[RWG] Instead of a new Meployee--what about investing in new technologies instead?

[Craig Dremann]

Dear All,

Periodically an email notice gets posted across a List Server, about a
land-management agency somewhere, needing a new employee, to something
like this:

..."applied management research including control trials, experimental
eradication of species from islands and post-control restoration of
native vegetation."

Wouldn't it be better for the Land Management Agency to BUY successful
Licensed Exotic Plant Management processes and successful Licensed
Ecological Restoration technologies, instead of expecting that an
employee can somehow invent those successful technologies?

The example I'm thinking of---is when our California Department of
Transportation (CALTRANS) recently paid the University of California at
Davis, the greatest Agricultural University in the Western United
States, $450,000 for only two acres, to try and do what the new
Galapagos employee is going to have to try and do--manage the weeds and
restore the local native ecosystem, 

After many years of trying, that you can see at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/road.test.html only about four individual native
plants are surviving in amongst the two acres of weeds?

Which means---that the cost of restoring the two-acre California
weed-patch was $4.3 billion dollars per acre---using the old unlicensed
weed management processes and outdated public domain Ecological
Restoration techniques?

So instead of looking for a new employee---whenever a land management
agency is faced with this decision, what about the possibility of buying
successful Licensed technologies instead?  Or the offering of a "Prize"
for whomever can provide the successful technologies to manage the weeds
and do the ecological restoration to a high-quality standard?

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann, Redwood City, California USA (650) 325-7333