LASSEN COUNTY, CALIF., where the high desert meets the Sierra
Nevada, offers wide-open vistas of juniper and sagebrush, and
habitat for rare wildlife such as sage grouse and Carson
wandering skipper butterflies. U.S. Bureau of Land Management
botanist Carolyn Gibbs started fighting weeds here as a graduate
student in 1994. She spent her summers pulling yellow star
thistle, public enemy number one for the coalition of groups and
agencies that became the Lassen County Special Weed Action Team.
Today, the "Weed Warriors" target all the noxious weeds in the
county, including cheatgrass and the lesser-known but even more
insidious medusahead, and Gibbs is looking forward to a new tool
in her fight against these two explosively flammable grasses:
Plateau, an herbicide that she says leaves most native plants
unharmed. The BLM is set to approve its use this fall, when it
issues its final decision on an herbicide plan. The plan allows
spraying for weeds and flammable brush on nearly a million acres
of public land, mos