By Jeff Hunter ’96

---

It’s a unique vocation that comes with the expectation of being either very cold and wet, or extremely hot and dry. 

But it can apparently also be dark and eerie.

“We’ve had grown men call just bawling,” Scott Pratt says of the unique adventure of being alone in the wetlands surrounding the Great Salt Lake in the middle of the night. “They’ve been on the phone just sobbing.

“I think it’s an experience that more people need to have, but a marsh is not a quiet, peaceful environment. You’ve got things making noises and chirping and squeaking and howling.”

The president of PMG Vegetation Control, Pratt and the company he co-founded two decades ago with his wife, Mindy, has played an enormous role in recent years removing the massive reeds known as phragmites from along the eastern edges of the Great Salt Lake. Considering that some of the “phrags” grow upwards of 16 feet high, PMG utilizes a distinctive piece of machinery known as a Marsh Master — a fully amphibious, tracked buggy designed to travel and work in swamps and wetland areas.

The Marsh Masters spray, crush, and mow down invasive weeds like phragmites, which behave like gigantic straws, consuming twice the water of native plants and draining the ecosystem of precious water. The phragmites also disrupt waterfowl and shorebird habitats, and when dried out, the reeds can also be a huge fire hazard.

“It’s probably the most unique place in the world for phragmites to grow,” Scott says of the Great Salt Lake. “It becomes a super plant. It loves those environments, and the more phrag grows up, it does several things. It consumes water, so it doesn’t make it to the lake. It forms a dense berm that keeps water from getting to the lake. And then it erases all the habitat, which is critical for the Pacific Flyway.

“So, all of that stuff really impedes progress towards a healthy lake.”

Due to the immense number of birds that make their way through the area — the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge sits at the northeast edge of the lake, along with several duck-hunting clubs — PMG is unable to work during the nesting and hunting seasons, which leaves a rather brief period of time from mid-January to May 1, for the Marsh Masters and their crews to wage war against the phragmites. 

“We have a short window to work with when the birds are nesting or we would disrupt the hunting experience, so we are running those machines 24 hours a day during certain times,” Scott explains. 

PMG kept six Marsh Masters going practically around the clock last winter and spring. But that also meant the Pratts, both graduates of Utah State University who live in Richmond, had to field distress calls from employees in the middle of the night when equipment broke down or got bogged down in the wetlands. Then there’s also the possibility of someone getting lost in a forest of phragmites.

“During the day, you see the mountains; that gives you comfort,” Scott acknowledges. “But at night, you can get turned around. There’s no lights, but maybe Antelope Island, or Northrop Grumman, and some salt operations. All of a sudden, you can be out in the middle of nowhere, and you literally lose track of where you’re at.”

Mindy adds, “You’ve got the phrag all around you, and you can’t see in front of you, and you can’t see behind you. And while you feel like you’re going up and down, you don’t know if you’re going up and down.”

On the plus side, since it was such a temperate and dry winter last year, weather wasn’t as much of a factor as usual. The state was able to burn large areas of phragmites in the spring, and Scott says PMG ended up mowing down more than 6,000 acres of the noxious reeds.

“That’s bigger than quite a few cities in Cache Valley,” he notes. “We literally mow it all to the ground and it exposes the soil and native plants come back up. And we hopefully then change the community to something that supports better water flow, better wildlife habitat, and help create a better experience for people who enjoy the lake.”

And sometimes, that “better experience” applies even to the Marsh Master crews themselves, who are out on the frontlines of the state’s battle with the phragmites that encompass more than 180,000 acres and suck up more than 70,000-acre feet of water each year from the continually shrinking Great Salt Lake.

“We get to be in some places that not many people go,” Scott says with a smile. “And I would stack the beauty of being out there against anything in the mountains. People don’t realize how beautiful it is. It’s hard to see. But when you get out there, the sunsets are just gorgeous.”

Viewing Landscapes Through a ‘Different Lens’

It’s fair to say that taking a road trip with the Pratts might come with a bit of a downside. Call it a vocational hazard, but thanks to their training and their careers, they see things a little bit differently than most people when traveling down a highway.

“Oh yeah, we’re always looking for invasive species when we travel,” admits Scott, who graduated from Utah State with a degree in animal science in 1997.

“But we still enjoy it,” adds Mindy, who also completed a bachelor’s degree at USU in ’97 in range science, then later earned a master’s in natural resources in 2005. “But having studied rangeland ecology, I can’t even drive like to St. George without going, ‘Oh look, they’re way overgrazing,’ or ‘Hey, look at that, they’ve done a bunch of chaining up there, and you can see where they’ve made a bunch of new habitat,’ or I see old fire scars.

“You just you just look at the world through a different lens.”

That lens led to the Pratts getting what would become PMG Vegetation Control off the ground in 2005, and then officially starting the company two years later.

“About 2005 is really when we started contracting,” Scott recalls. “And it was 2007 when we said, ‘We better make this legit and really go for it.’”

Based out of its headquarters in Richmond, PMG Vegetation Control normally has around 40 to 60 primarily seasonal employees on the payroll who work out of other satellite locations around Utah, as well on projects in 10 other states, including Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, and Texas.

In addition to taking on phragmites around the Great Salt Lake, PMG helps eliminate other unwanted growth and invasive species for clients like the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Utah Division of Natural Resources, PacifiCorp and Idaho Power. The company also specializes in rights-of-way and site maintenance, as well as providing data-backed tracking via GPS and GIS mapping and other technology.

The parents of four children, the Pratts met while students at USU and got married a week after they both graduated. Mindy is native of the Lehi area, who originally planned to attend USU as a freshman and study natural resources.

“I actually enrolled at Utah State and was all ready to go, and then at the last minute changed my plans, went down to Snow College, and kind of pursued animal science down there,” she explains. “And then it was just a natural fit to come back up here after I graduated from Snow.”

Scott Pratt grew up in Snowville as the son of fish and game officer who covered a huge part of the state south of the Utah-Idaho border. Attending USU was a natural fit for the Bear River High School graduate, but he felt even better about his decision after seeing Mindy for the first time at the “Bull Pen” game room and recreation area that used to be located on the bottom floor of the Taggart Student Center. 

“I’d had a good experience through FFA and different things where I interacted with the university, and a lot of my friends and people from the community were going to Utah State. So, I thought that was a great place to start,” Scott recalls. “Then I got over here, started in the College of Agriculture in animal science, and then I met Mindy.”

Following Commencement and their wedding in 1997, the Pratts relocated to the tiny community of La Sal in San Juan County so Mindy could work on a project near Monticello for the Natural Resources Conversation Service. During that time, Scott worked for a local livestock company, but thanks to responding to an ad in the newspaper, he also found himself in a unique situation serving as chairman of a multi-stakeholder group tasked with managing what would become the Bear Ears National Monument in 2016.

“I went to the first meeting, and there was a lot of contention in the room. So much contention that the facilitator said, ‘Well, we need a chairman,’” Scott remembers. “And they all turned and looked at me and said, ‘What are you? Twenty-one? And you graduated from Utah State. You must be neutral and smart. So, we’re going to elect you.’

“They elected me chairman, and we talked about everything from the heritage and the cultural resources, to protecting mining and agriculture and increasing recreation and other demands — two decades before it was made a monument. … I just got thrown right into this fire, and, all of a sudden, I’m using everything from some of the range science classes Mindy talked me into taking, to building relationships with all these people from both sides of the issue — well, actually, six sides of the issue — and trying to do it in a very neutral way.”

While that proved to be a very fruitful learning experience for Scott, the Pratts returned to the Logan area in 2000, when he took a job working for Rocky Mountain Power managing the wetlands in the central portion of Cache Valley and Mindy was hired as a USU Extension specialist. Mindy ended up working for Utah State for 15 years before ultimately stepping down to help manage PMG on a full-time basis.

But the Pratts have maintained strong ties with the university — many of PMG’s seasonal employees and interns are USU students — and earlier this year, the Pratts announced they’d established two new scholarships in the S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources: The Leadership in Working Landscapes Scholarship Endowment and the Pratt Leadership Award.

“We just saw a great opportunity to give back to the university,” Mindy says. “And I felt like they were really losing the rural component in that college. It seemed like those kids had really dropped away.”

“That rural component is big,” Scott adds. “We both enjoyed the experience of growing up in small towns in rural Utah and being able to contribute to the overall health and wellness of the landscapes around our communities. Over time, we realized that perspective was being lost, and there were fewer and fewer rural people in the College of Natural Resources. … And the more we thought about it, we felt like we needed to get more of Utah’s rural kids involved in understanding these disciplines, being aware of them, and be given opportunities to succeed.”

Scott acknowledges he doesn’t “fly on private jets and have billions of dollars to support the university,” like some other donors, but he notes that PMG Vegetation Control is “just a small business that is happy to provide jobs and learning opportunities.”

“We enjoy supporting the lands around us,” he proclaims. “And the one thing this experience has made us realize is that our ability to contribute and give back and help provide that leadership and build the next generation of people who will tackle those problems head on doesn’t require that level of success.”