Landowners in the Canadian River watershed have been issued a license to kill. Eastern red cedar, that is.
About 50 residents, state and local officials met October 25 at the Overlook Café at Canton Lake to kick off the study to determine the impact the invasive species has on waterflow into the lake and from there to the water supply in Oklahoma City. The study, presented by District 59 Rep. Mike Dobrinski and in the Senate by Darcy Jech, has been discussed for years. The premise is simple – how will removing the water glutton cedars improve the amount of water coming to the downstream areas. This experiment will eradicate the shrubs from the southern branch of the Canadian River, while using the northern branch as a control.
The difference of the waterflow should be easily measurable and provide concrete proof of the success of the program, which is named after Terry Peach, former Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture and executive director of the Farm Service Agency. He was a familiar face around Canton Lake and Woods, Dewey, Blaine and Major counties. “I’m glad we could honor Secretary Peach,” Dobrinski said. “I appreciated his vision, his leadership and his friendship.” Peach passed away in January 2022. His family was on hand to accept recognition for his hard work to make the idea a reality.
At the gathering in Canton, Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture Blayne Arthur addressed the crowd.
“I worked with and for Terry Peach,” Arthur said. “He was passionate about everything he did in life, and certainly about agriculture, about farmers and ranchers making a living. I’m glad to talk about this exciting project. To take his idea and bring it to fruition is very impressive. Our producers and the rest of Oklahoma will see the benefits from it.”
The project proposal, said Jech, the Oklahoma Senator for the district, was the last bill to come to the floor on the last day of the regular legislative session. He was presiding over the session and had to step down to present the bill. “I was glad to be part of the team that made this happen,” he said. “Mike (Dobrinski) championed it early and handed it off to me in the senate.”
Dobrinski was well pleased that the long-discussed project was getting underway. It passed this go round, he said, because of the broad base of support from insurance companies, the Cattlemen’s Association, Farm Bureau and many other interested parties.
“This is a long overdue, small first step to solve a problem that these producers have been dealing with for a long, long time,” he said. “Senator (Don) Williams made predictions in the past about what would happen if we didn’t stop them,” Dobrinski said, recognizing Williams in the audience.
Williams was a senator from southwest Beaver County who suggested a similar project some 30 years ago. Rep. Casey Murdock also held an interim study on removing cedars a few years ago, but it went nowhere. The current project was suggested again when the City of Oklahoma City needed water and the lake level at Canton dropped significantly. The three-part project was designed by Trey Lam, executive director of the Oklahoma Conservation Commission.
The three segments are to create a brush free zone around communities and use manual cutting and fire to eliminate the vegetation along the water ways, from pastures, fields and woodlands.
This will allow fire prevention by eliminating fire fuels rather than work from the suppression side, putting fires out. The nature of the eastern red cedar is such that it will not tolerate fire and won’t sprout from cutoff stumps or roots.
John Weir, extension specialist for fire ecology at Oklahoma State University, said the plants are a problem all over and are considered invasive in Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada and Colorado as well as Oklahoma. He said the idea is to return the landscape to what it was 200 years ago when there were very few cedars. It would, he said, provide better wildlife habitat and support grasslands for grazing and other uses. He was also blunt about the stubby trees, saying, “I hate cedars.”
Four technicians are scheduled to start the eradication process Nov. 1 and will work to clear more than 5,000 acres. They will be compared to other areas with no cedar control in place, measuring stream flow, water quality and soil quality.