These patches for future release will be allowed to grow over the next couple years, and when large enough, beetles will be released on them. All of the beetles released were harvested from five of our own former release sites and many of those sites will be harvested again next year. Another 71,000 beetles were collected and given to Wilkin County via a cooperative agreement.

Staff put great effort into the leafy spurge monitoring and releases this year. Refuge Manager Kevin Brennan said that in the past 26 years that he has been in refuges, he does not recall one year that the refuge he was on did not spray leafy spurge. He also stated that 20 ago he would not have believed this to be possible. We have successfully become self-sufficient for biological control of leafy spurge. We produce our own beetles, harvest our own beetles and relocate our own beetles to new spurge sites and are doing enough of it that we can discontinue spraying this highly invasive noxious weed.

Many release sites that were filled with leafy spurge in the past have been completely wiped out and almost no spurge exists on them. We continue to monitor these sites also to determine what happens after the spurge is gone. Can a site sustain a small population of beetles and then explode after seeds begin to germinate again? Do beetles survive at all after they wipe out a patch of spurge? There are many unanswered questions, but hopefully our sites will provide answers. For now, we are not spraying leafy spurge, and we are slowly seeing it eradicated from our land by tiny flea beetles! Flea beetles are truly a spectacular success story for noxious weed biological control!