[APWG] war on weeds & cheatgrass article

[Bob Beyfuss]

Hi Craig
I read your article and it is good! I am very pleased to see your 
alternative verbiage to the "war" rhetoric. I still do not understand your 
bias against all exotic plants. The overwhelming majority of exotic plants 
are either harmless or helpful and I see no need to ban the planting of 
useful or harmless plants regardless of their origin. I  also don't want or 
trust the federal government to tell me which exotic plants are good or bad 
in all situations, all the time. As you are well aware some of the most 
problematic plants in many parts of the U.S. were deliberately imported by 
the feds! It is also true that national policies fail to address specific 
situations most of the time. A highly desirable plant, either native or 
exotic in one place may be the opposite someplace else. For example striped 
maple (Acer pennsylvanicum)  is considered a serious weed in many NY 
forests whereas it is considered as an endangered native species in Ohio. 
the same is true for many species of wildflowers that are native perhaps in 
the midwest,. but weeds elsewhere.

In terms of Natural Resource management and policy, one federal size does 
not fit all. I also question the whole issue of "restoration ecology". 
While it may be possible to restore specific plants to any given area by 
killing exotics and replanting natives, it is not possible to restore the 
entire ecosystem since that ecosystem is comprised not only of the flora 
and fauna but also of other elements such as soil chemistry which has been 
changed irrecoverably by things like acid rain and even more importantly, 
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Carbon dioxide levels have increased by 
50% in the past 50 years or so and since the establishment and continuation 
of any plant life is directly affected by environmental conditions, 
"restoration" of native plant species that are ill suited to cope with a 
different environment seems somewhat pointless in the large scale. When I 
hear of the huge amounts of money that would be needed to "restore" native 
plant communities that may be doomed due to soil chemistry or some other 
"un-addressed" element in the complex equation, I must question the logic 
for the expenditures.

I also question the often cited "costs" of invasive plants to society that 
are based not on the ecological costs of the weed's presence but the costs 
of eradication. If I spend $50 on a brand name herbicide to eradicate an 
invasive weed, lets say garlic mustard, along my road and my neighbor buys 
the generic equivalent of that herbicide for $25 to do the same thing, how 
does one calculate the cost of that weed's presence?  and what if a third 
neigh spends nothing at all? What is the garlic mustard actually costing?

This is not science. This is pseudo science generated by entities which 
make money on "eradication" schemes.

Science is complex and the "lumping" together of non desired imported 
insects, diseases, weeds, microbes, etc under the general headline of 
'"invasive" biology is not biology at all. It muddies the issues which need 
specific responses and not some simplistic strategy such as the often 
declared, ridiculous "war on invasives".
Bob



>I completely agree with your use of the word "war" in connection with
>the word "weeds", and I ghave a talk at the Bureau of Land Management
>2003 "War on Weeds" meeting in Monterey, CA on that subject.
>
>What I suggested at my talk, is that no war on weeds can ever be won,
>and I used the flora that has regrown at Ground Zero at the Trinity
>site, the first atomic bomb that was detonated point-blank above the
>desert, as an example, at
>http://www.ecoseeds.com/juicy.gossip.fifteen.html.
>
>If you read that AP article on the four governors and the cheatgrass at
>http://www.lvrj.com/news/8961792.html, they are blaming a recent grazing
>court decision won by the environmentalists, for all the cheatgrass
>infestations they have in their states !
>
>The governors can talk all they want, but they don't have any money to
>do anything about the cheatgrass.
>
>The cheatgrass mostly infests federal lands in the western States, and I
>didn't see any efforts of the four governors to ask Congress to start
>giving BLM a sufficient annual budget to start converting the cheatgrass
>areas back to native grasses, or any estimate what the necessary amount
>of money is going to be.
>
>The ecosystems of the 200 million acres of BLM land in the arid west,
>are extremely degraded, with a lot of empty places for cheatgrass to get
>established where the native grasses have been wiped out, based from my
>1997 survey at
>http://www.ecoseeds.com/megatransect.html.
>
>I've estimated that it would cost about twenty billion dollars per year,
>for the next 20 years at least, to get those BLM ecosystems rebuilt and
>to convert the cheatgrass areas.
>
>That only totals $2,000 per acre for the 200 million acres, which is a
>really good price for ecological restoration!
>
>Furthermore, the cheatgrass AP article talks about the nearly one
>million pounds of seeds that BLM already sows out there annually, but
>fails to mention that over 50% of those seeds are perennial exotics,
>that permanently damage the ecosystems, perhaps worse than fires,
>because once sown in an area, the native species cannot get
>re-established.
>
>Sincerely,  Craig Dremann, Redwood City, CA (650) 325-7333
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.plantconservation.org/pipermail/apwg_lists.plantconservation.org/attachments/20070810/6f2d1f40/attachment.html>