Tag: invasion biology

Environmentalism in the Rear-View Mirror

One year ago, less than a month after Donald Trump was re-elected President, I announced on Conservation Sense and Nonsense my intention to “hunker down and watch the changes [in the federal government] play out.”  Although I predicted major changes in federal public policies, I did not foresee the scale and speed of changes in environmental policies that we have witnessed in the past year.  The uncomfortable reality is that some of what is being destroyed deserved to be destroyed, but at the expense of some valuable environmental protections. 

In describing the changes we have witnessed, I will focus primarily on environmental issues in the following main categories.  Please keep in mind that changes in environmental policies are but a small fraction of the changes that have occurred in all aspects of American life and global geopolitics, e.g., education, public health, arts and entertainment, architecture, science, economics, immigration, media sources, judicial system, disaster relief, social safety net, foreign aid, tariffs, etc. 

The Trump administration has left the international Paris Agreement, the legally binding treaty adopted in 2015 to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.  The US was not represented at the November 2025 meeting of the UN Conference of the Parties (COP30) to the agreement in Brazil, but the US actively campaigned against the new commitment on the agenda to limit pollution from cargo ships by using fines.  According to the New York Times, “…the United States launched a pressure campaign that officials around the world have called extraordinary, even by the standards of the Trump administration’s combativeness, according to nine diplomats on its receiving end.” US diplomats and officials were successful in threatening countries with loss of US port access and other onerous penalties if they voted for the proposal. The Trump administration hasn’t just dropped out of the Paris Agreement.  It is also actively engaged in preventing other countries from reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. COP30 ended without any new commitments to reduce the sources of greenhouse gas emissions, or even explicit mention of fossil fuels as the primary greenhouse gas.   

America Accommodates

Many of these changes have been delayed by legal challenges, but until appeals reach the Supreme Court, the final verdict on most issues is not known at this time.  However, the Supreme Court has signaled their intentions with many emergency orders, also known as the shadow docket.  These decisions have upheld most of the federal government’s actions, without providing any legal reasoning for doing so.  These preliminary decisions foretell the ultimate victory of the actions of the Trump administration.

Other segments of American society are contributing to the control the President has over the implementation of his agenda. At his request, Congress has completely defunded National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.  They are scrambling to find other sources of revenue, while cutting programs and staff as well as closing stations. Associated Press was banned from White House press briefings when they refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, as renamed by President Trump. Legal challenges have not restored AP’s access to White House press briefings.

Mainstream media has paid multi-million dollar settlements to resolve defamation lawsuits (ABC and CBS) brought by President Trump over perceived slights.  One major network (CBS) has changed ownership and is now owned by Trump supporters (Larry & David Ellison).  The Department of Defense (now calling itself the Department of War) has restricted access of the press to department staff and now requires department approval of press releases prior to publication.  Most members of the Pentagon press corps refused to agree to these restrictions and have left their offices in the Pentagon.  Self-censorship is a more insidious threat because the public no longer knows when the media is pulling its punches to avoid retribution, which is the President’s modus operandi.

The legal profession has also been brought to its knees by the President’s threats of punishment if they participate in lawsuits that try to prevent the implementation of the administration’s policies.  Many major law practices have been forced to provide pro bono legal services for President Trump after being threatened with access restrictions to the judicial system.  Major law practices are refusing to represent plaintiffs who are trying to protect themselves from government prosecution, hoping to stay out of the line of fire.

California Responds

The same day that Americans re-elected Donald Trump in November 2024, California voters passed Proposition 4, the $10 billion bond that funds climate change mitigation and ecological restoration in California.  California’s bond funding will help to compensate for the loss of federal funding of ecological and climate mitigation projects in California. California Natural Resources Agency reported the cancellation of federal funding for these projects in California:

Source: California Natural Resources Agency, July 2025

Does California have enough money to compensate for the loss of federal funding of climate change mitigation and ecological restoration in California?  I don’t know, but I do know that federal funding is also being lost for many other purposes that are important to Californians, such as subsidies for health insurance and food assistance needed by many Californians.  Some municipalities are responding by raising sales and property taxes to backfill the loss of federal funding in many sectors of the economy.  While federal taxes are being cut, California’s taxes may rise.

Meanwhile, California is challenged by related issues such as the need to build more housing in order to reduce the cost and house our growing homeless population.  In July 2025, California responded to that issue by revising the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which will remove many obstacles to building new housing and allow more aggressive fire hazard mitigation. 

The cost of gas in California has been consistently higher than in most states because of voters’ desire for clean air.  Regulations have made drilling for and refining oil in California costlier than in other states, which makes gas more expensive for consumers.  Refineries have responded to California’s restrictive regulations by leaving the state, which reduces supply, raises prices further and is expected to restrict availability of fuel. California’s Senate Bill 237, signed into law in September 2025, addressed these concerns by streamlining approval of drilling permits, including idle pipelines, in an “environmentally responsible and safe manner.” 

In other words, California has been forced to adapt to new economic and environmental realities. At the same time, California is aggressively fighting back.  As of October 1st, California has filed 46 lawsuits against the 2nd Trump administration, “contesting the Trump administration’s executive orders, agency decisions and even recent laws that Trump himself signed.”

Americans Shrug

Composite opinion polls reported a persistent negative approval rating of 11% for the Trump presidency until the government shutdown in October, when the approval rating dropped to negative 15% before returning to negative 11% when the government re-opened.  Over 40% of American voters still approve of the Trump presidency.  Many voters have made up their mind and are not responsive to the daily onslaught of alarming information.  I understand and am sympathetic to the public’s dilemma, summarized in a recent social media post:  “My desire to be well informed is presently at odds with my desire to remain sane.” 

Updated 12/10/25

For perspective, consider that President Biden’s composite approval poll on July 6, 2024 was negative 19.3%, just 15 days before Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21, 2024. 

The demonstrations I have attended are another window into the mood of the American public.  The NO Kings demonstration on June 14, 2025 is said to have drawn 5 million people.  The second NO Kings demonstration on October 18th claims to have drawn 7 million people.  Although these seem impressive numbers, they don’t add up to a change-making revolt.  The lack of young people participating in these demonstrations is dispiriting.  The future is in their hands, yet their commitment to democracy is lukewarm compared to my generation, the boomer generation that still feels a strong commitment to the peace and prosperity that democracy has delivered to us.

On the other hand, Democrats aren’t dead yet.  In November 2025, moderate Democrats won governorships in New Jersey and Virginia and a Democratic Socialist won the mayoral election in New York City.  In response to Republican gerrymandering of congressional districts in Texas, 64% of Californians voted to gerrymander congressional districts in favor of Democratic candidates.  A recent Marist poll indicated that registered voters in the US plan to vote for Democratic candidates for congressional seats in 2026 by a margin of 14%. 

Changes in the elected leadership of the Bay Area chapters of the Sierra Club are an indication of a change in the public’s commitment to the environment.  The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter is now led by activists who want more housing and more active recreational opportunities.  The old guard, who were committed to restricting recreational access in favor of native plant restorations in public parks, has been replaced.  The Lomo Prieta Chapter, which represents the South Bay, is now undergoing a similar transition to new leadership with new priorities.

Changes in the leadership of the San Francisco Bay Area chapters of the Sierra Club are symptomatic of the Club’s much broader decline on a national scale.  According to the New York Times, the Club has lost 60% of the 4 million members it had in 2019.  The Times attributes this loss of support to the change of the Club’s advocacy focus from environmental issues, most prominently climate change, to progressive social justice issues such as racial justice, gay rights, labor rights, and immigration rights. In 2019, one of the Board Directors objected to the proposed budget, but was voted down: “I said, ‘We have two F.T.E.s devoted to Trump’s war on the Arctic refuge, and we have 108 going to D.E.I., and I don’t think we have our priorities straight,’” Mr. Dougherty said.

Finally, wealthy American philanthropists are providing clues of a fundamental change in the political climate in America.  Bill Gates, former owner of Microsoft and supporter of global health initiatives, recently announced that it is time for a “strategic pivot” in the global climate fight from focusing on limiting rising temperatures to fighting poverty and preventing disease.  Gates still believes climate change is a serious problem, but it won’t be the end of civilization because he thinks scientific innovation will contain it.  Unfortunately, federal support for finding such scientific innovations has been withdrawn.  Gates’ message seems to be that we aren’t able to stop climate change, so we must cope with it.  It’s another way of accommodating the environmental policies of the Trump administration.

Looking Ahead

I am deeply troubled by the many threats to America’s treasured democracy.  However, many of the changes in environmental policies in the past year are aligned with the mission of Conservation Sense and Nonsense.  Since its inception in 2010, the mission of Conservation Sense and Nonsense has been the preservation of our predominantly non-native urban forest, opposition to the use of pesticides on public lands and advocacy for mitigating the causes of climate change.  Some of the changes in environmental policy in the past year are consistent with those goals:

  • Many projects that use pesticides and kill harmless animals and vegetation have been defunded by the federal government. The State of California is trying to compensate for the loss with state funding, but its ability to do so will be challenged by many other new demands on state resources, such as subsidies for health care and food.

When wildlife refuges and marine sanctuaries lost much of their funding and staff, many of their projects were abandoned.  Many of those projects may have been beneficial, but the plans to aerially drop rodenticides on the Farallon Islands to kill harmless mice is an example of a project that is better off dead.

  • Prevailing public opinion that native plants and animals are superior and the corresponding belief that non-natives are a threat to them is unlikely to change in the near-term.  I do not begrudge the horticultural preferences of home gardeners.  However, native plant advocates will have limited ability to demand that public land managers eradicate non-native plants if there is no public money available to fund landscape-scale “restorations.”
  • As public money for ecological “restorations” on public land dries up, the “restoration” industry and the jobs it creates will probably dwindle over time. As economic interests in “restoration” evaporate, the advocacy that supports it is likely to as well. College students are likely to make other educational choices with more promising career prospects, which will further reduce the labor force engaged in “restorations.”
  • When forest “restoration” projects that involve clear-cutting or removing healthy trees are defunded, existing carbon storage is preserved.  Every mature tree—native or non-native—sequesters carbon at a time when we need every available carbon sink to compensate for the loss of limits on greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.
  • Climate change will accelerate as we abandon our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. The landscape that survives the changed climate will be best adapted to the changed environment.  When the climate changes, vegetation changes or dies.  No amount of human intervention can alter that ultimate reality because nature always bats last.

In 2026, Conservation Sense and Nonsense will continue to report major developments relevant to my mission.  In other words, I will continue to “hunker down and watch it play out.”  Guest posts consistent with my mission and civil comments, both pro and con, are always welcome here. Thank you for your readership. 

Happy Holidays and best wishes for a more peaceful year in 2026.

“Instead of ‘controlling’ non-native plants, perhaps we should practice more ‘self-control’”

Juian Burgoff

Julian Burgoff wrote a guest post for Conservation Sense and Nonsense about the undervalued functions of non-native aquatic plants in 2023.  Necessary Nuisance explained that non-native aquatic plants perform valuable ecological functions.  Attempts to eradicate aquatic plants deprive aquatic animals of valuable habitat.  The herbicides used to kill aquatic plants also pollute the water, harming aquatic animals and killing non-target aquatic plants. 

Julian Burgoff is an avid bass angler and aspiring fisheries ecologist from western Massachusetts.  He recently received a master’s degree with the Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at UMass- Amherst where he studied juvenile river herring growth, diets and habitat use in coastal Massachusetts lakes and estuaries.  He is passionate about lake ecology and the management of aquatic vegetation in lakes and hopes to work in a field related to lake conservation and warmwater fisheries management in the future.

I am grateful to Julian for giving us another opportunity to publish an article about a specific project that is trying to kill valuable aquatic plants with herbicides.  Thank you, Julian.

Conservation Sense and Nonsense

Hydrilla and the Connecticut River: Falling into the “Invasive” Trap

If you spend time on the tidal Connecticut River in summer, you will likely see thick green mats covering its shorelines, coves and backwaters. This is hydrilla — a non-native aquatic plant that’s long been demonized by state agencies and lake managers across the country.

One morning during a summer internship performing fisheries related fieldwork on the river, I saw a young doe on the bank nibbling on a clump of hydrilla exposed at low tide. I laughed to myself — I knew it was good fish habitat, but even deer like the stuff!

The “official” position was that it was choking the river, outcompeting native species, and impeding recreational use of the river. But as a passionate angler and ecologist who studies aquatic ecosystems, I’ve learned that what we (as western scientists) think about non-native species and their impacts — especially in the world of aquatic plants — often turns out to be driven more by ideology than by scientific evidence.

The War on Hydrilla

Hydrilla arrived in the Connecticut River around 2016 and has since spread through the lower mainstem and its tributaries. In response, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) have launched an aggressive herbicide campaign that seeks to “restore” native aquatic plant communities and study the efficacy of using a cocktail of various herbicides to treat the areas of the river where the growth of hydrilla is most prolific. Over the past few summers and into next year, private contractors plan to treat hundreds of acres of river coves with a mix of chemicals, including diquat and florpyrauxifen-benzyl.

On paper, this might sound like responsible ecological stewardship — reducing non-native plant stands such that their native counterparts can flourish. But in my view, it’s another example of what resource managers in Minnesota have referred to as “the invasive trap”: the belief that any non-native species must be “harmful”, and that launching management campaigns to kill them must be ecologically and economically beneficial.

The problem is that this assumption is not based on data, but on the dogmatic assumptions of invasion biology that underpin the world view of many western scientists and management agencies.

Unexpected Ecosystem Services: What the Evidence Shows

Across the country, hydrilla has often played the opposite role of what managers might expect. In the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, researchers found that hydrilla helped stabilize sediments, clear up murky water, and create habitat for fish and invertebrates — even helping native aquatic plant stands return. In Florida lakes, scientists compared lakes with and without hydrilla and found no major differences in fish, bird, or aquatic plant diversity.

In other words, hydrilla didn’t destroy these ecosystems where it was introduced. It filled open niche space, performed valuable ecosystem services, and is now integrated into the food web, for better or for worse.

That’s not to say hydrilla should be introduced to new water bodies or can’t impact ecosystems in ways that are perceived as harmful. Like many aquatic plants (native and non-native), hydrilla can grow in thick stands that interfere with swimming or boating, alter water chemistry and change physical habitat suitability for aquatic organisms. But many of these impacts are human nuisances, not ecological disasters, and should be managed as such. In large, dynamic systems like the Connecticut River, hydrilla’s role is likely far more complex — and possibly beneficial — than its label as “one of the world’s most invasive aquatic plants” suggests.

The Risks of Herbicide Use to “Restore” Native Plant Communities

Despite the lack of evidence that hydrilla is causing ecological “harm” to the Connecticut River, the proposed management intervention — widespread herbicide use — carries significant ecological risk.

Diquat, one of the main herbicides being applied, is what’s called a contact herbicide: it kills whatever plant tissue it touches (including native plant taxa). Florpyrauxifen-benzyl is a systemic herbicide, meaning it’s absorbed into plants and disrupts their growth. When a large quantity of aquatic plants rapidly die, they decay and release nutrients into the water, which can fuel algal blooms that reduce water clarity. If water clarity is significantly reduced, the very native plants managers aim to “restore” can’t regrow.

Ironically, hydrilla often bounces back first because it’s more tolerant of poor water quality than many native species. This can lock managers into a costly, never-ending cycle: herbicide use → temporary die-off → algal bloom → hydrilla regrowth → more herbicides.

Similar outcomes have been observed in Florida, where researchers found a large-scale florpyrauxifen-benzyl treatment sharply reduced hydrilla abundance in a Florida lake, but the plant regained dominance within a year as reduced water clarity from the treatment hindered native plant recovery.

Cascading Food Web Effects

As primary producers, aquatic plants are essential to the foundation of food webs — sheltering young fish, providing surfaces for invertebrates to live, and supporting wildlife like waterfowl. When herbicides are used to kill aquatic plants, there are often complex indirect impacts to the integrity of aquatic food webs.

Diquat is known to be toxic to not just plants (native and non-native) but invertebrates (the tiny animals that feed fish), such as amphipods. Even at concentrations lower than what’s used in field applications, diquat has the potential to impact these organisms which in turn may reduce available habitat for organisms higher up the food web like fishes.

Diquat also contains bromide, a compound that researchers have linked to a neurological disease killing bald eagles in the southeastern U.S. The disease develops when a particular cyanobacteria grows on hydrilla plants and interacts with bromide — forming a toxin that bio-magnifies as it moves up the food web. Ducks eat the hydrilla, eagles eat the ducks, and the toxin accumulates, damaging the eagles’ brains.

While this phenomenon hasn’t yet been documented in the Connecticut River, applying bromide-based herbicides in a manner that is likely to contribute to algal blooms (including cyanobacteria blooms) is not an ecologically sound management practice.

What We Don’t Know

Despite the confidence behind these large-scale management interventions, there’s little data showing how hydrilla has actually affected biodiversity or water quality in the Connecticut River. To prove that hydrilla is causing ecological “harm”, we’d need long-term monitoring — decades of data on aquatic plants, fish, wildlife, and water quality — collected before and after hydrilla became established. These data likely don’t exist at the scale needed to make an informed, unbiased assessment. Yet herbicide applications in the name of ecological “restoration” are moving forward anyway. The “post-monitoring” required by the project plan mostly focuses on the “efficacy” of the treatment (e.g. how much hydrilla biomass is reduced) not on whether algae blooms occur or how invertebrate and fish communities are affected.

This is a common phenomenon with herbicide treatments: the indirect effects of the management intervention are simply too complex and too costly to quantify. Based on the current “post-monitoring” protocol, if it’s found that hydrilla biomass is reduced and that native aquatic plant communities continue to exist following treatment, the project will be considered a success.

Less is More: Observation Based Management

Sometimes, the most ecologically mindful (and most cost effective) management decision is to pause to let species interactions occur unmolested and find their own equilibrium rather than impose an imaginary concept of what a given ecological community “should” be.

Where hydrilla interferes directly with human activities — say, blocking a boat ramp or clogging a marina — mechanical removal or small, targeted herbicide treatments could be reasonable management interventions. But broad, river-wide herbicide use is neither justified by science nor a long-term sustainable solution to non-native aquatic plant management.

With non-native species introductions, the truth is that there is no going back. Climate change, nutrient loading, and decades of physical habitat alteration via damming etc. have already changed this river beyond what it was a few centuries ago. Plants and animals are constantly being introduced and adapting to a new reality — one where species origins and “native” vs. “non-native” status matter far less than their role in maintaining ecosystem functions.

Rather than pouring more chemicals into the water, perhaps we should pour our efforts into observing, monitoring, and trying to understand why certain plants succeed and how ecosystems adjust to change over time. Instead of “controlling” non-native plants, perhaps we should practice more “self-control” and let nature heal itself without the imposition of the human ego and its desire to constantly fight the expressions of the natural world in the Anthropocene.

Julian Burgoff
Amherst, MA
jburgoff@umass.edu

Ideological vs. Scientific Definition of Biodiversity

Although there is broad agreement that maintaining biodiversity is necessary to achieve conservation goals, there is disagreement about the definition of biodiversity. Some native plant advocates believe biodiversity includes only native plants (example HERE). Most scientists include both native and non-native plants in measurements of biodiversity. I asked Claude.ai about this debate. 

Data source: Living Planet Report (2022). World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Zoological Society of London.

I publish Claude.ai’s answer to my question as a guest post today. Claude.ai now has immediate access to internet sources, which makes answers to such queries more current and comprehensive.  Claude.ai has also provided links to the sources of the information provided. 

Conservation Sense and Nonsense

The ongoing debate about measuring biodiversity

Claude.ai:  Based on the available data, there’s a significant and ongoing scientific debate about whether biodiversity measurements should include non-native species. Here’s what the evidence shows:

Scientific Practice vs. Conservation Ideology

The Reality of Scientific Measurement:

In actual scientific practice, major biodiversity databases and assessment tools often do include non-native species. Research shows that “data used for biodiversity assessments and conservation planning should, initially, include all species” and that “including non-native species into the Biodiversity Intactness Index can lead to a 10% improvement in the index score” NihNCBI.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), one of the world’s largest biodiversity databases, explicitly includes non-native species, stating that “information is the single most important variable necessary to support research, monitoring and management of alien and invasive species” GBIF.

Standard Biodiversity Definitions

Official Definitions Are Inclusive:

Scientific definitions of biodiversity do not exclude non-native species. As Britannica notes, biodiversity is defined as “the variety of life found in a place on Earth” and biologists most often define it as “the totality of genes, species and ecosystems of a region.” The most common measure is “species richness” – simply “the count of species in an area” BritannicaWikipedia.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) “emphasises the role of biodiversity in delivering benefits essential for all people and, as a result, seeks to safeguard all life-forms.” Research argues that “the absence of non-native species from biodiversity indices stands in contradiction to the CBD and Sustainable Development Goals {SDGs}” Do non-native species contribute to biodiversity? – PMC.

Scientific Consensus vs. Conservation Advocacy

The Evidence Shows Division:

A 2019 survey of 314 researchers found that “overall, a majority of respondents in our sample supported statements that the species-component of biodiversity should include all species (55%) or some types of non-native species” Diverse views among scientists on non-native species. This indicates significant scientific support for including non-native species in biodiversity measures.

However, there’s strong opposition from some conservation biologists. The IUCN argues it’s “misguided and potentially disastrous to consider native and non-native species as equal from the standpoint of both ecosystem services and conservation goals” Do non-native species count as biodiversity? – Crossroads blog | IUCN.

Practical Measurement Reality

How Biodiversity Is Actually Measured:

Standard biodiversity indices like Shannon diversity, Simpson diversity, and species richness simply count all species present. These indices “do not discriminate between species and communities with very different functionalities” and follow “a leading principle that ‘all species and individuals are considered equal'” 22.2: Diversity Indices – Biology LibreTexts +2.

Research shows that “the introduction of a non-native species increases the local species count (by one!)” and “because of the spread of non-natives, a general trend worldwide is that often local biodiversity (measured by a species count) is increasing even while overall global species numbers are in decline” Understanding and Defending the Preference for Native Species | SpringerLink.

Key Contextual Points

The Complexity of the Issue:

Scientists recognize this is “a broader social debate about what type of nature we need to ensure a good life for present and future generations.” The discussion involves “not only a scientific debate about the contributions of these species to society but also a broader social debate” Do non-native species contribute to biodiversity? – PMC.

Even in conservation contexts, scientists often use the term “alien species” rather than “invasive species” because “‘invasive’ suggests invasion potential and negative ecological effects, which is not necessarily the case for all alien species” Species data for understanding biodiversity dynamics: The what, where and when of species occurrence data collection – Petersen – 2021 – Ecological Solutions and Evidence – Wiley Online Library.

Conclusion

The available data clearly shows that:

  1. Standard scientific practice: Most biodiversity measurements and major databases include all species regardless of origin
  2. Official definitions: Neither CBD nor standard scientific definitions of biodiversity exclude non-native species
  3. Research consensus: A majority of surveyed scientists support including non-native species in biodiversity measures
  4. Conservation advocacy: Some conservation biologists argue for native-only measures, but this appears to be a minority position in the broader scientific community

The claim that “biodiversity only includes native plants” appears to be an ideological position held by some in the invasion biology community rather than the standard scientific practice for measuring biodiversity.

“Speaking for the Trees, No Matter Where They’re From”

When I announced my intention to quit publishing articles on Conservation Sense and Nonsense in December 2024, I invited like-minded allies to send me guest posts for publication.  I also recommended several trusted sources of information about invasion biology and related issues.

I am publishing a guest article by one of those trusted sources today, with permission.  Kollibri terre Sonnenblume is the author of “Speaking for the Trees, No Matter Where They’re From,” available on Substack.  He introduces himself on that website:  “Writer, photographer, tree-hugger, animal lover, occasional farmer, cultural dissident. Author of several books on ecology, human culture, and their intersections. Podcaster on the side.”

For readers who love all plants, both native and non-native, I recommend the Substack of Kollibri terre Sonnenblume.  His articles are deeply researched, informative, and beautifully written.  His knowledge of plants far exceeds anything I have learned about plants because he works directly with them as an integral part of his life and he is an astute observer. 

Conservation Sense and Nonsense

What is a “native” plant in a changing world?

California Fan Palms in Anza-Borrego State Park in California (Photo by author)

The term “native plant” has become a common one, and many people probably assume that the definition is clear cut. However, like many other seemingly simple designations, that’s not the case.

It was in the UK in the mid-19th century where the concept of “native” as opposed to non-native was first proposed by Hewett Coltrell Wallace, who borrowed the terms “native” and “alien” from British immigration law. His definition of “native” also included “naturalized” species, which humans had introduced but that have come to live without them unaided.

Nowadays, whether a given plant is considered “native” where it is found growing is dependent on the interpretation of the interrelation of three factors: time, place and human involvement. There is no agreed-upon global definition.

So currently in the United States, a plant is generally considered native only if it grew here before European colonization. On the East Coast, that’s the 1500s and in California, that’s 1769. Plants introduced since then, whether deliberately or by accident, are labeled “non-native,” “introduced,” “exotic,” or in some cases, “invasive.”

In the UK, though the year 1500 is often cited too, some would set the date at the end of the last glacial maximum, 16,000 years ago, others at ~8000 years ago, when rising sea levels made those landmasses islands, and still others at the Roman invasion in 43 CE. Species introduced by the Romans can also be called “archaeophytes,” which inhabits a middle ground.

Other countries have their own cut-off dates, or, like China seem to still be working it out. Some have none at all, defining “non-native” only in terms of whether the species was introduced by humans, but not when. South Africa has a designation of “native-alien” referring to species that are native to one part of the nation but not to others.

Given that the term is so unstandardized, it’s impossible to make generalized statements about “native species” at the international level.

Plants on the move

The “native range” of any plant is not a static thing. Historically, plant ranges have always been in flux, often in response to climatic shifts, a process which continues in the present day more rapidly because of climate change. Had European colonization never occurred in the Americas, the ranges of plants today would not be the same as they were in 1492, which is a fact that’s not often considered in these discussions.

Fossils and phytogenetics are two things that can show us where plants used to live and where they came from. For example, when Spanish colonists arrived in California in the 18th Century, Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) grew in a strip nearly 500 miles long and 5-47 miles wide from what is now Monterrey County in the south to Curry County (Oregon) in the north. Since then, over 95% of them have been cut down. The grievous sin of destroying so many Redwoods in California is compounded by the fact that much of their former habitat is now so altered by land use conversion and ecological changes like erosion that it won’t be home to these grand trees for the foreseeable future.

Only 10,000 years ago—a blip in geological time—Redwoods grew as far south as Los Angeles, and five million years ago, they were found in Europe and Asia. The species has also been spread around the world by humans, including to New Zealand, where a 15 acre grove has been growing for over a century. Due to favorable differences in soil and rainfall there, the trees happen to grow faster there than on the US West Coast.

We can ask, then: how should we define the current “native range” of Redwoods? Are the degraded places where they recently grew but now won’t still part of their “native range”? What about portions of the Oregon Coast immediately north of their most recent range, which they would naturally be moving into because of climate change, both anthropogenic and natural? What about New Zealand where the tree is thriving because the conditions for the tree are so appropriate? Is a Redwood grown today within its historic range in Europe truly “alien” or is it just coming home? By the narrowest definition of “native” these questions are absurd, but of course definitions too are always in flux.

For many, the salient point is “human interference” as opposed to “natural dispersal.”

In this way of thinking, the Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata), the dominant and emblematic plant of the US Southwest’s Mojave Desert is native even though it arrived from South America as recently as 14,000 years ago, because its means of conveyance over those many thousands of miles was non-human; possibly in the tail feathers of migrating plovers.

But this way of thinking also tends to ignore an important element: the influence of indigenous humans over history, which definitely impacted the “native ranges” of many plants and animals.

Indigenous Land Management Practices

Controlled burns by Indians on the Great Plains expanded prairies at the expense of forests, which led to the spread of Buffalo.

Similar techniques on the West Coast maintained Oak Savannah and suppressed the growth of Firs and Hemlocks.

Seeds, bulbs, corms and other plant material for propagation were collected, transplanted and traded far and wide among tribes in North America. Some species (such as certain Mariposa Lilies in the genus Calochortus) may have dwindled in number to the point of being endangered these days in part because they are no longer actively tended by humans.

The case of the California Fan Palm is particularly intriguing. For years, it was believed that the iconic species was a millions-of-years-old relict, left over from when its current desert home in southern California was much moister. However, phytogenetic analysis proved that the species emerged quite recently, since the last glaciation period 11,000 years ago.

It’s long been known that Indians made use of Fan Palms and their groves for food, craft material, and as places to live. They planted trees and they also set fire to them to clear away the dead leaves so they would be easier to climb to collect the dates. (Fan Palms are fire tolerant.) However, it also appears that they might have been responsible for introducing them to the majority of locations within their “natural range” beyond the small area in Baja California where they originated. (See my Did Native Americans introduce Fan Palms to California?)

If this is the case, then the groves that remain are not the result of “natural dispersal” as that term is usually understood and are more akin to abandoned agricultural sites than to “wilderness.” What, then, is the best way to treat them? I mean, if we’re not going to allow tribes to maintain and use them as they did which is obviously the right answer? Burning is prohibited, as is harvesting and planting the fruits when the trees are on public land. Our current policy aims to protect the trees (which is understandable) but perhaps the actual result is neglect.

California Fan Palms are not the only trees that humans have moved around. In Asia, the “native range” of the Carpathian Walnut coincides with the route of the Silk Road. The distribution of food plants within the forests of the Amazon are anthropogenic. Polynesians brought plants with them as they made new homes on islands throughout the Pacific Ocean. In eastern North America, the “native ranges” of Black Walnut, Pawpaw, Persimmon, Chestnut, and Shellbark Hickory and other food plants are also the result of indigenous human influence. (h/t to Zach Elfers for this info.) They are all considered to be “in the right place” because that’s where they were before a particular calendar date.

Point being, ecosystems that we consider to be “wild” or plant ranges we consider to be “natural” are in many cases human-made or human-impacted. Some would go so far as to say that the very concept of “wilderness”—as in “untouched by humans”—is tantamount to indigenous erasure.

We are a plant-moving species, like many other animals. That settler-colonialism has wreaked havoc on the ecosystems of the Americas is all too clear but to conclude that all the introduced plants who live here now “don’t belong” because “we” brought them here is, I would argue, a step too far, much in need of nuanced examination. The idea that they should be eradicated purely on the basis of place of origin is not merely misguided, but dangerous, given the collateral damage that such efforts inevitably cause, such as disrupting beneficial relationships between native and non-native species that have since formed. Fortunately, the conversation does not need to be so limited.

“Novel Ecosystems” & Ecological Succession

Often, native plants are valorized and non-natives villainized in a reflexive manner that belies the facts on-the-ground. How well an introduced plant has integrated into its new setting is rarely considered by many people (though some invasion biologists do). Or the question of whether plants can become “native.”

“Novel ecosystems” are mixes of native and non-native species. Though formerly ignored by most researchers, they are now garnering more attention because it’s recognized that they operate like any other ecosystem, with their constituent species interacting and adapting and filling different roles just like happens anywhere else.

In California, approximately 1/3 of native butterfly species now use non-native plants as food sources and as egg-laying sites. The range of some of these butterflies has expanded as a result. (See: “Exotics as host plants of the California butterfly fauna“) This has been fortunate for the butterflies, since so much of the habitat that previously provided for them has been destroyed by human activity since 1769, through activities including agriculture, ranching, deforestation, mining, urban sprawl and—most recently—industrial-scale “green” energy installations. The butterflies are adapting to novel ecosystems.

Saltcedar/Tamarisk (Tamarix sp. and Russian Olive/Oleaster (Elaeagnus angustifolia) are oft-maligned as “invasive plants” that should be eradicated. But in the western United States, these two trees are now the third and fourth most frequently occurring woody riparian plants, and the second and fifth most abundant species along rivers. To kill them all would entail destroying a significant amount of healthy vegetation (with no small amount of collateral damage to other flora) and would incur an ecological cost. Their prevalence is due mostly to the thousands of dams that have disrupted most riparian areas in the West, making them less hospitable to the original natives like Cottonwoods and Willows. Novel ecosystems are emerging.

Fifty kinds of birds nest in Tamarisk, including the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, which is endangered because of habitat loss. At least 44 kinds of birds, as well as various native mammals, eat Russian Olives as winter hardy food. Given the prevalence the introduced trees now, and the dearth of the natives, many animals are now dependent on them. Spraying the trees with herbicides has not, and will not, change the fact the dams are responsible for the altered landscape, not the trees themselves.

At some point, do we recognize that the Tamarisk and the Russian Olive are de facto “native” even if they’re not de jure? For what it’s worth, all those birds have already cast their vote. Additionally, from a taxonomic perspective, hybridization among various introduced Tamarisk species have produced fertile offspring that may be declared a new species, Tamarix americana [reference]. Since this species is found only in the US, isn’t it “native” here?

Additionally, “novel” aspects might be temporary after the process of “succession” advances. “Succession” is a common ecological process in which the dominant flora of a landscape changes over time due in part to the ways that landscape is changed by the flora itself. So, after a disturbance—such as a landslide or the building of a road—the first wave of plants (which are sometimes called “pioneer species”) are often annuals that quickly fill the space. They will produce a profusion of flower that attract pollinators and seeds that feed animals. Such pioneers can be thorny, which is nature’s way of saying, “Keep out while I fix this!” A hallmark of this stage is the rebuilding fertility in the soil.

The annuals might be followed by shrubs, including berry bushes, which attract yet more animals, including birds. The scat left by these animals enriches the soil more. The bushes provide shelter for trees to germinate, and in time, the trees shade out the berries.

There are cases where disturbed landscapes “invaded” by non-native plants have been left untouched, and the exotics have ended up doing nothing more than fulfilling the role of pioneer species, and the area has returned to “natives” over time. So, when “invasives” are constantly beaten back in a given location, it’s possible that this interference is holding back the natural process of succession and ironically working against the intended goal of bringing back natives.

Novel ecosystems demonstrate nature’s inherent resilience. What we need to do is recognize them as ecologically legitimate and work with them from there. As time goes on, we’ll certainly have more opportunities.

Climate Change

According to National Geographic, “Half of All Species Are on the Move.” This is because, as the climate changes, so do ecosystems. With temperatures rising, species are moving further north or higher in elevation. As time goes on, this means that more and more species will migrate “outside their natural range” thereby becoming “non-native” or even—to some—“invasive.”

Those that can migrate, that is. Many plants will become, as wildtending guru Finisia Medrano used to say, “refugees without legs,” unable to flee fast enough and far enough to find safe haven. If that’s the case, then we must help them, Finisia repeatedly counseled.

The biologists call this “assisted migration” and it’s a topic that coming up more frequently as time goes on. Some of the strongest arguments against it come from the anti-“invasive” crowd, but many native plant lovers are in favor.

Does It Matter?

The term “native” can have utility; it tells you that a plant was well-adapted to a given place in a given time period because of the conditions that existed there then, and this can be helpful in understanding a species or an ecosystem. But it’s not an ancient, universal concept among all humans by any means, and ultimately it’s just a label of no account whatsoever to the big mover and shaker of life, Mother Nature.

Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Malibu, California: A model for grassroots opposition to pesticides

“How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brings the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?” – Rachel Carson

I am pleased to publish a guest article about a grassroots effort to reduce the use of pesticides in Malibu, California, a community of about 10,000 on the coast of Southern California.  Malibu is famous as the residence of Hollywood celebrities and executives and surfers attracted by 21 miles of beaches with world-class surfing conditions. 

City of Mallibu. Wikipedia – Creative Commons

The author, Kian Schulman, and her husband, Joel Schulman, are founding members of the Malibu-based nonprofit Poison Free Malibu, a group that has had much success protecting local wildlife, children and pets in the Santa Monica Mountains and throughout California by educating the public and policy makers about the dangers associated with pesticides.

I hope the impressive accomplishments of Poison Free Malibu will inspire readers to participate in such efforts in your community in 2025. 

Happy New Year!  Best wishes for a more peaceful 2025. 

Conservation Sense and Nonsense

Grassroots Power is a Strong Voice!

In the fight against harmful pesticides, the coastal community of Malibu, California is a model for the power of grassroots activism and persistent community engagement, which has significantly reduced the use of pesticides in Malibu. 

Chemical companies like Bayer (Monsanto), Dow, Syngenta, and others have expanded beyond agricultural markets, targeting “invasive” and “non-native” species in nature preserves with toxic pesticides. The Santa Monica Mountains surrounding Malibu are replete with “invasive species,” targets for eradication with herbicides, downplayed by claims of so-called Integrated Pest Management policies. 

The Santa Monica Mountains are wildfire prone. In December 2024, the Franklin Fire threatened the campus of Pepperdine University in Malibu, burned over 4,000 acres, multiple homes, and displaced many residents.  Various methods of fuels management are available, but herbicide is the primary tool because it is the cheapest method. I ask, “What is the price tag to our health and the entire ecosystem?”  

The Pesticide Problem

The impacts of pesticide exposure on our health are profound. Pesticide exposure has been linked to a rising tide of serious health problems, including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, reproductive failures, developmental disorders, and autism. (1)

Pesticides and other chemicals can persist in soil for decades, contaminating soil and watersheds with toxic breakdown products.  In 2021, Scientific American published an article about a meta-analysis of nearly 400 studies that examined 275 soil organisms and 294 different pesticides. In 70% of those experiments, pesticides were found to harm the organisms that are critical to maintaining healthy soils.  Tens of thousands of subterranean species of invertebrates, nematodes, bacteria and fungi are filtering our water, recycling nutrients, and helping to regulate the planet’s temperature.  The EPA, which is responsible for approving chemicals for the market, is not presently required by law to test the effects of chemicals on the soil. 

The widespread use of these poisons are also harming wildlife. Rodent poisons used to kill small rodents don’t stop there.  Other non-target animals are often killed as well, either by eating the bait directly or eating the poisoned rodents.  Many top predators, such as mountain lions and bald eagles, have been killed by rodent poisons that work their way up the food chain. 

Market size of rodenticides in the US, 2014 to 2025 (in million US dollars)

Malibu’s Transformative Journey

In 2012, local activists began investigating the city’s pesticide use, discovering a shocking reality. Malibu’s parks and public spaces were being treated with a cocktail of toxic chemicals, including glyphosate (RoundUp), 2,4-D, triclopyr (Garlon), pre-emergents and others, often applied in areas where children and pets play.

RoundUp being sprayed in a Malibu public park while child cycles nearby.

Protecting Wildlife

Poison Free Malibu was activated in 2012, after a mountain lion was found dead in a local park with rodent poison detected in the autopsy.  Reducing rodent poison exposure has always been one of our primary objectives.  All top predators of rodents are at risk of rodent poisoning:  “The vast majority of bald and golden eagles in the United States are contaminated with toxic anticoagulant rodenticides…” (2) 

Poison Free Malibu addressed this issue in a variety of ways:

  • We asked local businesses selling rodent poisons to quit selling them.  No stores in Malibu now sell rodent poisons.
  • We asked businesses and organizations to remove bait boxes from their premises. 
  • We approached 10 neighboring cities to suggest that they pass resolutions banning the use of rodent poisons in their communities.  Animals are on the move, so broader protections are needed for them.
  • We helped pass three state bills to prohibit the use of 3 specific rodent poisons in California.  Unfortunately, these laws have exceptions, including one for using rodent poisons on off-shore islands to kill rodents. The pesticide industry was quick to respond to the new restrictions by promoting other, still allowed but extremely dangerous rodent poisons such as bromethalin and cholecalciferol.  Both of these have NO antidote, endangering wildlife and pets. According to the National Park Service, bromethalin was detected in 10 out of 16 mountain lions tested in the Santa Monica Mountains from July 2020 to August 2022.
  • We helped to pass a Dumpster Lid Lock Ordinance in Malibu.  In both commercial and residential areas, this ordinance was key to eliminating rodent issues.

Changing Public Policy

As we learned about the extensive use of a wide range of pesticides in Malibu it became clear that a broader effort was needed.  We petitioned our city for an Earth Friendly Management Policy, which bans the use of all toxic chemical pesticides in EPA 1, 2, and 3 categories of toxicity.  The city now relies on organic solutions, environmental enrichment, and “Expel, Deter, and Repel” tactics.

There is a National Park and a State Park in Malibu that also use pesticides on our public lands.  We had to negotiate directly with those organizations that are not subject to our city policies.  Following numerous meetings with State and National officials, we reached an agreement to establish hand weed-pulling events. This initiative has proven highly successful.

Public Education

The support of the public is needed to achieve changes in public policy.  Educating the public about the dangers of pesticides is therefore an important part of our strategy:

  • We reached out to school systems, other local cities, and counties, to bring these issues to their attention. Many have adopted pesticide-free policies, most recently Ojai just on December 10, 2024.
  • We received grants from our city and county to help us with our outreach efforts, such as developing coloring books, distributing hundreds of yard signs, and putting up billboards throughout Los Angeles.

Not the end of the story

Despite these many important accomplishments, our work is never done.  Legislative hurdles to our progress exist because of opposition from various government agencies, such as the Wildlife Conservation Board, the Department of Pesticide Regulation, the Environmental Protection Agency, CalTrans, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture.  There is regrettable opposition from many non-profit organizations that champion the use of pesticides to kill so-called “invasive” species, such as the California Invasive Plant Council and the American Chemistry Council, a trade association representing manufacturers of chemicals.

Our work is never done, but the grassroots movement in Malibu proves that collective action can transform seemingly insurmountable challenges into opportunities for positive change.

Kian Schulman, RN, MSN
Director, Poison Free Malibu
Contact: PoisonFreeMalibu@gmail.com | 310-456-0654
Website: PoisonFreeMalibu.org

(1) “Wide Range of Diseases Linked with Pesticides,” Pesticides and You, Summer 2010

(2) https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2021/04/study-finds-eagle-populations-experiencing-widespread-rodenticide-exposure/

My transition from activist to observer

This is my last article of 2024, and the last for the foreseeable future.  However, I still welcome guest posts that are consistent with the mission of my website.  If you have a story to tell, please contact me at mildredtrees@gmail.com.

Clarification:  I published this article prematurely on November 28th in error.  I republish the article today to clarify my intentions.

Although I have accomplished little in 25 years of environmental activism, I can point to a few achievements that I am proud of. 

  • I was successful in getting the “invasiveness” of eucalyptus downgraded from “Moderate” to “Limited” by the California Invasive Plant Council.  There were a few specific issues that were deleted from Cal-IPC’s assessment of eucalyptus.  The assessment no longer claims that eucalyptus kills birds.  Cal-IPC also removed the claim that eucalyptus leaves are allelopathic, i.e., they do not emit a chemical that suppresses the growth of an understory.  However, these improvements in Cal-IPC’s assessment of eucalyptus had no apparent effect on the demands of native plant advocates to destroy all eucalyptus in California.
  • I am proudest of our achievements to improve pesticide applications by the supplier of our drinking water in the East Bay, EBMUD.  With the help of a video and a photo, a small team of collaborators convinced the leadership of EBMUD that their staff did not know how to apply herbicides.  The leadership of EBMUD deserves equal credit for this accomplishment because they listened and they acted.  EBMUD is now conducting annual training of its staff about proper application of pesticides, herbicide application notices are being posted, and an annual report of pesticide use is presented to the Board and posted on-line for the public to see.  As a result of these efforts, herbicide applications were reduced by one-third, but have since plateaued. 
  • When the SelecTree website published by CalPoly San Louis Obispo claimed that blue gum eucalyptus lives only 50 years, it became another tool nativists used to support their demands to destroy blue gums in California.  I was able to give CalPoly the evidence needed to disprove this inaccurate claim.  Blue gums have lived in California since the 1860s and many of the original plantations are still alive.  Eucalypts are known to live in Australia from 200-400 years.  It’s difficult to determine the age of eucalyptus because trees growing in mild climates such as ours do not have clear growth rings used to determine age.  SelecTree initially changed the lifespan estimate to 150 years, which was the maximum lifespan for the entire SelecTree database of trees in California.  Since then, SelecTree has deleted all lifespan estimates because they weren’t able to find reliable sources of this information.  The correction of blue gum lifespan on SelecTree relieved some of the pressure to destroy them. 
  • I also claim small credit for the final version of Oakland’s Vegetation Management Plan, which is a compromise with native plant advocates who wanted all non-native trees on public land in Oakland to be destroyed and replaced with native trees.  The consultant who wrote the plan also deserves credit for listening and reading studies I sent to him about the flammability of trees.  Non-native plants and trees are not inherently more flammable than native trees. We live in a Mediterranean climate in which vegetation is fire adapted and fire dependent.  It took 7 years and 4 revisions to reach a compromise that satisfied the nativists.  The plan will destroy all eucalyptus less than 31” in circumference on 2,000 acres of public land and 300 miles of roadside.  The plan will also use herbicides on public land where it has been prohibited since 1998, when herbicide spraying was confined to road medians.  Although the plan is destructive, its approval after 7 years of pointless delay will finally enable Oakland to mitigate fire hazards with fuels reduction without destroying all non-native trees on public land.

These were small victories and they were difficult to accomplish. I won’t bore you with a list of hundreds of my failed efforts to protect public lands from needless destruction.  My most recent failure was an appeal to California’s Wildlife Conservation Board, which is theoretically responsible for protecting California’s wildlife. Despite the effort of a small team of collaborators, the WCB granted another 10 years of funding for an eradication project that has killed over 50% of an endangered bird species in the San Francisco Bay after 20 years of spraying herbicides, destroying the bird’s habitat and its food. 

I hope these few achievements and multitudes of failures will help to convey why I am pulling back from my 25-year effort to defend our urban forest and our public lands.  In a word, it is unrewarding work.

Good sources of information about invasion biology and the “restoration” industry

I have 535 subscribers on Conservation Sense and Nonsense and over 1,000 followers on Meta (Facebook).  In addition, my articles on Conservation Sense and Nonsense have been read by over 500,000 people who found them with internet searches over the 15 years that Conservation Sense and Nonsense has existed. 

I intend to keep posting occasional news items to Facebook and I welcome my readers to follow me there.  I also encourage my readers to follow other sources of reliable information about the issues I have covered.  I leave the field in the good hands of those who still have the courage to fight what seems like a losing battle:

  • Beyond Pesticides is a reliable source of information about pesticides.  I recommend that you subscribe to BP’s Action Alerts that inform us of opportunities to engage with decision makers about new policy decisions regarding pesticides. 
  • For home gardeners looking for advice about creating gardens that are beautiful as well as respectful of the environment and the animals that live in our gardens, I recommend that you subscribe to Garden Rant.
  • For readers who love all plants, both native and non-native, I recommend the Substack of Kollibri terre Sonnenblume.  His articles are deeply researched, informative, and beautifully written.  His knowledge of plants far exceeds anything I have learned about plants because he works directly with them as an integral part of his life and he is an astute observer.

Right turn at the crossroads

After a long, bumpy trip to the crossroads of the 2024 presidential election, the American people made a hard right turn on Election Day.  Voters have re-elected President-elect Donald Trump and given him control of all branches of government with which to implement his agenda. 

As Trump approached the crossroads he also acquired some allies who will be influential in crafting his agenda.  Wunderkind Elon Musk, who is already a major government contractor in space exploration and telecommunications, is likely to influence and benefit from policies in those—and other—areas. Billionaire “tech-bros” have convinced Trump to promote crypto currency.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is likely to influence the future of our policies regarding health, such as the availability of drugs and vaccines. 

This is to say that although we can’t predict specific policy decisions, we can predict that there will be significant changes in the functioning of the federal government.  We know that Republicans have been trying for years to defund, if not eliminate, many federal agencies.  

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior have long been Republican targets for budget cuts.  And the US Supreme Court has collaborated with this effort by reducing the power of federal agencies to implement policies that aren’t specifically authorized by federal laws.

We should probably expect that federal funding for many so-called “restoration” projects will evaporate, such as the USFWS plan to shoot 500,000 barred owls in Western Forests or the USFWS plan to dump rodenticides on hundreds of off-shore islands to kill non-native animals.  Likewise, the theoretical ability of the EPA to evaluate new pesticides for access to the market is likely to end altogether, to the extent that regulation exists at all.

On the other hand, State funding of “restoration” projects is unlikely to decrease.  California voters have approved Proposition 4, which will provide $10 billion of bonds for water, wildfire, and land protection in California.  The federal government is expected to withdraw funding for ecological “restoration” while California state government is likely to replace the lost federal funding.

Becoming an observer

We are headed into a long period of radical change.  It is an opportunity to hunker down and watch the changes play out. That is my plan for the foreseeable future.

Although environmentalism had little explicit role in the rightward shift in American politics, it probably played a role on the margins.  The electorate’s rejection of environmentalism as a priority policy goal requires some deep reflection. 

Does environmentalism contribute to the political divide between urban and rural voters?

  • For example, urban environmentalists support the reintroduction of top predators, such as wolves, into rural communities, where they become predators of domesticated animals.  Rural communities resent that their livelihoods are threatened by decisions made by urban policy makers who are not impacted by the decisions they make. 
  • Proposition J in Sonoma County would have shut down many agricultural operations that raise animals.  Most of these agricultural operations are certified organic and they are central to the economy of Sonoma’s rural community. Proposition J was easily defeated by an agricultural community that could have been destroyed by an extremist version of environmentalism.  However, a similar Proposition DD in Berkeley passed narrowly in a community with a more diverse economy. 

Has environmentalism contributed to the high cost of housing and the growing homeless population?

  • The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club has a track record of suing to prevent the building of new housing.  The Chapter’s support for this agenda reflected the opinions of entrenched elected leaders who were recently displaced by a coalition of housing advocates.  One of the displaced leaders explained how this coup has changed the Chapter’s approach to new housing.  The changed leadership is now reflected in the Chapter’s political endorsements of housing advocates, such as State Senator Scott Wiener.
  • The insurance industry in California is in trouble.  Major insurance companies have left California.  Some have quit insuring homes.  The companies that remain have cancelled thousands of policies insuring homes. Premiums of the policies that remain have increased significantly and are expected to increase further.  California’s wildfires have increased the costs of the insurance industry and California has not allowed the insurance industry to anticipate increased risks of wildlife in setting premium prices for home insurance.  Insurance is required to finance new building and home buyers cannot get a mortgage without property insurance.  The 7-year delay of Oakland’s Vegetation Management Plan is an example of how extreme versions of environmentalism have handicapped fire hazard mitigation. 

Statement of Purpose

I am a moderate Democrat who voted for the Democratic candidate for president in 2024.  I am disturbed by the sudden and extreme lurch to the political right.  I also see it as an opportunity for all Americans to think deeply about how we reached this point.  I intend to do more listening and less talking.  I hope to find something more rewarding to do. 

I leave the field knowing that nativism in the natural world will be defeated eventually by evolution, as natural selection “chooses” the plants and animals capable of surviving in a radically altered climate.  Nativism in the natural world is ultimately a dead end.  Nature moves forward, not backward.  Activism, such as mine, will not successfully deliver that message to the ideologues who continue to destroy the plants and animals most likely to survive, but nature will, because nature always bats last. 

Thank you for your readership.  Best wishes for happy holidays and a more peaceful new year in 2025.

Invasion Biology: “We can do whatever we want”

Macaylla Silver discovered Conservation Sense and Nonsense on Facebook.  We instantly recognized one another as kindred spirits, battle scarred by our attempts to protect nature from pointless destruction in service of the ideology of invasion biology and the native plant movement it spawned. 

When confronted with the destruction of wild places we love, our reaction was very similar, and responses to our efforts were also similar.  First we turned to public policy for protection:  Are they really allowed to poison our public lands with pesticides to destroy harmless plants? With a few targeted “exceptions” to policy, the answer was always, “We can do whatever we want.”

Then we both decided the best course of action was to become experts about the “science” that is used to justify destroying harmless vegetation with herbicides.  And so, we took to the books and armed ourselves with the science that refutes invasion biology.  Once again, we hit the brick wall of “We can do whatever we want.”

And there Macaylla’s experience as an activist diverges with mine.  He has successfully stopped the poisoning of Leverett Pond (for the time being) by showing the neighbors of Leverett Pond with videos, the consequences of poisoning the pond. 

However, he concludes his story with the astute observation that stopping the destruction of Leverett Pond is unlikely to be the end of the story.  Life in the pond will continue to evolve, as it must.  As long as people continue to believe that evolution must be stopped, the futile attempt to prevent change will continue. Macaylla is hopeful that mistaken belief will fade.  I hope he is right.

We thank Macaylla for his efforts.  We wish him luck in preventing more herbicide applications in Leverett Pond.

Conservation Sense and Nonsense

“Let the Pond Be a Pond”

Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act was created for the protection of the state’s wetlands. The goals of the law are to prevent pollution, maintain habitats for plants and wildlife, and protect groundwater, public and private water supplies.

Our Town Bylaws in Leverett, Massachusetts also included a ban on the use of herbicides for any use outside of domestic and agricultural use since 1973.

There are five colleges in the area. The town is filled with highly educated academics and retired academics. Leverett is quite ecologically minded in my opinion, this hill town of 2,000 people.

Leverett Pond, circa 1860-1880, Erastus Salisbury Field.  Public domain.

One day back in 2018, I found that the large body of water at the town’s center, Leverett Pond, was under ecological attack. Somehow, some way, a handful of land abutters on the shallow side of the pond were trying to rid the pond of “noxious weeds.”  This included floating leaved Waterlilies and Watershield, plants such as rootless carnivorous plants like Bladderworts, submerged weeds like Coontail, Waterweed and Milfoils.  Even Cattails and other plants growing on the pond’s edges were considered for removal.

Act One:  Isn’t there a law against this?


I thought I could stop this. I thought once the town’s people knew what was happening they would be outraged. I thought the state would step in, prevent the further destruction and maybe even fine the people who were poisoning the area and dredging large sections, all so they could in their words “have crystal clear water to look at.”

I thought it would be easy.  I have never been so wrong in my life. 

It was five years of continual meetings, letter writing, publishing newspaper letters and articles, and a large portion of the town thinking that somehow I was just trying to cause trouble. Or maybe they didn’t think I knew what I was talking about. Sure, I saw the destruction, but I was misinformed. They believed in their intent and factual details of why they were on a campaign of eradication.

The details of destruction used to convince the town’s Conservation Commission, Select Board, and state agencies came from two retired professors, neither with a degree in Environmental Ecology. Their plan contained the curveball of being designed to show off knowledge of several obscure subjects unknown to nearly everyone:

1.Limnology: The science of fresh water systems
2.Pesticides and their application to aquatic environments
3.The botany and identification of aquatic plants

Act Two:  Countering Pseudoscience with Science


While the wordsmithing of the two PHDs had merit and flow, my own research quickly showed that they had only a surface understanding of subjects.  In order to counter their statements and proposals, I decided that I would deeply learn all I could about limnology, pesticides and the life of aquatic plants. I would become an expert, the old fashion way: I would purchase books. Lots of them. I read extensive science based articles on pesticide families, collecting hard data and staying away from anything that was too opinionated. 

People began to realize that I knew more than expected, so much more that it was easy to forget that the vocabulary was rarely understood. I presented myself on equal footing with proponents of the project.  I asked the community and its policy makers to consider that dumping herbicide on the pond might not be the best thing, creating aporia, lingering doubts that this handful of lakefront owners may have hidden motives.

Act Three:  Invasion Biology at Work

Then came the videos. I purchased two kayaks, an underwater camera, and I used cameras I had purchased for bird photography. The videos contrasted the “before and after” of the years of degradation in 2019, 2020 and 2022. The videos got the state involved.   The state permits for dredging that the project applied for in 2010 were never received. This meant that the project had to reapply for permits for any further work after 2020. 

Up to this point, I thought I was fighting against ignorance and arrogance from a few landowners who came late to the pond’s available real estate and bought lots that were undesirable because of their shallowness and large amounts of aquatic flora and fauna. I would have been in heaven if I bought such an area, but they looked to “improve it.”  So they had set out to “manage” the water’s surface.

The two professors contacted a professional who specialized in finding ways around what was allowed by the Wetlands Protection Act. Leverett’s Conservation Commission reviewed the law and found that there were no ways around the law because the plant abundance, oxygen levels and fish life were all healthy, vibrant. Graphs, data, reams of older regurgitated documentation pointed to the same conclusion I had reached: Let the pond be a pond.

To show the reason why no further “management” permits would be issued to continue the project, the head of the Conservation Commission submitted his own reason: the project violated Town Bylaws. Clearly. 

Then it happened. Three members of the Conservation Commission had what I thought were very strange ideas about conservation.  One had a pesticide license. One looked at the pond for recreation purposes rather than an interest in environmental issues. Another felt strongly about eradicating plants that they couldn’t identify if asked.  One said, in defense of using pesticides, the blithe motto “If you can choose it, you can use it,” while the other two nodded in agreement. “We have to stop the growth of these plants before they destroy the pond. It will reach a tipping point where there will be no return,” said one, with great conviction.  “It could in the future make the fishery less healthy,” said another, without a shred of data.  I had no idea why such people would be put on such a Commission. 

The Conservation Commission voted three to two to allow the project to continue for another five years. The state admonished but did not intervene. I had been angry at the professors and their allies for their lack of concern. Now the Conservation Commission had let me, and the pond, down.

The decision of the Conservation Commission gave the pond abutters cover, so they could remove all the plants they wanted. The Commission gave herbicide sprayers a welcome mat in Leverett to earn big money for the applicators and companies that make a variety of toxins.

The decision gave the Conservation Commission, not its local intended use, protecting wetlands and freshwater, but a zealous conviction that they were acting on a world saving mission.  It was Invasion Biology at work, masquerading as “restoration,” AKA the “native plant movement.” Invaders needed to be destroyed, regardless of recklessness, collateral damage, complete destruction.

So destroying acres of plant life, to get at one plant, that is okay now.  They were Crusaders with a capital “C.” And like all crusades…it rarely ends well.

Act Four:  Pictures are worth thousands of words

In 2022, the herbicide sprayers came back, on a very windy day, on an airboat. It appeared that the targeted areas were being sprayed, yet large amounts were misted and blowing in the air as the airboat itself churned the water’s surface. It was, in a word, sloppy.

From my kayak, I videoed the spraying of the pond with herbicides from an air boat: the before, during, and the after of floating masses of dead vegetation. I got the resulting video shown to many. It had few words, an eerie soundtrack that suited the unreal transformation, from living beauty to full degradation, death and decay.  (see below)

Leverett Pond after herbicide spraying in 2022. Entire video available HERE.

For the next year, and the next they stopped spraying. Sure, they hired an aquatic harvester to clean around the area of their docks, but that was it.

In 2024, the promoters of the deadly project were apologetic. They promised that “no herbicides” would be used. Even an attempt to hand pull marginal plants failed.

The pond will continue to respond to changing climate conditions, as it must.  Plants are likely to return and the fear-mongers are likely to demand their destruction again.

Fear of so-called “invasive species” is being used as an excuse to use herbicides in the futile attempt to freeze ecosystems that replicate historical landscapes.  As climate conditions continue to change, the fantasy that humans can prevent evolution is likely to fade.   Perhaps the restoration movement will begin to realize the folly of trying to sort plants and animals into two simplistic groups:  native vs. non-native.

As Charles Mackay said in a book written in 1841, ” Men, it is said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

Macaylla Silver
Leverett, Massachusetts
Contact:  artargentia@gmail.com

Defining “Success” so “Success” can be achieved

I always attend the conferences of the California Invasive Plant Council (Cal-IPC) and the California Native Plant Society because I feel obligated to understand their viewpoint so I can accurately report on the controversies of invasion biology.  Ironically, the more I learn about the native plant movement and the “restoration” industry it spawned, the less sense it makes.  The October 2024 Symposium of the California Invasive Plant Council has provided more evidence that attempts to eradicate well-established non-native landscapes and replace them with native plants are futile.

Tricks of the “restoration” trade

Every Cal-IPC Symposium has wrestled with the question of whether or not it’s possible to convert non-native grassland to native grassland. A study of 37 grassland “restorations” in coastal California addresses that question. (1)  It’s really quite simple.  All you need to do is define success as 25% native plants after “restoration” and limit post-project monitoring to 5 years or less:  “Monitoring is done ≤5 years after project-implementation, if at all, and rarely assesses the effects of management practice on project success.” 

It also helps if public land managers in charge of the projects won’t allow the academic researcher to enter the land to conduct a survey of the results.  43% of the projects that were studied were “statutory,” i.e., they were mandated by laws such as county general plans or legally required mitigation for projects elsewhere that Environmental Impact Reports determined were harmful to the environment.  30% of the managers of the statutory projects would not allow the academic researcher to survey their projects. 

It is also easier to achieve success if the project goal is downgraded mid-project as were many of the statutory projects because they weren’t able to meet the original goal.

Project managers can also reduce their risks of failure by planting a small number of native species that are particularly easy to grow:  “Ninety-two percent of restoration managers preferentially use one or more of the same seven [native] species.”  Seven projects planted only one native species. 

According to the study, the result of planting only a few hardy native plants is “biotic homogenization.”  Call it what you will, but this risk-averse strategy is inconsistent with claims that the goal of native plant restorations is to increase biodiversity. 

The study did not ask project managers about the methods they used to eradicate non-native plants or plant native plants.  The study tells us nothing about the methods that were used or whether or not some methods were more effective than others.  Since results of the projects were all very similar, should we assume that the methods that were used didn’t matter? 

The presentation of this study concluded with this happy-face slide. (see below) It looks like a cartoonish marketing ad to me:

Harmless aquatic plants being pointlessly eradicated

A USDA research ecologist stationed at UC Davis made a presentation about the most effective way to kill an aquatic plant with herbicides, but that wasn’t the message I came away with. 

Jens Beets told us about a species of aquatic plant that is native to the East and Gulf coasts of the US, but is considered a “noxious weed” in California, solely because it isn’t native.  He said the plant is considered very useful where it is native.  (see below)

Where Vallisneria americana is native, it is considered a valuable plant for habitat restoration because it is habitat for vertebrates and invertebrates and it stabilizes soil and water levels.  The canvasback duck is named for this plant species because it is preferred habitat for the native duck that is found in California during the winter.

 Vallisneria americana looks very similar to other species in the genus considered native in California.  For that reason, native species of Vallisneria have been mistakenly killed with herbicide because applicators didn’t accurately identify the target plant as native.  Jens Beets recommended that genetic tests be performed before plants in this genus are sprayed with herbicide.

This story probably sounds familiar to regular readers of Conservation Sense and Nonsense.  The story is identical to the pointless and futile effort to eradicate non-native species of Spartina marsh grass in the San Francisco Bay.  The species being eradicated in California is native to the East and Gulf coasts, where it protects the coasts from extreme storm surges and provides valuable habitat for a genus of bird that is plentiful on the East Coast, but endangered in California.  The 20-year effort to eradicate non-native Spartina has killed over 50% of the endangered bird species in the San Francisco Bay. 

Throwing good money after bad

Because the hybrid is indistinguishable from the native species of Spartina on the West Coast, 7,200 genetic tests have been performed in the past 12 years before hybrid Spartina was sprayed with herbicide. Taxpayers have spent $50 million to eradicate Spartina over 20 years.  Recently, California state grants of $6.7 million were awarded to continue the project for another 10 years.  A portion of these grants is given to the California Invasive Plant Council to administer the grants.

Plants are sprayed with herbicide because they aren’t native, not because they are harmful.  Even if the target species is needed by birds and other animals, it is still killed and animals along with it.  The target species looks the same as the native species and only genetic testing can identify it is as a non-native.  The non-native is the functional equivalent of the native.  It is only genetically different because natural selection has adapted it to the conditions of a specific location. 

Pesticide regulation in the US is a hit or miss proposition

The final session of the symposium was a carefully orchestrated apologia for herbicides, a defensive tirade that suggested Cal-IPC believes its primary tool is in jeopardy.  Two presentations were made by employees of regulatory agencies.  Their assignment was to reassure the public that pesticides are safe because they are regulated by government agencies. 

The fact that many countries have banned pesticides that are routinely used in the US does not speak well for our regulatory system.  America’s pesticide regulators rarely deny market access to new pesticides.  A recent change in policies of California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation made a commitment to the continued use of pesticides for another 25 years. 

In 1996, Congress ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to test all pesticides, used on food, for endocrine disruption by 1999. The EPA still doesn’t do this today. Twenty-five years later, the EPA has not implemented the program, nor has it begun testing on 96% of registered pesticides.  In 2022, an organization that represents farm workers sued the EPA to conduct the legally mandated evaluation of chemicals for endocrine disruption.   The lawsuit has forced the EPA to make a commitment to conduct these evaluations of chemicals for hormone disruption.   

The Cal-IPC presenters got some badly needed push back from attendees.   One attendee informed the audience that all the testing of herbicides is bought by the manufacturers, not the regulators who don’t do any testing.  Another attendee pointed out that herbicides have not been evaluated for the damage they are doing to the soil, damage that makes it difficult to grow native plants in the dead soil.  The “pesticide regulator” agreed with those observations.

Fire safety or native plant restoration?

The Interim Deputy Director of the Laguna Canyon Foundation was the final presenter for the Symposium, speaking on a Friday afternoon at 4:30 pm, when there were less than 100 attendees left of the 690 registrants.  His presentation was about the blow back that his organization gets from the public about herbicide applications.  Criticism of herbicides escalated after a wet year that increased vegetation considered a fire hazard.  This photo (below) is an example of the visible effects of fuels management by Laguna Canyon Foundation using herbicides.

It seems likely that a fuels management project was selected for this presentation because it’s easier to justify herbicide use for fuels management than for eradicating harmless plants solely because they aren’t native. 

I recently supported Oakland’s Vegetation Management Plan that will use herbicides for the first time on 300 miles of roadsides and 2,000 acres of public parks and open space in Oakland.  Previously, herbicide applications were only allowed on medians in Oakland.  I tracked the development of the Vegetation Management Plan for 7 years through 4 revisions to avoid nativist versions of fuels management such as leaving dead thatch after herbicide applications on grassland or destroying non-native trees, while leaving highly flammable bay laurel trees behind or destroying broom, while leaving more flammable coyote brush behind.

However, using herbicides for the sole purpose of killing non-native plants is much harder to justify.  The irrational preference for native species has put us on the pesticide treadmill. Every plant species now targeted for eradication with herbicides should be re-evaluated, taking into consideration the following criteria:

  • Is it futile to attempt to eradicate a plant species that has naturalized in an ecosystem?
  • Will the attempt to eradicate the plant species do more harm than good?
  • Is the targeted plant species better adapted to current environmental and climate conditions?
  • Is the targeted non-native plant making valuable contributions to the ecosystem and its animal inhabitants?

If these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered, the bulls-eye on the targeted plant should be removed. Limiting the number of plants now being sprayed with herbicide is the only way to reduce pesticide use. If the plant isn’t a problem, there is no legitimate reason to spray it with herbicide.

Pot calls kettle black

The Cal-IPC presentation was a detailed criticism of the public’s complaints about herbicides used in their community.  The intention of the presentation was to arm herbicide applicators with defenses against the public’s complaints.  Herbicide applicators were encouraged to recognize these arguments (below) and participate in the “education” of the public about the righteousness of their task.

The presenter then showed a series of slides making specific accusations, such as these:  (see below)

Those who object to the pointless destruction of nature can also cite distortions and misrepresentations of facts (AKA lies) by those who engage in these destructive projects;

  • Nativists fabricated a myth that eucalyptus kills birds to support their demand that eucalyptus in California be destroyed.  There is no evidence that myth is true. 
  • Nativists also fabricated a myth that burning eucalyptus in the 1991 firestorm in the East Bay cast embers that started spot fires 12 miles away from the fire front.  There is no evidence that myth is true.
  • Nativists exaggerate the success of their projects by setting a low bar for success, conducting no post-project monitoring, and restricting access to their completed projects.  
  • The EPA justified the dumping of rodenticides on off-shore islands by inaccurately claiming that the rodenticides do not end up in the water, killing marine animals.  There is ample evidence that island eradications have killed many marine animals because rodenticide lands in the water when applied by helicopters. 
  • USFWS justified the killing of 500,000 barred owls in western forests by claiming they are an “invasive species.”  In fact, barred owls migrated from the East to the West Coasts via the boreal forests of Canada.  These forests were not planted by humans and have existed since the end of the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago.  The arrival of barred owls on the West Coast was a natural phenomenon.  Barred owls are therefore not “invasive species.” In a rapidly changing climate, many animals must move to survive.
  • Nativists claim that most insects are “specialists” that require native plants.  That claim is a gross exaggeration of the dependence of insects on native plants, which are sometimes confined to a family of plants containing thousands of both native and non-native species. 
  • Pesticide applicators also complain about “personal attacks.”  They are not alone.  I (and others) have been called “nature haters,” “chemophobes,” and “climate change deniers.”  Pesticide applicators feel abused.  So do I. 

I could go on.  The list of bogus claims of the superiority of native plants and animals is long and getting longer as more and more public money is available to conduct misnamed “restorations.”  Suffice to say, there is plenty of misinformation floating around invasion biology and most of it is used to defend destructive “restoration” projects.  The war on nature is also a war of words. 

(1) ­Justin Luong, et.al., “Lessons learned from an interdisciplinary evaluation of long-term restoration outcomes on 37 coastal grasslands in California.” Biological Conservation, February 2022.

The program for the Cal-IPC 2024 Symposium is available HERE.  Abstracts and presentation slides have not yet been posted to the website, but they will eventually be available to the general public. 

Dana Milbank: The evolution of a native plant advocate

Dana Milbank is a political columnist for the Washington Post.  Like many Americans, Milbank moved his family from urban Washington D.C. to a derelict farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, seeking refuge in nature from urban confinement imposed by the Covid pandemic.  So began his war on nature, dictated by native plant ideology.

In a series of columns, WaPo readers observed how his battle against non-native plants developed:

  • The first installment of his “restoration” saga described the over-grown property that he believed he was obligated to tame:  “an entire civilization of invasive vines and weeds had cruelly exploited the inattention [of previous elderly owners].”  The vines were “murdering defenseless native trees.”   He hired a crew to clear brush, until the cost challenged his budget.  Then he bought equipment and tried to do it himself.  He concluded that he could not “restore order” to his land without using herbicides.  Even then, he was doubtful of ultimate success:  “Clearly, I won’t be defeating these invaders.  At best, I’ll battle them to a temporary truce, holding them at bay until I lose the will to fight them.”  Like many city-slickers, Milbank has an unrealistic vision of what nature looks like when allowed to take its course.
Kaweah Oaks Preserve, Visalia, CA.  November 2013.  California Wild Cucumber, also called manroot (Marah fabacea), climbing over a native valley oak.  Both native and non-native plants can be “invasive.” 
  • In the second episode of Milbank’s battle plan, deer were his target:  “I will be wielding my gun against a brutal foe—one that destroys our forests, kills our wildflowers, sickens humans and threatens the very survival of birds, mammals, insects and amphibians.  I am becoming a deer hunter.”   Where top predators, such as wolves and bears, have been eliminated by humans, there is an over-population of deer who browse vegetation, depriving other animals of the food and cover they need.  Again, Milbank has his doubts about the effectiveness of hunting deer on his property:  “I can’t pretend that my hunting will make a dent in the deer population.” 
  • After taking Virginia’s Master Naturalist Program, Milbank’s third episode expresses his regrets as a gardener:  “I’ve been filling my yard with a mix of ecological junk food and horticultural terrorists” and he warns urban and suburban gardeners that their gardens are “dooming the Earth.”  He takes aim at cultivars in general and many specific species of introduced plants.  Conservation Sense and Nonsense explains why most of these accusations are exaggerated, if not, patently false. 
  • In Milbank’s column, “How I learned to love toxic chemicals,” he expresses frustration about how hard it is to eradicate non-native plants:  “I was losing, badly, to the invasive vines and noxious weeds…I’d cut them back, but they would return in even greater numbers.”  He fully embraces the use of herbicides to escalate his war on nature:  “I have become a reluctant convert to chemicals.”  He acknowledges that glyphosate is toxic, but he claims that the cut-stump application method he uses is “surgical.” He wears protective clothing, including a respirator, which is not required by the product label or California law for glyphosate applications.  He is encouraged by Doug Tallamy, who calls herbicides “chemotherapy.”  Conservation Sense and Nonsense explains why herbicides are doing more harm than good to the environment and everything that lives in it.  

Throwing caution to the winds

In the latest installment of Milbank’s crusade against non-native plants, he tosses caution about herbicides aside. He hires a drone to spray a hayfield with glyphosate in preparation for creating a meadow of native grasses and forbs:

“To save the birds, I brought in this big bird: a 10-foot-square, Chinese-made drone with 8 propellers, capable of carrying 10 gallons of fluid, in this case glyphosate, to kill the grass in my hayfield. (It might seem counterintuitive to douse a field in herbicide to help nature, but conservationists broadly endorse the practice.)”

Herbicides are often sprayed from drones to eradicate non-native plants considered “invasive.” Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spray-drone-used-to-treat-a-patch-of-invasive-Lepidium-latifolium-on-Suisun-Marsh-The_fig3_372867398https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spray-drone-used-to-treat-a-patch-of-invasive-Lepidium-latifolium-on-Suisun-Marsh-The_fig3_372867398

Milbank has abandoned his cautious use of herbicide and is now aerial spraying from a drone 30 feet over his head, while he watches, without wearing any protective gear:

“Shanley, in shorts, sneakers and fishing shirt, plopped in a lawn chair in the shade of my barn and, using a control pad with two joysticks, sent the drone into the sky… In a moment, the beast was airborne and, from a height of about 30 feet, spraying death on my hayfield. It sprayed the fescue. It sprayed the Johnson grass. It sprayed the foxtail. It returned, flew over the barn — and sprayed me with glyphosate. Programming error. “Sorry about that,” Shanley said. My eyes burned for two days.”

If he had been wearing safety goggles, as required for glyphosate applicators in California, he would have been spared. Milbank has the right to poison himself, his land, and the animals that live on his land.  Although the applicator may be breaking laws (he would be in California) by not wearing any protective equipment, Milbank isn’t doing anything illegal. 

If I weren’t reading his story in the mainstream media with a national following, I wouldn’t be writing about what he’s doing. I’m writing about Milbank’s dangerous use of herbicides because he has a big audience and his audience displays their ignorance of the dangers in over 1,400 comments.

The reader comments on Milbank’s latest article are uniformly positive, as were comments on his earlier installments about his war on nature.  Most comments are short expressions of unqualified praise, such as “You are doing holy work,” or “God bless you.”

A handful of comments (including mine) express concern about the indiscriminate use of glyphosate.  The few dissenting readers are blasted by Milbank’s supporters.  Some of their responses betray ignorance of herbicides: 

  • “It’s not Round Up; it’s a safe herbicide.”  In fact, Milbank says he’s using glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Round Up.
  • “He said nothing about dousing. It looks like a selective approach. In some cases, there is no practical alternative.”  In fact, Milbank says explicitly that he’s spraying 10 gallons of herbicide 30 feet over the ground from an aerial drone.  Does that sound selective?

The reader comments claiming that glyphosate is harmless brought to mind a recent article about the army of paid apologists for pesticides.  The pesticide industry, in collaboration with the US government, has “established a ‘private social network’ to counter resistance to pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa, Europe and other parts of the world, while also denigrating organic and other alternative farming methods. More than 30 current government officials are on the membership list, most of whom are from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).”

The most common defense of Milbank’s herbicide spraying was that it only needs to be done once, with an occasional follow up prescribed burn.  Milbank doesn’t actually claim that herbicide only needs to be sprayed once, but his supporters wish to believe that.  Here are a few actual attempts to convert non-native grass to native grass that illustrate that such a conversion is unlikely to be possible, even after a persistent, long-term attempt.

Dunnigan plot in August 2011, after 9 years of effort, described below. Source: https://www.ecoseeds.com/road.test.html
  • A team of academic scientists at UC Davis attempted to convert non-native grasses to native grasses on 2 acres of roadside.  At a cost of $450,000, they tried every available method (herbicides, plowing, plug planting, mowing, burning) for 9 years.  When they ran out of money, they declared success, which they defined as 35% native grasses that they expected to last for no more than 10 years. (See above)
  • The Invasive Spartina Project in the San Francisco Bay has been trying to eradicate non-native spartina marsh grass with herbicide for 20 years at a cost of $50 million.  The project was recently granted another $6.7 million to continue the project for another 10 years.  The project has killed over 600 endangered birds (Ridgway rails) in the San Francisco Bay because of the loss of habitat. 
  • One of the presentations at the 2022 conference of the California Native Plant Society was about a 20-year effort at the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve to convert non-native annual grassland to native grassland, using 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.”
This map of the San Francisco Bay shows where herbicides have been sprayed on non-native marsh grass for 20 years. It is a BIG project!

Anyone with a little knowledge of how herbicides work, would know that glyphosate kills only the top-growth of an actively growing plant.  Glyphosate won’t kill the seed bank of Milbank’s hayfield, which he says has been growing there for decades, perhaps as long as 100 years.  That’s why glyphosate must be applied annually as the seed bank continues to produce new top-growth annually.  If Milbank plants native plants after the initial spraying, they will be killed by subsequent spraying because glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, which kills whatever it touches, both native and non-native plants. Perhaps Milbank knows this, but his readers don’t.  It might explain why Milbank is not particularly optimistic about the prospects of achieving his goal of a native meadow:  “Will it work? I have no idea. It could become the field of my dreams…Or it could be a costly and time-consuming failure.”

Only two of Milbank’s readers mention the damage that herbicide does to the soil, making future plantings even less likely to survive.  One of those comments is from a farmer who has reason to know this important information: 

“The number of things you screwed up, from possibly destroying that old man’s life, family, and farm, to messing up the winter food supply with a cascading effect for farms in your region, to obliterating a small farm, were appalling until you got to the part where you killed your soil microbes with poison. You actually killed topsoil with the idea you were going to grow healthy plants! If I were to write a caricature of a [sub]urbanite transplanted to a farming community and with the best intentions absolutely destroying everything, couldn’t have done any better than you have with your self-congratulatory actions. Farms are complex systems embedded in even more complex natural systems. Farms interact with and depend on each other. It’s where food comes from. When you kill one, you hurt all the others. You also hurt animals and plants that depend on the farm. Creating a farm, and a farming community, is hard. Destroying one is easy, and you just did it.”

This comment brought to mind a recent study about the damage that pesticides do to the soil.  A meta-analysis of 600 studies “…published in the journal iScience found that soil pollution was the leading cause of declines among organisms living underground. The finding has surprised scientists, who expected farming intensification and climate change to have much greater impacts.”  The co-author of the study said, “Above ground, land use, climate change and invasive species have the greatest impact on biodiversity, so we assumed that this would be similar below ground,” Victoria says. “Our results show, however, that this isn’t the case. Instead, we found that pesticide and heavy metal pollution caused the most damage to soil biodiversity. This is worrying, as there hasn’t been a lot of research into the impacts of soil pollution, so its effects might be more widespread than we know.”

A familiar story

Dana Milbank’s plans to transform a derelict farm into a native plant garden are the mirror image of the native plant movement in the San Francisco Bay, the region where I live and have observed failed native plant “restorations” for over 25 years:

  • Native plant “restoration” projects in the Bay Area began over 25 years ago based on the mistaken assumption that if non-native plants were destroyed, native plants would magically emerge without being planted.  In other words, nativists originally believed that the only obstacle to native plants was the mere existence of non-native plants.
  • After 25 years of applying herbicides repeatedly, there are no more native plants in the San Francisco Bay Area than there were 25 years ago.  The soil has been poisoned by herbicides and climate change and associated drought makes native plants progressively less well adapted to current environment conditions.
  • Despite the obvious failure of these “restoration” attempts, they continue unabated because vast sums of public money are available to keep them going.  Dana Milbank will run out of money eventually, but the public coffers are never empty.  Milbank is 56 years old.  When he gets too old to do the work or when he dies, whatever he has accomplished will quickly revert to its previous unmanaged state.  Nature will prevail and his brief conceit that humans can control nature will be history. 
  • The public is unaware of how much herbicide is used by public land managers because application notices are not required for most pesticides.  In California, for example, if the manufacturer of the pesticide claims that the pesticide will dry within 24 hours, application notices are not required by law.  Glyphosate is one of many herbicides for which application notices are not required.  Some land managers post application notices anyway, but many do not.  The public is also ignorant of the damage that pesticides do to the environment and everything that lives in it. 

Defining “Success” So That “Success” Can Be Achieved

I always attend the conferences of the California Invasive Plant Council (Cal-IPC) and the California Native Plant Society because I feel obligated to understand their viewpoint so I can accurately report on the controversies of invasion biology.  Ironically, the more I learn about the native plant movement and the “restoration” industry it spawned, the less … Continue reading “Defining “Success” So That “Success” Can Be Achieved”

I always attend the conferences of the California Invasive Plant Council (Cal-IPC) and the California Native Plant Society because I feel obligated to understand their viewpoint so I can accurately report on the controversies of invasion biology.  Ironically, the more I learn about the native plant movement and the “restoration” industry it spawned, the less sense it makes.  The October 2024 Symposium of the California Invasive Plant Council has provided yet more evidence that attempts to eradicate well-established non-native landscapes and replace them with native plants are futile.

Tricks of the “Restoration” Trade

Every Cal-IPC Symposium has wrestled with the question of how to convert non-native grassland to native grassland. A study of 37 grassland “restorations” in coastal California answers that question. (1)  It’s really quite simple.  All you need to do is define success as 25% native plants after “restoration” and limit post-project monitoring to 5 years or less:  “Monitoring is done ≤5 years after project-implementation, if at all, and rarely assesses the effects of management practice on project success.” 

It also helps if public land managers in charge of the projects won’t allow the academic researcher to enter the land to conduct a survey of the results.  43% of the projects that were studied were “statutory,” i.e., they were mandated by laws such as county general plans or legally required mitigation for projects elsewhere that Environment Impact Reports determined were harmful to the environment.  30% of the managers of the statutory projects would not allow the academic researcher to survey their projects. 

It is also easier to achieve success if the project goal is downgraded mid-project as were many of the statutory projects because they weren’t able to meet the original goal.

Project managers can also reduce their risks of failure by planting a small number of native species that are particularly easy to grow:  “Ninety-two percent of restoration managers preferentially use one or more of the same seven [native] species.”  Seven projects planted only one native species. 

According to the study, the result of planting only a few hardy native plants is “biotic homogenization.”  Call it what you will, but this risk-averse strategy is inconsistent with claims that the goal of native plant restorations is to increase biodiversity. 

The study did not ask project managers about the methods they used to eradicate non-native plants or plant native plants.  The study tells us nothing about the methods that were used or whether or not some methods were more effective than others.  Since results of the projects were all very similar, should we assume that the methods that were used didn’t matter? 

The presentation of this study concluded with this happy-face slide. (see below) It looks like a cartoonish marketing ad to me:

Harmless aquatic plants being pointlessly eradicated

A USDA research ecologist stationed at UC Davis made a presentation about the most effective way to kill an aquatic plant with herbicides, but that wasn’t the message I came away with. 

Jens Beets told us about a species of aquatic plant that is native to the East and Gulf coasts of the US, but is considered a “noxious weed” in California, solely because it isn’t native.  He said the plant is considered very useful where it is native.  (see below)

Where Vallisneria americana is native, it is considered a valuable plant for habitat restoration because it is habitat for vertebrates and invertebrates and it stabilizes soil and water levels.  The canvasback duck is named for this plant species because it is preferred habitat for the native duck that is found in California during the winter.

 Vallisneria americana looks very similar to other species in the genus considered native in California.  For that reason, native species of Vallisneria have been mistakenly killed with herbicide because applicators didn’t accurately identify the target plant as native.  Jens Beets recommended that genetic tests be performed before plants in this genus are sprayed with herbicide.

This story probably sounds familiar to regular readers of Conservation Sense and Nonsense.  The story is identical to the pointless and futile effort to eradicate non-native species of Spartina marsh grass in the San Francisco Bay.  The species being eradicated in California is native to the East and Gulf coasts, where it protects the coasts from extreme storm surges and provides valuable habitat for a genus of bird that is plentiful on the East Coast, but endangered in California.  The 20-year effort to eradicate non-native Spartina has killed over 50% of the endangered bird species in the San Francisco Bay. 

Throwing good money after bad

Because the hybrid is indistinguishable from the native species of Spartina on the West Coast. 7,200 genetic tests have been performed in the past 12 years before hybrid Spartina was sprayed with herbicide. Taxpayers have spent $50 million to eradicate Spartina over 20 years.  Recently, California state grants of $6.7 million were awarded to continue the project for another 10 years.  A portion of these grants are given to the California Invasive Plant Council to administer the grants.

Plants are sprayed with herbicide because they aren’t native, not because they are harmful.  Even if the target species is needed by birds and other animals, it is still killed and animals along with it.  The target species looks the same as the native species and only genetic testing can identify it is as a non-native.  The non-native is the functional equivalent of the native.  It is only genetically different because natural selection has adapted it to the conditions of a specific location. 

Pesticide regulation in the US is a hit or miss proposition

The final session of the symposium was a carefully orchestrated apologia for herbicides, a defensive tirade that suggested Cal-IPC believes its primary tool is in jeopardy.  Two presentations were made by employees of regulatory agencies.  Their assignment was to reassure the public that pesticides are safe because they are regulated by government agencies. 

The fact that many countries have banned pesticides that are routinely used in the US does not speak well for our regulatory system.  America’s pesticide regulators rarely deny market access to new pesticides.  A recent change in policies of California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation made a commitment to the continued use of pesticides for another 25 years. 

In 1996, Congress ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to test all pesticides used on food for endocrine disruption by 1999. The EPA still doesn’t do this today. Twenty-five years later, the EPA has not implemented the program, nor has it begun testing on 96% of registered pesticides.  In 2022, an organization that represents farm workers sued the EPA to conduct the legally mandated evaluation of chemicals.   The lawsuit has forced the EPA to make a commitment to conduct these evaluations of chemicals for hormone disruption.   

The Cal-IPC presenters got some badly needed push back from attendees.   One attendee informed the audience that all the testing of herbicides is bought by the manufacturers, not the regulators who don’t do any testing.  Another attendee pointed out that herbicides have not been evaluated for the damage they are doing to the soil, damage that makes it difficult to grow native plants in the dead soil.  The “pesticide regulator” agreed with those observations.

Fire safety or native plant restoration?

The Interim Deputy Director of the Laguna Canyon Foundation was the final presenter for the Symposium, speaking on a Friday afternoon at 4:30 pm, when there were less than 100 attendees left of the 690 registrants.  His presentation was about the blow back that his organization gets from the public about herbicide applications.  Criticism of herbicides escalated after a wet year that increased vegetation considered a fire hazard.  This photo (below) is an example of the visible effects of fuels management by Laguna Canyon Foundation using herbicides.

It seems likely that a fuels management project was selected for this presentation because it’s easier to justify herbicide use for fuels management than for eradicating harmless plants solely because they aren’t native. 

I recently supported Oakland’s Vegetation Management Plan that will use herbicides for the first time on 300 miles of roadsides and 2,000 acres of public parks and open space in Oakland.  Previously, herbicide applications were only allowed on medians in Oakland.  I tracked the development of the Vegetation Management Plan for 7 years through 4 revisions to avoid nativist versions of fuels management such as leaving dead thatch after herbicide applications on grassland or destroying non-native trees, while leaving highly flammable bay laurel trees behind or destroying broom, while leaving more flammable coyote brush behind.

However, using herbicides for the sole purpose of killing non-native plants is much harder to justify.  The irrational preference for native species has put us on the pesticide treadmill. Every plant species now targeted for eradication with herbicides should be re-evaluated, taking into consideration the following criteria:

  • Is it futile to attempt to eradicate a plant species that is deeply entrenched in plant communities?
  • Will the attempt to eradicate the plant species do more harm than good?
  • Is the targeted plant species better adapted to current environmental and climate conditions?
  • Is the targeted non-native plant making valuable contributions to the ecosystem and its animal inhabitants?

If these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered, the bulls-eye on the targeted plant should be removed. Limiting the number of plants now being sprayed with herbicide is the only way to reduce pesticide use. If the plant isn’t a problem, there is no legitimate reason to spray it with herbicide.

Pot calls kettle black

The Cal-IPC presentation was a detailed criticism of the public’s complaints about herbicides used in their community.  The intention of the presentation was to arm herbicide applicators with defenses against the public’s complaints.  Herbicide applicators were encouraged to recognize these arguments (below) and participate in the “education” of the public about the righteousness of their task.

The presenter then showed a series of slides making specific accusations, such as these:  (see below)

Those who object to the pointless destruction of nature can also cite similar distortions and misrepresentations of facts (AKA lies) by those who engage in these destructive projects;

  • Nativists fabricated a myth that eucalyptus kills birds to support their demand that eucalyptus in California be destroyed.  There is no evidence that myth is true. 
  • Nativists also fabricated a myth that burning eucalyptus in the 1991 firestorm in the East Bay cast embers that started spot fires 12 miles away from the fire front.  There is no evidence that myth is true.
  • Nativists exaggerate the success of their projects by setting a low bar for success, conducting no post-project monitoring, and restricting access to their completed projects.  
  • The EPA justified the dumping of rodenticides on off-shore islands by inaccurately claiming that the rodenticides do not end up in the water, killing marine animals.  There is ample evidence that island eradications have killed many marine animals because rodenticide lands in the water when applied by helicopters. 
  • USFWS justified the killing of 500,000 barred owls in western forests by claiming they are an “invasive species.”  In fact, barred owls migrated from the East to the West Coasts via the boreal forests of Canada.  These forests were not planted by humans and have existed since the end of the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago.  The arrival of barred owls on the West Coast was a natural phenomenon.  Barred owls are therefore not “invasive species.” In a rapidly changing climate, many animals must move to survive.
  • Nativists claim that most insects are “specialists” that require native plants.  That claim is a gross exaggeration of the dependence of insects on native plants, which are sometimes confined to a family of plants containing thousands of both native and non-native species. 
  • Pesticide applicators also complain about “personal attacks.”  They are not alone.  I (and others) have been called “nature haters,” “chemophobes,” and “climate change deniers.”  Pesticide applicators feel abused.  So do I. 

I could go on.  The list of bogus claims of the superiority of native plants and animals is long and getting longer as more and more public money is available to conduct misnamed “restorations.”  Suffice to say, there is plenty of misinformation floating around invasion biology and most of it is used to defend destructive “restoration” projects.  The war on nature is also a war of words. 

(1) ­Justin Luong, et.al., “Lessons learned from an interdisciplinary evaluation of long-term restoration outcomes on 37 coastal grasslands in California.” Biological Conservation, February 2022.