7/28/08 FRIEND OR FOE?

Monday, 7:30 AM. 56 degrees, wind NW, dead calm. The channel is glassy. The skies are blue and hazy, and the barometer predicts rain.
Invasive plants are becoming a big issue in the community. The DNR has had a team visit Bayfield for several years in a row, doing demonstrations of chemical eradication of Polgonatum cuspidatum, “elephant ears” in local parlance. This plant (those pictured are eight feet high, and create a virtual cane break) was introduced by the USDA for erosion control in the dust bowl ‘30’s, along with kudzu (“the vine that ate the South”) and other plants, mostly Asiatic in origin. Many of these, while doing their erosion control job admirably, have become noxious weeds, and are targeted for control or elimination by state or federal agencies. The dilemma is: if the plants are eliminated, what will happen to the eroding lands they have stabilized? There have already been such questions asked by Bayfield property owners, and battle lines are being drawn between those who see the plants as useful or benign and those who see them as foreign invaders to be eliminated. There is also the nagging question of the environmental hazards posed by the poisonous herbicides to be used, which is a legitimate concern. Our “elephant ears” were planted in the local ravines after a disastrous 1942 flood, and they do hold the banks in place. Trouble is, few people alive today are familiar with the flood except through grainy old photographs.
As volunteer city forester and weed commissioner I am sort of in the middle of a growing controversy, which won’t be easy to resolve because the facts and the science cut both ways. There are many similar issues, on a much larger scale, and what is most needed is a common sense, cost-benefit analysis of each. But common sense, unfortunately, is sorely lacking in contentious ecological issues. Wish us luck!