Important "Invasive Species" information for the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks and for the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee
 
To all members of the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks, and also the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources:
 
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Subcommittee on National Parks
 
364 Dirksen Office Building
 
Washington, DC 20510
 
202-224-4971
 
Fax: 202-228-0539
 
 
and all other members to whom this will be submitted at your website email forms:
 
Republican Subcommittee Members
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Democratic Subcommittee Members
 
Daniel K. Akaka (Ranking Member) [email protected]
 
 
 
 
 
Pete V. Domenici (ex officio member) http://domenici.senate.gov/contact/contactform.cfm
 
Jeff Bingaman (ex officio member) http://bingaman.senate.gov/Contact_Me/e-mail_form.htm 
 
Regarding:
 
SP-24 Use of Partnerships for Managing Invasive Species in and around National Parks
 
Official Short Title: Invasive Species
 
Sponsors: 
 
States: None
 
Subcommittee: National Parks 
 
Status:  08-09-2005 
 
Oversight hearing by Subcommittee on National Parks, in Hilo, Hawaii, to gather information regarding invasive species. Specific areas of interest include challenges and needs of the National Park Service, existing legislation, legislative solutions, and use of partnerships for managing invasive species in and around National Parks.  (37)  
 
 
Important "Invasive Species" information for the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks and for the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee
 
To all members of the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks, and also the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources:
 
"Invasive Species" is Junk Science
 
 
August 11, 2005
 
The 470-word version of my commentary (below) has been published at least 51 times, to date.
 
"Invasive Species" is Junk Science
 
 
 
August 4, 2005
 
 
470 words
  
 
"Invasive Species" is Junk Science. That's right, and I can prove it.
 
"Invasive Species" can be almost any plant or animal -- deemed "native" or "non native" -- that "invades" a place it is not welcome. The newly sprouting layer of bureaucracy, regulation, and government graft stems, not from a desire to curb "invasives," but from what is seen as a golden opportunity to tap into many more taxpayer dollars, while further regulating taxpayers and draining property rights.
 
How can this be, you ask? The media is screaming about "invasive species" from every corner, as though it were a foreign army landing upon our shores. It isn't.
 
There are already in place regulations and statutes governing the use of noxious weeds and other undesirables. All that need be done is to enforce those laws and revisit species in different areas as they wear out their welcomes or cross the line from "ornamental" to obnoxious. Some species of flora and fauna are welcome in one area and dreaded in another. That is no excuse to forbid them all.
 
Congress recently struck all "invasive species" language from the Transportation Bill, SAFE-TEA. Why? Such onerous wording would have made all highway projects fair game for those seeking to stop them by merely claiming "invasive species" were present. Learning about the junk science embodied by the "invasive species" frenzy saved America from another layer of unnecessary and duplicitous regulatory imprisonment.
 
Sound familiar? This is the big brother to "endangered species," that thirty-something year mess that has gutted logging, ranching, commercial fishing, etc., in America and made private property rights little more than a doormat for litigation-happy "environmental" groups who say they're "protecting" or "saving" this or that "poster species." Many species dubbed "endangered" actually aren't, but are simply used to further something increasingly recognized as a rush to acquire vast areas of land and control of water.
 
Those most incensed about "protecting" and "restoring" "habitat" wax utterly silent when massive conflagrations burn our mismanaged, stagnating forests by the millions of acres -- which also incinerate "endangered" flora and fauna. Where is the hue and cry when countless "Smokey Bears" lose their lives in the face of these fires? Such "protection" of "habitat" is something that most plants and animals certainly don't need. In fact, these out of control wildfires actually endanger much more than they "help." Junk science strikes again.
 
I make no claims to be an expert on "invasive species" or science, but my daily research has for years provided knowledge that "something's wrong" with the "best available science" being used to strip property rights from honest citizens. When "best available" bears the aroma of last week's fish wrapper, junk science has likely been used.
 
Perhaps the real "invasive species" are those driving such agendas to create more wealth and power. Please consider.
 
 
Julie Kay Smithson  
213 Thorn Locust Lane
London, OH 43140
740-857-1239
 
 
Julie Kay Smithson's website is the number one unsponsored property rights research website in the world, with well over three million first-time visitors and return visitors numbering almost one hundred million. Her research seeks to educate and empower the reader with the tool of knowledge. To visit the "Invasive Species," ESA and Property Rights buttons at her site directly: http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/invasivespeciesfrms.htm
http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/esaframes.htm
http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/proprightsfrms.htm
 
It has even been posted here:
 
http://www.protectyourwaters.net/news/display.php?id=3116 Points to:  http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?9de1d6ba-9133-4bd0-85cc-d1b1c2f468fd Posted as "News: What's Hot" at the "STOP AQUATIC HITCHHIKERS! - New ANS Task Force Public Awareness Campaign." Here's what's at the bottom of all their web pages: "The Stop Aquatic Hitchhikers web site is part of the ANS Task Force public awareness campaign and is sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Coast Guard." The "Contact Us" part of their website is "still being developed" -- i.e., they cannot be contacted. ANS, by the way, stands for "Aquatic Nuisance Species," but at their home page, they narrow that definition: "Clarification of Terms: For the purposes of this campaign and the related materials, Aquatic Hitchhikers are defined as non-native, harmful aquatic plants, animals or microscopic organisms that can readily be transported to other waters via popular recreational activities. Also, different terms will be used interchangeably throughout the campaign to describe aquatic hitchhikers. These terms include: aquatic nuisance species, ANS, aquatic invasive species and non-native, harmful aquatic species. Campaign sponsors use these multiple terms to facilitate a better understanding about the issue and to assist with the ease of your reading." Also at this website/page is a definition of Recreational Activities: Boating, Fishing, Swimming, Waterfowl Hunting, SCUBA Diving or Snorkeling, Windsurfing, Seaplane Operations, Personal Watercraft Use, Recreational Bait Harvesting. Source: http://www.protectyourwaters.net This is also at the ANS home page: "Thanks to the U.S. EPA for developing the initial Task Force web site."
 
I ask that you consider -- carefully -- ANY legislation that accepts the replacement of "noxious" with "non-native" or alien, or makes "native" a synonym for "beneficial" and "non-native" a synonym for "invasive" or bad.
 
No such wording should be included in any legislation, when "noxious" already covers this issue without resorting to the specious and false pairing of "non-native" with "invasive species."
 
There are many beneficial species (think Ivy League colleges, ground covers to prevent soil erosion, the flowering cherry trees of Washington, D.C., which are decidedly NON-native, etc.), including the gamut of economic sensibility and sensory delights found in plants and animals (think French poodle, Siamese cat, English walnut, Arabian horse, day lilies, Asiatic lilies, and so much, MUCH more) that do not stand up to the false definition of "native." The species content of international shipping ballast water is already well-covered by "noxious species" legislation.
 
U.S. Senator Michael DeWine ("R"-OH) is using junk science to promote unnecessary regulation overlays using "invasive species" wording in proposed legislation. I ask that you not follow his lead, but champion instead and UTILIZE the "noxious" wording already in place and simply awaiting use.
 
One notable paragraph of related interest:
 
A few years ago, Sen. DeWine also obsessed on seeking to make homeless a 223,692-acre area of Ohio's best farm ground that has been peerlessly farmed by Amish, Mennonite and other farmers for two hundred years -- ostensibly to "save" us from "urban sprawl" by installing a federal wildlife refuge by using the false premise that we had "possible" "habitat" for the allegedly "endangered" "Indiana bat." While we were successful in stopping that onslaught, the same seven-score list of "partners" that have called us everything from "political footballs" to "holdouts for the highest bidder" continue their campaign to rid this beautiful, fertile and abundantly producing farm country of us by switching "lead agencies" to the EPA and the lead "Act" to the Clean Water Act. We don't have "impaired waters" here and it is utterly Wrong to promote that falsehood, yet we are still subjected to voucher-signing, self-proclaimed "environmentalists" and "conservationalists" from urban counties and colleges who keep telling us that we "need" their expertise -- while they tout 1,500-foot unmowed, untended and unkempt "buffers" from All streams and watercourses, including Manmade drainage ditches for our hydric soils, and including Intermittent streams that have moisture in them for just two or three months per year. These out-of-area "instant experts" even call little whipstitches of streams that one can easily step across "navigable waters"! The only boat that could navigate these "navigable waters" is the TidyBowl boat! Yet, we are still plagued by these two-legged and very much "invasive species." We don't come to the cities and tell them how to landscape their yards or window boxes. We know our work well; if we did not, the land would long ago have been stripped of its ability to grow food and other sustenance.
 
Creating another totally unnecessary layer of regulation built upon the ever-shifting sand of "native / non-native" or "invasive species" is subjecting American voters to nothing more than illusory freedom. Don't do it, folks. It's not only bad for the vast majority, it's also wrong to its very core.
 
The short version, which to my knowledge remains unpublished, follows below. Your comments, questions, etc., are encouraged and welcomed!
 
Sincerely,
 
Julie Kay Smithson
 
=====
 
 
"Invasive Species" is Junk Science
 
 
 
August 4, 2005
 
 
88 words
 
 

"Noxious species” describes any species that "invades" an unwelcome place. 

 

Shouted from every corner, “invasive species” are portrayed as a foreign army landing upon our shores. They aren't.

 

"Invasive Species" is Junk Science. 

 

Congress recently struck all "invasive species" language from the Transportation Bill because highway projects would have become fair game simply by claiming the presence of "invasive species.”

 

Current regulations already govern noxious species. Something's wrong with "best available science" being used to reinvent noxious weeds and expand "invasive species" to include everything that's not "native."

 

 

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Official -- but inaccurate and misleading -- Definitions:
 
 
Invasive Species - An alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm, or harm to human health. An alien species includes, with respect to a particular ecosystem and species, its seeds, eggs, spores, or other biological material capable of propagating that species that is not native to that ecosystem (Executive Order #13112). http://www2.srs.fs.fed.us/strategicplan/view_and_submit_comment.asp?ID=52
 
Native Species - Species of the plant and animal kingdom indigenous to the plan area or assessment area (Proposed Planning Rule, Section 219.36, August 2000). http://www2.srs.fs.fed.us/strategicplan/view_and_submit_comment.asp?ID=52