Posted on 10/29/2004 5:14:37 PM PDT by farmfriend
Feds pay visit, launch invasive species attack
Officials take tour, visit Prineville 'threat assessment center' cite
October 28 - PRINEVILLE - The U.S. Forest Service chose the town of Prineville Thursday to unveil a national effort to prevent and control the growing threat of invasive species and non-native plants spreading quickly across the country.
The step is part of the president's Healthy Forests Initiative to restore forest and rangeland health and protect communities from wildland fire and supports his executive order promoting cooperative conservation.
"Millions of acres of public and private lands are at risk from non-native species," said Mark Rey, Department of Agriculture undersecretary for natural resources and environment. "Each year, the United States loses 1.7 million acres to the spread of these invasives, in addition to spending billions of dollars on control measures."
Prineville was picked for the announcement because it's the site of the Forest Service's new threat assessment center, slated to open early next year, which will develop user-friendly technology and cutting-edge research on invasive species.
"This national strategy will help to prevent, find and contain the spread while working to rehabilitate and restore ecosystems," Rey said.
It was the second Central Oregon visit in 16 days for Rey, who also joined other Bush administration officials at an event in the forest west of Bend to mark the 1-year anniversary of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (www.bend.com/AR-18635).
On Thursday, Rey visited the Ochoco National forest to tour two sites in the Mill Creek drainage. One was the largest knapweed infestation site on the forest, while the other is being invaded by bark beetles.
The National Strategy and Implementation Plan for Invasive Species Management focuses on four key elements: preventing invasive species before they arrive; finding new infestations before they spread and become established; containing and reducing existing infestations; and rehabilitating and restoring native habitats and ecosystems.
The plan will use one of the new tools developed under the Healthy Forests Initiative - an early warning system to help land managers detect new invasives.
Title VI of the 2004 Healthy Forests Restoration Act called for the Forest Service to develop such a system to improve its detection and response abilities to ecological disturbances across the nation.
And if you didn't get the kudzu joke, here's a good reference: Growing Kudzu
This book proposes a free-market environmental management system designed to deliver a product that is superior to government oversight, at lower cost. It provides examples illustrating how the system might work and proposes an implementing legal strategy. Though environmental in origin, the principles this book describes are applicable toward privatizing nearly any form of government regulation.This book examines where we are going and what to do about it from the perspective of an amateur ecologist developing habitat restoration processes as a hobby. By profession, the author is a medical device engineer, representing neither of the polar opposites of the environmental debate. The combination of multinational regulatory, industrial, and "hands-on" experience is sadly lacking in policy development all too often dominated by lawyers, activists, or other interest groups. The goal is to introduce a system design, capable of reversing the growing reach of regulatory government and motivating the human and ecological benefits through the responsible expression of individual liberty.
As a representative of the California State Grange, I support this book and it's program as a way to promote Grange grass roots policy. Founded in 1867, the Grange is the oldest general farm and public policy organization in the United States.
Now the simple answer. LAWSUIT! Read the book, you'll like it.
And just so you know, your senario has actually happened to the author of the book.
Thanks for the responses. I will look up the book. But in the meantime, let's say I'm the out-Eastern investor. I say "Screw it, you don't like my weeds, kiss my asset-- move. I didn't put those barkbeetles there, its an act of God, and what right do you have to tell me I have to do something about them? Hey, I LIKE barkbeetles- they remind me of my mother-in-law (arf-arf.)"
What do you sue me for?
BTW, we still have a few Grangers here in Ohio! I think they're mostly pretty old though-- along with the Oddfellows.
As a landowner, I have mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, I like to keep the government out of my business. OTOH, I cannot control the invasive species on my land if my neighbor does not also control it on his land. Most farmers/ranchers are good caretakers of the land, but a few are not. And, when it comes to invasive species, a few can undo the work of many.
I think some laws are needed to protect the land...but it seems like it could be handled at the state level...
There is currently no objective estimate of the financial worth of ecosystem assets. The proposed system generates the necessary accounting data as part of the conduct of certified operations. The capital value of ecosystem resources derives from accounting records of habitat restoration, research experiments, and hazard mitigation projects. The process yields the replacement cost of ecosystem elements necessary to an accurate assessment of the insured assets at risk. This is similar to the manner in which industrial insurers developed our understanding of financial risk through direct measurement of the scope and probability of an insured loss. That data serves other valuable purposes within the system.
Environmental malpractice and the replacement costs of your ecosystem!
You forgot to mention wild grape. I've been battling it for 20 years up here in the north, and I plan to have a go at it again tomorrow. It destroys our maple trees and other growth. It's roots must be a deep as China, and it's impossible to control.
The Legislative Director for the Ohio State Grange and I are good friends. We have done lobbying together in DC. Great gal.
This is true and the same problem the author has. He does have a solution. No government needed. See my post #28.
The author is currently on vacation or he would be here answering your question.
OH, okay,Kudzu-my favorite comic strip!!!!
Just kidding. Kudzu the vine from hell. Just like those other invaders from below where we once had a border, Kudzu was introduced to America as the miracle cure for the erosion that was turning the south into gullies that could be challenging Grand Canyon today as the biggest gulley in America, if not for Kudzu. Trouble is that the weed is worse than the washouts.
THose from down yonder came here highly praised as ready to do all those jobs that American's supposedly too uppity to do. Now they are filling jobs that Americans would be happy to do, if they could get them at a wage they could survive on.
The Wild grape I have growing around here are native. In fact I live on the Raisin river, named after the grape vines that run rampant over everything.
Ive read that the first white men to travel in this area of Michigan were horrified by it.
Ten years ago, 14 people died fighting a fire on Storm King Mountain near Glenwood Springs, CO. Nine of those who died were members of the Prineville Hot Shots. I've never been to Prineville, but since that day, I have felt very protective of it. I can never hear the name without saying a prayer for those who were killed and for their families. I know it is not what you meant, but when you ask 'Whats left to kill', I could not help but thinking of those who were killed...
Wait a minute... aren't the greenpissers an invasive species?
Aren't Liberals in General?
Don't they know that America is the land of immigrants?
"I've been battling it for 20 years up here in the north, and I plan to have a go at it again tomorrow."
I defeated a couple acres of wild grape. The key is persistence. I didn't want to use herbicide, so every year I would take my lopping shears and cut off every vine I could find right at ground level--several times a summer, at least, at the start.
Every year I repeated the process, and every year it came back but a little weaker. the trees grew taller, and straightened up. It took about fifteen years, but I now (fifteen years plus ten) have a fine stand of hardwood trees. Some have a few twisted branches at the lower levels, vestiges of the struggle for light, years ago.
It was a sort of philosophical exercise, tending, and pruning, and general stewardship. It also was good physical exercise.
When I started they were several inches thick, some of them--real Tarzan stuff, and up to the tops of mature trees. Now there are none.
Environmental malpractice. Wow. I guess it's true, a tort is whatever a judge says it is!
I gotta read this book.
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