Road Warriors

Every war has its front lines. In Missouri, they run along the interstates, highways and lettered roads—miles of medians, shoulders and ditches where invasive weeds encroach and overtake native vegetation.

This is where the Missouri Department of Transportation’s Invasive Species Strike Team takes up the fight. Armed with powerful herbicides, specialized application equipment and agronomic knowledge, their mission is much more than maintenance. They’re defending public and private lands from the relentless spread of noxious plants that threaten the state’s native biodiversity.

“We’re out here beautifying the roadways, but if we cut back on all these invasive species, it also helps with people’s properties, it helps farmers, and it helps our public lands,” said Cole Avery, a member of the MoDOT Central District Strike Team based in Jefferson City. “We’re not just worried about the state right-of-ways. It’s about taking care of our neighbors.”

In early May, Avery and the two other members of his crew, Zack Hess and Chester Grabinski, were staged in the Columbia area, where the targeted enemy was teasel, a highly invasive, thistlelike biennial plant.

“Those pods you see at the top are full of nothing but seeds, and the wind can carry them pretty much anywhere,” Avery said. “We’re constantly out here chasing them, and whatever we can’t get with our injection truck from the roadway, we’ll go after it with our 6x6.”

Teasel is just one example of Missouri’s invasive plants, defined as any species not native to a particular area. Once they get a foothold, they’re tough to remove—and even tougher to contain. Along with teasel, the MoDOT Strike Teams target johnsongrass, sericea lespedeza, thistle, bush honeysuckle and spotted knapweed among other nuisance vegetation.

“These foreign species, especially the ones that are invasive, take up space from other, more desirable plants,” said Jan Dellamano of the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC). “They can crowd out native species that have much more value in the landscape. Here in Missouri, we value our recreational lands, our conservation areas, our farms and nature in general, but this stuff is just pushing all the good stuff out.”

The origins of the Strike Team program began around 15 years ago—not with MoDOT but with Dellamano and the MDC. The private lands specialist was growing increasingly worried about the infestations of invasive weeds and brush along roadways in the southeastern area of the state where he was headquartered, and Dellamano was ready to wage war.

“I had a lot of concern about these invasives escaping off the highway and getting into pastures and cropland, and I started to think about what we could do to keep them contained,” he said. “Not that it was MoDOT’s fault, but these species are very adept at traveling along the highways and spreading by vehicle movement. One small colony can all of a sudden be relocated miles away.”

Dellamano and some MDC colleagues decided to ask the local MoDOT office for permission to do their own selective spraying on right-of-ways, which extend 30 feet from the road.

“They were happy to have our help because there just wasn’t enough time, people and equipment,” Dellamano said. “A couple of us within MDC started going out and spraying areas that had invasives. We’d let MoDOT know when and where we were going to be, and sometimes they’d send a crew out with us.”

This small army, however, couldn’t make much headway in an overwhelming battle. MDC then tried a couple of short-lived pilot programs, first using volunteers from AmeriCorps, the federal agency focused on national and community service, and then working with private contractors to tackle the task.

“After a change in MDC personnel, the cooperative effort with AmeriCorps fell apart,” Dellamano said. “And the cost of using contractors was way too high, and we weren’t happy with the results.”

That’s when a new plan began to take shape. MDC brought in the Missouri Prairie Foundation to partner with MoDOT in a unique arrangement that would ultimately prove to be the solution they were seeking. MDC and Missouri Prairie provided the specialized spraying equipment needed for the job, MoDOT provided the personnel, and all three partners shared in the cost of herbicides.

Under this agreement, the first Invasive Species Strike Teams were created in 2020 for MoDOT’s Southeast District, where Andrew Turner had just been hired as roadside manager. The objective, he said, was to show that a dedicated crew and specialized equipment could control noxious weeds on the roadsides.

“When I took over the project, all the groundwork had already been laid,” Turner said. “They had equipment in place and had hired the crews that were going to be doing the spraying. We finally went live in September 2020.”

Two four-person units were strategically stationed in Jackson and Houston to cover the entire district. That first abbreviated season, the crews sprayed 900 acres. The second full season, they covered 4,000 acres.

“It was a pretty monumental task, but they were very successful,” said Turner, who left MoDOT last fall. “After the second year, we compiled a report to show how much they were able to do at the district level and how much more efficient, effective and economical these special crews were. As a result, in 2023, the program was green-lighted to expand statewide.”

Today, 32 utility terrain vehicles (UTVs) have been deployed across Missouri, with Strike Teams covering all seven of MoDOT’s districts. Each crew member is trained in herbicide application, weed identification, pesticide regulations and safety protocols. The UTVs are outfitted with custom injection sprayers, which can carry and apply three separate, selective herbicides rather than using tank mixes.

“One of the biggest selling points that factored into the expansion was the selective spot spraying,” Turner explained. “The teams are able to go through an area and just selectively target what they want to control. It saves on herbicide costs, labor and environmental impact.”

Plus, having crews dedicated to controlling invasive weeds also frees up MoDOT’s other crews to focus on maintaining road surfaces and safety.

“We’re considered a special crew within MoDOT that specializes in this job,” Avery said. “Other crews might go out as needed, but we do this year-round. I think last year we sprayed up until the first week of December.”

The Strike Team fleet also includes an injection sprayer truck that can apply selective herbicides from the road, but the UTVs allow the Strike Teams to go off-road in rougher terrain to reach farther into the right-of-way and attack as many invasive plants as they can.

The team uses a scout-and-spray strategy to efficiently cover as many miles as possible during peak spray season as well as off-season spraying to target certain weeds through the winter. They keep detailed logs and maps of the areas they spray, because many of the invasive plants will take multiple years of treatment to eliminate.

“They’re tough,” Dellamano said. “They wouldn’t be invasive species if they were easy to control.”

For the Strike Team crew, each day begins by reviewing safety procedures and maps of where they’ll be working, before gearing up with personal protective equipment, loading their herbicides and filling their water tanks. Then they head to the designated location and stage their fleet, which is unmistakably marked. The Invasive Species Strike Team logo is emblazoned on a vividly wrapped trailer that transports the UTV. The design is both bold and purposeful.

“For this to work, we needed some kind of powerful, identifying logo that depicted action,” Dellamano said. “We wanted something that creates a sense of urgency and awareness about what we’re doing. And maybe it will even get the public to look for these species on their own property and control them.”

Indeed, the Central District crew said they are often approached by passersby and landowners to find out what is happening. Most of those interactions are friendly, though often a little wary.

“We do get a lot of questions,” said Strike Team member Chester Grabinski. “When we see someone pull over, we stop and take time to talk. They’ll usually want to know what we’re doing, what we’re spraying, what weeds we’re trying to control. The conversation might not start out positive, but it typically ends positive. More often than not, they’ll tell us we’re doing a good job.”

Public relations isn’t the only challenge the crews might face. While some right-of-way areas allow the Strike Team to easily stay away from traffic, operating slow-moving vehicles on the side of the road “can get a little dicey,” Avery said.

“If we’re on a two-lane road, we’re required to have a block vehicle with some type of signage like ‘spraying operation ahead,’” Avery said. “With the injection truck, we don’t go over 10 miles an hour to make sure we get a good, even coating of the chemical and avoid drifting. We’ve never had any issues, but every once in a while we have to work somewhere on a razor’s edge.”

Though the staggering numbers of invasive weeds on Missouri’s right-of-ways may seem like a losing battle, the program is making progress. In the Southeast District, populations of some species have been controlled by 80% to 90%—or even more. Even though he’s no longer with MoDOT, Turner said he’s proud of the progress made.

“I can’t believe the amount of control,” he said. “These crews have been very effective. There are some areas now that you could probably consider clean that several years ago were a real eyesore.”

When there’s nothing left to fight, that’s considered a victory for the Invasive Species Strike Teams.

“Ten years down the road, what we did today will have a lasting impact,” Avery said. “That’s how I look at it. I’m proud to be out here doing this. I feel like it’s a very important job.”    

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