Fwd: Importation of Plants for Planting; Establishing a Category of Plants for Planting Not Authorized for Importatio

James Frelichowski butterflyamaryllis@yahoo.com
Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:57:40 PDT
Chestnut blight,
asian longhorn beetle
various nasty fishes from other countries
water hyacinth
that tall grass that is choking out cattail marshes
kudzu
gypsy moth
1 million weeds that consumers and farmers must yank out or spray.
prickly pear cactus and rabbits in Australia
on and on and on....
 
I would trade these for a little more caution in importing and exporting stuff

James Frelichowski
 

--- On Sat, 7/25/09, totototo@telus.net <totototo@telus.net> wrote:


From: totototo@telus.net <totototo@telus.net>
Subject: Re: [pbs] Fwd: Importation of Plants for Planting; Establishing a Category of Plants for Planting Not Authorized for Importatio
To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Saturday, July 25, 2009, 11:02 AM


On 24 Jul 2009, at 15:27, Tony Avent wrote:

> You point out the absurdity of such a regulation.  If this was in place, 
> we would not have thousands of plants that we enjoy today from impatiens 
> to lantana.  The best models miss 40% of the plants.  Any intelligent 
> scientist will tell you that it is impossible to predict invasiveness 
> for each habitat within each ecological region.  I had a meeting a 
> couple of years ago with one of the scientists developing this and we 
> had this same discussion.  Off the record, he admitted that it couldn't 
> work, but he said that his superiors were demanding it, based on the 
> rants from radical groups such as the Nature Conservancy, who has taken 
> an ethnic cleansing stand on this issue.   Everyone needs to call USDA 
> Aphis and their legislatures before it is too late.

Sounds to me that the whole regulation can be challenged because has no 
scientific basis for the classification. Thus it becomes an arbitrary 
regulation, a category in bad odor these days.

As for "plants in cultivation", it should be pointed out that all plants listed 
in Bailey's "Manual of Cultivated Plants", the various editions of Hortus, and 
held in the Bailey Hortorium's index of nursery catalogues (which though 
possibly no longer maintained, has historical interest) should be included 
automatically. One could argue that any plant listed in any major seed exchange 
- SRGC, AGS, NARGS - should also be viewed as "in cultivation."

Likewise there are such books as Rehder's "Handbook of Woody Plants" (I've 
garbled the title) and Bailey's "Cultivated Conifers" that should automatically 
be included, as well as all current nursery & seed catalogues.

I also suggest that rather than resign from the Nature Conservancy, more people 
should join and work to reverse its position - a position which is probably due 
to a few monomaniacs infiltrating the upper echelons of the organization.


-- 
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate
on beautiful Vancouver Island

http://maps.google.ca/maps/…





      


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