Ecology and Extension: The Other Kind of Weeds and Grass (and Gardening, Land Management, Invasive Species)

Rivers are thawing, the call of the western meadowlark is floating through air, and other signs of spring are emerging in Missoula County. Maybe you’re inspired to pick up some plants for your patio, start an herb garden or even raise some livestock on your property. But where do you begin?

The Missoula County Department of Ecology and Extension can help you with all of this and more. From their new headquarters at the G.W. Marks Exploration Center, down to the Lolo Mosquito District and up to the Clearwater Watercraft Inspection site, Ecology and Extension staff are experts in land resources and management.

This week the commissioners sat down with Bryce Christiaens, self-described plant nerd and director of this department, to hear about what programs are available to residents.

If you’re looking for more information on how the G.W. Marks Exploration Center came to be, click here to listen to this episode from 2022.

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:10] Welcome back, everyone to the agenda with your Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Dave Strohmeyer. I'm joined by my friends and colleagues Juanita Vero and Josh Slotnick. And today we are delighted to have a special guest with us, Bryce Christiaens, director of the Ecology and Extension Department at Missoula County. Welcome, Bryce. Yeah. And this is your first time on the agenda?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:00:32] First time on the agenda. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:33] Welcome, Bryce. So Bryce has lots of people know you guys have recently moved to a new spectacular building, the Jerry Marks Exploration Center at the fairgrounds. What's all in this building? What's going on out there?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:00:46] Yeah. So if you haven't already been to the new building at the fairgrounds, you know, the construction was underway for like, four years. So people were driving up and down south seeing this crazy building going in. Many of those people, I don't think, even knew where the weed district and extension office was before that kind of tucked back out on reserve. So this is a new space for us and new space for people to be able to interact with the services that we provide. Missoula County Ecology and Extension basically can answer any kind of land resource land management, weed mitigation, nutrition education, youth development question that you have. Like if you have a goal for your property or a goal for your home, chances are extension has a document that can help you out.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:24] So if you're interacting with the Earth or taking something from the earth or the water and putting it in your body, absolutely. Your office can help. And the love, the love, the name, the Office of Ecology and Extension that's new, isn't it?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:01:35] That is new. So we had been Missoula County weed district. If you're if you're also not familiar, every county in Montana, pretty much every county west of the Mississippi. I heard the.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:45] City of Missoula was going to steal that name to reflect the plethora of shops we were going to.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:01:49] We were going to do like a percentage fee for for that to support our programs. Um, no extension offices are, you know, nationwide, we districts are west of the Mississippi River, both focused on providing resources to help land managers meet their goals. But as as you just kind of referenced, weed districts can be confused and conflated with some of the other issues that we have in Montana or other states and didn't necessarily reflect the broad scope of work that we were doing around water quality or comprehensive plant community management. And so it seemed more natural for us to make a step to be called ecology rather than weed district. But we can take them out into the Rocky Mountain Gardens, which is a two and a half acre demonstration garden that we're establishing in in kind of the backyard of.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:36] Slotnick out there with his tractor.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:02:38] He was indeed.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:39] I will be.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:39] Was he invited or did he just show up with his tractor? Yes.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:43] Good question.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:02:45] Um, what's been amazing about that garden. So we have so the Rocky Mountain Gardens are a two and a half acre demonstration garden associated with a GW Marx Exploration Center that has over 24 different types of gardens, from veggie gardens, pollinator lawns, native plants, crevice gardens, berry gardens, stone fruit forest, garden. Wow. Um, low maintenance garden. We have a green roof demonstration, a bioswale demonstration, all of those things through the lens of water conservation and pollinator conservation in western Montana. So really trying to help people do what they want to do on their property, but making sure that they understand the limitations from our climate, from our water. So they're successful in what they want to do. Awesome.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:30] Outstanding.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:03:31] Pretty much anything that you want to do in your backyard if you had ten acres, whatever you have for property, even on a patio, there are opportunities to get your hands dirty and figure out how to do that on your property. And one of the really cool things about that is that we've had engagement from the nursery and landscape and farming community in and around Missoula to have for each of those spaces, either a donor that's focused on install or design or providing materials. And so it's really become really a truly a community garden people just invested in, like making it their space, which has been great from the ground up, really. It's in the act of creation. It's different from a botanical garden where it's like, you know, a gallery of plants. This is something that we really want people to engage in. So we will have events, especially around fair this year where people can engage in that space. And probably events rolling out this fall to kind of celebrate the successes of all those partners and establishing the gardens.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:04:27] Bryce, I want to go to just partnerships for a second, and I've been at this job for a good number of years, but I am still at times trying to wrap my mind around the relationship between MSU and extension and county government. And is our arrangement here in in Missoula County similar to or different than other counties in the state?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:04:48] Yeah. So state extension across the country really has kind of two focus areas. They have specialists that are typically on the land grant university campus that can that can answer, you know, livestock questions, wildlife questions, plant management questions. So they're there to provide a resource to the rest of extension staff, but also help communities in the states that. They reside. The other arm of extension is to really have a county agent in every county, and some of them are focused on nutrition and family, consumer science, estate planning, helping individual families figure out answers to some questions around their their agricultural agents that help answer the questions that you were referring to. Josh of, you know what's happening in my soil? What crops should I grow? How can I get a better return on what I'm doing? You know, all the way back to why is it important that I electrify my farm? There's some amazing documents that I found in our move into this building of extension documents from the 30s and 40s of, like, why it's important to send my kids to public school, why is it's important to have good posture like so.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:05:51] Wow. We're all sitting upright. Uh, when you said that, we snap to attention. So in other counties, are our extension agents weaved into county government are completely separate or.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:06:02] Typically there is an extension office. Sometimes they're housed within other departments in those counties. Some of our neighbors have a weed like one individual that represents all of the weed district and all of the extension. Sometimes they're with public works. I think we're particularly fortunate in Missoula County, because we have the population base to support a larger spectrum of agents. So we have a for each agent, Campbell Barrett here in Missoula County, whose sole purpose is youth development and leadership. Through the Four-h program, we have horticulture agent that's focused on answering any kind of question you have from, you know, market gardening to to large cash crop type programs all the way to backyard gardening issues. We will have a livestock agent coming on to help people with, you know, small acreage livestock questions all the way to supporting larger producers within the county. And then we have a family consumer science agent as well, who is able to focus on nutrition education and caregiver support, all sorts of things.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:03] Wow. And in that building, there's some pretty a pretty incredible teaching kitchen. I'd say the nicest one I've ever seen. The way the cameras are set up, it's better than the library.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:07:12] Oh, it's pretty nice. It's pretty nice.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:14] Very nice.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:07:15] I put our I'd put our demonstration kitchen up against it has.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:19] The where the where the cameras are so you could see the hands of the person. Teaching is kind of special. Yeah.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:07:24] So one of the things that like really made ours cool and I'm a little intimidated by it to be honest. But the set designer. Um, from friends. Don't you have one for your kitchen?

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:34] Set designer from friends?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:07:35] The set designer from friends. The set designer for two and a Half Men. Also, a number of cooking shows like Emeril is from Missoula, and his mom was a nutrition educator for extension back in the day. And so when we were building, you know, the capital campaign around this facility and reaching out to prospective donors, their names came up. And in those conversations, he was really excited to work with us to look at some of these classrooms from the perspective of the end user. And that was really important at that time, too, because we were finishing up design of the facility in the height of Covid, we didn't know if people were really going to be coming into classrooms for a moment there. And so there was a lot of focus on how do we use this space to broadcast education to any classroom or any home down the road once we're in this space? So trying to evolve the availability of our programs to make sure that the community could still access them, even when there was a lot of uncertainty.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:27] It is my great dream to someday teach a cooking class in that kitchen. Just letting you know, Bryce. Someday you up. Someday.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:33] So would you teach?

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:34] I was just thinking maybe something in the fall about winter squash.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:08:37] That'd be awesome.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:38] Yeah, we'll do a whole bunch of do a taste testing and different cooking methods. Yeah. If a person could only grow one big thing in their garden. I know saying this, most people are like, what the hell are you talking about? That's crazy. Who cares about winter squash? That's why you need to go to this class.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:08:51] Exactly.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:52] So I got to ask you a real question. A real question, a real question. We've been talking about plant communities. There are a lot of small acreage landholders in Missoula County that have animals. What do you guys offer for folks who have cows and sheep, goats, etc.?

Juanita Vero: [00:09:06] So what are you calling small acreage?

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:09] 20 acres or less?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:09:10] 20 acres or less. We treat every landowner in Missoula County the same as far as providing them resources. So whether you have just a backyard, you have five acres or your Juanita Vero 20 acres, you have a ranch in the Blackfoot. If you have questions about how your animals are impacting your plant community or animal health questions, we might not have all of the answers right away, but we have access to put you in touch with the people that would have the answers to those questions. So we're really excited to find the answers with you. The interesting thing that I've seen, and like what we call small acreage landowners in western Montana, is that it is a pretty proud moment for a lot of new landowners in western Montana to have that acreage, whether it's five acres or ten acres or 20 acres. And in a lot of times it's the first time that they've managed land or come into like any kind of space where they're responsible for the healthy management of land. They're really excited about that. And they're really. Timid about it. And one of the things that we really like to do is just initiate that conversation with a site visit to walk their property with them. So great answer the questions they have from, you know, water, weeds, desirable plants, what's possible on your property? I'm kind of a little bit of an org structure nerd, and usually the question that they ask when they're initiating that conversation is maybe 3 or 4 steps ahead of where they should be. And so I've started using like the Toyota model, where how they troubleshooted anything within that corporation was, you know, if there's a problem we need to troubleshoot. Why is that a problem? And then asking why of that answer for 5555, five whys. And when you get back to that point, you're probably at the root of your issue.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:57] So what's an example? Someone comes in yeah. Run the schematic for us. 

Bryce Christiaens: [00:11:02] I mean, the easiest one is especially with livestock is carrying capacity is pretty limited. We don't have that robust of a plant community to support a number of horses on their property. And so they'll have questions about horse health or weeds or something like that. And they're like, well, you know, maybe that's not the issue. That's the symptom of what we're seeing with land management. And we can kind of walk that back. Maybe you have weeds because you don't you didn't have any forage. You bought cheap hay, you brought hay in it had weeds in it. You had a big disturbance on your site that opened up a niche space for those propagules to take root. And now you're dealing with a weed issue that you know you're going to continue to deal with that weed issue unless you mitigate some of these other things that would make your plant community susceptible.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:45] That's a good example.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:45] Awesome. Thank you. Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:47] So even me, who lives in the heart of Missoula on Pine Street, I could come in and ask a question about your...

Juanita Vero: [00:11:54] Lawn, that lawn!

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:56] Pollinator garden or some such thing. Absolutely. Okay.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:58] Anything, a lawn.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:12:01]  [00:12:01]One of the really exciting things that we're starting to build a program around. And I actually have a two day symposium starting this week on pollinator research and pollinator conservation around the state of Montana, in the hopes of it creating Montana's pollinator network. A lot of research has shown that we have a huge missed conservation opportunity for pollinators in urban areas, and urban and suburban development is the fastest growing ecosystem on the planet. Most pollinators are central like central foragers, so they have a space and they can only forage out a certain distance from that location. And so as we start to see an increasing development, we're seeing, you know, like any kind of wildlife connectivity, we're starting to see these disjunct distance. [00:12:47]

Juanita Vero: [00:12:47] I mean.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:12:47] It depends on the species. Bumblebees would maybe be like up to a mile.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:12:51] Oh, okay. So a little.

Juanita Vero: [00:12:53] But I had no.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:12:53] More than a few feet?

Juanita Vero: [00:12:54] Exactly. 

Bryce Christiaens: [00:12:56] More than a few feet. But you know, some of the smaller bees, like sweat bees or mason bees, they would have even a smaller footprint from where they can forage. So planting pollinator habitat within suburban urban areas, not only to create pollinator pathways between some of this disjunct patches of habitat that that we have, but also just for pollination within our urban centers. This is a.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:19] Silly question, but are cars a problem? When I see, like a boulevard full of flowers, I'm like, oh, look at these fantastic flowers. But they're right next to the road. And I'm like, is everything getting...

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:29] Carbon Monoxide loving tulips?

Juanita Vero: [00:13:30] Oh, I wasn't thinking of that. You're thinking of.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:13:33] The pollinators.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:33] The things in the grill. Oh yeah. Is that even.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:36] Are they taking out insects?

Juanita Vero: [00:13:38] Is that even something to be concerned about?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:13:40] So can you have like, deer.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:13:41] Whistles but really small for the bees?

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:44] Has there been some Darwinian kind of thing going on where cars are selecting for bees that respond to cars and get out of the way?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:13:52] So there is definitely been research that has occurred.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:55] Not a crazy question to understand.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:13:57] If roadside pollinator mixes are essentially habitat sinks where you're attracting pollinators to their death. There is a lot of research on that, and I don't think I'm the expert to answer that question. Marirose Kuhlman, who is our habitat coordinator that's focused on pollinator conservation, definitely would be.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:13] And a question for you. Yeah, we've been talking a lot about terrestrial things. Missoula County is the home to the only aquatic invasive species district in the state. And it's something I know that you personally put a lot of effort towards. And it's been really successful and touted statewide for its effectiveness and its busyness. Yeah. Do you speak to that? So yes.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:14:33] We have the state's only aquatic invasive species district. You know, it was kind of in the hopes of being able to develop an all taxa invasive species district where we could focus our efforts on multiple things. The weed district is really tied to the county.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:46] When you say all taxa, people are thinking, I am taxed to death.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:14:49] By Slotnick pivots to the tax subject.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:53] I'm not going there, I just want you to explain what that means. Tax us. Yeah. This is not where people are listening, but they're taxing us.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:15:00] Again, all taxes.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:01] Getting taxed on on our weeds. So not.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:15:03] Not taxes. Um, but more taxidermy. Ah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:15:09] So what does it mean?

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:09] When you say all taxa, what are you talking about?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:15:11] Yeah. So we districts in Montana are really focused and built around the Montana County Noxious Weed Act, which is focused on terrestrial and aquatic plant species. But the authority does not extend to other invasive species. You know, if you're thinking of.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:26] Crows and white tailed deer.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:15:27] Potentially whitetail deer, feral hogs, feral hogs, you know, zebra, quagga mussels, uh, some fish species, uh, koi would be another example. A lot of things that people introduce as pets.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:41] In Missoula County.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:15:42] I don't think there's a koi issue necessarily, but koi can definitely survive in our rivers.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:48] I didn't know that.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:15:48] Nutria would be another example of another all taxa species, which we did have.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:54] So taxa meaning species.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:15:55] Taxa meaning species. Yes. So the Aquatic Invasive Species District was developed in the hopes of being able to create a more robust partnership with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, who has authority over the management of all aquatic species. We were able to provide more of a boots on the ground component to their statewide program. Each of these invasive species programs only have so many people, and we really have to rely on partnerships at all levels federal, tribal, county, state and some NGOs to really be successful in the work that we're doing. And so the aquatic Invasive Species District was was a really good example of how we could step up and provide direct management for the Clearwater Watercraft Inspection Station, which is now open. So if you're on a on a boat or you have a boat, you have a stand up paddleboard, whatever, you're going at the Blackfoot by the big cow, you have to pull over and talk to our friendly inspectors, and they can provide you a ton of information about where to go fishing as well as, you know, check your equipment to make sure that it doesn't have a mussel or anything on it.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:16:54] Has that station in recent I don't know about this year, but in recent memory actually headed off at the pass. Any aquatic invasives.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:02] So. Right.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:17:03] Yeah, there are a number of plant species that are stopped at that. Last year there was one mussel boat out of the, I think 76 that were caught statewide this year. I think there have been eight mussel boats stopped so far. We have not had any of those at highway 200, not at our space. Yeah. That was a statewide.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:20] So so for folks out there who are listening, who might not be familiar with any of this, why are these little mussel things a big deal?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:17:29] Oh, we're going to get into some nerd talk now. So these particular mussels have what's called byssal threads. So most mussels are like they can't attach to a substrate like.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:40] The side of a boat.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:17:41] Cannot attach to a side of a boat, can't attach to the inter workings of a hydro dam, can't connect to pipes for water for wells, can't impact infrastructure in the same way that these with byssal threads, because these sticky byssal threads stick to the inside of those things, and then they start to build significant mussel beds. That means they.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:02] Live on top of each other.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:18:04] They live up on top of each other and start to like, close things off or close or like prevent turbines from being able to spin. Wow.

Juanita Vero: [00:18:12] What does living on top of each other without that? Like barnacles? Like, what does that it.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:18:16] Essentially would look like? Barnacles. Yeah, but they're shells. So as they die as well, they're creating like on shorelines, basically broken glass all along. So for recreation, it's a big impact because a nice beach or even a rocky beach quickly becomes unwalkable and unusable. Their extreme filter feeders, and what you tend to see in some of these water bodies is severe impacts to water quality, because they're essentially pulling everything out and you start to get more of like a toxin component in there so it can make the water poisonous.

Juanita Vero: [00:18:49] What's the natural predator here?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:18:50] They have no natural. Where do they come from? Predator. It's more like the Baltic region. Okay.

Juanita Vero: [00:18:57] So they came on like big ships through so.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:00] Eastern Europe, uh, somewhere. Uh, yeah, somewhere.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:02] They have a predator. But it's not here.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:19:04] It's not here.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:05] Boy, what.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:06] Is this thing called? The what? You the the bissel. What?

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:08] Byssal threads.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:09] Byssal threads. Yeah. Okay.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:19:11] That's how they anchor onto things.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:13] Attach. And then they need their community all around them to survive. Is that. Why do they cluster like that? 

Bryce Christiaens: [00:19:19] That's a great quesiton.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:20] So they're very social.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:19:22] They're very social. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:23] How successful is the check station at catching these guys clinging to the bottom of a boat?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:19:28] We can't catch 100% of the boats 100% of the time. The Aquatic Invasive Species Program for the state of Montana has a lot of focus and investment in the prevention component. There's a big education component. Once that boater has brought a boat to Montana, we're already kind of increasing our risk. So there's a big effort to talk to the boating population that's coming to Montana where they live, because that's where we want them to be cleaning and draining their boat before moving it here, understanding that there's a potential that we may miss a boat, we also have a significant effort. We put a significant amount of effort into survey and monitoring work. So each year we're doing sampling. For the larval stages of zebra quagga mussels in water bodies across the state. So if we did miss a boat and we did happen to have that enter water, we would catch it early enough to potentially be able to mitigate and eradicate it. Awesome.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:20:23] What a huge array of work that you do or involved with. From mussels to demonstration kitchens.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:30] And yeah, having ecology in your name is aptly put. 

Juanita Vero: [00:20:35] Yeah, I'm super grateful, I know we had a horse die in one of our pastures, and I, we didn't know how this horse died. And I called Bryce and asked him about all the plants. And I was very grateful for you guys.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:45] So you mentioned that people have an issue, like, once talking about horse died and wondering what the heck's going on, or you have a pollinator issue in your backyard or in the median on Pine Street. You have a place to go to meet a person to ask, how about if you don't have an issue and you hear all this and you just want to get involved because it sounds super cool, what do you do?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:21:02] Um, so yeah, we provide a lot of answers for people who have a question, but we also take it like it's a major priority of us to be a community hub, to provide this information and make these things interesting and make it, you know, an exciting place to learn. [00:21:17] So we have a number of programs in that demonstration kitchen that are really focused around increasing people's confidence in using their kitchen, anything from having a class on how to sharpen your knives and what knives you should use for what thing, how to cook with spices and what spices make sense, what you're cooking, how to cook seasonally. You know people get excited about getting a CSA, but then maybe they're getting the same thing at a certain part of the year for a couple of weeks and they're like, oh, what should I do? So, you know, trying to teach people how to use ingredients that are available, teaching people how to cook off of a recipe. So Kelly, our nutrition educator, our main nutrition educator, really coined that like confidence in the kitchen is like what our goal is. The gardens are the same thing. You know, like gardening doesn't have to be intimidating. Cooking doesn't have to be intimidating. These are things that you can do with your family. So focusing on programing where you can bring your kids and cook with your kids or garden with your kids, or you can garden or cook with your grandkids is something that I'm really excited about building that portfolio programs. [00:22:14] I also just have a lot of really cool native plant and insect nerds on my staff.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:21] That's your you're you're one of them. I was looking at your arm.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:25] We're looking at the tattoos.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:22:26] We are really excited to talk to experts, you know, in our community and share their knowledge with people that are just moving here or people that are just interested in learning about mushrooms. We had a big mushroom presentation last week. We also had a big presentation on bone in meat cuts in collaboration with the Blackfoot Cattlewomen.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:48] Dave could sign up for some of these.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:50] Dave could teach a class on cooking with game. Yeah, it's really good at that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:54] Well, I don't know about that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:56] The pictures are pretty awesome.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:57] We had a shank fest a few years ago.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:58] Yeah, we did Shank Fest. We was. It was awesome.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:00] Product is fantastic.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:01] It was awesome. So you guys are installing this Rocky Mountain garden. You talked about all the different entities that are coming together. If somebody wanted to volunteer to help, could they do that?

Bryce Christiaens: [00:23:09] Absolutely. So right now you can just email or call anybody at our office who would be a Stephanie Potts is the main point person for volunteer coordination, especially in the Rocky Mountain Gardens. You can go to our website and sign up. We'll typically have like drop in volunteer events on Wednesdays and Fridays. Right now, it's really tied to some of the installation of those spaces. If you're interested in just, you know, learning about volunteer opportunities, being engaged in that, but also knowing what programing is coming up. I haven't talked about our partner, Healthy Acres Healthy Communities, which is the nonprofit foundation that supports our work. They have created a membership that you can join, and we're.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:48] All three members.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:49] We are members.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:23:49] Thank you. And as members you get early registration for programing. You get discounts for programing. We have a number of business sponsors, including the Liquid Planet out by our office, but pink, Grizzly and Caras that have discounts at their businesses for being members. So lots of ways to get involved and stay engaged. But I would say the membership is the easiest way to stay informed.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:11] I will be volunteering on Friday. Yes.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:24:12] Excited. Thank you. Thank you very.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:14] Much. So before we close, Bryce, this is our classic last question. Could you share with us a nugget of wisdom from culture that you've picked up anywhere in the recent past? Could be a book, movie, podcast song, conversation at the bar, anything that's gotten to your head in the recent past where you thought, well, that's really worth holding on to.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:24:31] I had a narrower prompt than that whole thing. I could have really gotten somewhere with that. Um, I had two books that I wanted to mention, the two recent books. One is A History of Mosquitoes. I didn't mention that...

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:42] Oh, that sounds super cool.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:24:43] The Lolo mosquito district is also housed within Ecology and Extension.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:47] Someone...

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:47] It's very tiny.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:48] ....Mentioned that in this book.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:24:49] It was me.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:50] Oh, okay.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:51] Someone else I've heard this is a cool book.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:54] I think it was at another meeting.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:24:56] It's amazing to understand just how much influence mosquitoes and mosquito borne illnesses have impacted human society. We do not have high numbers. Of the mosquito species that carry malaria and yellow fever. We do survey and monitor for equine encephalitis and West Nile virus through the Mosquito District. But that book will change your perspective on insect borne diseases and the impact that they've had on human populations. One of my.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:25] Favorite books from a long, long time ago, this book is probably 35 years old. It's called Five Plants That Changed History by Henry Hobhouse, and quinine is.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:25:33] One of them. Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:34] Because there would not have been British India heading up in for quinine.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:25:38] Yep. The other book is called The Invention of Nature which um.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:42] Who was that? E.o. Wilson.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:25:43] No, it's a book about the life and adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, who is basically the person who created the concept of ecology. He was a Prussian baron around the end of the 1700s. That convinced the Spanish government to allow him to do this expedition through their territories in Central and South America, and he was the first person to tie all of this information from plant communities around the world to say that, oh, at this certain elevation, we have these similar types of plant communities because we have these types of resources that are available to them. And then down here it's different and down here it's different. And he inspired John Muir, he inspired Darwin, he inspired Thoreau. All of them referenced his adventures and his ideas as inspiring them to go out into the world and do what they did.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:35] Two excellent books that was.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:37] A great who's who's.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:26:38] State of Nevada. Who's the author.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:40] Of the.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:26:40] Book going to be named Humboldt? Oh, uh, Andrea Wolf is her name. Okay, thanks.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:44] I didn't realize that. Humboldt. Is that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:47] So? This so the same Humboldt from Humboldt, California? Yep.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:26:50] Fascinating.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:51] Cool. Thanks. Thank you so much for coming by, Bryce. And thanks for all the work you do. And I'm looking forward to seeing you on Friday.

Bryce Christiaens: [00:26:56] Yeah. Thanks again.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:57] Thanks. Thank you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:59] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot. If you rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:07] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:13] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:25] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us to find.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:33] Out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.co/countyupdates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:40] Thanks for listening.