Thanks Michael, for the reminder. It will continue to be necessary to be reminded and to continue our input for many, many years, I suspect. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Mace" <mikemace@att.net> To: <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Friday, November 26, 2010 11:25 PM Subject: Re: [pbs] Weedy bulbous plants > Folks, > > I wrote a message to the list last July summarizing the "whitelist" > situation in the US. If you're new to this discussion, you might want to > check it out: > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/old.php/… > > A couple of thoughts... > > I agree that the import regulations in the US are unreasonably eroding our > ability to practice our hobby. > > And I agree that bureaucracies tend to be, well, bureaucratic. > > But in this particular case, I don't think we can put most of the blame > for > the regulations on the bureaucrats. The US Congress *ordered* the USDA to > put controls on potentially invasive plants. It's written into a law. > The > USDA has moved slowly on implementing that law, and in many cases has > tried > to modify it to minimize its impact on our hobby. There have also been > some > amazing behind the scenes cases in which a few involved people from the > gardening societies have worked with the USDA to prevent major mistakes > (the > save that I'm aware of was the potential banning of the entire genus > Moraea > from the US after Homeria was merged into Moraea). > > The "bureaucrats" have been listening to us (when we've bothered to lobby > back) and have been trying to accommodate us. But we're late to the > party, > and in most cases we're getting outshouted. > > The people pushing the whitelist in the US are the native plant societies, > some academics, and their allies like the Nature Conservancy. They are > very > well organized, and many of them are amazingly strident. They are the one > who pushed through the original legislation requiring import restrictions, > and they've been lobbying the USDA (and threatening lawsuits) trying to > enact the most restrictive regulations possible. > > I do think we should be very careful about what we label a weed, but I > don't > think we need to worry too much about our wiki being used as a source for > banning plants. Unfortunately, the whitelist regulations as they were > being > structured the last time I checked would rely on peer-reviewed scientific > articles to evaluate invasiveness. That sounds like a good approach, but > some of those peer-reviewed articles make scientific guesses at > invasiveness > by looking at factors like the native climate of a bulb and how many seeds > if it sets. So if it grows in a climate similar to some part of the US, > and > if it sets a lot of seeds, it could be assumed to be invasive even if all > of > us testify that in reality it isn't. > > On the other hand, if a species is shown to already be present in the US, > it > will be exempted from the whitelist. So I think one of the most useful > things we can do on the wiki is document what we're already growing here. > > If you live in the US and don't like the regulations, tell your > congressperson, and participate in the public comment opportunities when > new > regulations are proposed. And if you belong to a native plant society, > tell > it to back off. > > If you don't bother to do these things, then look in a mirror before you > blame anybody else for the new regulations. > > Mike > San Jose, CA > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/