Revolutionary Chemistry Snuffs Environmental Threat

Spotted Knapweed

Noxious and invasive weeds pose a real, rapidly spreading threat to the environment, with an impact that reaches all the way to our local and national economies.

Hearty invasive species adapt to crowd out native vegetation, create ecosystems ill suited for wildlife habitat, endanger rare plant species, and reduce usable grazing areas for livestock producers. It’s a domino effect that can lead to other serious environmental and economic hardships. Take spotted knapweed, for example. According to Celestine Duncan, a consultant specializing in noxious weed management, spotted knapweed dominates and displaces native species, reducing species richness and diversity; modifies wildlife habitat; increases surface runoff and erosion leading to increased stream and lake sediment; and changes fuel characteristics and affects wildfire intensity and frequency. Some invasive species even can change soil chemical and physical properties.

Aminopyralid, a revolutionary chemistry researched and developed by Dow AgroSciences, is helping resource specialists, roadside vegetation managers, land managers and livestock producers take back the land from noxious and invasive weeds. Introduced in November 2005, aminopyralid has shown unparalleled activity on some of the toughest noxious and invasive weeds threatening our parks, rangeland, pastures and wildlands today, all with a very favorable environmental profile. Aminopyralid was reviewed and accepted for registration under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Reduced Risk Pesticide initiative, a unique program reserved for compounds that demonstrate lowered risk to the environment and humans, compared to marketplace standards.

This unique chemistry offers an effective tool for restoring areas plagued by invasive species. Aminopyralid allows land managers to remove these troublesome weeds on sensitive sites that may have been off limits in the past, such as near streams and other bodies of water or around certain trees or other native species. And aminopyralid accomplishes this without harm to desirable grasses, so they can reestablish to hold soil in place, feed livestock and wildlife, and out compete future weed infestations.

Dow AgroSciences is a long-standing leader in rangeland, pasture, rights-of-way and wildland weed and brush management and continues to work to develop effective and environmentally responsible land management solutions. The first products available with this new chemistry include Milestone^™ and Milestone^™ VM, and ForeFront^™ R&P herbicides.

Dow AgroSciences and aminopyralid: committed to making environmental protection an integral part of the design, production, marketing, distribution and use of our products.