“Invasive Species”

Answer to a Problem – Or the Next ESA in Waiting?

The Issue

Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies proclaimed in the Fall, 2004, “Foreign Invaders Threatening Global Biodiversity And the Public Hasn’t Noticed – Yet”!

Well the public does need to sit up and take alarm! Not because of invaders, not because of truly noxious weeds and harmful pests. Rather the bells are ringing because regulatory overkill threatens land use control far more than created even by the Endangered Species Act.

There’s no disagreement about the need to control rapidly spreading weeds that destroy our Western grazing lands and choke our National Forests. All would concur with eradicating the brown tree snake, sudden oak death, yellow starthistle and the emerald ash borer.

The heart of the problem is the definition of “invasive” as 1) nonnative, and 2) harmful or likely to cause harm to the environment. “Nonnative” ignores the need to control all noxious weeds and pests regardless of origin. It cedes control of harmful natives like pinebark beetles, poison ivy, mosquitoes or native ferns.

“Harmful” or “likely to cause harm” to the environment is open to subjective determination. Even agencies disagree. The National Park Service seeks to prohibit rainbow trout in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park , while the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries raises them for stocking the state’s waterways.

Proponents of “Invasive Species” control claim that nonnative species cause extinctions and threaten historical biodiversity. This claim is true only in isolated island geographies like Guam and Lake Victoria , but not in the world at large. Empirical research shows that introduced species actually increase biodiversity on continents, where the only constant is change itself.

The potential for regulatory abuse is overwhelming. In fact, it is already happening under just an Executive Order. Prohibitions of useful, but so-called “Invasive Species” on government lands have spilled over to private lands. If “Invasive Species” becomes embodied in law, it is only a matter of time before the courts enforce regulations to prohibit them on all private land. Existing regulations and calls for future action pay no attention to safeguards for economic freedom and private property. 

Laws and Regulations

Noxious weeds, pests, and species harmful to human health are now regulated by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other agencies. These agencies concentrate on species causing objectively definable harm to the economy and to human health.

A few years ago very few outside the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), or academia had ever heard the term “Invasive Species”. All that changed in the United States in February of 1999 when President Clinton issued Executive Order (EO) 13112.

This EO established a National Invasive Species Council (NISC), defined “invasive” as “nonnative and harmful to the environment”, and established an Invasive Species Advisory Committee (ISAC). It also gave powerful impetus to the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and other agencies to write policy and create lists of “Invasive Species”. Or demand the exclusive use of native plants and seeds at enormous expense.

State agencies and environmental groups followed suit and produced highly contradictory lists of “invasive” plants, even within the same ecological regions. Rhode Island outlawed rosa rugosa, a plant loved by Maine ’s people. Pennsylvania declared Penngift crownvetch its State Conservation and Beautification Plant in 1982, but since 1999, the FHWA has sought to cut funding if it was used. Common reed hopped on and off lists as it was defined as nonnative, native, harmful, beneficial or any and all of the above.

Many states have established Invasive Species Councils, which are studying “Invasive Species” management plans and a model state law offered by the Environmental Law Institute. In 2004 the California Assembly tabled a bill to set up a hierarchy of “Invasive Species” managers, list every species in the state in 1 of 5 categories, and charge landowners with felony if they failed to remove forbidden species from their property by the state-prescribed method.

In 2004 Connecticut enacted “Invasive Species” legislation to prohibit listed species from being sold, bought, cultivated or transplanted in the state. Belatedly the nursery industry found 15 of its current products, worth $18-29 million in annual sales, on the prohibited lists.

Amidst all this activity by the states and the federal regulatory agencies, the Congress of the United States has yet to pass an invasive species bill per se. Nor has it authorized federal regulations on the subject. Not that it hasn’t tried.

 In the last Congress over 50 bills were introduced in the House and Senate. The Aquatics Bill would have brought the Precautionary Principle into law, requiring proof of no harm before the importation of any species. The felony and penalty clauses in Aquatics are chilling. Several bills would have codified the Council. Clauses in the Transportation Bill would have introduced costly ESA-type mitigation plans and site inventories of native and nonnative species.  

Actually, one effective bill to control harmful weeds did pass last year. That was Senator Craig’s Noxious Weed Act, which provided Federal funds to control harmful weeds regardless of origin. It proved to be a bill to solve a problem, rather than one to promote a natives-only agenda.

Enter 2005

The future of controlling harmful species lies in public education of the real nature of the problem and in legislation funding existing, time-tested programs.

If you live in any State but Connecticut, make sure your Legislature knows what it may wreak. If you live in Connecticut, it might be too late.

Ensure that federal legislation

·        targets harmful species regardless of origin

·        protects the use of private property, and

·        provides reimbursement for any economic outlay for the public benefit. 

Let’s control the truly harmful and keep the benefits of introduced species for all to enjoy.

From: GrassRoots Alliance for Sensible Policy - GRASSP