How the Government Got in Your Backyard

by Jeff Gillman

  Government Policy

  Even before Thomas Jefferson advocated moving useful plants from one place to another, plants were being outlawed because of the damage they could cause. As early as 1726, a law was enacted in Connecticut banning barberries because they were associated with wheat stem rust. Then, in the late 1800s, many states started to restrict the importation of plants to prevent dangerous diseases from hurting their crops. At the national level, the 1912 Plant Quarantine Act gave the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) the authority to regulate the import and interstate transportation of nursery stock and other plants that could carry pests and diseases. This act overrode the earlier importation laws drafted by many states. Since then, Congress has expanded APHIS’s responsibilities and enforcement tools. The 1931 Animal Damage Control Act gave APHIS control over populations of wild animals; the 1939 Federal Seed Act gave them the power to regulate importation of seeds that could contain noxious weeds; the 1957 Federal Plant Pest Act allowed APHIS to inspect, seize, quarantine, or destroy nonnative organisms that could damage native plants or other natural resources; and the 1974 Federal Noxious Weed Act expanded APHIS’s authority to stop the introduction and spread of harmful, nonnative weeds. These laws make APHIS a very powerful agency with the authority to do just about anything conceivable to protect us from foreign plants and animals.

  APHIS spends roughly half of its resources attempting to prevent invasive species from entering the United States and the other half on eradicating pests that are already here. It uses three major tools to control the spread of invasive species. First, and perhaps most importantly, it issues permits for the importation or interstate transportation of numerous types of organisms that are potentially threatening to native species. The permits cover nursery stock, seeds, fruits and vegetables, timber, cotton, and cut flowers, as well as protected plants, such as orchids, and threatened and endangered plant species. The use of these permits should, theoretically, keep unwanted species out.

  Second, APHIS has developed “pest lists” of organisms that are quarantined. These pests cannot be moved through importation or interstate transportation. APHIS also develops strategies for controlling the pests in the wild and for restoring natural native habitats for the organisms. The pest lists include insects and mites, mollusks, nematodes, plant diseases, and weeds. The federal noxious weed lists cover aquatic and wetland, parasitic, and terrestrial weeds. It can be found online at http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/weeds/downloads/weedlist2006.pdf.

  Third, APHIS also participates in border inspections to prevent organisms on its lists from entering the country. Its primary role is not to provide personnel to do the inspections, but rather to train U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents to identify items on the lists at airports and border crossings. APHIS does have two thousand inspectors of its own, but with fifty thousand ships, one million aircraft, and tens of millions of travelers seeking entry into the United States every year, the task before them is daunting. Put another way, APHIS has the capacity to inspect about 2 percent of the cargo entering the United States. (All border agencies combined inspect about 5 percent of U.S. imports.) Even with its limited resources, APHIS intercepts more than one million potentially harmful plant materials and tens of thousands of insects and other pests each year. Global travel is easier than ever for both humans and the pests that plague us, which makes stopping invasive species increasingly difficult. Organisms can come along for the ride in packing crates, ballast water, and scrap material without APHIS, or anyone else for that matter, knowing they are there—unless an inspector just happens to inspect the right thing on the right day.

  For newly introduced pests that can potentially be eliminated, the federal government (usually in the form of APHIS) takes action that can sometimes be very effective. The Asian longhorned beetle is the target of such government work. A serious pest of hardwood trees, it infested regions in and around New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts in the late 1990s and 2000s. Though this pest has not yet been completely eradicated, there is little doubt that its numbers have been drastically reduced by rapid government intervention—removing infested trees, cutting down nearby trees that could harbor the pest, and using chemical treatments. Similarly, the plum pox virus, which affects peaches, plums, and related fruits in Europe, was identified in Pennsylvania in 1999 and was also controlled. Certainly there are other pests that have made it here successfully, but in recent years, our government has generally been able to move fast enough to prevent any major catastrophe.

  Environmentalist critics contend that APHIS is overly focused on the contents of containers—the plants and animals that someone is purposely trying to ship into the United States—rather than the shipping materials themselves on which the “free riders” travel. Two major forest pests that found their way to the United States in the 1990s, the Asian longhorned beetle and the emerald ash borer, are both thought to have hitched a ride on packing materials shipped from somewhere in Asia. Though APHIS now requires more care in the treatment of pallets and other shipping materials, enforcement is not particularly strict and not every container can be checked. Concern about the intentional importation of harmful cargo has only increased since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Security experts have been specifically concerned about the potential for terrorists to transport microbes (for example, foot-and-mouth disease) into the country to damage food supplies.

  Recent changes in the law have been inspired by the zebra mussel infestation in the Great Lakes in the late 1980s. Zebra mussels are originally from Russia and probably hitchhiked their way here on a ship. These mussels grow in dense masses and can clog pipes and orifices. They can crowd out other mussels and other native organisms, and so are very disruptive to natural ecosystems wherever they are introduced. In response to this emerging problem, Congress created the 1990 Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act. It retained APHIS’s authority as the primary agency enforcing rules on invasive species, but it also gave the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Coast Guard the authority to regulate the ballast water that is carried by ships and in which zebra mussels and other aquatic species have often been transported.

  This more protective legislation has been a long time coming. The first species to be introduced to the shores of the United States from Europe many years ago were probably earthworms and other soil-dwelling creatures that were stowaways in ballast tanks on ships. (Many of the earthworms now in the United States are not native, particularly those in the northern portions of the country, where the glaciers from the last ice age removed them from the soil.) Congress went further in the 1996 Invasive Species Act, developing a framework for international negotiations to prevent the spread of nonnative species in ballast water. Though the framework was developed specifically for addressing the zebra mussel, APHIS has used it as a model in working with foreign countries to identify and stop the spread of other invasive species by preventing them from leaving the host country.

  In 1999 the arrival of the West Nile virus spurred another initiative on invasive species. This virus is carried by birds and then spread to humans through mosquitoes that have bitten infected birds. It can cause brain swelling in the elderly, which may lead to death, though it is not generally considered fatal to others. President Clinton responded to the outbreak of West Nile virus by issuing an executive order that established the National Invasive Species Council (NISC) to develop recommendations to improve cooperation between federal agencies, state agencies, and foreign governments on invasive species. NISC was also charged with documenting and monitoring the effects of invasive species in the United States. The council includes representatives from the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Interior, State, Transportation, Treasury, and the EPA. NISC issued a “National Management Plan” in January 2001. This plan emphasized that the only effective method of addressing invasive species was to stop them from entering the United States, and recommended tha
t prevention should be the priority of U.S. policy. For species that do reach the states, the plan recommended immediate eradication of the invader and strategies for dealing with long-established invasive species.

  The Noxious Weed Control and Eradication Act of 2004 recognized APHIS’s personnel limitations and its reliance on state and local government agencies and private organizations as its eyes and ears for identifying and controlling invasive species. The act focused on attempting to improve coordination between these agencies by providing financial grants to state and local governments or to other “weed management entities” (only Congress could come up with that name!) for projects to fight invasive species.

  Control of imports and exports to prevent the introduction of potentially harmful species is handled by APHIS at the federal level, while many different state institutions may be involved in controlling noxious and invasive plants, usually the state’s agriculture or natural resources department. Control of invasive species that have established themselves is mostly a state issue. States decide which plants are problematic in their own localities, and often draw distinctions between invasive plants and noxious weeds, considering noxious weeds worse than invasive species. Some states require homeowners to control plants that are considered noxious weeds (for example, North Dakota and Minnesota require private and public landowners to control Canadian thistle), while plants that are considered invasive species (like buckthorn) are simply restricted in terms of their transplant or sale. Some localities provide help to homeowners in getting rid of weeds. For example, in Billings, North Dakota, the Landowners Assistance Program will actually provide herbicides at a reduced cost to help control noxious weeds. If you’re interested, you can check out the differences between your state’s list of invasive and noxious plants and the lists of other states online at http://plants.usda.gov/java/noxiousDriver. New England states tend to be the most aggressive about dealing with invasive and noxious species. In Connecticut, selling sycamore maple, white poplar, yellow iris, Russian olive, and many other species is banned, meaning that they cannot be moved, sold, purchased, transplanted, cultivated, or distributed. (We do think that you’re still allowed to look at them, as long as you don’t admire their beauty!)

  The Political Dynamics

  Unlike many of the other policies discussed in this book, the policy debates surrounding invasive species have not been terribly contentious. Few people are going to take the side of invaders or pests who destroy crops, endanger native species, and devalue land. Most of the criticism of the policies is that they are not aggressive enough: the government doesn’t spend enough resources combating invasive species, it spends too much time studying potentially harmful organisms and is too slow to list them, and it doesn’t do enough to coordinate across multiple federal agencies and among federal, state, local, and international agencies. The complaint that the federal government should do more, do it more quickly, and should ride herd on other authorities can be heard regarding just about any policy one can think of. In the case of invasives, there is a difference between interest group involvement in the politics of the more aggressive attempts to prevent importation of harmful organisms and in the politics of controlling invasive species that are already here.

  The highest priority in dealing with invasive species, according to the National Invasive Species Council, should be preventing additional species from entering the country. That recommendation seems obvious, straightforward, and uncontroversial. Yet there are substantial barriers to making it the top priority. One barrier is international trade treaties, which discourage countries from imposing regulations that would inhibit trade (see the chapter on genetic engineering). American companies that engage in international trade are a key domestic constituency that, naturally, supports minimal restrictions on trade. Transportation companies do not want their vehicles, and importers do not want their products, sitting around on docks or tarmacs for extended inspections. Every hour that a product is in transport is an hour that it is not being sold. For plants, food, and other perishable goods, timing is obviously that much more critical. The political stature of national security experts could potentially offset the power of those who advocate against tighter restrictions on imports or more rigorous inspections. But security experts are much more concerned about higher-profile smuggling—such as bombs, or chemical or radioactive materials—than about the import of harmful microbes or diseased materials. Looking for contraband or dangerous materials in the midst of thousands of daily shipments, vehicles, and visitors to the United States is a needle-in-a-haystack problem. There is so much to search, such a low probability of finding something, and such a high cost associated with the searches—both to the government doing the search and the people and businesses being searched—that the result is a lack of a powerful, organized constituency to advocate for more action. On the other hand, there are well-organized constituencies who oppose doing more.

  When environmentalists do argue for changes in our national policies for preventing the introduction and spread of invasive species, one of the things they attack most vehemently are the lists of organisms banned from entry into the United States that were developed by APHIS. Environmentalists contend that these lists are too narrow and allow potentially harmful pests into the country. They’re particularly concerned about the damage caused by invasive species because almost half of the species on the Endangered Species List are there because of competition or predation by invasive species. Additionally, environmentalists insist that APHIS is focused too narrowly on agricultural pests and gives too little priority to pests that could threaten other industries or the environment in general. They argue that APHIS should develop a list of species that can be imported, and all other species should be banned. That is, rather than assuming that an organism is safe until we have evidence that it isn’t, we should consider it guilty until proven innocent. Another less blunt alternative is for APHIS to restrict the half-dozen plant families that are known to contain harmful species, even without specific evidence that a particular species from that family causes problems.

  According to NISC, blocking problematic imports should be the higher priority, but there are organized and active constituencies that give a higher priority to dealing with the noxious and invasive species that are already in the country. These constituencies are motivated because of the economic costs that these species have imposed on them, and they have a strong incentive to fight. Hence the success of Great Lakes shipping companies in passing the 1996 Invasive Species Act to deal with zebra mussels. Farmers, ranchers, and private landowners suffer the most from noxious and invasive plants and they support APHIS in devoting its resources to containing and eradicating existing invasive species. Environmentalists argue that APHIS is overly focused on existing agricultural pests because farmers and ranchers are its main clientele and source of political support. Meanwhile, these same environmentalists are also skeptical about farmers’ or government’s ability to selectively target problem species without going into overkill and doing broader ecological damage that is worse than the damage caused by the invasive species.

  Although interest groups provide greater support for controlling invasive species than for blocking their importation, even this support is relatively low-key. Farmers and ranchers have higher-priority issues, particularly protecting crop subsidies and fighting land-use restrictions. Environmentalists also have many higher priorities. There is even some ambivalence in the scientific community over exactly how bad nonnative species are on the whole, and thus a mixed assessment there, too, of whether it is worth devoting substantial resources to fight them.

  CONGRESS and executive agencies are likely to devote resources to addressing the concerns of well-organized, intensely mobilized constituencies, particularly when there are no similar constituencies in opposition. Without such advocates for devoting resources to battling invasive species, Congress and executive branch agencies will find plenty of other constituencies who are clamoring for m
oney and attention.

  Policy Option One: Leave Things as They Are

  In terms of the goods that are imported into this country, the current system is not perfect, but it works. Federal inspectors control the borders, but when inspectors can only check about 5 percent of the goods being shipped in, something is going to slip by at some point. Inspectors are expensive, and if they do a good job of randomly checking the materials, they will be able to identify those things that are most likely to cause a problem. In other words, right now we have what most people would consider an acceptable trade-off. We also face the law of diminishing returns. Inspectors are currently available to check for the most obvious and dangerous problems. Hiring more inspectors and adding more regulations would not make enough of a difference to offset the additional costs.