Welcome everybody, thank you for being here.
This working session is thinking about
how we can, sort of the first steps
toward forming a rapid response network
for acute tree mortality events,
and in this case we've sort of been thinking about this
with an existing working group
that's using emerald ash borer as a case study.
But for this session we'll be thinking about it.
You can use that as the case study in your mind,
if that helps to anchor things,
or you can think about a different on the horizon threat
that is relevant to you, just to think about
how information is moving through your networks,
and sort of where the barriers are there
and also what information is needed.
We were originally gonna do moving around introductions
because we thought we might, if we had a bigger group,
but since we have a pretty small group,
I think we could just do actual introductions.
So if folks want to say your name
and what your role is and where you're at.
You can be a little expansive.
They don't have to be super short intros,
because then as we learned in the meeting yesterday,
everybody just forgets everybody's name.
So you can say a few things about yourself
related to your work, and that would be great.
We can start with Eli, we'll go in the room,
and then we'll go online.
I always just feel like I'm yelling into the sky,
but I think they can hear us.
[Eli] My name is Eli Ward.
I work at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
I'm the Connecticut State Coordinator for FEMC.
I just started my position seven months ago,
and I just graduated with my PhD seven months ago.
So my role is primarily research, forest ecosystem scale,
looking a lot at tree regeneration
and response to forest disturbances,
primarily mortality from invasive pests and pathogens
and different forest management practices.
My PhD also was actually in forest soil biogeochemistry.
That's not my current work,
but that is an active area of interest
that might come back someday.
-That's a lot. -Yeah.
-Is that too long? -That's a lot, wow.
[Eli] Well, now it's a career.
(group laughing)
[Lana] Hey guys, Lana Russell.
I am the Rhode Island Forest Health Program Coordinator
and the Rhode Island State Coordinator with FEMC.
I'm also new in my position as of April,
but I have been the Rhode Island State Coordinator
for three years.
I'm running the Rhode Island Forest Health Program.
I am keenly interested in just rapid response
to tree rescue or tree mortality events.
My program has very limited capacity.
I staff one, and so just historically with limited capacity.
I'm just really interested to see
what can be established here.
[Jeff] Okay, I'll go.
Jeff Harriman with Maine Forest Service,
Resource Management Coordinator.
I pretty much cover everything for our field aspects.
I oversee the entomologist pathologist,
and then we're kind of two groups,
and one forest health monitoring,
has what we used to be called insect and disease management,
but we also have the forest inventory program
where we actually have field groups
that complete the forest inventory.
I do aerial survey, RGIS.
You name it, I pretty much do everything for our group.
I was curious to see the outcome of this presentation.
[Thom] I'm Thom Allgaier, the Invasive Species Coordinator
with New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.
I also represent the department on the State Community.
I cover the whole state,
and I deal a lot with the United State agencies
on the New York Invasive Species Council,
a lot with New York State DDC,
a lot with New York State parks, and the others as well.
Also the prisms, the partnerships
from invasive species management.
I kind of coordinate with them as well.
We've used incident management, ICS,
for response to different instances,
and in New York state being one of them,
EAB being another one.
So I thought this would kind of fit into that aspect.
I have a lot of ICS experience with the USDA for 13 years.
For nine and a half of the 13 years I was with USDA,
I was on the National Incident Management Team
in one role or another, lots of deployments here and there.
And then also in my current role,
which I've been back at New York State Ag and Markets
five years, we've had several,
we've used it for several things,
including planning a statewide meeting,
responding to spotted lantern fly
and other instances as well.
So I was trying to figure out how this
would kind of interact
with ICS and how we could implement some
of it in our state as well.
-Or how we can learn. -That's what I'm thinking.
(group laughing)
[Thom] That, too.
Yeah, we have no answers.
We are only gonna ask you to do things.
(group laughing)
Awesome.
[Jen] Jen Pontius, I am the note taker of this session,
and I am forestry faculty here at UVM
and the PI for the FEMC.
My research is mostly in remote sensing
and geospatial modeling for forest health,
early detection or fragmentation.
That was with Allison long time ago.
A long time ago. Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, just happy
to be here and learn from all of you.
[Presenter] Great.
Do the online folks want to introduce themselves?
They can unmute themselves, right?
-Yes. -[Presenter] Yep.
And we can start with Laura, then Erica,
then Savannah than Kelsey.
Hmm. Can y'all hear us?
-We need a volume on- -Somebody just unmuted.
-Oh, oh, -Oh. Yay.
[Presenter] Great. Yeah. Erica, go ahead.
Maybe you wanna step away for a while.
[Erica] Hi, my name is Erica Colbert.
I work for the New York State Department
of Environmental Conservation in the Forest
Health Diagnostic Lab.
I am a lab tech that works mostly with the entomology
side of our programs.
[Jen] Thanks, Erica.
-Savannah. -Savannah.
[Savannah] Hi, I'm Savannah Ferrera.
I'm a forest health specialist with the state of Vermont
and I'm also co-coordinator with FEMC for Vermont.
I typically work out of our forest biology lab,
which provides diagnostic services to the state.
And I also help with our forest health programming.
So doing all of the insect trapping
and IDs, our plot work.
Yeah.
-Great. And Kelsey? -Hello,
my name is Kelsey McLaughlin.
I'm a forest pathologist with the New York State DEC,
working out of the Forest health diagnostic lab with Erica.
I work with the disease side of things.
So for example, beech leaf disease, oak wilt,
white pine needle damage.
Those are kind of the big three that I work on.
And then also responding to public inquiries
and diagnostic requests.
[Presenter] Great. Laura, did you come back?
-She put some comments on- -She's, oh, she said
that she's not an attendee,
but like she's doing (indistinct)
[Presenter] Oh, ha ha.
We can't see that on this particular screen, so thanks.
Sorry for the confusion. Okay, great.
So I'm just gonna give a little bit of broad context to sort
of network mapping.
So this might be sort of obvious,
but just so we're all sort
of working from the same sort of idea.
So when we're talking about a social network here,
we're talking about about social structures.
And by social I mean like very broadly.
Like this could be like professional social,
like your professional network could be, you know,
could be like a neighborhood, could be lots
of different kinds of networks, but it's composed
of nodes and edges.
And the edges are the connections between the nodes
that a nodes could be a node, could be an individual,
or it could be an organization of some kind.
And as you can see here, the edges can be linked
to multiple nodes, which, you know,
if you're thinking about a network that makes a lot
of sense, if you're thinking about your own social
connections, obviously, like you
as a human are connected to multiple things.
And understanding the structure of a social network
can help us to sort of see both how, how people
or groups are connected to each other,
but also how it provides a, a sort of map to start with
to understand how information is flowing from node to node
and where there might be barriers along those edges, right?
Like there might be a connection there,
but it's not really being activated
for some reason or another.
And so today what we're going
to do is spend some time thinking about like
what this looks like for you individually
and then building that into a
little bit of a larger network.
And then thinking about that in the specific case
of tree mortality events and how is information flowing
and what barriers can we identify as we start to think about
what it would look like to develop a network
that would be able to respond quickly to
acute tree mortality events.
So I was, I just wanted to mention,
I'm not super closely familiar with this case study,
but we've been partnering with a working group
that's been focusing on emerald ash for,
and they have some connections to folks
who have done other work related to social networks
to address environmental issues.
And this was one of the ones
that was sort of brought to our attention.
So this kind of social network mapping was used
to address issues that were happening
with Atlantic Salmon Recovery,
where there was information was not really flowing
efficiently through the system
between the different partners.
And as a result, recovery was really, they were having a lot
of trouble having success with
the recovery goals that they had.
And so this mapping and understanding
where those barriers were was a really important
part of solving that problem.
So that's sort of the framework we're looking at.
We're gonna think about, again, applying that to,
we're gonna start kind of broad
and then think about applying it to specific,
sort of a more specific idea.
And Alyssa's gonna walk us through a bunch
of exercises to get there.
Great.
[Alyssa] So yes, so phase one we are going to sort
of start forming that network map.
And so as an activity, we've got notepads here
and I just want you
to think about your network and think of yourself.
You are a node, nodes can also be institutions
or example a university extension office
or a state agency, that can be a node.
But also individuals can be nodes,
could be colleagues, neighbors,
members of your knitting group.
-So those are- -That's a response
-you were telling- -Thinking.
As I said, thinking broadly to start,
you never know what you might
-Learn- -Yeah.
[Alyssa] At your knitting group or your card club
or your book club or whatever, you know, there.
So, so think broadly,
and it doesn't have to be about tree mortality at this
point, just like thinking about your network.
[Jen] Yeah, the question is about context
because I think this came up yesterday in our meeting
and sort of understanding what the overall purpose
of this project is.
Like what are the goals if,
because I think there was some confusion
that the purpose was
to create some new rapid response network.
But I don't know that that's what the goal really is.
Can you provide context on what the sort of purpose
of the project really is focusing on
and why we're sort here to inform that?
[Alyssa] So the idea is
that there are tree mortality events that happen that then
sort of, nobody knows who to go to, what to do.
Should there be monitoring that gets implemented?
Should there be treatment that happens?
And so this, the purpose of the group is to,
you know, really pull it together.
Like how can we support, like what is needed,
what information is needed, what,
who, what do you need to know about who to talk to to get
that information to flow.
And yeah,
[Jen] So at the Ag is that there's already
all of these programs, the, you know, you already
talked about the incident response.
There's already all these different things.
Some happening at the federal level,
some at the state level, some I don't even know, right?
So we're just trying to get a lay of the landscape
of what's currently out there.
How do you then connect them
and identify sort of which is the best, best edge that
what you call it connection, no node?
-Edge. -Edge. It is an edge.
How do you like, make sure the edge has no barriers
or that if edges are missing, they could,
we could add edges in?
[Alyssa] I mean, that's some of
what we'll do today in this exercise,
but it's also maybe a next step type thing.
-Okay. -Okay.
So, so yeah, at this point it's trying
to understand like what are the networks that already exist,
the ones that are obviously relevant
and maybe ones that are not obviously relevant.
Because in some cases we may need to be activating people
who, you know, own smaller private plots of land.
And like how do we get access
to those people particular if they're not already connected
into, you know, a network of foresters
and they don't really know who to reach out to
and their main point of contact.
Maybe if they've gotten that for far
as a local extension office maybe, right?
Like in a lot of cases they might
not even really know to do that.
So the idea is to get a map of what the network is.
And we won't be able to build that today.
But just starting to think about what some
of those nodes are generally,
and then what are the barriers to information moving through
that system and identifying what's
needed at any given moment.
Which again, maybe is monitoring
or maybe it's information or whatever.
And that could be different for different kinds of events.
[Alyssa] For the EAB case study,
which I know we're not focused on
that much, but just more for context of like
how we're thinking about this.
Was their goal to like treat the
ash like certain ash trees?
Yeah, it was,
-there were monitor- -There were a lot
of different pieces to it
because there was, they were working closely
with tribal relations
and so like, I think there was some seed saving
and trying to capture seeds.
And then I think there was also, if they thought
that there was an area that was at high risk of being lost,
capturing the, what was needed for basket making from
before it was lost.
So there was a little bit of, you know,
that sort of stuff too.
[Thom] I still think it makes that very difficult
because, you know, if you're looking to start ground floor,
you know, there was various responses from each state as to
how they handled, you know, that that kickoff.
And I think that's where this was gonna be very difficult.
But I think Kyle was the one that brought it up yesterday,
if I recall that, you know, yeah.
There's, so to speak, other platforms that have tried
to do this and you know, it's because in a whole,
the region is large
and that everybody's gonna come across different barriers.
You know, it's gonna be based on your state,
what you're allowed to do first and foremost.
You know, whether it's public, private, the national land.
I mean, I, I think there's, there's a lot
of barriers here that's gonna make it difficult
to put this in a region-wide context.
[Attendee] I was, I jump in so
I was thinking the same thing.
because there are regulatory authority issues,
there are funding issues.
A lot of our funding funnels through the USDA,
APHIS, PPQ to us.
But there's, there's guidelines that we have to stay within,
you know, and so those restrictions,
whether they're regulatory or funding, kinda limit-
-Exactly. -How we can relate
to, you know, different organizations and different entities
and even how we can spend money.
We might be able to spend it on things but not staff. Yeah.
That sort of thing.
So that all kind of comes into play.
So, and backing up a little bit,
the way you were describing this in an ICS
incident management team situation, it would be more of
a MAC, a multi-agency coordination group.
And because it would be like all the stakeholders sitting
down and, and you know, putting, okay, this is,
this is my package on the table, this is my package,
this is what I have to offer, this is what I have
to offer and this is what I need.
And then basically they coordinate amongst each other,
how did we meet all those needs with what they have.
And then it's up to the incident management, you know,
that goes through the incident from the MAC
to the incident commander,
to the actual incident management team
to get those things done on the ground.
So.
[Attendee] And similarly, just as you said, there's,
and Kyle brought it up yesterday with the Northeast Compact,
which, you know, it's, I don't know what states are involved
to be quite honest at this point in time,
but it brings in some of the provinces as well.
And you know, they do have something similar
and it does work off the ICS system.
So, I mean, that one's kind of in place as.
[Jen] Is this fascinating?
I don't want to I don't want to derail the activities
that you have, but I just, I I have so many questions.
I mean, this, this MAC I think you went for acronyms.
-Yeah. -(group laughing)
-Trying- To explain. -So this MAC,
this multi agency coordination group.
Yep.
Okay, So who, who calls that
and what triggers that to be called?
And then who pays for it, someone's gotta pay for,
and then who did else do they talk to besides themselves?
These are, I think this is a kind of questions you're trying
to, you're trying to get at.
[Thom] It would be, it would be up
to each individual entity,
how they would pay for it for AG
and markets, depending on what the program is.
Either it's paid for state by state funds
or specific program funds that, that were funded
through a cooperative agreement through the USDA.
[Jen] But that, but, but that would've required
forethought and or an insurance account.
We're talking about something happens this summer
-that we didn't anticipate- -Right.
[Jen] And it's catastrophic
and we want to figure out
what the hell's going on, how do we respond to it-
[Thom] But there are USDA funds
and state funds for those situations
[Jen] That go that flow to specifically
the state agencies.
-Yes. -And not anybody else.
-Correct. -So these are
the gate barriers, right?
[Thom] So the, so the, within our regulatory
authority, we're charged with responding
to test outbreaks and things like that.
So the funding is there within,
you know, within the state budget.
So, but if it, you know, if it's a catastrophic event
that exceeds that small pool of money
and then we go to the USDA
and, you know, request funds for that.
And sometimes it's denied, sometimes it's approved,
it really, and it's usually through a cooperative agreement.
[Attendee] (Indistinct) do you have that for Rhode Island?
Are you the person for that?
This is another like information sharing where I'm like,
I don't have that right now.
Maybe I'll get it with my forest health role
that I'm starting in in the spring.
But like, I don't know, in Connecticut we've had that.
[Attendee] We're, you know, I'm,
I've like potentially been aware of like a few attempts
to have like an ICS structure in Rhode Island.
We, we did kind of do that. Or the state mostly did it.
I was with the state at the time, first spotted lantern fly.
And I do think, yeah, if they were kind
of more traditionally, yeah, I would be
that person in that role.
But I, I'm kind of curious to learn more about like,
the ICS structure and a response.
Because I've also heard, you know, I know,
like Massachusetts for Southern Pine Beetle initially
with their response had developed an ICS
structure and then they abandoned it.
So I wish somebody from there was
-here today to- -That was Mass?
[Attendee] Yeah, to tell why they,
maybe they morphed it into something a little bit.
It is just all, you know, hearsay.
But I did hear that they didn't use an ICS structure.
And why were those barriers actually?
-Yeah. -I've been on instance
where things went really,
really smoothly with many agencies
and then others where there were less agencies
and it was a horror show.
A lot of times it, it involves,
because the whole ICS structure is you can plug people into
positions that have nothing to do with their day job.
-You know- -Can you give
like a concrete example?
Can you have one?
[Attendee] Forest, the forest service and fire?
[Thom] Well, well just, no even spot even more close,
more related to what we do for spotted lantern fly.
We were coordinating with New York State DEC,
New York State, sorry, USDA within New York State
and AG and Markets and Parks.
Some of the people that were put into those roles had no
understanding of those roles.
And they were trying to operate under their normal
USDA structure or their normal state structure,
and they weren't relating to the role
that they were plugged into.
Whether it was a, a section chief where, you know,
they're not out doing the field work.
They're coordinating others
that are going out and doing the field work.
And those people would disappear
because they'd be out in the field trying to help
and it wasn't helping, it was hindering.
[Attendee] Right. It's like an emergency detail
-Yes. -Regular person,
but they need people to quickly do something else.
-Right. -They pulled from
your job to do something else
so you'd have any clue what you're doing.
And it sounds like it's hit or miss.
-Right, right. -Well, yes and no,
but those ITS classifications-
-Yeah. -As he mentioned
Section Chief and so on, everybody has a defined role.
It's a matter of just making sure that those people stay
with those defined roles.
-Yeah. -So you've got a
finance officer that person
is charged to, you know, figure out these costs,
what it's gonna take to, to, you know,
if you're using a fire, for example, to get an engine
to a certain location or you've got well, in which way,
I mean, there's defined roles for each classification.
[Thom] And when people start stepping outta those boxes,
that's when things go off the rails.
And, and they're not just plugging people in,
you know, here go do a job you're not trained to do,
the people that predicate those positions are capable
of doing those roles.
-Sure. -But it might not
be what their daytime, you know, everyday job is.
-Right. -Sometimes it is.
For us, typically within New York State AG
and Markets, the finance person is our admin person
who normally handles finances.
So it makes sense.
But we sometimes have, you know,
strike team leaders that are assistant horticulture
inspectors and they have horticulture inspectors
reporting to them.
So kind of the roles are reversed.
Or you, or you could have a supervisor
as a survey team member, not as a,
you know, a section chief.
And you could, so sometimes, you know the mentality of,
well, you know, you're my boss.
-Well no, not today. -Right, right.
[Thom] Like it changing those gears sometime,
-really were changing- -And that that concept-
[Thom] That's when things sometimes go off the rail.
-Yeah. -And you know,
and we had that on the spotted lantern fly incident
where there was some USDA folks that were not used
to cooperating well with others.
They were trying to run us like, like, well you,
you handle your people we'll handle our people.
I'm like, well no, we're all the same,
we're all on the same team.
-Yeah. -Like that whole
one team concept,
there were two people in particular
and one of them doesn't even work for the USDA anymore.
-Just couldn't grasp that. -Yeah.
[Thom] And it was, it was really causing, you know,
-an issue with the response. -Yeah.
I understand that the importance of having sort
of a similar structure in these agencies, you know,
they're all governmental agencies, but I'm just, I cannot
but think of what a missed opportunity it is
to not include people who are not in any government agency,
like academics, research, you know, scientists,
practitioners who might actually be there
and have some perspective to add
or ability even just to help with field work.
I just feel like it's really exclusive.
[Thom] No, I disagree. because we include those people.
So there's a role, a specific ICS role
as a subject matter expert, SME,
subject matter expert.
And those people from academia, from other outside areas.
You know what, it could even be private industry.
If there's a contractor that that's hired to be spraying
or pesticide application,
those people can be brought into the ICS structure.
So can, in New York state we have prisms.
So they're not, they're, they're kind of quasi government.
They're funded through environmental protection funds
through the DEC, but they're not a government agency.
And they're networks of private public
and governmental agencies.
You know, sometimes it's the soil and water district.
Sometimes it's the private contractor sometimes, excuse me,
sometimes it's just the volunteer.
But those prism networks can also be brought in.
And we've used those on spot micro flag responses.
Particularly there's the Lower Hudson Prism has
trained detector dogs for invasive species.
-Yep. -And we've used
the conservation dogs within the ICS response.
-So those- -So they're set up
in advance too
-and funded through- -It's not set up in advance.
It's, it grows and contracts as needed.
So if there's a need to bring in the detector dogs
as determined by the objectives of the incident,
then it's up to the operation section chief
to request those through logistics.
And then if they have to be paid for, finance pays for it,
logistics brings it in the planning section, tracks it,
and then operation section use the-
[Attendee] Yeah.
But there are already relationships, and maybe this is true
because it's the prism or whatever-
-Yeah. -But like there
for some of the other instances
for the subject matter experts, that if there's a consultant
or an academic, like there, there has
to already be a relationship that exists
in order for them to know to go to them,
-right? -I think that's where
-the nodes and edges come in. -Exactly.
Because they might be outside that normal orbit-
-Right. -Of you know,
-that agency. -Right.
But they, you know, those pockets of people know people,
it could be their neighbors.
-Right. -It could be, you know,
somebody that they went to college with.
-Right. -It could be, you know,
someone they saw at a conference like this.
-Yeah. -And they could tap them
and say, Hey, would you be interested in,
in filling this role as either a subject matter
-expert or a contractor, so- -That's awesome.
So awesome, but on my mind is like literally
going conflicted interest.
I went to college with you,
I want to now have my agency pay you
to be our subject matter expert.
I'm just thinking of the barrier. Sorry. (laughing)
[Thom] But there might not be,
there might not be paying for that.
It might be they, they're doing it on their outside agency's
dime or like a contractor.
-Yeah. -They may give, you know,
they would be reimbursed,
but that would be through the kind of the situation I,
you know, operations deems it necessary.
They request it through logistics finance and say yes
or no, thumbs up, thumbs down.
Yes, we have the funds for that.
Or, you know, we can't fund that spring and it ends.
If they can fund the springing, then they have
to find a contractor sometimes, depending on the,
on the dollar amount that has to go out to bid.
-I was gonna say- -But in a small scale,
-like if a tree with two trees. -Yeah.
[Thom] A lot of times it doesn't.
So especially on a rapid
response, you know, if it's a bigger
incident, a longer term thing.
-Yeah. -I was in Montana
and we had planes spraying for grasshoppers.
You know, those contracts were put into place.
-Sure. -But they already
knew the contractors
because it was a perennial issue and they already,
and they, those contractors
have to be registered with the state.
So they had a, you know, preexisting list
of those specific contractors.
Just like in New York state, we would have a list
of certified pesticide applicators.
Sure, so is this Jeff, is this similar?
Like does this same system happen in Maine?
[Jeff] To a certain extent, yes.
[Attendee] Can you say but what, why the hesitation?
[Jeff] Well, because every incident
-is different. -Yep.
[Jeff] I mean, it's gonna be based on size, severity.
I mean, I guess I, I personally find it hard
that we can lump this all into one.
-I mean- -Yeah-
[Jeff] Go back to like our,
our first detection to BAB.
We got a call from our Canadian counterpart saying
that they found it across the border.
So we pulled together our field staff
and we sent them to the north for week.
And we laid out a plan ourselves, what we were gonna do.
And I mean, we were there the first day we found it.
We were, you know, that's how that one worked.
You know, every, everything is a little different.
-Yeah. -At least on
the Forest Health side.
I think you could look at anything.
BLD our first detection was a landowner.
Saw some information we sent to crew out, you know,
to take a look while went to look at it.
You know, I think, yeah, I guess
unless it's a major, major event,
I think it's gonna be hard to do.
But, you know, at least statewide,
you know, we work a lot with New Hampshire
because they're in between us.
So if if something's on the horizon commonly reach out to us
to let us know or you know, we,
or something we tend to share with them.
So, but, but I think that kind of happened already.
-Yeah. -To a certain extent.
And you know, to be honest,
I said one of the greatest things about the,
being on the coordinator call is actually having the ability
to talk with everybody else there.
Yeah, I think that that's, you know, we hear stuff
from the other co-coordinators.
Coordinators and we go back and relate it to our folks.
So I, I guess that's, you know, I'll, I'll go that route.
But yeah, I, I think personally, I guess I find
that this is gonna be a difficult task
because every state is gonna have different barriers
that's gonna make, you know, following that pathway-
-Yeah. -Much harder.
But yeah, I mean, it is possible
to show, you know, who our nodes are-
-Yeah. -You know,
how we work things out.
But I think as far as a region wide plan, I think I,
I don't know if it's feasible or if it's necessary, it's,
the other piece might not be necessary.
Yeah. To, to, to a certain extent.
I mean, because I think every state agency
or whatever is gonna have to abide by their guidelines.
-Yeah. -Before, you know,
before they can jump on somebody else's plan
and say, this is what we're gonna do.
I mean, I, I know if we had something pop up all
of a sudden there was no way that I'm gonna, you know,
our group is gonna reach out to another state
and say, this is going on without talking with our,
whether it be our going to our director first
and then our, our commissioner
and then, then we could even go to our governor
before we have to,
or we're able to push any information out.
[Attendee] Yeah.
I wonder, so like New York is like much larger,
probably has a lot more resources,
like the one you talked about.
And I'm also gonna say I'm perfectly fine abandoning
the plan and we can have an open conversation about this
and folks online should chime in also.
I know it can be hard,
but we're keeping an eye on you.
[Attendee] Yeah.
And don't feel like you need to read your hands.
You could just talk too.
Yeah.
-We'll notice you. -Yeah.
But I'm wondering if, like, is is the landscape
for like quickly responding
to something really different in Rhode Island
or in Connecticut?
It sounds like you're also kind of figuring out what it is.
[Attendee] Yeah, I don't know if I can speak
to that too much yet with being new the, to the role.
And I also think Connecticut,
I keep saying this like all day,
the past two days is weird structurally in that, like,
I work for the Ag station, which does research
and like we have the entomology department
that everyone focuses on their own thing.
But then there's deep, which is like the forestry division,
like all the forest management.
So it's different agencies.
But yeah, I'm definitely
still figuring out a lay of the land.
But like, I mean, yeah, it must exist.
because like we have people studying like EAB
that are detecting it right away-
-Right. -That are tapping
into their interstate network.
[Attendee] I can't help but think,
I really liked your example
how you just got a call from
somebody from one of the provinces.
-Like that's amazing. -Yeah.
[Attendee] But it was dependent on that one person,
but that doesn't happen
-all the time either. -That's what I'm saying.
That's what I'm saying.
[Jeff] We just had, you know,
we were on a conference a couple weeks ago that they found
brown spruce longhorn beetle,
and it was probably 30 miles from our border.
We didn't hear a word about it until the conference.
So I mean that it's gonna be hit or miss.
I think again, that's where it's gonna be difficult
for any state.
And I certainly what you just said, the problem is also
for us that we are so divided in our state.
I mean we're, my group is Forest Health
and Monitoring, but we work with our,
well my umbrella is Department
of Agriculture Conservation and Forestry.
And within that department there's a lot of other groups.
So, you know, our, on the Ag side, we work
with so many different groups,
division that there's split up.
I can, I can think of three immediately
that we were working on HWA I just,
I just completed a map this morning to update our,
and I sent it off to three different groups
because we all work together
and it makes it, I think every state is gonna have a
different structure and I think it's gonna be difficult.
-Extremely difficult. -Yeah.
[Attendee] And I'm still, so, so there's, yeah,
-there's, we hear from, -I just want to, I'm curious
what the context is in Rhode Island.
-Yeah. -Is that-
[Attendee] Yeah.
So kind of you mentioning, you know,
or yeah, Maine and New York saying,
or like you have so many,
or Connecticut, you have so many different groups
and it's a little bit disjointed.
Like I guess one thing in Rhode Island is that we don't have
that many groups and we
therefore know each other pretty well.
I do talk quite a bit,
but yeah, it's just like there's less people to be
involved in an incident response and less resources.
But we did, we implemented ICS for spotted lantern fly
before we had any findings.
And we were able to establish like at least a
very baseline structure of like, you know,
once we detect it, you know, we will talk
to contractors about treatment, stuff like that.
And I don't, I guess I'm kind
of not answering your question.
-No, it's fine. -But I, you know, it seems
to me like ICS is really like a response
and like, what's your response detection and treatment.
But like what about, you mentioned BLD, like,
well when you don't have answers of like what to do
with BLD, what's the response like?
And then it made me think like,
well the response considering more monitoring
or like collecting seeds for preservation, like, you know,
and it just in my wrong, that ICS is like kind of just like,
-like what's the- -The goal?
[Thom] It could be, it's really flexible.
It's whatever the, the whatever the,
I can't think of the term.
Really the objectives they're set
for that incident for that operational period.
It's really guided by those.
So it could just be, you know, survey
and find out, you know, limitative how far out
and that particular path to spread, whether it's BLD
or DAB or any others.
And a lot of times too, like if we get a call from,
you know, somebody from the public
or from a neighboring state or Canadian province
or report IMAP invasives,
we'll send a horticulture inspector out to confirm
or collect a sample and confirm that particular pest.
You know, we don't, and we don't immediately jump
to an ICS structure.
It's, you know, we handle it internally
and then it's like, okay, it's more than what one
or two people can handle.
We, you know, we need some more structure
here, we need some more help.
And then if we implement an ICS
structure, then we have that help.
[Jeff] Well, that goes back to where I said size
and severity plays a role into that
because, I mean, it could be a,
-a minor, moot point, right. -Right.
Get a call that lows of southern ash trees, you know,
then we send out some folks to look at it.
It's based on size and severity.
[Thom] I mean, I've gotten literally thousands,
almost 3000 reports of Northern Giant Hornets in New York.
None of them zero have been, you know, none
of them have been Northern Giant Hornet,
but we've gotten thousands of reports.
So it, we wouldn't, you know, jump to that conclusion
until we actually had a sample.
-Right. -One thing about,
from my USDA experience, one thing that Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island have going for them
on the USDA side,
they have one state plant health director
for all three of those states.
-Didn't use, so, huh? -You didn't use the acronym.
(group laughing)
[Thom] So, so they, so they have it, you know,
they have a convenient, you know, situation there
where they, you know, they, they don't have to coordinate
with three separate states on the USDA
side because it's one individual.
-So- -Yeah.
[Thom] And there's some states that have two states,
but for the most part, each state has their own
state plant health director, yeah.
[Attendee] So I know Savannah, do you want to jump in?
I saw that you posted on your notes.
[Savannah] Yeah, I can just read what I was commenting.
So Vermont doesn't have an ICS command system as far
as I know for forest health.
But we do meet with other state agencies.
So we have a forest pest action committee group
and we meet, we now do bi-annually,
but we used to do quarterly
when we were first getting started.
And it's between Forest Parks
and Recreation Agency of Agriculture UVM,
the Green Mountain National Forest, the folks at APHIS PPQ
who are working in southern Vermont as well as urban
and community forestry.
So we all work together
and develop these forest pest action plans
for like spotted LAN and fly beach leaf disease,
oak whale, all of the big players.
And then depending on who's the lead,
so for beech leaf disease, that's primarily a forest pest.
So FPR has it where spotted lantern fly is predominantly
an agricultural pest, so they'll take the lead on that.
We still all work together
and agree on what the response will be.
And then we develop these little flow charts of who
to contact if it's a new county, if it's a new town,
if it's a previously confirmed town, what are we doing
for reporting and communication just so
that we're all consistent.
[Attendee] So I'm curious then like when there's,
so like maybe the small instances aside
where it's like okay, you send a couple people out,
like deal with whatever the issue is, for the bigger things,
what are the barriers
to taking whatever action is needed?
Are like, are there ever barriers,
it sounds like New York has like a
pretty robust response system,
but sometimes is it like, I'll just throw out some
examples I could think of that could happen.
Like things don't happen fast enough.
Like there is not funds
for whatever you particularly want to do
or you don't actually have the staff time like great,
but like people can't be pulled off the projects they're
doing or you don't have connections with the communities
that you need to be connecting with in that case.
Like those are just examples I could think of
as potentially being barriers.
But like what do you guys run into?
[Thom] All the things you just mentioned
-and regulatory authority. -Okay.
[Thom] Because sometimes like if it's not a plant pest
or if it's not covered by another specific AG
and Forest regulation, we don't have the authority.
-Okay. -Like you could have
the resources and the expertise, the knowhow
and not be allowed to do anything.
-Correct. -That sounds-
[Thom] If it's not a plant pest, then like one
of the issues we deal with is jumping worms right?
So they're not a plant pest-
-No. -It's an invasive species.
They're regulated under part 575.
So we but there's no treatment, there's no survey,
there's no good survey method.
You can survey for the adults.
You can't say survey for the cysts.
So there's no treatment, there's no survey.
But they're regulated under part 575.
So that it's a challenge and it's not covered.
We can't regulate, we don't regulate it under any
of our other regulatory authority.
None of the health state regulations cover that
because it's not a plant pest.
So things like
-that are limiting. -That one though.
If there's no response, no treatment, what do you,
what would you even do anyway?
Kind of like beech leaf to disease, same idea.
-What what can you do? -So it's, I dunno, monitor
-reports. -Yeah, I was just gonna
encourage people report through a, my IMAP invasives.
But other than that-
[Attendee] Yeah, go ahead.
[Savannah] I was just gonna speak to beach leaf disease
in New York, because this has come up a couple times.
We tried to do an incident command system,
but I'll add to the list.
You know, it's about the, the size and the severity,
but it's also about how much you can do
and how many people it takes to do what you can do.
Because that's what we ran into with beech leaf disease.
You know, we tried to design this ICS structure
and then ultimately it was like, all right, we need
to research it, we need to survey for it, we need somebody
to run the show and we need somebody
to do outreach, that's only four people.
That's not an ICS structure.
And so I do think that's a good one though,
because even though we don't have anything to do, I think
that has almost pushed us harder into connecting with people
and connecting with people
who are interested, who want to learn more.
We have a BLD communications calls that is open
to like any group, anybody who's doing research with BLD
or wants to do research with BLD.
And so we've gotten a lot of stakeholder involvement in
that just because that's,
that's all we can do right now is kind
of facilitate the sharing of information.
[Attendee] I'm on, yeah, I'm on the BLD
like working group call too.
So that's been, especially as a new person, like
in every call that I've been at so far,
there's like a whole suite of new people as it's expanding.
So it's like this massive call. Hmm.
-And who leads that? -Comes out of
Holden, Sarah Pitt.
Because Holden is
where it was first discovered,
Holden Arboretum and (indistinct).
[Attendee] So it then really does depend
on one person stepping up
and saying we need to have a collaborative group to learn.
[Attendee] And then it's also like,
I mean I've only been on two calls
so far, so it's only every other month.
But it also is like, it is like huge at this point.
So there's only like so many people that can speak
and it's like the people that have
so far seem like they've been on it the longest
that are like still speaking.
[Savannah] Yeah.
And I can say too that I'm part
of the national BLD call,
but we also have a New York Beech Leaf Disease
communications call just for New York stakeholders
because stakeholders, the national call was getting so big
and it didn't seem like the same kind of forum
where people could connect with each other.
-Yeah. -And then how
are communications from that distributed
to a broader audience?
Like if you're not on that call or don't know about it,
or I mean, I mean what,
how do communications go out from that?
-Or don't they? -I mean, for me,
like the same way I do everything,
like workshops and talks and talking
to you all on the state court,
-like just normal- -The network.
(group laughing)
Yeah. I guess like received, yeah, well what was
that university extension?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And university extension's a good one because it's obvious,
but it also like, it does sort of get
to the like individual landowner level,
which like here we're not really,
I mean some people here own some land,
but like we're not really getting to the same population.
But I could see some sort
of network map being a
useful resource in some of those cases.
If it's like, you know, we want to get this information out
to some particular group of people that's
beyond like the traditional practitioner
that we're usually working with.
We need to figure out how we get that information there.
That's suddenly where it's easier to be in a small state
-that's actually like- -Yeah.
We have like lots
of presentations and workshops,
so it feels like we're covered,
like spreading the information really quickly.
-Yeah, yeah. -Two comments on that.
-Yeah. -So I mentioned
the multi-agency coordination group
and when that group meets, kind of like
what Kelsey was talking about,
it gets unwieldy sometimes there's too many people they try
to limit it to, you know,
just a few members from each agency.
Otherwise the meeting can go on for six weeks.
So, but the notes from those meetings are shared. Yeah.
So even the patient in the meeting
is limited and restricted.
The notes are shared kind of freely.
And again, extension, we use that extensively,
especially for not just kind of contacting homeowners
and landowners, but municipalities.
So when we first found spotted lantern fly in an area,
we reached out through Cornell IPM,
integrated pest management to the extension offices
that hey, you know, you're getting a lot of,
you're gonna be getting a lot of calls
about spotted lantern fly in the next few weeks, few months,
just to give them a heads up.
Same thing with the towns and villages
because they're, you know,
whether it's their recreation department
or their parks department,
they're gonna be getting calls about this particular pest,
whether it's EAB, about, you know, tree mortality
or that sort of thing.
So we use extension to contact those entities
and they've built those networks
and they know who the current person is in those roles.
So they can respond a lot faster than we can trying
to track down that.
There's also, in New York State, there's the Association of
and Villages, the Association of Counties.
So those organizations are also good ways
to route information out where we can kind of,
Cornell IPM can route information to that organization
and they can get it out to their members.
So those, those are other nodes
and edges that can be kind of brought into the mix
that we wouldn't normally do.
But for getting information out there about a new find
or a find in a new area,
those can come in handy in New York state.
Some of the other smaller states, Rhode Island, sorry,
you are the smallest state, I might not have those
organizations, but they may, I don't know. So-
[Attendee] Wear that label with pride
because it means every tree is that much more valuable.
[Thom] Exactly.
And you can pivot and you're a lot
-more flexible than we are. -Yeah.
[Thom] We're like this big unwieldy machine
and anything we do with, in these species, we're dragging
around nine different state agencies that have
at least some input into invasive species.
Generally it's New York State Agri markets
and DEC as co-chairs, parks is pretty heavily involved.
And then it kind of trickles down
to other agencies like New York State DOT is very involved,
but it becomes a, you know, slower to respond.
[Attendee] I think for us, like communication
amongst our groups,
very easy communication to disseminating our stakeholders.
Also relatively easy.
But like yeah, capacity we have,
we dump regulatory capacity is really limited
and resources is really.
[Attendee] Well and that's why I can't help
but wonder again if there's a missed opportunity,
especially for things just like field surveys.
Like if you just need boots on the ground
but there aren't enough bodies within
that are already employed, why not connect
with somebody like the Nature Conservancy
or you know, UVM with all of their summer interns
and pull people for a week.
[Jeff] I mean, well it does happen to a certain
extent though, with the compact.
-Okay. -Because the compact,
you know, states have invested money
into this, the province.
-What does the compact help? -What's that?
-What is that? -The compact.
[Jeff] So, so I,
I don't know the whole background behind the compact that
it was built, it was built on fire.
And so they looked at, one of the responses would be that,
you know, major pest disease issues
because it come in the fire portion of it that they saw
that if we had a major outbreak of whatever, it caused a lot
of mortality, then there's a potential for large fire.
So they brought in forest health folks
and then that actually kind of formed into a smaller group
of forest health personnel.
And those folks have kind of worked together to,
with state money and federal money
and province money that there's a pot
of money that sets there.
And if there's a need for survey
or whatever it may be, there's training there.
I mean there's everything.
I went to Long Island,
I did Southern Pine Beetle,
I went there for a couple weeks actually.
Sorry, I grew up on Long Island.
But you know, that that money has also been used,
you know, for good training events, you know,
whether it be a ID workshop or whatever it is.
So ultimately that is kind of in place already.
[Attendee] Yeah, well that's encouraging to hear.
[Jeff] So you, if you need, as you mentioned,
if you needed to get boots on the ground,
it's not super easy.
I mean, it's not gonna happen overnight.
It does take some work,
but I mean that's a, that's available.
[Thom] One other thing we've used is the prism network
and they have volunteers and paid staff.
So we can tap into that
and we have, you know, I mentioned the conservation dogs,
but just for survey for spotted lantern fly, we set up
program through IMAP invasives where,
you know, people wanted to volunteer
and rather than self-directing themselves
and getting in our way, you know, we don't all need
to survey in the same one kilometer grid square.
So we knew where we could, our staff could survey,
we knew areas that we wanted to survey,
which just didn't have the staff to do.
So we plugged those one kilometer square grids into IMAP
and said, here sign up for a grid, adopt a grid square
and go survey,
-you know, X amount of- -I love it.
-Locations- -Adopt a grid square.
[Thom] In this one kilometer grid on public land.
And we could get surveys done in areas
that we would never get to through volunteer networks.
[Attendee] Can I just ask the,
so things like the compact
and the Prism network are those resources available
to Connecticut and Rhode Island?
Like so you would knew, you know, you get
to add into those if you need them.
[Attendee] Yeah, so each, like for the compact, each
entity involved has on the forest health side has a forest
health working team member for sure.
[Thom] Yeah. Rep doesn't necessarily show up.
[Attendee] For example, Rhode Island
did have a representative, but it was not nested
in the forest health program previously.
And now though, now that I've taken on my role
in the forest health program,
I'm now the, the representative.
-So- -You're the node.
Other states do have prism network
and similar structures.
I know Hawaii has one,
I believe Massachusetts has a prism network.
Pennsylvania just recently
is establishing theirs based on New York's.
So the, those networks do exist in some other states.
And again, sometimes it's paid staff that are paid
through the Prism and sometimes it's Prism volunteers so
that that funding kind of works itself out that way,
whether they're volunteers.
We've also had volunteers set up and check traps.
So another survey method, not just visual.
-Yeah, that's awesome. -So then if all, so like
for any given pest or pathogen
or any other emergent concern, if all,
it sounds like the states are working pretty independently
then and maybe like it's just serendipitous kind
of communication between them, like maybe
through FBMC if the right people are in the room,
and I wonder if there's also room there
for some coordination, just like if it's like, okay,
everybody in the Northeast is probably gonna be responding
to this pest at some point in time,
but Connecticut got to it first
because you often give anything first and,
and you've already like sort of sorted out like,
well here's the methods we're using,
here's like what we're doing.
And if there were some place where that could be shared so
that when that hits the next place for New England
or Massachusetts
or New York that they could, there's like, okay,
well we could start with this toolkit
or something like these suggested ways
to start thinking about this,
given that there's gonna be different resources
in each place and a different, you know,
potentially a different structure.
Like if that would be helpful
or is that like duplicative in some way?
[Attendee] That APHIS or state forestry or-
-Right. -On the ag side,
and I'm sure you deal with this too,
but the National Plant Board is the organization
that there's a representative from each state SPRO,
not Spud, State Plant Regulatory Official,
but it's the equivalent to the USDA's SPUD in each state.
And sometimes it's within Ag,
sometimes it's within Forestry,
sometimes it's with an extension service.
But each state has a representative on the National Plant
Board, which is broken down
to I think four regions, five regions.
But they communicate and meet regularly.
So if there's a pest detection in state Massachusetts,
the, through the national, through the National Plant Board,
that information is decimated
to the other states surrounding it.
Say, Hey, we found this,
or there was a nursery detection of this ex pest, you know,
at this nursery
and it was shipped to these other three states.
So that information is shared really
amongst the, that group.
And then that would trigger our inspectors going out
and doing an inspection at that location if it was,
you know, a trace forward situation where a nursery from,
you know, one state sent it to another state.
Not, not intentionally,
but you know, they, they got plant shipment
and divided up and got sent out.
And that happens very, very often.
So that network does exist as well.
So there is a communication network there,
at least on the Ag side.
I don't know about the forest pest side. Okay.
There was something else I was gonna say
about National Plant Board.
Oh, and you mentioned about, you know,
Connecticut getting things first and I disagree.
I think it's Canada because so many, I can think
of about six different pests
found in Canada now we have here. So it's just-
[Attendee] So maybe sometimes coming the other way too.
[Attendee] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So and through, we also have in New York State, there's two
pest risk committees where it's USDA,
Customs and Border Protection because they enforce that,
the APHIS regulations coming over the border
and APHIS enforces regulations
when it's in the United States.
So we made together quarterly
and discuss, okay,
these are the things we're finding at the ports.
These are the things that were, you know, found, you know,
inland at that the, you know,
around the airports and things like that.
They have a whole smuggling in traditional trade compliance
unit and they find things that are accidentally brought in
or in certain, intentionally brought in,
but accidentally introduced.
And a lot of times it's not, it's not a plant pest.
A lot of times it's a path, you know,
an animal pathogen or something like that.
But those meetings happen quarterly.
So that information is shared too.
And Canada sometimes participates in that as well.
And as well as food safety or,
or FDA, food drug administration.
because they handle some of the food issues,
but it, those networks do exist as well.
So there is some, you know, provincial to, you know,
Arcadian to us communication about those pests.
But it'd be nice if they didn't communicate so much.
[Attendee] So I'm also thinking about the project
that we're starting, well have technically already started,
but that we're really starting next year to,
with the DNA meta bar coding to
do like extra early detection basically of invasives.
And I'm wondering like, if that has a piece
in this conversation of like,
if things are being detected extra early, like Jeff,
you said, well if we don't see it,
like we're not gonna go do anything,
would that still be the case?
And if so, then is that like not actually help is detecting
things that early not actually helpful?
-Definitely is. -Because then you,
so like, what, what happens then?
[Jeff] I mean that, that, that stands the awareness.
So, but yeah, I mean I, I think again,
that's gonna vary from-
-State to state? -Based on resources.
[Attendee] Yeah. Right, right.
I'm wondering, like, one
of the potential barriers I mentioned that I made up,
because I don't work in this, the way you guys do is the,
like things not happening fast enough.
And I wonder if it's like, it would be like, okay,
well we know this is coming so we can start forming
some plan, think about how we're gonna respond
before, like, you know, months before a year, year before-
-And again- -Interconnected.
[ Jeff] That's based on each state.
-Yeah. -Because again, he mentioned,
well I think everybody's mentioned it, that,
within each state there's different levels, different groups
that are gonna take care of different things.
You know, you know, beech leaf disease falls on
of my shop, but somebody brought up Asian jumping worms
that falls under horticulture on under us or-
-Right. -Yeah.
I mean, so that's,
but every state I think has already probably thought this
through or you know, whatever their title is.
My case is mine, our director
for Forest Health and Monitoring,
Allison Kente, she, I mean,
she has a plan, I would say a plan in place for everything.
But, you know,
we worry about public perception if we're not jumping on
something and you know,
we let things lie then, then of course-
-Right. -The first thing
people are gonna say is that we're avoiding this.
I mean, we look at everything.
But I think for me, I guess where I see this is probably
if there was a way to disseminate information,
I don't know about, you know, trying to, to do some sort
of response or methodologies.
I mean that, that could maybe forming down the road.
But I think certainly the sharing
of information I think is probably more so than anything.
We just, we just had this discussion, you know,
and it popped into my mind when you said, you know,
Canada sharing things beef leaf minor is, is on our door
doorstep, excuse me, from the Canadian side.
But I know Allison mentioned the other day that, you know,
she brought it up in a meeting.
There were some people that, that sat there.
Like, what the hell is that?
So that's, that's the thing, I mean for me,
I guess it's probably more that sharing
and finding a way to make that happen.
But I think to, to actually try to intertwine how,
how the response is, is gonna be different for each-
-Yeah. -And I think there's just,
there's too many players.
That's my belief.
But I again, well just one person
-and sometime an idiot. -But yeah.
-And I don't think we're- -Well this is, you know,
wherever this goes is, if it go like, you know, it's very,
it's very open-ended
and I think part of what we're we are trying
to do here is figure out like where is the need?
Like what, if the need is like information needs
to be transferring between states more efficiently in some
way, like that is very much FEMC's role
and like how can we help with that?
Or if it's like we need to figure out how
to support being able
to get people out into the field in places
with fewer resources to do that when that's necessary,
like maybe that's on more of a state basis.
Like maybe that's more of an even
Rhode Island than it is in New York.
So yeah, I think part
of it's just identifying like what those needs are.
I mean, one of the things that FEMC has, well FEMC being me
and Alyssa have talked about a lot.
We've talked about it with, with the other staff too.
But I feel like just you and I have talked about it the most
is that like, even just having a forum, it doesn't even,
it doesn't have to be like one that emails you,
but it could be, but it doesn't have to be.
Maybe it's like, you know, but
where people could just post like, Hey,
I'm like dealing with this.
Or has anybody heard anything about this yet?
Or is anybody addressing, some people could reply.
Because there is none of that.
Even though FPMC is sort
of this coordinating network,
there's actually not a structure for the network to interact
with each other outside of the state coordinators.
And I think that's a big limitation to sharing information
and something that we should probably be trying to address.
And maybe that's, maybe that would even be like a piece
of this puzzle.
Maybe that's the most important piece.
[Attendee] I was, my mind went exactly there as well.
If like one of the real issues is this sort
of more efficient sharing,
so the information gets out earlier
before you're waiting for your monthly call
or you're waiting for your annual meeting.
But what maybe I'm just always looking
for the potential holes.
I just wonder how do you vet that?
So like, do you have only certain people who are allowed
to post before, oh my God, everyone's freaking out
because some landowner thinks they have
Asian Longhorn beetle.
So I, but I, I think that's, that's something that,
really could really could facilitate it.
Literally just an open post.
Has anybody seen this I my pine look crappy?
Anybody else seeing that's what, you know, what's going on?
And it would be completely contemporary, right?
Like dynamic.
But then the issue becomes
how do we make sure people know about it?
That we've identified people who have agreed to post to it
and that other people are actually looking at it
so they know when something-
-Right. -Shows up.
So, I mean, so it, it wouldn't be an
easy, it'd be easy to build.
It would not be easy to make it effective.
[Attendee] No, it totally would need management.
-Yeah. -Like that is,
absolutely would require management.
And just like you said, somebody to manage it
and moderate and just like you said, make sure that it's-
[Attendee] Hey people, you should look at this, this one,
this one post might be of interest to you.
-Yeah. Yeah. -But at the same time,
a lot of that comes out of my bonus shop as well.
You can use frost damage as a good one this spring that,
you know, this, the whole region experienced that
and that it, you know, there was just talk everywhere,
but my Shop was the one that, you know, kind of
put everybody together, you know,
or shared that information.
[Attendee] Can you say more about how that worked?
Like what did, how was he sharing that information?
Was it like via a meeting, via emails going out?
What was going, what was happening?
-Well, so yeah, I,- -I don't, I don't know if-
-It's like a sticky issue. -Well, no.
So I was actually getting ready to leave state service.
-Oh right, yeah. -Somewhere else.
And I was away for six weeks, so I kind
of was out of that one a little bit.
-Okay. -Maybe you two could,
you know, give a little more info on that.
[Attendee] Not maybe me and I'm brand new.
[Attendee] I probably, yeah, Mike being a hub
and like hearing from all of us, it just, yeah,
he caught on to a region wide need
and then actually, you know, he delegated,
they had a GIS person just looking
or remote GIS person who's looking into the remote sensing,
like kind of picking up those type of signatures and stuff.
So just, I guess, yeah-
-it just- -But yeah,
I was gonna say, I think,
I'm just trying to recall, you know, in the back of my mind,
I think state coordinator meetings
where I think I first heard it, I mean, we were seeing it,
but we thought maybe we were the only ones.
And then I think that's where we actually heard it first.
And that's why I go back and I say that,
but having those monthly calls
-is actually- -So you solved
the problem already.
It's be a new person.
[Attendee] Like there was another great one on
one of the calls, like the maple that everybody would see.
-Oh yeah. -Maple or crappy,
crappy fall color in Connecticut.
-Yeah. Here too. -Actually don't,
nobody wanted, don't quote.
(group laughing)
But here it was like the same, it was like really dull
and nobody wanted to talk about it being really dull.
-Yeah. -But I still wonder like who,
I don't know why but I think of the network
as being so much more broad than the,
than the public agencies.
And I feel like there's still like a potential
that is missed by not including people outside
of the government agencies in those conversations.
And I think of Tony D'Amato, who's got crews out, you know,
every summer doing work across the region.
And what if he saw something?
I mean, he would know, he would know who to call.
But I mean, does everybody know who to call?
[Jeff] But I, yeah,
I think that's already in place.
Networks, I think that's already in place.
I mean, for us, we have the CFRU
that works outta the university
and they found PLD for us in Burlington.
So they reached out to us, you know, so I think, you know,
probably within each state, a lot of those
ties already exist.
[Thom] Well sometimes that can come back and bite you
because like with spot line, you know.
Yes. We want people to report it.
And then, you know, when there's thousands upon thousands
of them at Staten Island, we don't need Staten Island
to report them anymore, but they keep doing it.
And this year it was all of New York City,
Nassau County and Westchester
and trying to get that message to, you know, thank you
for reporting, but, but no, thank you.
Yeah. What, how, but you know, what's there, we, we need
to know where it's, you know,
-the new area is- -Yeah.
-So that we can respond. -What is your,
what is your reporting process?
Depends on the pest.
Typically we avoid phone-
-contact. -Yeah, yeah.
-Because that takes staff. -Yeah.
[Jeff] An artifact from years ago that the Asian
Longhorn Bees still has a phone reporting an 866
number that you can report it to.
Typically we use online reporting tools
that are, are GIS based.
So it's just a quick short little survey.
They can submit a photo.
We thoroughly encourage people to put photos in.
[Attendee] But that way at least you could ignore.
You could be like, okay, yep.
You know, it's on Long Island, we don't even know-
-Exactly. -We could filter
it by zip code.
-Yeah. -It's not a 100%,
because we've had issues where people from, you know,
one location, they're reporting it from their address,
but they saw it somewhere else.
They saw it at their vacation.
-Right. -Yeah.
So the location doesn't always match the zip code.
-Yeah. -So there are some,
there's a margin of error there that we recognize.
And we, and we've also had issues where, you know,
where it wasn't in New York City,
we had somebody from Pennsylvania report it
and they were reporting it
because they were in Pennsylvania,
but there was college student in Brooklyn, New York,
and they were reporting it from Brooklyn,
but they saw it in Pennsylvania.
And that was before we had it in New York.
And it was like all the alarm bells went off
and then it was like, oh, this is from Pennsylvania,
then thank you for reporting it.
-So- -But that's,
but that's maybe part of it.
So what you're describing is what New York has,
do you have a GIS based
reporting system that's online?
[Attendee] It's not, we have a reporting system
and it's through our CAPS cooperative
there cultural test survey.
So it's supposed to be invasive species reporting on framed
as agriculture, but it gets used
from the public for everything.
And, and it's a another testament to like yeah.
on one hand, like, so the people
who receive those reports are literally the CAPS coordinator
-and me and- -We're in the same boat.
That's usually Mike Dorgan and myself.
[Attendee] Yeah. We're filtering through.
And a lot of them are like, I have dead
and dying trees, period.
No, no picture.
So Rhode Island smaller, we get less reports.
So it's manageable just the two people.
But I can mention New York.
[Thom] So the online reporting tools we can have
and you know, say if one person person's out, it doesn't go
to one email box, multiple people can check that.
And we can coordinate internally
who has access to that.
So that helps.
And then also routing them into different tubs.
-Yeah. -You know,
these are New York City,
we don't need to respond to these right away.
They get a automated response so
that they're getting responded to immediately,
which they like, but sometimes they don't get the answer
they want, which is come take down my tree.
No, we're not taking it down your tree.
-Yeah, yeah. -Because it has
spotted lantern fly, sorry.
Or Asian Longhorn Beetle when it's, you know, (indistinct)
or (indistinct) beetle or something.
So the, they sometimes they'll report and report
and report until they, you know, they think
that squeaky wheel will get the, you know, the grease
and that doesn't always work.
-Yeah. -But for the vast majority,
those reporting tools work
and each one is specific to a pest.
So we have, there's one for spotted lantern fly,
there's one for the box tree moth,
there's one for European trade fruit fly.
So there's, there's, you know, there's, there's other,
it's not one tool, it's not like a one stop shop
and they have to be set up by the survey coordinator,
Mike Dorgan's, the one who does it internally for us.
So those tools do help.
-And- -Would a one stop shop
be helpful from the user,
from the reporter perspective?
No, no, we touched on that.
That we have.
So we have two reporting systems,
basically we have CAPS,
which it's really kind of a catchall.
And then we do have a specific spotted lantern.
I say we, because I'm technically agriculture
and forestry, I always say have division forestry,
but we are agriculture forestry together.
And we have a spotted lantern fly reporting tool.
But we don't, we, we don't really do separate surveys just
because again, capacity, who's gonna do it?
But, and the CAPS monitor that,
or that catchall survey is really supposed to be for CAPS.
But I'm on it and I'm monitor it just
because you kind of speaking to like in a,
in the command response, like, well,
who's got, who's gonna do it?
Who's got, who's getting funded to do it?
Like I don't, that's not what I do monitoring that survey.
It's not at all in my job description, but I do it
because I see the relevance of it if I do catch something.
But you know, it's weeding through a lot of stuff
-that- -Chief
[Attendee] Yeah. Yeah.
So the catch, it's difficult.
You know, I'm trying to get the most value
out of it and I do,
-but- -It definitely slows
things down, because you can't respond
because we even get people reporting, you know,
northern giant hornets
to the spotted lantern fly page
because they don't, and there's a tool for that,
-but they don't know it. -Yeah.
[Thom] But they see the advertising for the SLF
and they're like, oh, I'm gonna report this pest here
and then it take and it just slows things down.
-Yes. -Versus using the actual
tool that's set up for it.
It it really slowed things down.
[Attendee] If it was somebody like, this is your job
where you have a small portion of your job
to monitor catchall-
[Attendee] A headache file.
-Yeah. -That's not really, yeah.
Us anybody's responsibility. It's difficult.
[Thom] The other thing that we use is IMAP invasive.
We encourage if everyone, you know,
if you want to report us invasive species, please report it
through, you know, if it's not more than one specific
programs that we have set up, that might not be something
that, you know, if you want to report canary grass
or you know, some that we're not concerned with,
because it's an agricultural product.
You can report it in in IMAP and that's great.
So, and it doesn't take our time to know
that somebody found green canary grass in a pasture
because it's wet clay soil
and it's the only forage they can possibly grow.
[Attendee] But this is really, this is fascinating.
So how, so I'm at Davis, I've love cool,
cool citizen science, right?
Who then gets that? How is that information disseminated?
Do you have to go and look?
You decide I'm gonna look
-at IMAP basis- -I get alerts.
So as, as again,
if there's specific pasts like Asian Longhorn Beetle,
Northern Giant Hornet, spotted lantern fly,
those alerts come to me.
And there's different settings like Northern Giant Hornet,
Asian Longhorn Beetle are set to confidential.
So if somebody reports it, they can't even see their report.
The public can't see the report.
But a select few people can see those reports
and respond this, my job position,
little Giant Hornet,
they're reporting European Hornet.
Okay, thank you. We're done.
Where with Asian Longhorn Beetle,
there could be trade implications
and that could seriously negatively impact somebody's
business when it's not Asian Longhorn Beetle.
So we have those safeguards in place.
And then spotted lantern fly is kind of a middle ground
where it's confidential until it's confirmed.
Right?
Because if it's in a new county
or if it's something similar, we want to make sure
that it's actually in that county.
And then we can respond, collect an official sample,
get a confirmation, and then let the municipalities know.
Let the extension office know
and then announce it to the public.
If it's in a new county, if it's in a county that
that already has it, thank you for reporting it.
Click it's confirmed and off it goes
and the public can see those.
But if it's in a new area
or in a first in county situation, you know, we limit that
until it's you know, it's confidential until confirmed.
And for spotted lantern fly, nine times out
of 10, 99 times out of a 100, it's me that's confirming
[Attendee] This is, yeah.
So I'm, IMAP Invasive is pretty stinking
cool as a tool.
I'm just wondering who, who maintains and funds this.
Is it different for each of the states? It's New York.
[Thom] Well it's not just New York.
[Attendee] There's nation, well, I mean they have,
I'm looking at who pays for it.
-Yeah. -Who maintains it?
Each state has their own site,
-but I'm- -I think
NatureServe maintains it.
[Attendee] And Nick, who funds NatureServe?
[Nick] I believe in New York State
that they get money from the they-
[Attendee] Except I'm just wondering like that,
things like that always make me nervous
if they're not embedded within a
government agency because of longevity.
I mean, software updates, right? Yeah.
Well, in New York it's Ma IMAP is, is it's,
-it's owned by Nature- -Nature Serve.
[Jen] Nature Serve,
-but it's managed- -Natural
-Heritage program. -Natural Heritage program.
-But that's, -Which I believe is,
it's either state funded through a budget
or it's funded through the EPF, which I believe it's funded
through the Environmental Protective Fund.
Look at this, there's one in Arizona,
so it must be like whatever state forks up the money,
gets a page.
[Nick] There could be a report in Arizona.
And Arizona doesn't use IMAP
because an IMAP user was in Arizona on vacation.
[Attendee] No, no.
Participating jurisdictions.
-Arizona? -Arizona.
Maine, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, SK?
-That's Saskatchewan. -Saskatchewan.
Okay. Thank you.
Shows how US-centric I am and the Maritimes.
Those are the only participating jurisdictions.
[Attendee] But you can report it anyway.
[Attendee] Well, yeah, of course.
But I mean, but, but who's going to,
who's the key person who's gonna be alerted
if somebody reports it?
Nobody, right?
-There's a gap. -Yeah.
-Follow up matrix. -Sure.
[Attendee] And another, well, you know, off track.
But as far as sharing information
and data, things that go into iNaturalist
that are invasive species can be crosswalk into IMAP.
And I get those alerts.
So, so I, I can give them to IMAP from those alerts
and I can look at, you know, the original,
the original post was from, it's in IMAP,
but the original data
is in iNaturalist and I can, and there's a link. .
It used to be have to log out,
copy the copy the record number, go and iNaturalist.
But now you just click
the link and it brings it right there.
-Nice. -And you can usually
confirm it or deny it from photos, so.
[Attendee] Yeah, I'm just thinking, I mean, your testimony
that it's actually been helpful to you is really,
I think interesting and I-
-What's been helpful? -IMAP Invasive.
-Very much so. -So that's what I'm think,
do other people know that that's an actually really useful
resource that they might want to adopt?
I don't, I don't know. That's great to hear.
[Attendee] And, and we get all Asian long bottleneck
or fly all kinds of things reported in there that, you know,
Northern Giant Hornet, there's another one.
-But. -So there's five
minutes left.
-I apologize if I talk- -No, I think
you're learning so much.
I think I have like eight pages of notes.
Is there anything to do to wrap up to thank you.
-We don't know. -I think there's
gotta any follow up, honestly,
I mean the notes that I have,
I feel like are incredibly a, a great framework that I need
a lot of background and corrections on.
So I would ask if anybody is willing for us to follow up
with them to help us actually fill in those gaps.
I mean, I feel like from what we've heard, we could start
to build that base network and it's not gonna be complete,
but at least we can see what the first things
that bubbled up that are what are available out there.
And then maybe, you know, get a working group
to see if there are gaps or-
[Attendee] I would just preface it with
that's the New York State Ag Market perspective.
There's EC members, you know,
so they have a slightly different
perspective on it, I'm sure.
[Attendee] Yeah. Right.
Jess can probably help fill that.
-Or Justin. -Yeah.
You know, I'm sure Jess
has been very busy recently, so yeah.
[Attendee] But I think this has been really helpful.
I want to thank you because I learned a lot today.
Including SPUD is my new favorite acronym.
[Attendee] Yeah, me too.
-I appreciate miss that one. -I appreciate
the willingness to just pivot and have a conversation.
That was really helpful.
[Attendee] I agree.
The current spud for Louisiana
has a (indistinct) on his status.
-Perfect. -He was given that when he,
when he got in that position, so.
-I love it. -Great.
Do you all know
where you're gonna go next steps with this?
[Attendee] Well, there's a, there's the complicated piece.
As those of you who are in our meeting yesterday know
that like we don't know
how much staff time we're gonna get to dedicate to this.
Alyssa's interested in it-
-Maybe. -But maybe-
It's even a need.
-I mean, I think- -Right.
[Attendee] That's why we trying to need this,
this is already being done every,
every time, every hole I tried
to find you're like, they're doing that.
This person's doing it. That person. No, no, that's good.
That's what we want to hear. I mean that's beautiful.
And so maybe it is just identifying all
of the, they're already doing that.
They're already doing that.
And so if someone who is new
to the realm needs to understand where to go
or where to look, there would be a resource for that.
Maybe that's the extent of it.
-Yeah. -So there's more nodes
and edges than you thought.
[Attendee] There are so many nodes and edges
and I think there's even more than we've talked about.
But I think that's not something that we can-
[Attendee] No, we can't,
we didn't know most of these things
so we we are not fill it out. Yeah.
[Attendee] Could maybe try together a call together,
an expert working group that includes aphids
and my everybody and ask them to do it.
But again, would that even be useful if the
states already know what they're doing?
[Attendee] Yeah, I think the piece
that I keep coming back to is
what you brought up yesterday.
Just that like if there is a need for people
to do field work
and it's a place where there isn't the resource for
that available, what happens?
Like that piece still feels like a
gap to me that I don't know.
[Attendee] Yeah, ad I'm just kind
of just think like I just knew became privy to the,
the whole four fire compact for working team.
The deployments that the funding
that there could be possible deployment.
-Yeah. So maybe that's a- -Yeah, I don't-
[Attendee] I think they're meeting next month.
-Yeah, I'm going. -I think it's the first
-of next month. -Yeah.
So it's been a learning curve for me.
[Attendee] Oh that's the thing that they were like,
there's not a Connecticut representative.
I'm like I can't, I technically
still have to write publications.
[Attendee] That's actually another really interesting-
[Attendee] But like Connecticut
-doesn't have- -That's so interesting.
Like yeah ad so every,
for Rhode Island capacity is small.
I'm the only staff staff person for Forest Health.
So every single one of these committees
and representatives, I am that one.
Unless I do have somebody who's case do it.
[Attendee] Yeah, I know. They're like-
[Attendee] I think that sometimes that's good
because that keeps, keeps you in the mix so that you can,
you know, if you have separate people going to these,
the problem is that it's not getting all
-relayed back. -Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I do like that.
-But then- -Like Kyle,
Kyle, I think he's the chair of Forest Health,
so, you know, I wouldn't hesitate to reach out to him.
-Yeah. -Ask him some questions.
[Attendee] I'm also just thinking,
literally looking at the two
of you that honestly there is a huge retirement flip
I think, within our district.
And so how is that all of this knowledge,
how is that transferred efficiently?
I don't know if that's like another, just another thing
to be thinking about again,
-more broadly. -That's a whole
nother barrier though.
I mean, again, that kind
of boils down to what,
what your state can do.
-I mean, we can't- -And like individual like,
because I am taking on the Forest Health role
and it's, so it's kind of like how much is my predecessor in
that role going to mentor me?
No, I dunno. It's a huge question.
But now I have Alana
and all other people to like be,
who have been recently in the role that now I'm like, sweet.
I don't have to just like make sure I get enough information
only vertically through my own state.
[Attendee] Well that was my experience,
that I got very little of
that mentorship from my predecessor.
Mostly because Rhode Island just being small capacity,
like the Forest Health program coordinator
was not the Forest Health Fire Compact
Forest Health working team person.
So I just didn't get any of that from him.
And, but it's really been, well of all the other state
operators and the other meetings we have
that I've just learned so much.
[Attendee] Well, yeah, that, that's the key point too,
is that, you know, any other state is there.
They're more than willing to help.
But I, that's where Kyle's name, he's, he's a wealth
of knowledge and he's willing to share it most time.
Yeah, my boss Allison Kente, I'm,
I'm, you could call her.
-Oh, I have so great, too. -Yeah. Yeah.
[Attendee] I just wonder if Kyle Flag, Kyle's the one
that brought up the tree rescue thing
and I just wonder did not, out least that he did,
but not saying as much of the thought that was going
through his head of what he knew about the fire
-compact and this- -Yeah, right.
That he thought maybe knows enough that he's like,
I think we've got this covered.
Like, what are you gonna do?
But, you know, there were many things we were talking about
yesterday, so we couldn't, this was an hour
and a half conversation just on this one thing.
So yeah. But maybe so.