From Coast to Coast, Weeds Sow Seeds of Disruption

A nation of Johnny Appleseeds has turned America’s environment into a big shop of horrors.

Yellow starthistle is consuming California; mile-a-minute is dining on the Northeast. Kudzu has wrapped itself around the South. Weeds of all types and sizes are hitchhiking on planes, cars, shoes and in the digestive systems of birds and mammals.

Every backyard gardener already knows what they’ve discovered in this high alpine park: There’s no stopping weeds. They’ve invaded farms, nature preserves, swamps and cities.

The cost is translated into $30 billion a year in crop losses, dead or diseased livestock, choked waterways, fires, allergy attacks, displaced wildlife and frustrated gardeners.

Environmental groups and government agencies have been slow to identify the threat, but campaigns have begun to eradicate the weeds.

“The hardest thing about noxious weeds is making people understand before things get out of control that there is a threat,” said biologist Carol Beidleman of Estes Park, who has helped build a cooperative weed-control agreement with Rocky Mountain National Park.

Visitors have approached park workers to complain when they pull out the invasive Dalmatian toadflax. It has yellow, snapdragon-like flowers and is prettier than some of the native plants it is replacing.

The spread of weeds started innocently enough, with explorers and pioneers bringing familiar plants to a new homeland. Benjamin Franklin brought the Chinese tallow to America. The dandelion came from France. Spanish missionaries carried plants to California in the 1700s.

Today, 5,000 of the 22,000 plants in the United States are from other countries, according to a Cornell University report. The report says that 98% of the nation’s food comes from introduced species such as wheat, rice, cattle and other livestock.

Many of the most noxious imported weeds were introduced for erosion control, landscape restoration, biological pest control or to beautify gardens.

At Rocky Mountain National Park, which is an international biosphere reserve, 110 of the 1,020 plants are now nonnative, said park resource management specialist Jeff Connor.

“The park is still pristine, or more so than other places. At the present time, though, it is not a success story because we still have a couple noxious weeds that are expanding. We don’t have the resources to stop them,” Connor said.

Complicating the issue is simply defining weeds.

St. John’s wort, now sought by naturopaths, is a weed that biologists rip out of the park, Connor said.

“A rose would be a weed in Yellowstone,” said Craig McClure, Connor’s counterpart at Yellowstone National Park.

Eliminating unwanted plants is proving much more difficult than imagined. Americans have tried herbicides, insects that eat weeds, controlled fires and yanking them out by hand.

In Florida, waterways are becoming clogged with hydrilla, a plant used to dress up goldfish bowls. The state has spent hundreds of millions controlling weeds, especially aquatics, but it is not claiming victory.

“With proper funding we are able to control it so it doesn’t get worse,” said Bill Torres, the state’s invasive-plant boss.

Still, there’s hope.

In New Mexico, officials have taken back the Middle Rio Grande River banks in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge from tamarisks in a project that has become a model for other areas in the Southwest. The cost for removing them has been as high as $500 to $800 an acre. The removal of tamarisk, also known as saltcedar, helps make way for native cottonwoods.

“We’re doing the work the river used to,” said refuge biologist John Taylor.

Farmers control weeds in some cases with smother plants, which grow over the weeds and deny them the sunlight they need to survive.

The trick to weed control “is to pick your battles,” said Eric Lane, Colorado’s weed coordinator.

“We try to eradicate a weed like leafy spurge in areas where it is rare and draw the line where it is common. Eradications done on a small level are easier and cheaper,” he said.

Rich Sacchi of Klamath Falls, Ore., knows firsthand how difficult it is to deal with a weed.

In 1988 Sacchi, who owns an excavation business, bought a ranch that had been abandoned by its owners because leafy spurge, a Eurasian herb prized for its yellow flowers, made it impossible to run cattle. He was told that for $65,000 he could eradicate the weed with herbicides.

“It’s a tough weed. Its roots go 22 feet deep and 20 feet wide. I’ve spent over $100,000, and it won’t go away. I went before the county weed board and told them, ‘You take care of it. I quit,’ ” he said.

For several years he has brought in goats to eat the weed, but the weed still comes back.

“If a man could make a dime on goat meat,” he said, “I might be able to make this work.”