In with grazing, out with baaaad plants

To fight exotic weeds, Florida is deploying sheep. The problem in the first test? Gators.

By JULIE HAUSERMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 2, 1999

Kudzu [Times files]

TALLAHASSEE -- Weary of buying weed killers by the barrel, the state of Florida is testing a novel weapon to battle botanical invaders: flocks of munching sheep.

The Great Florida Sheep Experiment started small last winter in Okeechobee County. A New Hampshire company called Bellwether Solutions loaded about 500 sheep onto a quadruple-decker truck and headed south. The sheep were a rare breed of itinerant mowers: They had spent the summer working for a utility company in New Hampshire, knocking back vegetation under power lines.

During the winter, they grazed on exotic grasses that grow along a canal maintained by the South Florida Water Management District. In Okeechobee County, the shepherds from New Hampshire learned a hard lesson about Florida's food chain.

See related story: Mission: Kill the creeps Florida is crawling with non-indigenous pest plants — one step behind Hawaii. Most of us are blissfully unaware of the invasion and how much it costs to combat it.

"We lost six sheep to alligators before we learned the best ways to manage sheep around alligators," said Dick Henry, a former New Hampshire Audubon Society president who founded Bellwether Solutions.

Now, the experiment is expanding. This month, Henry will again lead the flock onto a southbound truck, this time bound for Tallahassee. Their target: the kudzu vine, a green bully that is muscling out the native plants in some of Tallahassee's majestic, oak-filled parks.

The idea is to employ a technique called "mob grazing," in which hundreds of shoulder-to-shoulder sheep strip down every green thing in their path. Before the sheep get a chance to tear into any desirable trees, the shepherd moves the flock. A few days later, the sheep are back again, stressing the kudzu vines' underground tubers so much, officials hope, that the plants can at last be murdered for good with a potent dose of weed killer.

"People laugh about this, but I don't want to turn my back on anything that might be the silver bullet," said Greg Jubinsky, a Florida Department of Environmental Protection scientist who has been waging war against exotic plants for 20 years. "We've got public conservation lands that are just eaten up by kudzu and air potato and other vines."

About 2-million acres of Florida are infested with exotic plants, Jubinsky said. Kudzu, a tenacious vine that can grow a foot a day, covers 100,000 acres of North Florida.

The DEP is kicking in $75,000 and the city of Tallahassee another $75,000 to pay for the sheep test. The flock comes with its own shepherd and highly trained dogs, some to herd and some to stand guard against predators, such as coyotes. The flock is made up of Rambouillet sheep imported from Montana. They are ideal for the job, because they like woody plants and they tend to cluster together.

The big question is whether the sheep will ultimately prove to be a cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution to Florida's horticultural woes.

In New Hampshire, Public Service Co. spokesman Martin Murray says the sheep do a good job, but the jury is still out on whether using the flock is fiscally prudent. The utility company is in the second year of a three-year pilot project.

A South Florida Water Management District official says the grazing sheep efficiently dispensed with unwanted grasses along the canal banks. But in the end, Dan Thayer said, mowing is cheaper.

"I don't think there's any doubt that mowing is cheaper," said Henry of Bellwether Solutions. "The long-term potential is whether we can actually eradicate" exotic plants with the sheep.

Kudzu-eating could prove to be a great niche for the sheep. As it stands now, state workers wield herbicides, chain saws and loppers to knock the vines back.

In his start-up operation, Henry has found this central challenge: A good shepherd is hard to find.

Shepherds have to know how to work the dogs and sheep, and they often have to work the night shift. In warm weather, the sheep tend to lie around all day and graze all night.

"There's sort of a romantic aspect of this," Henry said. "When you actually get into it, that rapidly evaporates. I mean, there's black flies and rain -- even alligators."

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