SPEC: How Not To Conduct An Iris Salvage

I mentioned several days ago I was submitting a recommendation/report
concerning an iris stand in the way of a road project. I'm sorry to say,
this nice vignette of governmental and private sector cooperation is
seriously derailing and I'm not sure whether to jump the train or stick
with it.
I hand-carried my recommendation day before yesterday to DOT (Dept. of
Transportation) as time was of the essence. The construction season is
short and delays of even a week are costly, which I sympathize with.
Their response to the botanical group and myself, delivered yesterday, was
that since this was not an endangered or unique group, they couldn't afford
to wait until the ground thawed out more for us to dig on our own. They
plan to proceed as usual with the schedule. They will start work as soon as
the snow leaves, which is probably this weekend. I was a little surprised
they weren't willing to work with the Society a little more, but it turned
out there is more to the story ....
That came out last night talking with my friend in the club, who first
asked me to become involved, and I'm a little uncomfortable about my
position right now. Apparently the Society wanted my input mainly as a
volunteer "gun", and expected me to come out in full defense of saving
these iris as irreplaceable specimens of the "Earthquake" iris. That might
have effectively shut down construction until biologists came in and did an
authoritative study, and would have bought them time to move the plants in
May.
I feel like DOT needs to follow all the rules governing such issues, but
also that a private group, no matter how well-meaning, shouldn't abuse the
political process involved merely to buy time. The extra cost is enormous,
and even more to the issue, not warranted. If this patch truly was unique,
there would be no question that it should be protected and salvaged. But to
invoke emergency protection privileges in order to merely be allowed to
transplant the normal and standard existing flora is inappropriate. I don't
wish to be part of something I feel is wrong, which is why I'm divided.
There are a few more complexities to this case, which made both sides feel
justified in their stands, but the bottom line is that I would like to stay
friendly with this society and involved in the salvage, but not at the
expense of doing the right thing. There has been a bit of heated rhetoric
at this point, mainly from a newly appointed radicalized president, which
is making DOT somewhat unwilling to bend, but I think it is still possible
to pull the hat out of bag.
I will do one more thing at this point: my brother-in-law just happens to
oversee this construction project. I may see if he would be willing to dig
a section of this area with a front-end loader before they put fill on it,
and pile it off to the side so we can pick through it. We would be there at
their pleasure, but I don't see that as a large problem. It wouldn't save
the entire patch, but it wouldn't need to. At this point, I think it's more
to keep goodwill going between these two entities, and get rid of the
radical rhetoric. To be honest, I don't care for the politics of situations
like this. I would dearly love to be out of the middle of it.
On a much better note, spring has arrived a vengeance. Wonderful sunny
weather has melted most of the snow around town. I have 3 bright red tulips
blooming  - they look great.
Kathy Haggstrom
Southcentral AK USA
USDA zone 3/ AHS zone 1




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