The Whitehall Project summarizes its summer focus

We have much going on this summer.  Here is a short summary of what we are doing.  

1. Leafy spurge: We collected leafy spurge flea beetles July 7-8 near Grass Range.  We have well over 100 requests for releases, but if you are interested in one contact us and we will do our best to get some to you.  We do not have a good site to collect in Jefferson County because they all have releases and the flea beetles have caused them to crash (they have killed much of the spurge) so there are not enough insects to collect.  Some folks have learned that if you start flood/heavily irrigating a site where the flea beetles have cleared most of the spurge, it comes back.  This is because the flea beetles only work on dry sites where the larvae in the roots do not drown.

2. We are monitoring 10 of the 12 spurge research sites we set up last summer for the ARS researchers at Sidney.  We will be collecting insect and plant density data as well as soil and actual plant samples (for DNA analysis).