Effective Integrated Vegetation Management

Shirley D. Morrow

Integrated vegetation management (IVM) combines manual activities, mechanical tools, and chemical applications with cultural and biological methods to develop a vegetation community that requires minimal maintenance and benefits wildlife and it’s habitat. Today, manual, mechanical, and chemical methods are the most often used vegetation management techniques. The primary objective of IVM is to minimize vegetation-related power outages while lowering the cost of future maintenance activities. The IVM plan will identify the environmental constraints and give the vegetation manager flexibility in management methods used. With this, today’s vegetation manager must wear many hats—public relations representative, budget manager, environmental steward, and research and development specialist are just a few. Properly executing integrated vegetation management practices using a combination of these methods results in the conversion of rights-of-way to a plant community requiring minimal maintenance activities in the future. Integrated vegetation management balances service reliability, environmental compliance, and customer service while lowering the cost of maintenance over time.

Keywords: Vegetation management, rights-of-way, right-of-way maintenance, herbicide, right-of-way management, integrated vegetation management, utility right-of-way management, wildlife habitat