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agreed than disagreed. However, he also found that respondents believed control
should only be attempted if the control method poses little or no risk to the environ-
ment. Respondents were 3.5 times more likely to believe safety should be the most
important factor in choosing a control method than to believe effectiveness should
be foremost.
Debates about exotic invasive plant management often revolve around the use
of specifi c control options, especially herbicides. Different publics (i.e., specifi c
communities of people who share common interests or values, whether organized as
groups or not) view herbicide application differently. For example, Norgaard ( 2007 )
examined a controversy over control of Centaurea maculosa (spotted knapweed;
syn. Centaurea stoebe L. ssp. micranthos (Gugler) Hayek) in Northern California
and found that USDA Forest Service employees considered herbicide application to
be safe while community members did not. Similarly, Shindler et al. ( 2011 ) reported
that residents of rural parts of t he Great Basin were more than twice as likely as
urban respondents to believe herbicide application is “a legitimate tool that manag-
ers should be able to use [for sagebrush ecosystem protection] wherever they see fi t.”
Tidwell ( 2005 ) asked respondents to his Southwest survey about the acceptability
of using chemical, mechanical, biological, and cultural controls on invasive plants.
Cultural and mechanical approaches were the most likely to be judged acceptable,
with biological controls next. Chemical control was the only approach judged to be
moderately or highly acceptable by fewer than half of respondents. Tidwell also
asked about whether each of those approaches was acceptable in different contexts:
in protected areas such as national parks or wilderness areas, on multiple use public
lands, on ag ricultural lands, and on properties adjacent to residential areas. Chemical
control was judged more acceptable for use on multiple use or agricultural lands
than on protected or residential lands, while there was no difference in support
across contexts for biological, cultural, or mechanical approaches.
The two Great Basin surveys found that there is greater support among both urban
and rural publics for using livestock grazing for controlling B. tectorum than herbicide
application. There are no programs currently in the Great Basin to widely spray
herbicides to kill existing patches of B. tectorum , but herbicide is sometimes applied
during reseeding after a wildfi re to suppress annual grasses while allowing other
plants to take hold. Between 2006 and 2010, support for widespread use of livestock
grazing to keep B. tectorum in check and reduce fuel loads rose slightly from 57 %
to 61 % of respondents, while support for widespread use of herbicides remained
under 20 % (Gordon et al. 2014 ). Because the same individuals completed both sur-
veys, Gordon et al. ( 2014 ) could measure the stability of attitudes over time. Attitudes
toward livestock grazing were more stable, with 64 % of individuals giving the same
response each time. Attitudes toward herbicide application were less so; while 44 %
of respondents gave the same answer in 2010 as in 2006, 32 % had a lower opinion
of herbicides in 2010, while 24 % had grown more supportive of their use.
Gordon et al. ( 2014 ) also identifi ed predictors of support for livestock grazing
and herbicide application as vegetation management tools. In 2006, those who
supported grazing were more concerned about the health of Great Basin rangelands and
the threat posed by exotic invasive plants and less likely to believe that overgrazing
M.W. Brunson and H. Kartchner