Dana Milbank: “How I learned to love toxic chemicals”

Dana Milbank is a political commentator for the Washington Post.  Like many city dwellers, Milbank moved his family from Washington DC to the Virginia countryside during the Covid pandemic. 

His new home inspired him to become a native plant advocate with the usual corresponding hatred of non-native plants.  He announced his new hobby of killing non-native plants in April 2023, as described in this response to his article by several defenders of the natural world as it exists, rather than as some might wish it to be.

In a more recent article, Milbank expressed his frustration at the failure of his early efforts to destroy non-native plants on his property without using herbicides: “When last I wrote about my battle of the brush, I was losing, badly, to the invasive vines and noxious weeds that had turned forest and field at my Virginia home into an impassable jungle. I’d cut them back, but they would return in even greater numbers.”

And he explained how he “learned to stop worrying and love chemicals.”  He is now both a native plant advocate and a promoter of herbicides (specifically glyphosate) which is typical of most native plant advocates. 

He justifies poisoning both his property and the Shenandoah National Park near his home by turning to advisors who tell him what he wants to hear, people who make their living using herbicides to eradicate non-native plants. 

Of course, renowned native plant guru, Doug Tallamy, is one of his advisors.  Although Tallamy advised residential gardeners against using herbicides in his book, Nature’s Best Hope, published in 2020, he has now changed his mind about herbicides.  In Milbank’s article, Tallamy says that herbicides are an “essential tool:”  “‘I think of it as chemotherapy,’ said Doug Tallamy, a University of Delaware entomologist and guru of the native-plant movement. ‘We have ecological tumors out there. If we don’t control them, we have ecological collapse. We have the collapse of the food web.’”

Poisoning the soil

Milbank admits that glyphosate (Roundup) is toxic and he wears protective gear when applying it, including a respirator (which is not required for glyphosate applications by California’s pesticides regulations).  He describes his application technique:  “My preferred technique is ‘hack and squirt.’ With my hatchet, I cut gouges around the circumference of the invading tree, then spray the poison inside. For smaller invaders, I can chop the whole thing down and apply the chemical as a ‘cut stump’ treatment.

I read most of the over one thousand comments on Milbank’s article to determine the public’s reaction.  Although many commenters express reservations about the use of herbicides, the majority of commenters are supportive of the use of herbicides.  The manufacturers of pesticides are definitely winning the public relations battle regarding chemical safety.  When supporters reply to doubters of herbicide use, they defend Milbank’s application technique as “surgical.” 

Cut stump and hack and squirt application methods are less likely to disperse chemicals in the air, but they increase soil contamination.  These application methods work by applying herbicide shortly after the woody plant is cut, while the cambium layer (between the bark and the heart wood) is still functional. The cambium layer delivers the herbicide to the roots of the plant to kill the roots. The application may appear to be “surgical” from the standpoint of above-ground contamination, but the damage is being done in the soil, the plants growing in the soil, and the animals that eat those plants. 

There are many consequences of poisoning the soil:

• Because the roots of plants are intertwined as well as connected to one another by fungal networks in the soil, non-target plants are harmed and often killed.  It is not possible to poison one plant without poisoning others. HERE is an example of a forest of native trees that was damaged by spraying herbicide under the trees.
• Herbicides kill beneficial microbes and fungi in the soil that contribute to plant health. (1) For example, fungal networks that are killed by herbicides transport moisture and nutrients from the soil to the plants.  Whatever vegetation remains or is planted in the future is handicapped by the loss of this living support system.
• Glyphosate binds minerals in the soil, preventing essential nutritional minerals such as iron and manganese in the soil from being taken up by plants. (2)  Glyphosate is so widely used that it is found in the blood and urine of most of the population, including children.  Could glyphosate be a factor in widespread iron-deficiency anemia in adolescent girls and young women? (3)
• Glyphosate is a well-known anti-microbial agent.  These effects raise concerns regarding glyphosate’s influence on human health and behavior through secondary means, such as our gastrointestinal microbiome, given what is now known regarding the gut microbiome and its influence on human health and disease. (4,5)

Who are the climate change deniers?

Milbank repeats his accusation that those who believe the threat of non-native plants is exaggerated, are climate change deniers.  He turns to the Executive Director of the federal Invasive Species Council for confirmation, who calls the threats of non-native plants “settled science.”  Science is, by definition, never settled.  Science is a process, not a conclusion.  Every scientific hypothesis is constantly tested and usually refined or overturned as new knowledge and methods are available.   Many scientists are testing the hypotheses of invasion biology and questioning their validity in a changing climate. 

The only issue about invasion biology that is “settled” is that it has created a multi-billion dollar “restoration” industry that relies on and benefits the manufacturers of pesticides, as well as creating vested interests that perpetuate the industry.

Milbank also quotes one of his advisors who claims that native plants are better adapted to the changed climate than non-native plants:  “The natives have the best ability to adapt — they’ve been adapting for tens of thousands of years in these areas — so they’ve got the ability to change as the climates and the landscapes have been changing.”  This statement seems comical, given that the topic is the extreme difficulty of eradicating non-native plants and the fact that they are out-competing native plants.  There is zero evidence that native plants are better adapted to the changed climate than the non-native plants that have replaced them.  500 million years of geologic history on Earth has informed us that when the climate changes—as it has many times–the vegetation changes. 

All plants, whether native or non-native, convert carbon dioxide to oxygen and store carbon. Destroying them contributes to greenhouse gases causing climate change by releasing their stored carbon into the atmosphere and reducing the capacity of the landscape to absorb more carbon in the future.  To deny that fact, is to be a climate change denier.

Reality trumps unrealistic hopes

Milbank describes the landscape he hopes to achieve with the help of herbicides.  It is the landscape that existed in the distant past, in a different climate, before the environment was altered by the activities of humans.  I am reminded of one of the presentations at the most recent conference of the California Native Plant Society, an event where the audience hopes and the speakers douse the audience’s hope with the reality of their unsuccessful efforts.  The presenter described a 20-year effort at the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve to convert non-native annual grassland to native grassland, using annual (sometimes bi-annual) prescribed burns.  Many different methods were used, varying timing, intensity, etc.  The abstract for this presentation reports failure of the 20-year effort:  “Non-native grass cover significantly decreased after prescribed fire but recovered to pre-fire cover or higher one year after fire.  Native grass cover decreased after prescribed fire then recovered to pre-burn levels within five years, but never increased over time.  The response of native grass to fire (wild and prescribed) was different across time and within management units, but overall native grass declined.” The audience was audibly unhappy with this presentation.  One person asked if the speaker was aware of other places where non-native grass was successfully converted to native grass.  The speaker chuckled and emphatically said, “NO.  I am not aware of any place where native grasses were successfully reintroduced.” 

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(1) “Glyphosate kills microorganisms beneficial to plants, animals, and humans,” Beyond Pesticides, October 2021.
(2) “Glyphosate, a chelating agent—relevant for ecological risk assessment?” Environmental Science and Pollution Research International, 2018
(3) “Prevalence of Iron Deficiency and Iron-Deficiency Anemia in US Females Aged 12-21 Years, 2003-2020,” Journal of American Medical Association, 2023
(4) “Is the Use of Glyphosate in Modern Agriculture Resulting in Increased Neuropsychiatric Conditions Through Modulation of the Gut-brain-microbiome Axis?” Frontiers in Nutrition, 2022
(5) “Toxic Effects of Glyphosate on the Nervous System: A Systematic Review” International Journal Molecular Science, 2022