Editor’s note: The article has been updated to reflect the correct amount of weeds pulled and volunteer hours served through Teton Conservation District’s Thistle Thursdays. Buckrail regrets the error.
JACKSON, Wyo. — A growing cohort of organizers and land stewards have been hard at work removing thousands of invasive plants from local landscapes and popular recreation spots around the valley.
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem remains one of the largest nearly intact temperate-zone ecosystems in the world, and it contains a wealth of wildlife, vegetation and geologic diversity. Musk thistle, houndstongue and spotted knapweed are noxious weeds that can spread uncontrollably and monopolize resources like sunlight, water and nutrients. Teton Conservation District (TCD) GIS and Wildlife Habitat Specialist Morgan Graham told Buckrail that this jeopardizes native plants’ ability to thrive — plants that native wildlife and pollinators rely on for survival.
“If you come to Jackson and think the wildlife are incredible or want to support pollinators and birds, it’s important to recognize that they only thrive because our native plant communities remain relatively intact,” Graham explained via email. “Across most of the United States, those [flora] communities have already been converted or heavily altered. It isn’t an accident that we still have the wildlife diversity we enjoy here.”
Habitat Heroes, a volunteer group organized through Teton County Weed and Pest (TCWP), works to prevent the spread of non-native plant species in the valley by hand-removing invasive vegetation. The program sprouted in 2023 from meetings and discussions with the Jackson Hole Weed Management Association (JHWMA), a cooperative dedicated to noxious weed management that includes TCWP, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, TCD and private herbicide applicators. TCWP Education Program Coordinator Meta Dittmer, who runs Habitat Heroes events, described JHWMA as “weeds without borders.”
Dittmer told Buckrail that integrated pest management is made up of defense strategies that work together to reduce the presence of invasive species. Components usually include prevention, identification and monitoring; biocontrol, the releasing of naturally occurring organisms that decrease weed abundance; targeted chemical spraying; and mechanical removal, like weeding. During Habitat Heroes’ pilot year, Dittmer arranged 28 volunteer events and recorded 884 volunteer hours. Last summer, 57 events were scheduled and volunteer hours rose to 2,238.
In 2025, Habitat Heroes removed the following:
- 115,436 musk thistle plants and 1,551 pounds of seed
- 4,865 spotted knapweed plants and 110 pounds of seed
- 5,612 houndstongue plants and 477 pounds of seed
- 2,387 common mullein plants and 278 pounds of seed
“The two purposes of this program are: one, to educate people and get them out there being stewards; and the second is — can we really make a difference this way?” Dittmer said. “And I think, if you’re regularly visiting a place, you can. … So I think the education piece is invaluable because it’s making stewards. And part of our mission is to empower stewards for responsible use of this land.”
According to Dittmer, musk thistle is a biennial plant. This means that it will grow a cluster of spiny leaves in its first season, and in the second year it will bolt upward and grow a bunch of pink flowers about the size of golf balls. The blooms then turn into wind-dispersed seeds, with up to 120,000 seeds coming from one plant. After the two-year cycle, the thistle dies, but seeds can remain dormant in the soil for 10 years. Though most seeds will germinate in the first few years, it’s critical to return to infested areas to pluck flower heads and remove root systems before more seeds are carried away.
Graham leads a volunteer group on Thursdays in Game Creek during the summers to remove musk thistle from the environment. Since beginning the annual weeding adventures in 2019, Graham and his volunteers have removed over 3,756 pounds of musk thistle seedheads. Work in that area peaked in the summer of 2025 when volunteers contributed 466 service hours and collected 1,301 pounds of seedheads. In an update after last week’s Thistle Thursday, Graham said that houndstongue is nearly gone from the Game Creek area. At that meetup, volunteers also removed about 800 spotted knapweed plants, most of which had not yet flowered.
“For me, and for many of our regular volunteers, the goal isn’t primarily to kill weeds,” Graham explained. “It’s to give native plant communities a fighting chance. Every invasive plant we remove means a little more sunlight, water, and nutrients are available for the native plants that belong there.”
Dittmer applauds Graham’s efforts in Game Creek because it allows volunteers to see the progress week after week. This is rewarding and can often encourage the same attendees to return. Dittmer’s model for Habitat Heroes focuses on changing locations and finding spots where people recreate regularly or care deeply about. The group removed musk thistle at Shadow Mountain twice in 2024, twice in 2025, and will return for the third time this summer on Tuesday, Aug. 4. High School Butte, R Park, Crystal Butte and sites in Grand Teton National Park have been in Dittmer’s rotation. Through the programs, she seek to create community in the outdoors with a shared goal of stewardship.
“A good thing about this is [volunteers] get that image in their mind and then they start to see [invasive plants] and they’re like, ‘I’ve got to go get that,'” Dittmer said. “So you’re planting a seed of a neurosis — you cannot look at it without killing it.”
Graham echoed Dittmer’s thoughts: “Once you’ve helped remove a few hundred musk thistles in a morning, the 10 by your driveway don’t feel like work anymore. They just feel like something you ought to knock out while you’re already outside.”
