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Re: [OFF TOPIC] plant regulations

In a message dated 98-08-21 16:46:27 EDT, Jared wrote:

<<  ... I am not saying that there are no problems with exotic plants, but
 please don't confuse people by oversimplifying the facts. We are dealing
 with complex systems here, and a very crazy set of rules from nature.>>
 
Jared makes some valid points.  I would like to add that it is precisely
because, as he said, "we are dealing with complex systems" that we need to be
very careful.  The natural systems are so complex that we humans have yet to,
if we ever will, figure them out entirely.  

Perhaps some insects will be able to adapt to new food plants if their sources
become extinct.  But what will stop the leaching of nutrients when spring
rains fall on forest floors devoid of the vernal forbs that once so
efficiently held these nutrients and returned them to the soil when they died
back in the summer?  And what other problems, unforseen due to the limits of
human intelligence and research, will we create if we continue on our current
course?  

Sure the balance of nature is, and has always been, changing.  But due to
human actions it is changing now at an unprecidented rate of speed.  I am not
willing to gamble that mother nature can keep up the pace.

In a 1992  foreword to a book on Missouri natural history,  then Director of
the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, G. Tracy Mehan III, wrote:  
"For countless ages, life forms were a product of their environments; for the
coming age, for good or ill, the environment will be a product of the highest
of all life forms--human beings."   

--Janis

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