- [Narrator] Montana Ag Live is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, the MSU Extension Service, (guitar music) the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

- If you haven't guessed it, you are tuned to Montana Ag Live originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very standing campus we call Montana State University.

And coming to you over your Montana Public Television System.

It's been a good week here in Bozeman for agriculture, we had the Celebrate Agriculture event here on campus.

It's always interesting to see a lot of good old friends there.

And to top it off, there was an excellent football game here yesterday and the Bobcats got it done again, so congratulations to them.

Tonight, we're gonna have a really kind of interesting, different type of program.

We're gonna look at a topic that we call fire seam, coal seam fires.

And they are big, they threaten the sustainability of the grasslands out in the eastern part of Montana, and we call that the Powder River Basin, also Northern Wyoming.

And we have a guest that's here from that part of the country tonight.

But before we get to that, let me introduce the panel this evening.

On my far left, Sam Wyffels.

Sam is a range scientist here in the Animal Science Department.

Relatively new here in Montana, we're happy to have him on the program.

And Sam, thanks for coming in tonight, we'll have a good time.

Special guest, all the way from Miles City, Cory Cheguis.

Cory is a fire warden out in the Powder River Basin and he is one of the most knowledgeable individuals when it comes to coal seam fires.

We're gonna learn to learn a lot about 'em, why they occur, and how much damage they're doing.

Jane Mangold, I'm gonna call you an invasive specialist tonight, not a weed scientist.

So Jane's here quite often.

Jane, thanks for coming in, and of course Abby.

But before we go, I want to introduce the phone operators.

We have Cheryl Bennett and John Holly.

if you have questions tonight and definitely I'm sure we're gonna have plenty about coal seam fires, call 'em in and we'll do our best to get 'em on this evening.

I've always said my favorite city in Northeast or North Central Montana is Fort Benton.

My favorite city in the eastern part of the state is Miles City.

A good weekend for those people that wanna spend a little time in Montana, go up to Fort Benton, see the history there, stay at the Grand Union, head to Miles City the next day, stop the Range Riders Bar and have a beer or two.

It's a great area to really visit, I am a big promoter of Eastern Montana.

Cory, thank you for coming in.

Tell us about coal seam fires and what you do out there in Miles City in the Powder River Basin.

- Well thanks, Jack, for having me.

Coal seam fires have created quite a burden on local agriculture in eastern Montana.

In 2011, it was a really wet year, had a good fuel growth.

And then 2012 was a drought year.

There's always been a few coal seams around Eastern Montana, but after that 2012 had a bunch of wildland fires.

And then after that, it seemed to be more and more active wildland fires caused from coal seams.

But what honestly happened was after that drought year that caused all the wildland fires, all these burning coal seams ignited across Eastern Montana.

And every time we have a new wildfire, another one, a whole bunch more starts within the Powder River Basin.

- So just an estimate, I know there's people mapping, and we'll get into that a little bit, but your guess how many coal seam fires are actually present in that area?

And I think the number's gonna shock me.

- Yeah, Jack, I'm thinking probably 2,000.

We've already got 700 mapped right now, verified boots on the ground, went to each of these sites.

So I would definitely say roughly around 2000, maybe even 2,500.

It's so hard to tell at this time.

- They've caused some huge fires out in that area.

I think we're talking ahead of time, what'd you say in Roseburg County, how many acres burned associated with coal seam fires?

- So actually, whole Eastern Montana last year, for example, there's 13 counties in Eastern Montana, in the ELO is what we call it, Eastern Land Office.

We burned a total of 248,000 acres, that's total for everything.

201,000 acres were specifically attributed to coal seam fires.

- That's amazing.

So I'm gonna ask you one more question and I've got one that came in here for Sam.

How do you put one of these coal seam fires out?

- Good question.

(all laughing) We've been working, my friends in Powder River County who have been trying to test some data, do a little scientific work on the side to figure out what we can do.

Those guys have actually excavated one, which will be very costly.

Every coal seam's different, there's small ones, big ones.

Surface coal seams, there's some in the middle of draws that you can't get to, miles in the back hills.

So I think we could get to maybe a management standpoint, but I don't physically think mitigating all of them by digging 'em up is feasible.

- I've talked to a couple ranchers out in that area and I've spent some time out there mainly hunting, 'cause I'm not in the range area, but I know they lose a lot of range land.

And Sam, I had a question that came in via Facebook ahead of time, what is the philosophy of grazing after a wildfire?

- Thanks, and that's a good question.

And I guess real quick before I get to that, I do have a background in range, but I'm actually the extension beef specialist here on campus.

- Okay.

(laughing) - And so I do do a lot of work with grazing on range lands and things like that, but I should just point that out if folks wanna get in contact with me, and my specialty is actually beef production on grazing range lands.

But no, that is a really interesting component.

And right now, it's a fairly conservative approach.

And the philosophy is once there's a wildfire on a range land, the federal BLM and Forest Service, their typical management strategy is, I would say, probably a minimum of two years of rest.

I'm sure there's some wiggle room on that.

And the whole thought between that is that the wildfire comes through and essentially defoliates and kinda maybe puts these plants at a level of stress.

And so by giving those plants a full years of rest allows them to kinda recover.

And then that second year allows 'em to potentially like set seed, reinoculate the seed bank and before we start putting grazing pressure back on those plants.

Some of the research I've seen that looks at some of those philosophies, the effects of range land, or the effects of wildfire on range land, it really depends on the ecosystem, precipitation ranges, soil conditions.

And recently, I've seen some work that looked at what the vegetation community looked like prior to fire and how healthy that system was has a big impact on how that rebounds after fire as well.

- Okay, thank you.

Changing tune a little bit, Corvallis caller, this is for Abby, and this is kinda interesting.

They had a bunch of crab trees, and they have way too many crab apples, and they don't like that because they attract deer and the deer are grazing on their tulips in the spring and so forth and so on.

How can they prevent production of the apples on a crab apple tree?

- That is a good question.

I don't know how easy it would be to do that.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think- - There used to be a product, well it's still around called Sevin.

It's an insecticide that does abort blossoms.

The problem with that is bees.

- [Abby] Yeah.

- Yeah, you're gonna do damage to bees.

- Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah, pollinators are really attracted to crab apple trees.

But yeah, I'd say that would be a challenging thing to take care of.

- [Jack] Okay, thank you.

- Abbey, I have a follow up question.

Are there varieties of crab apple that don't produce apples?

Like you still get the beautiful flowers in the spring, but maybe they don't produce apples or they're really small?

- Yeah, there are more ornamental varieties of flowering crab apples than other flowering fruit trees that you could look into.

That would probably be a good option for someone who wants a really nice flowering tree for bees but doesn't wanna deal with the fruit.

- Yeah, okay.

- Yeah.

- Okay, thank you.

From Malta, Cory.

This person would like to know how do the coal seam fires actually ignite grass fires?

Because they've heard that the coal seam fires are deep in the ground, whereas the grasses closer to the surface.

So in other words, why or how deep do these fires actually burn?

- Good question.

Every coal seam is actually different.

So for example, I was actually out Tuesday or Thursday this week with some people from the other side of the state showing 'em how this happens.

Every coal seam, they could burn underground very deep, or they're actually burning on top.

These pockets of coal are anywhere from 2 inches thick, just as an example to 20 feet thick.

And so they'll burn underground, and when the ground creates a void with that burning pocket of coal and the ground swaff off, opens it up.

And so then you got this exposed pocket of coal, or they're coming out the vents.

Some of these vents are 900,000 degrees from the burning coal.

- [Jack] Wow.

- [Cory] Coming out, so that actually on a hot dry day, essentially is the grass will swaff off, that bank will swaff as you see in some of these pictures.

And if you look at that one right there on the screen, that's an exposed seam where it's exposed out and catches the grass on fire.

- I have a follow up question.

How long do these coal seam fires burn?

- There's actually been some talking to locals, grandpa's grandpa that hundreds of years, some of 'em.

But we found some that have started since 2012, that bad fire year that have actually went out on their own.

- Okay.

There's a rancher out there, you know him, I've talked to him on the phone many times.

His name is Scott McCray, he's north of Cheyenne Reservation down there.

And they had a big range land fire.

It consumed 15 to 20,000 acres several years ago.

Since then, he claims that every year, he has fires that ignite from the coal seam fires, and that has really reduced his carrying capacity.

Any comments on that?

- Yeah, actually I know the McCray's really well, and they're part of the reason why I even started this project, was we gotta start looking towards a solution.

Mr. McCray and their family, I go to fires there all the time on their place, ironically, and have been over the years.

This year I think they've had three or four.

I'm not positive, but last year was Richard Springs Fire, burned 170,000 acres and it completely wiped out the McCray place, burnt 'em out.

And it has actually started more new coal seams that were never known about before.

- What a rancher, how does a rancher handle a situation where their winter forage is burnt, they don't have the alfalfa so forth.

How do they handle that nowadays?

- Yeah, and I think that's actually a great question and probably a great question to some of these producers that have had to deal with it.

I think there's always the thought of having a stockpile of hay put up or something, is in an emergency forage source, things like that.

But usually, when these things happen and it's unpredictable, the options are is to find grazing somewhere else, so lease other ground, purchase, you hear a lot of people that are having to purchase forages or purchase hay in order to feed those animals during those times.

And at worst case scenario, there's always the option of reducing herd size to match what forage availability you have at that moment.

But yeah, I don't think there's a magic solution there.

The cows have got to eat and so there's, you just gotta find places to graze or some forages to supply.

- Yeah I think, or I'm sure there's, and I'm not familiar with, I'm sure there's probably some government programs that are designed to assist disaster payments for helping these ranchers along, and Cory, have you ran into any of that in your- - So there actually is, through Montana Disaster Emergency Services.

I believe there is some sort of help for, not really through emergency services, but small business.

But, and USDA, I believe does have a program that will assist when you're burned out.

- Okay, it's becoming more commonplace then.

- It really is.

And you look at, I don't know what insurance companies are doing about this specifically, that's an unknown.

- Yeah, now something to be considered.

From Miles City, what weeds come in after these fires threaten the range land?

And Jane, all of you can jump in on that.

- Yeah, well I'll take a shot, but then I'd like to hear what Cory's experience is firsthand.

But my guess would be if there's cheatgrass in the area prior to the fire, cheatgrass would be, and maybe Japanese broom in that part of the state would be two species that would show up.

Canada thistle probably, if Canada thistle is around.

One of the, people often ask, does fire encourage weeds?

And it kinda depends on what weeds are there before the fire.

If there aren't weeds there before the fire, you're probably not gonna have as much of a weed problem after, unless some weeds would come in on equipment, firefighting equipment.

- You disturb a lot of land though by trying to have fire breaks or whatever you call 'em.

Would you get more weeds in those areas afterwards?

- I've actually seen, yeah, a dozer line does disturb with the ground quite a bit, invasive plants.

I've seen Canadian thistle a few times.

Fireweed, kochia.

- Yeah, the annual species.

- Yeah.

- Some of the work done at MSU with looking specifically at cheatgrass response to fire, because in other parts of the west, there's a positive relationship between fire and cheatgrass.

So if you go to the Great Basin, so places further west and south of Montana, some of the work at MSU has indicated that the dozer lines, the fire lines are really where the cheatgrass shows up the most.

So if you have a healthy range land that's comprised of perennial grasses and forbs, and there's a little bit of cheatgrass there before the fire, we haven't seen that increase in cheatgrass.

Where we see the increase is where we disturb the soil with the dozer line.

And that's really where the post fire weed management should probably focus on.

- Yeah.

I'm sitting here thinking I've got a question for you in a moment, but the Native Indians, the Native Americans here, often started their fires to quote "improve the grasslands."

Do these forest fires or range fires over time improve any of the range land?

- Yeah, I mean I can talk a little bit about that from like a forage nutrition perspective, and then maybe Jean can talk about weeds and things like that.

(panel chuckling) But yeah, no, I mean, historically there is some evidence and accounts where the Native Americans would burn vast expanses of range lands and areas.

And the thought process is that that would in turn improve the quality of the forages there that following spring.

So it was a way essentially to attract the bison herds to come back for hunting grounds and things like that.

And in fact, what we have found is that when a wildfire goes through that next year, it does typically improve the nutritional quality of that forage.

But in the sense that that fire has removed all the residual stemmy stuff that's a couple years old, the litter, the things that are typically the nutrients have leached out.

And that next spring, the only thing that you have left exposed is new growth, that leafy growth, and those tend to be the parts of the plant that are the most nutritious.

And so from an aspect of over time, I don't think it's like a time thing, it's more of a initial response.

So the next spring it's gonna be good.

The longer you wait to go in there, it's probably gonna get back to what you would normally normally see.

- Okay, thank you, good information.

Abby, from Helena, interesting question here.

They say that leaf cutter bees have damaged their peonies and lilacs for the last several years.

Is there any way we can deter them?

And also they wanna know are they a pollinator and I believe they are, but go ahead.

- Yeah, leaf cutting bees are a pretty great pollinator, they're pretty important in our landscape.

And usually their damage is just superficial on trees.

It's aesthetic damage, trees, shrubs, peonies, especially roses, lilacs.

But the damage won't really harm your landscape plants, it's not really gonna affect them.

And the positive for this pollinator, they're a really great pollinator, but they're also pretty important in the alfalfa seed production industry as well.

So I would just say it's just aesthetic damage that I would- - Live with.

- Wouldn't too worried about, yeah, I would be intrigued to see, it's pretty cool to watch them cut those little notches out of leaves.

- It is, they are a neat insect.

From Hot Springs.

This is an interesting question.

Cory, would they, this person would like to know, are there specific towns in Montana that are more threatened by fires caused by coal seams?

- There is actually, as the data shows from what we've collected already.

Any given day, you could have a wind-driven wildland fire.

Even prior to this, Jack, that video you showed me, that was a wind driven fire.

So as we get into that, Eastern Montana is one dry, I call it the desert.

Eastern Montana is the desert.

Not this year, thank God.

(panel laughing) But most given years, the biggest threat I could see to any population, I know the northern Cheyenne definitely is, I mean that fire almost burned right into Lame Deer.

- [Jack] Right.

- It was right on the verge of burning into Lame Deer.

So all the smaller towns, there's always a potential.

I can't really say, the risk is always there.

- Talking to Scott, he said that he's noticed as temperatures have warmed and now approach 100 degrees quite commonly out in the eastern part of the state, he thinks that the coal seam fires are more responsible for grassland fires at higher temperatures.

Have you noticed that?

- Yeah, I actually have noticed that.

It's the last few years, every year we seem to be getting more and more coal seam caused wildland fires, and the fires always seem to be more and more extreme.

I mean, 8 years ago, 10 years ago, a bigger fire was a hundred acres.

A small fire to us now is a thousand acres, honestly.

- Yeah.

- It seems we keep getting these mega fires, is what you call 'em, is more frequent.

- It's scary.

It really is, man.

I've seen a few of those fires out there.

And once they get started, they're pretty difficult to contain, especially on a windy breezy day.

- Lookout.

- Yeah, you're absolutely right.

From Helena, and also from Bozeman.

They welcome Sam, they'd like to get to know him better and they would like to know the sort of resources that you offer as a beef extension specialist.

That's a good question.

- Yeah, yeah, that is a good question actually.

(panel laughing) I should also preface before I answer this question that I just started in June, so I'm gonna do my best to give you those, that information.

So we're always available.

I would say just about almost all the campus-based extension or extension even off campus or very friendly to just phone calls, emails, even just stopping in the office if we're not out on tours and giving talks.

I think one of the best places to probably look is on the web, there's a bunch, we have a bunch of stuff.

We have MontGuides, extension bulletins, in general beyond just beef cattle, just in extension in general.

We actually have our, we actually for beef cattle specific have an extension beef cattle extension page.

We have a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, is there anything I'm forgetting here?

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there that's available.

I wish I had those addresses fresh in my mind to put those out there.

But I believe the beef extension one might be or something close to that.

But if you get on the Montana State University website and put extension beef, I think it'll pop up pretty quickly.

- Yeah.

All right, thank you.

Jane, I think I'll throw this one to you.

And this is, I always like to throw, I hear you, it's a curve, right?

(panel laughing) From Bozeman.

This person would like to know if controlled burns are used for sagebrush management, and do you think we need to do sagebrush management?

- Well, they certainly can be.

Historically, when fires burned more naturally, that was a way to take those woody species out of the grassland system.

And sagebrush is not a re-sprouter, generally speaking.

Some of our shrubby species re-sprout after fire, sagebrush typically does not do that.

So prescribed fire or even wildfire will take the sagebrush out.

Does it get used very much anymore in terms of prescribed fire?

A little bit, but as we've been talking here tonight with warmer, dryer conditions, the use of prescribed fire is becoming more and more of a challenge.

- I agree.

- I don't know if Cory or Sam have anything to offer in terms of prescribed fire for sagebrush control.

- We actually do some smaller prescribed fires locally in the county for ranchers and stuff.

But you gotta be careful with the word "sagebrush fires" due to sage grouse habitat, it's a touchy subject.

- Yeah.

- I meant as a rancher, that opens up better grass, I've seen personally.

But then again, you gotta deal with the other aspect of it, of the sagegrass habitat.

- Right, right.

And as you mentioned, trained personnel are good at these controlled fires, but if you don't have that training and the equipment, it can be kind of a scary endeavor.

- Yeah, you for sure have got to have a little experience.

I've seen a handful of wildland fires prescribed, turned out to be uncontrolled wildland fires.

- Yeah.

- So yeah, definitely training is there.

- Yeah, and just to add to that, I mean I have seen some prescribed fire not necessarily for sagebrush, but for other conifer encroaching into, I mean, that's more of a grassland-wide issue.

So you see conifer encroachment into like the Great Plains becoming an issue.

You see it definitely in the Great Basin, but that gets a little tricky with the cheatgrass and whatnot, so you see a lot more mechanical removal.

But I have seen where if it's a light conifers are just starting to kind of come in there.

I've seen the use of prescribed fire to help keep 'em from establishing.

But like I said, it's risky.

There's a big risk that most people don't want to take when it comes to that.

- I, yes, I've been in the Midwest a little bit where the junipers have started to encroach, and I have actually seen fires get away back there.

You never know when the wind's gonna blow in the Midwest, and that's true out in your country too.

It can get breezy out there on occasion.

Change tunes a little bit.

This person is pretty optimistic in that they want to grow cherries here in Montana.

And again, maybe, with climate change that's possible.

So they planted a bunch of cherries in their yard and they would like Abby to tell them how to make them survive the first couple winters.

- Yeah, this- - No pressure.

(panel laughing) - Yeah, pretty challenging.

But I mean, we do grow cherries in the western part of Montana and they're amazing.

But young trees like cherry trees, especially when you're newly establishing them, they're pretty sensitive and can, it's a pretty important critical period for the first couple of years.

So for their first winter, what I would recommend is if your ground isn't frozen yet, make sure you water these trees well in the fall so they have those moisture reserves.

Add mulch to that soil line so you have that root zone so that you have that nice buffer for those young roots as they're continuing to develop and establish.

And for thin bark trees like cherries and plums, things like that, especially dark thin bark trees, wrapping the trunk is pretty important if you have south or southwest exposure because we can have sun scald, where the bark will split, and that can harm the health of the tree.

So for the first couple of years in the winter, I'd recommend wrapping or using indoor latex paint around the trunk just to protect those trees.

- While we're on the subject of trees, driving in this evening here on campus, I have seen a lot of downed branches and actually some trunks that have actually split.

Suggestions on what growers, homeowners need to do about that?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

And then especially because we haven't had, a lot of our trees had gone dormant and we had a snowfall here in Bozeman today.

A lot of those trees that still have leaves on their branches, the snow that piles on adds a lot of extra stress to those branches and results in them breaking down, or structural failures for those.

So if you have these trees in your backyard with a lot of leaves still on them, I would recommend shaking those branches and getting rid of some of that snow.

Use a broomstick and kind of shake it off to protect those trees so it doesn't damage their branches.

- And the broken branches, get a chainsaw out, clean cuts.

- Yeah, make sure you cut that cleanly.

And the winter is a great time to do that.

- Yeah, okay.

- Could I ask a follow up of Abby?

- Sure.

- Did you say that you can use indoor latex paint?

- You can use, yeah, latex paint.

- Okay, paint the bark, so they don't, it's like sun scald even in the winter time?

- Yeah, so 50% Latex paint, 50% water, and then you just paint the trees, the trunk, and the base of the tree for that.

- Okay, - Yeah.

- Or you can also use tree wrap.

- Tree wraps as well.

Painting's easier.

- [Abby] Yeah - And messier.

- And you probably have some left- - Some lying around.

- Somewhere in your house.

- Yeah.

- Okay, enough with the paintbrush.

(panel laughing) Cory, from Helena, this caller would like a reminder about how the coal seam fires initially ignite, we touched on that a little bit.

You want to touch on a little bit more?

- Yeah, Jack.

So spontaneous combustion actually can lightning could cause 'em to ignite, and also wildland fires.

Wildland fires seems to be the most prominent cause.

A lightning caused wildland fire burns through and essentially catches all these pockets, veins of coal, exposed coal veins and lights 'em up.

So that is the prominent cause.

- [Jack] And they're increasing, so no doubt about it every year.

- And Cory, once they're burning, do they have to be above ground to burn?

I mean, how do they get oxygen if the coal is below ground?

- There's always a vent under every coal seam, so when they start burning under the ground, there's always that exit for it, at the end of the seam, wherever it might be.

We've found a vent for a burning coal seam a couple hundred yards away.

- Okay.

- That's pretty amazing.

We had a question here that came from Broadus, and this person says there's a company out there called TM Thermal.

You wanna, I think they're associated with coal seams.

- Yeah, so CM Thermal, ironically these guys are, it all started actually in November last year when we started working on this, brought this as a stakeholder meeting.

We had state, federal, local, everyone come to get to the table and we were like, what are we gonna do, we gotta come up with a plan.

And these two guys out of Powder River County, Clint Peterson and Miles Gardner went ahead and started a drone business and thought that maybe using drones to find these hotspots would work.

And it's proven very well.

These guys are wealth of knowledge on coal seams, I actually could say they're more experts than I am.

We all work together all the time on these coal seam, this coal seam project.

Those guys are good.

- And they're mapping it, making it available to producers, ranchers?

- So yes, there's a clause right now, we're collecting all this data, but long term, we're gonna publish a map.

- Okay.

- So AML, DEQ, AML built the GIS platform for this for free, which was, and then it was Field Maps, if you guys used Field Maps.

And then we'll take the drones CM Thermal fly and then actually get the lat-lon picture.

And some of 'em we walk into just because we want to see 'em.

- And the map will be a map of the coal seam or the fire associated with a seam?

- It'll be the burning coal seam.

'Cause as we're learning to figure out, there's so many problems with these burning coal seams.

One, if they're on public land, somebody that's out for example right now hunting, goes steps on 'em, you could actually fall into 'em.

If you read the article, John Bailey actually out of Rosebud County fell through one in a pickup.

- Wow.

- And on a wild gunfire.

And you fall into one of those, you might consume your body, they're so hot.

- Wow.

- Yeah, dangerous.

From Custer, Sam, this person would like to know following a wildfire, he's been told that the recovering grasses are more nutritious than they were before the fire, any truth to that?

- Yeah, there is.

And that kinda goes back to what we discussed a little bit.

So that that fire's gonna go through and it's gonna burn all the old, brown, standing stuff, which is high in fiber and kind of low in crude protein.

And so in terms of like a grazing forage, it's not that the cattle can't utilize it, it's just not the most nutritious.

And in an instance where there is no fire, a lot of that is left as standing litter or something.

And then the next year, the plant's growing through that.

The cattle inherently eat some of that dead stuff as they're eating the good stuff, and at when that fire goes through, it gets rid of all of that.

And so you just end up with that year's fresh leafy material growth, which is the most nutritious component.

So as of the range land on a whole, it does increase the overall nutrition for that year, maybe perhaps into the next year.

But then after a few years, that litter then gains back and you're probably right back to what you were prior.

- Okay, as a follow up question, this comes from Bozeman.

But they would like to know, do ranchers ever fertilize range land?

- I remember back when I was doing my undergrad, and maybe even into my masters, there was this, there was a proposal of kinda doing that.

But what I think they've found, for the most part on range lands, the most limiting nutrient is really water.

And the cost-benefit ratio, I believe, and maybe you remember some of this work too, but I don't think it paid very well.

I think you spent more money than what you got out of it.

And you may be able to put some nitrogen down or something, but if you don't get the moisture, then it's just, it'll eventually leach out and not provide.

So they did do some work, I just don't think it paid very well, if I remember right.

- Yeah, on that note, let me throw this up and you guys can jump in.

If, you had to put a dollar figure on an acre of grass for a rancher, give me a number.

- [Sam] I like that.

(Jack laughing) - Anybody wanna, y'all throw something out there?

I love it when I stump the panel.

- Well, what's an, like, what's an, what's the cost of an AUM?

Do you know Sam?

- Yeah.

- I mean that would be one way to think about it.

Like lease rates for an AUM or.

- Yeah, that would be actually a good question for like Kate Fuller.

- Yeah, I was gonna say, where's our economist?

- I know she does lease work, but I can tell you like, I mean you definitely stumped me, but what I will say out there is it's gonna completely depend, like not all range land is equal.

Some range lands I've done work on in Montana have maybe 2000 to 3000 pounds per acre.

And then I've been in places that are lucky to get 5 to 700 pounds per acre.

And then the species composition associated with those, the quality's different, the fiber's different, the nutrition's different, so I don't think there's a solid number, it kinda depends where you're at.

- And so it's an unfair question I pose.

- Yeah, it's a great question for Kate, I know she does some work in that.

- Okay, sounds good.

Abby, and this person from Bridger Canyon just up the road here, they had a significant fire there two or three years ago.

Big one, it did a lot of damage.

And that wasn't a coal seam fire.

But Abby, would you recommend shrubs as a live snow fence for a house in Bridger Canyon?

Good question.

- Yeah, that is a good question.

Yeah, if you have the space for them, yeah, a few shrubs could work pretty well.

It would depend on just the type of soil, the exposure that you have, and just the area.

But people do use shrubs as live fences, as wind shelter and snow shelter pretty often.

We have some publications on, I believe we have MontGuide on shelter belts that have recommendations on types of vegetation that you can incorporate that work really well for that purpose.

So, I would check that out.

- Question from Glendive for Cory.

In mapping these coal seam fires, are you able to tell which ones are more dangerous to start a range land fire compared to others?

It's a very legitimate question.

- That is a very good question.

So there are some, yes, based on the fuel type around it, honestly, that's what it comes down to.

But once again, they're all very vulnerable.

You never know any given day which one's gonna start a wildland fire.

There's been no mathematical, a rhythmic, or anything to figure out which ones are more prone to start wildlife fires.

- Are some of 'em a lot bigger than others?

- Oh yeah, there's some the size of this table here, or there's some that three, 400 acres big, just monsters.

- In years past, and just reading a little bit about this.

Wasn't the Bureau of Land, or Mines responsible for the coal seam fires out in that area?

- So good question.

(Jack chuckles) - You don't want to go there?

- Well, I'll go there to the best of my ability.

- Okay.

- So I believe that once upon a time, DOI, Department of Interior did have a program that actually studied coal seam fires and had a program to put 'em out.

And that was actually outta North Dakota where they done it.

Roosevelt Park, I believe it is.

Yep, they actually had quite a few in there.

But apparently, or they ran outta funding is from the source I heard, ran outta funding and so they shut that program down.

But I know that they had actually had a for these coal seams in North Dakota at the time.

- Oh.

A lot of people don't know Eastern Montana very well, but what areas in eastern Montana and northern Wyoming or the Theodore Roosevelt Park area, which area has the most coal seam fires?

- So from the data we've collected so Eastern Montana's a checker board, there's state, BLM, private, BIA, they're all, everyone's affected equally, I would say at this time, everyone has 'em.

Where they originally originated from is a different question, they're everywhere.

- Okay, all right.

Sam from Custer again, this person would like to know if there's any MSU or USDA research going on on the recovery of grasslands damaged by rain fires?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

And gosh, the years escaped me a little bit.

I know we discussed it here probably, you probably remember the years.

But a few years ago there was that really big fire, I think it was up by Jordan Sidney area, burned a huge amount of the state.

And actually I do know that Dr. Clayton Marlowe and Dr. Lance Vermeer, Clayton Marlowe from Montana State, Lance Vermeer from ARS Miles City had a graduate student that was looking at grazing and recovery post-fire.

And then, I don't know if you'd say luck would have it or it's just making the best out of a unfortunate situation, but here more locally in Bozeman, a few couple years ago, 2019 I believe, there was a wildfire on our university Red Bluff Research Ranch.

And Dr. Lance Vermeer, Clayton Marlow, Dr. Tim DelCurto, and myself were able to come together and actually put like several paddocks out there where we're actually looking at timing a grazing post wildfire and how that affects animal diet.

And Dr. Marlow in Lance Vermeer are looking at vegetation components to that.

We're looking at diet quality in burn versus unburned and then from spring grazing to fall grazing at different time periods post fire.

So there is some stuff going out that we're doing right now.

I don't think any of those results are out yet, but we're just wrapping up those studies this year, so they should be coming pretty soon.

- Okay, that's interesting.

Over to Jane and Abby.

And you guys thought you were gonna get by without having to answer this question, but I just remembered I was supposed to ask it 'cause Mary sent it to me.

They want to know what the most dangerous plant in your garden could be.

(panel laughing) - I think that's a difficult question.

I think it would depend on what aspect you're approaching that with and how you're viewing something as a dangerous plant.

I'd say if you're talking about pets that might be in your yards and gardens like dogs or cats, plants like lilies, tulips and narcissus bulbs, they can be pretty toxic if they're consumed by animals.

So I would say from that perspective of dangerous, those would be pretty high on the list for garden plants.

- Yeah, so the toxicity.

- Yeah.

- Another angle you could look at that is, are there garden plants that could escape and become invasive?

And there are still quite a few species in the horticulture industry that are sometimes used in landscaping that can become invasive.

And some states have these species on their noxious weed list, some states don't.

A couple species that come to mind for me, there's a couple ornamental spurge plants, cypress spurge and myrtle spurge that I think you can buy at the nursery that they can become invasive, kinda like leafy spurge.

Most Montanans are familiar with leafy spurge.

There's a lot of species on the state noxious weed list that were brought here and planted as ornamentals, like the toad flaxes, yellow and dalmatian.

Dyer's woad was planted as an ornamental and for its qualities as a dye plant, they get indigo dye from that plant.

So yeah, it kinda depends what angle that question's coming from, but.

- Maybe I'll clarify that next time you guys are on, we'll be a little more specific.

- Okay.

- If you got cats, what's dangerous to cats, what's dangerous to dogs, so forth and so on.

- Yeah.

- I do know that lilies and dogs do not get along.

- Yeah - But anyway, enough of that.

Caller from Harden would like to know more info about proper tree wrapping, like Abby mentioned, and keeping the wrap on for how long?

- Yeah, so that's a good question.

You can purchase wraps like we were talking about, you can use latex paints and you can wrap entire trees for really sensitive trees or shrubs, like certain arborvitaes, they can be pretty sensitive, especially new ones where if you're wrapping the entire tree in burlap, you're supposed to stake it so that burlap isn't gonna attach to the foliage, that'll protect it from wind and drying out as well.

We do have a lot of information about this on the msuextension.org, and if you google tree wraps, we have information about other options that you have.

For leaving it on for wraps, it's pretty important to remove those in the spring because that can constrict the growth of the trees as they come out of dormancy and start expanding.

So it's important to remove those, but you can put them on right now.

As soon as those trees go dormant, you can put those wraps on.

- Okay, thank you.

- I'm really hung up on the paint thing.

So in the spring, the paint is okay or do you wash it off?

- Yeah, I think it just degrades.

So you'll see trees- - Okay.

- Still in the landscape that have that white paint on them, you see them all the time.

And sometimes, if that really deteriorates, you can add a fresh coat after a few years, but you might not have to paint it every year.

- Okay, yeah.

(Abby laughing) - Okay.

Thank you.

From Glendive, this person is fascinated by mapping these coal seam fires.

And they want to know, is this done mainly in the wintertime when the snow melts and you have the bare areas?

Or is there steam coming out?

They wanna know how these drones map.

- Yeah, well, that actually is a very good question.

Winter time is for sure the most prominent time to map 'em.

Like I said, I was out the other day, it was still 50 degrees, maybe 60, and there was smoke rolling out of the ground.

A smoke of steam.

- Yeah.

- But wintertime, yeah, the ground, like last winter we went out, there was a foot of snow on the ground, it was 20 below and there's just this barren spot on the ground, and steam rolling out of it.

And you go over there and you get kinda close, I like to flirt with danger a little bit sometimes, but the ground's mud, I meant close to it.

How much heat is underneath that ground, it's pretty impressive.

I mean this was January and it's froze all winter, then it's mud.

- Yeah, amazing.

Question for Sam, is there any precision ag techniques that you're aware of that might be useful in managing wildlife-wildfire interactions?

- Yeah, so the college ag at Montana State is actually a big proponent of precision ag technologies.

And we've been working in a multi-state group, actually, looking at precision ag livestock technologies in production systems.

And one of our multi-state collaborators at Oregon State has actually been doing a lot of work with a virtual fence.

And so some of the things that they've been doing and doing quite successfully and publishing is looking at using virtual fence to potentially, I think one of their studies they looked at, they put a fire line in there and tried to keep the livestock out of the burn area using virtual fence technology.

Which we haven't talked about, but these fires also burn up fences and cause a big issue there for grazing.

And so this would be a potential to graze those areas and not graze the more sensitive fire areas.

And then the other thing they've done that I believe they just got published and are working on is using livestock to create natural fire breaks.

And so putting these collars on the animal, designating where they would like the fire break to be and then using those animals to reduce the vegetation in those areas in a hope to, if there is a fire, that that slows it down enough to get it out or cause a fire break there.

So a lot of interesting work coming outta Oregon State right now.

- Okay.

- I do have a follow up question for you, since we couldn't figure out a price of an acre variance, what's a mile of fence cost these days?

- Oh shoot, I just saw some, I just saw some interesting data on this, and it was presented by the Oregon State folks.

And I don't remember the exact number, but when you see the virtual fence numbers come out, one of the big, I know one of the big red flags is just the cost.

They usually rent these collars out, but you have to purchase a tower to communicate to the caller, or for the caller to communicate to the satellite.

And that number, I know, I wanna say that that number for that was somewhere in that $20,000 range.

And that made me, I was a little shocked by that, but then they put out what the cost for a mile of fence is right now and it exceeded drastically what it would cost to put some of this virtual fence technology on landscape.

- Yeah, I had heard like $5, maybe $5 to $8,000 for a mile of fence.

But you're looking at me surprised, like more than that?

- A mile of steel fence is anywhere between $20 and $30,000 right now.

- Oh, wow.

- Wow.

- Well that's, I know going right at home, but then topography plays a little role with it too.

- That was a few years ago when I heard that $5,000.

(panel laughing) - We're in different times now.

- We are in different times, that's for sure.

- Okay.

Cory, this is one that just came in.

Came in from Kalispell, and they've heard that people do attempt to put coal steam fires out.

Can they plug the vents that provide oxygen?

Can they pour enough gravel or dirt on 'em to put 'em out?

Anybody tried some of these things?

- So actually they're, and south of Miles City quite a ways, there's one that was done a long, long time ago.

You could still see the reclamation work that was done to it, but, and they actually stuff a sniffer tube in the ground, so they pull a cap off and you could sniff to see if the coal's still burning, crazy enough, but.

(panel chuckling) There has been attempts, I know of some that have failed, and I know that some are still the unknown.

It's testing the data right now, there's so many options to try, but cost reasonable is the priority, cost effectiveness.

- Take the McCray Ranch, I don't know how big they are, close to a 100,000 acres, maybe 70,000.

- They're a pretty big place.

- Yeah, it's huge.

- Yep.

- So how many fires or coal seam fires might they have on their property?

- I honestly, I can't give you an answer right now.

- Okay.

- But almost all ranchers in that area have a fire or two that they have to contend with.

- Yeah, there's every year, yeah, that whole area.

John Bailey, Jerry Broadus, McCray's, they're probably one of the worst areas affected just based on from topography standpoint, the coal seam fires are in such rough area.

And they, yeah, it's.

- It's not good.

- It's not good.

- And it's increasing.

- It is increasing.

And the Cheyenne Reservation, just to the south of Crow.

I haven't actually went over to Bighorn County yet, but I know they got a bunch of 'em.

Treasure County has a handful along the little Wolf Mountains there.

- Okay.

- And trying to figure those ones too.

- Amazing story.

One for our weed scientist, invasive plant specialist.

They wanna know how long will leafy spurge seeds remain active in the soil?

- [Sam] That's a good question.

- Oh man, that is a good question, and there probably is actually an answer.

Someone's probably actually done that research.

I think it's, I'm just gonna put a guess out there, probably somewhere between 5 and 15 years, I think they're fairly long lived seeds.

But I think one of the bigger challenges with leafy spurge is the root system.

So once you get an infestation established, it's persisting at that site because those roots are so extensive and they can go so deep.

There's a rollout, a root rollout that we use for educational purposes that was modeled after a plant that was actually found along a roadcut, I think in Western North Dakota and those roots are like 15 feet deep.

So that's what allows leafy spurge to persist, it's not so much the seeds in the seed bank.

- Okay, we're getting down toward the end of the wire.

I've got one quick question here, which comes in almost every year at this time.

Is it too late to plant garlic?

- If your ground is not frozen, you can still put garlic in the ground.

So as long as your soil is still workable, you can put garlic in the ground here in Montana.

- And with all this moisture and stuff, it'd be a good time?

- It'd be probably, yeah, great time to do that.

- And we have had some good moisture, finally.

We come to an end of another program.

I want to thank Sam, first of all, for your first time here.

Cory, it's a pleasure to have you over, very knowledgeable, very interesting.

Good luck on fighting those things out there.

The rest of the panel, thank you as always.

Next week, we're going to look at 4H, and the need for volunteers in 4H.

And 4H just has a new big grant that you'll learn all about, it'll be interesting.

(guitar music) Meanwhile, have a good week, good night, and join us next week.

Goodbye.

- [Narrator 2] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

- [Narrator 1] Montana Ag Live is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, the MSU Extension Service, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(bright piano music)