WASHINGTON, D.C. — The USDA has announced $1.1 million in grant awards for seven different research projects on invasive pest issues. The grant recipients are from seven different states and include researchers in Ohio and Michigan.

USDA Secretary Mike Johanns announced the awards on Oct. 6.

“This research will help identify effective strategies for preventing the introduction of invasive species and managing their presence,” Johanns said.

The other states to receive grants are Arizona, Minnesota, Montana, Texas and Washington.

The program, called Program of Research on the Economics of Invasive Species Management (PREISM), has been going on since 2003. Seven projects were funded in 2005, seven in 2004 and 12 in 2003.

“We hope they’re working,” said Craig Osteen, a spokesman for the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) who monitors the effectiveness of the program. “We’re looking for research that meets our program priorities. We have multi-year projects. Some of the first ones are just wrapping up.”

Richard Horan and Christopher Wolf of Michigan State University (MSU) won an award for a project called Bioeconomics of Managing Multi-host Diseases. They plan to investigate economic effects of policies to manage diseases transmitted between livestock and wildlife.

In Michigan, these diseases include bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis and Johne’s disease. They’ve been awarded $117,000 to conduct the study.

“We are very excited about the award and look forward to a productive collaboration with the Economic Research Service,” Horan said. “There has been very little work on the economics of controlling infectious diseases in wildlife-livestock systems, but this is becoming an increasingly important problem.”

According to Horan it’s usually assumed that culling a herd is a desirable thing to do to manage wildlife disease, no matter what the cost is. Horan said this may be true in the case of animals that have no recreational value, but may not be with others. A deer herd, for example, is extremely valuable as an economic resource.

“The point of our research is to show that costs and benefits matter when designing a disease management strategy,” Horan said.

Previously Horan and Wolf received PREISM funds to conduct research on the economics of bovine TB in Michigan white-tailed deer and cattle. They developed relationships with researchers at the Michigan DNR who have been working on the same problem.

The current study is intended to go beyond the bovine TB case study, Horan said.

The Ohio researcher who won a 2006 PREISM award is Jonathan Bossenbroek, a University of Toledo assistant professor in the environmental sciences department.

Bossenbroek has been awarded $250,000 to study the economic costs and benefits of slowing the spread of the emerald ash borer in Michigan and Ohio.

“The PREISM award is a great opportunity for me and my colleagues,” he said.

According to Osteen, this is the first award with the emerald ash borer as a topic.

“Right now it doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to stop it,” Bossenbroek said. “It looks really bad.”

He said there’s a question as to whether it’s even cost-effective to try and slow the spread of the pest. This study is intended to help answer that question.

At the same time, Bossenbroek said that one never knows for sure what will happen with these diseases. Fifteen years ago, everyone thought that the zebra mussel would spread across the country and be in every lake, but that didn’t happen, he said. Right now the zebra mussel is confined to 350 lakes in the entire United States, as well as the rivers that are used for international shipping.

For more about the PREISM awards and research projects both past and present, visit www.ers.usda.gov