Control of Sosnowskyi’s Hogweed (Heracleum sosnowskyi Manden.) Invasion on the Territory of the Russian Federation

The analysis of competitive documentation, contract documents, and technical assignments from 477 government contracts on control of the Heracleum sosnowskyi Manden. invasion carried out in 18 Russian regions from 2011 to 2017 is presented. According to the data posted on the official website of the Unified Information System in the field of procurement, 95% of the contracts were signed to destroy H. sosnowskyi plants, and the rest were connected with the determination of invaded areas, the development of methods for their elimination, and the supervision of the works carried out. The stands of H. sosnowskyi were mapped on an area of 169 000 ha and were destroyed on an area of 18 000 ha. The total cost of the contracts amounted to 314 million rubles. The mowing cost of H. sosnowskyi was about 30 000 rubles/ha; the cost for treating thickets with herbicides was 14 500 rubles/ha (median values). The median cost of mapping the H. sosnowskyi stands was about 370 rubles/ha. The high variability of the cost of the work was revealed for the contracts with treatment of areas less than 5 ha. The largest scale works on H. sosnowskyi eradication were conducted in the Leningrad, Moscow, and Vologda oblasts, where the funds for invasion control were reserved in the regional budgets. In the context of limited funding, systemic work on H. sosnowskyi thicket control should be initiated with a pilot project on the territory of one or two settlements, and then this experience should be extended to a larger region. Data on 477 government contracts used in the paper are freely available on the server Zenodo.