Case study of a weed management action - McFarland Creek and what went wrong

Spraying rivers (McFarland Creek) Faced with increased damage to forest and human health, Kettle Range Conservation Group released a report, Risky Business, Invasive species management on National Forests, documenting the problem of Forest Service herbicide abuse, and giving a comprehensive list of solutions (picture is from the report cover, showing County spray trucks bound for Forest Service lands, spraying herbicide into the Methow River).

Spraying fails (McFarland Creek 2 years later) Result of saturating roads, rivers and residents with herbicides - Total failure! This is the same stretch of road in the previous photo, the only difference is that now there are more weeds. The important thing is that this is job security.

Calling Fire in the Theater

by
George Wooten
Twisp, WA
November, 1999

The intentions of my first paper written on invasive species was based on rational science, combined with a bit of compromise to allow some management flexibility.

Biological invasions of alien plants in the Interior Columbia River Basin was meant to provide managers a balanced overview of approaches to weed management. My second paper, The use of Integrated Weed Management within a framework of ecosystem management, became necessary because of a deluge of hastily prepared government proposals presenting biased misapplications of only those portions of weed management that control weeds through the use of herbicides.

It is regretful that this conflict has arisen just as decision-makers are finally awakening to the public and scientific outcry over invading species, but I have recently come to the painful realization that government in general, and the Forest Service in particular, intends to solve the problem of Noxious Weeds by throwing large amounts of money and chemicals into the ecosystem, without much heed to the consequences.

Following the receipt of several USDA Forest Service Environmental Assessments here in North Central Washington, it is now clear to me that the details of Noxious Weed management need to be as precisely spelled out as the principles. To leave this to managers unfamiliar with the biology of invading species, or with the chemistry of herbicides, is a recipe for costly, ineffective treatments and ecological disaster.

I do not wish to detract from the present national resolve for control of invading species, any more than I would wish to detract from less prominent aspects of the battle against environmental pollution. However, now that noxious weeds have become a high profile problem, managers are becoming overzealous in their control efforts.

As a former botanist with the Forest Service, I occasionally was required to help expedite weed management projects. My program was uprooted one day when I and found my supervisor brandishing the Nature Conservancy's EIS on Spartina in Willapa Bay as if it were the botanical equivalent of the Bible on glyphosate. Another vigilante appeared in Audubon Magazine's March-April 1997 Incite column, Killer Weeds, by Ted Williams along with January-February's Silent Scourge, by the same author, Mr. Williams has carved the word chemophobe so indelibly into the into the psyche of the readers, as to render suspicious anyone less than enthusiastic about herbicides. The predictable result is that the Forest Service now counts this as scientific justification that herbicides are benign and environmentalists are paranoid. Thanks, Ted.

What these reports did was increase increase the use of herbicides without a proportionate increase in environmental protection. Besides being the antithesis of Integrated Pest Management, it shows an ignorance of the harmful environmental and human effects that xenophobics cause. These reports were written by people living in ivory towers who do not realize that rural Washington, and particularly Okanogan County, is awash with a potent brew of toxic chemicals sprayed twice yearly on every road. There is no excuse for these poorly executed management plans based on half-baked "scientific" reports. Herbicides are poisoning our society and chemically sensitive individuals who each day must face a living hell in their battle with the county spray trucks who dump their toxic payloads across the landscape. Many of my friends and neighbors have become ill as a result of chemical trespass, for instance, my dear friend and well-known author on rural lifestyles, Jeanne Hardy, described her life in a 24' X 8' living space in her newspaper column, in an article titled, Life in the Narrow Lane . Soon after writing about her experience, she passed away.

Scientists knowledgeable about the ecology of invading species risk their collective reputations when advocating increased government funding to treat harmful exotics. But an examination of recent proposals for treatment of harmful exotics does not reveal a balanced viewpoint from the agencies regarding chemical advocacy. In fact many agencies accustomed to industrial management paradigms feel herbicides go hand-in-hand with their programs, and perhaps this is rightfully so. Like Ted Williams, my first paper was guilty of highlighting the risks of invasive species, while minimizing the hazards of herbicides, so that I wouldn't lose my intended audience of decision-makers. What I didn't expect was how managers would focus on what they wanted to hear, and magnify it, while ignoring and minimizing what they didn't want to hear.

Although I am trained as a chemist, I do not consider myself a chemophobe. Nonetheless, there is an alarming lack of knowledge on the part of scientists on the environmental hazards of herbicides, given the fervor of the political juggernaut we botanists and land managers have unwittingly created. While we may express with confidence the necessity of controlling exotic species, we are not justified in concomittantly minimizing the risks of environmental pollutants, which in some cases are worse than the weeds being controlled. Regardless of how well we convince the politicians, there always remains the final filter--a public skeptical of the imminent danger of invading aliens, but all too willing to believe that all chemicals are bad. Rightly or wrongly, the public has vilified the chemists, who, through their close industrial ties, and the deadlocked government regulatory framework they work within, have brought this disdain upon themselves.

Therefore I am publishing these additional papers to try and restore some balance that has resulted from the strict but myopic adherence to principles set forth in my first paper on invasive species, which was actually intended to demonstrate the need for agencies to control plant invasions. Both decision-makers and the shallow science that has led to this disgrace have lost my respect and their credibility because of the narrow paradigm in which yearly broadcast spray programs operate. There is a great deal of work before us if we are to regain a balanced, open attitude about managing invasive species.