Invasive species pose a threat to the livelihoods of many people living on rangelands of the western United States. Invasive species impact many ecosystem goods and services of the areas they invade and represent one of the largest causes of habitat degradation. On private ranches, economic analyses often find that conservation practices, such as invasive species control, are not economically viable, in contrast to what is found at the landscape scale. In northeast Wyoming, ventenata [Ventenata dubia (Leers) Coss.] is a relatively new invader in the Great Plains ecoregion that threatens forage production on ranches. Our objective was to explore the economic costs of V. dubia for two options available to a ranch operation: purchasing extra hay to offset losses in forage and controlling V. dubia with herbicide. Using a partial budget analysis, we compare these two options in three invasion scenarios using a range of forage utilization rates and discount rates. Controlling V. dubia with herbicide was a cheaper option compared with purchasing additional hay in many cases. In fact, at 50% utilization, it is cheaper to control V. dubia in all of our scenarios at all discount rates given our assumptions. For lower grazing utilization rates, it becomes cheaper to purchase hay in some cases other than in our worst-case invasion scenario. In these cases, coordination among ranchers is needed to effectively control V. dubia. There are many ranch-specific differences that may make a different option more feasible, and we did not explore options of reducing herd sizes. However, our results suggest that controlling V. dubia can be an economically viable option under certain circumstances. Additional assistance in the form of a cost-share program, and facilitation of coordination is needed to overcome the difficulties of private management of invasive species.

入侵物种对生活在美国西部牧场上的许多人的生计构成威胁。入侵物种影响其入侵地区的许多生态系统产品和服务，是栖息地退化的最大原因之一。在私人牧场上，经济分析经常发现，与景观规模的做法相比，保护措施（例如入侵物种控制）在经济上不可行。在怀俄明州东北部，ventenata [ Ventenata dubia (Leers) Coss.] 是大平原生态区中一种相对较新的入侵者，威胁着牧场的草料生产。我们的目标是探索V. dubia的经济成本牧场经营有两种选择：购买额外的干草以抵消饲料损失和使用除草剂控制V. dubia。使用部分预算分析，我们使用一系列草料利用率和折扣率在三种入侵场景中比较这两个选项。在许多情况下，与购买额外的干草相比，使用除草剂控制V. dubia是一种更便宜的选择。事实上，在 50% 的利用率下，根据我们的假设，在我们所有场景中以所有折扣率控制V. dubia 的成本更低。对于较低的放牧利用率，在某些情况下购买干草变得更便宜，而不是在我们最坏的入侵情况下。在这些情况下，需要牧场主之间的协调才能有效控制V. dubia. 有许多特定于牧场的差异可能使不同的选择更可行，我们没有探索减少畜群规模的选择。然而，我们的结果表明，在某些情况下，控制V. dubia可能是一种经济上可行的选择。需要成本分摊计划形式的额外援助和促进协调，以克服私人管理入侵物种的困难。