ENVIRONMENTAL CURES ARE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE

When flora and fauna are involved, Floridians, especially elected officials
and other sundry bureaucrats, are some of the dumbest people in the union
- -- perhaps the world.

We, the human menagerie who choose paradise as our home, love to import
exotic stuff. However, almost every time we bring home a botanical or
zoological stranger and sink it into our tropical soil, cage it, imprison
it in an aquarium or float it in our waterways, we regret our actions.

Each year, though, we welcome dozens of noxious outsiders that cost us
millions of dollars in equally exotic efforts to control.

Most Of These Invaders Are Nature's Own.

Others are man-made: Take the new phantasm called Fusarium oxysorum, a
"mycoherbicide" that is being developed by the Montana company Ag/Bio Con.

And just what is a mycoherbicide? It is a fungus that kills plants. In this
case, it is a real "weed" killer, manufactured to destroy marijuana plants
in the Sunshine State.

That is right. Gov. Jeb Bush's hand-picked, zealous drug czar, Jim
McDonough -- himself a New York transplant -- is so determined to rid
Florida of pot that he wants to release into our fragile environment a
soil-borne fungus that we know diddly-squat about.

McDonough is embracing the word of Ag/Bio Con. that Fusarium oxysorum "does
not affect animals, humans or any other crops," and he is hoping that
experiments at the University of Florida will prove that the fungus is safe.

Fortunately, David Struhs, secretary of Florida's Department of
Environmental Protection, and his scientists are not being swept up by
Ag/Bio Con.'s claims. If they err, they apparently are choosing to do so on
the side of putting the environment first.

Struhs expressed his alarm in a letter to McDonough: "It is difficult, if
not impossible, to control the spread of Fusarium species. The inability to
guarantee that the organism will not mutate and attack other plant species
is of most concern.

"Mutation of the organism would not only threaten Florida's natural
environment, but would also put at risk our economically vital agricultural
industry. . . . Without considerably more information to address these
concerns . . . I strongly recommend that Florida not proceed further with
this proposal."

Too Late.

Emboldened by the support of anti-drug crusaders, such as U.S. Rep. Bill
McCollum, R-Longwood, who calls the fungus the "silver bullet," Tim Moore,
director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and Betty Sembler,
the influential wife of one of the GOP's best fundraisers, McDonough is
plowing ahead with his fungus scheme.

Native Floridians and transplants who love the state's natural wonder
should actively oppose McDonough's blind tinkering with nature. After all,
his mission is not so much about eradicating marijuana as it is about
right-wing Republican politics.

Lest we forget, we have a long history of creating environmental
Frankensteins that could have been avoided had we proceeded with "good"
science and common sense. In trying to establish dominion over the
environment and rid nature of phenomena that inconvenience humans, we
repeatedly concoct cures far worse than the disease.

One of the most boneheaded feats of environmental engineering was the
planting of Australian melaleuca to drain the Everglades. Decades later,
the thirsty trees have more than done their job -- draining the River of
Grass beyond recovery and drying up thousands of acres of other South
Florida wetlands. We have no way of accurately measuring, in dollars or
human effort, what we squander on trying to strangle the melaleuca menace.

Do not discount the invasive prowess of kudzu, the supercharged Chinese
vine that grows like Jack's bean stalk along Florida roadways. Our
prescient leaders, cocksure that it posed no threat to the environment,
imported kudzu in the 1920s to control erosion. Well, guess what? This
exotic pest grows a foot per day under the right conditions.

For shade and windbreaks, our bureaucratic wunderkinds brought in
Australian pines. These non-native giants seeded rapidly and often bunched
in the hundreds on single lots, tearing up sewers and buckling sidewalks
and foundations.

Developers and ordinary citizens have been just as misguided in fiddling
with the environment. A nice little lady brought the prolific water
hyacinth from the World's Fair in New Orleans and plopped it into a pond in
Putnam County. Today, the weed rules many waterways. As we try to drown it
with pesticides, we wind up killing valuable aquatic life.

Here on the Suncoast where I live and work, residents often travel abroad
and return with non-native plants. A famous example is Flora Wylie, who
brought the seed of an Ochorisia Eliptica tree from Italy in her shoe. The
seed passed to a local nurseryman, who propagated it into what has become a
favorite tree throughout the state at Christmastime. No matter how much
people love the Ochorisia Eliptica, this Italian interloper, which crowds
out native varieties, does not belong in Florida.

Another misadventure, which began innocently enough, gave Florida yet
another exotic. In 1989, Alan Bunch, in the town of Seffner, traveled to
Hawaii and went bananas over the Plumeria rubra, popularly called
frangipani. Back home, he could not forget the fragrant blossoms of the
tree. Well, Bunch went to work, growing the plant and selling it to all
comers.

When Will This Lunacy Stop?

The state has a so-called Upland Invasive Plant Program, but I do not see
much evidence that it is effective. Palm Beach County is the only region
that seems to be serious about ridding its environs of exotics. Officials
there have updated their 1992 code to require residents in all
unincorporated areas to eradicate all non-natives on their property by 2006.

Here are the plants and trees that must be removed in Palm Beach: Air
potato vine, Australian pine, Brazilian pepper, schefflera, kudzu, earleaf
acacia, carrotwood, melaleuca and the small-leaved climbing fern.

Because Florida is a keystone state, one that disproportionately attracts
new, permanent residents each year, officials at all levels should follow
the example of Palm Beach County and adopt environmental policies that
protect our two most important economic assets: tourism and agriculture.
Guess what each industry depends on for its viability?

The Environment.

Hopes should not run high, however, that officials elsewhere will come to
their senses any time soon. Why should they be expected to when one of the
state's most powerful men -- the drug czar -- wants to introduce a
pot-killing fungus into an environment that already struggles against too
many non-native life forms?