ANNE SUTTON Associated Press writer | Posted: Sunday, January 22, 2006 12:00 am
JUNEAU, Alaska - Activists scored a minor victory when their Hawkweed Manifesto - which urged people to "be prickly and hard to eradicate, join the resistance" - helped stop officials from spraying herbicides on a nonnative plant at a small Alaskan airport.
The battle has moved from the tiny community of Talkeetna, 120 miles north of Anchorage, to the state Legislature, where a bill has been introduced to outlaw the importing and cultivating of two nonnative plants, orange hawkweed and purple loosestrife.
Officials say the two could invade Alaska's wildlands and choke out native species.
That fear last year prompted plans for the Upper Susitna Soil and Water Conservation District to spray a herbicide on orange hawkweed at the Talkeetna airport, a springboard for climbers heading for the base camp of Mount McKinley.
Hieracium aurantiacum, also known as the "devil's paintbrush" and "grim-the-collier," was blanketing the gravel surface of a helicopter pad and flaunting its presence with showy bright-orange blossoms. District officials feared the plant's barbed seeds would hop a helicopter ride into Alaska's wilderness, where it would muscle out native wildflowers and other plants.
Authors of the Hawkweed Manifesto, which was successfully spread through the Internet, scoffed at the idea of Orange Hawkweed going wild.
"These plants spread into disturbed areas, not wilderness," said Paul Bratton, a longtime Talkeetna homesteader who fishes commercially and occasionally practices law.
He and his wife, Judy Price, are veterans of herbicide wars because of their concerns about health and environmental effects of the chemicals used in the sprays. In the 1970s, they founded a group called Alaska Survival to stop the Alaska Railroad from spraying herbicide on the tracks that run near their home.
The resurrected organization's manifesto advertised a garden catalog where hawkweed seed could be purchased in bulk. The rationale? To overwhelm efforts to spray the weed - fighting fire with the fiery colored blooms.
"The more they spray, the more we will propagate," the declaration read. "Let the Hawkweed bloom free."
Kristie Renfrew, the general manager of the Susita soil and water district, calls the move "ecoterrorism."
"Shame on them," she said. "We don't need those plants ruining our beautiful wildlands."
But the manifesto had an unintended consequence; it was the impetus for a proposed law that could make a garden outlaw out of Bratton.
After seeing the manifesto on the Internet, officials at the soil and water conservation district in Kodiak convinced Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, R-Kodiak, to back legislation outlawing the plants.
Blythe Brown, the district's invasive plants coordinator, said Kodiak is overrun by orange hawkweed. A trial herbicide spray to test its success on a nearby island and weed pulls by volunteers in town helped contain its spread.
"So even though good people are doing good things voluntarily, we need something to back that up," she said.
Though a native hawkweed exists, Brown said Orange Hawkweed probably arrived in Alaska more than 40 years ago as someone's potted plant. Under LeDoux's bill, having that potted plant could net the offender as much as a $10,000 fine and a year in jail.
Larry DeVilbiss, director of the state Division of Agriculture, said the bill may not be broad enough, even though Alaska's isolation has kept it relatively free of invasive weeds.
"We are ahead of the problem enough that these species can still be managed and handled. In other states, it's so bad, there's no solution," he said.
Rather than focusing on just two weeds, DeVilbiss said the state should develop a regulatory list of plants that can be adjusted accordingly to changing circumstances.
On Spur Road coming into Talkeetna, nurse's assistant R.G. Denny owns a few empty acres where he hopes to build an assisted living facility one day. But for now, his number one tenant is orange hawkweed, a fact he proclaims proudly.
Last summer he erected two 8-foot signs on which he painted "ORANGE HAWKWEED PRESERVE" in vivid red.
The fuss over the plant is a lot of fear-mongering, said Denny, who rails at a law that would tell him what he can and cannot plant.
"How's that law going to work?" he asked. "Are they going to raid garden shops? Are they going to go through the post office and print up posters that say, "No ammunition, no explosives and no orange hawkweed seeds?"'
The conservation district never did spray at the Talkeetna airport last summer, in part because of the outcry. However, officials would still like to eradicate the plants with chemicals, while also testing alternative methods.
Christine Evans, who heads the district's hawkweed project, admitted the district's initial approach was probably flawed.
"We said, 'You have an invasive weed problem and we have to spray,' all in one breath. I think we went too fast for the community."