Letter to USDA APHIS Quarantine 37
Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
Station 3C71
4700 River Road, Unit 118
Riverdale MD 20737-1238
Regarding: Docket No. 03-069-1
Dear Dr. Tschanz:
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) appreciates this opportunity to participate in revisions to USDA's regulations pertaining to plants for planting. UCS is a national conservation organization with more than 150,000 members and activists. APHIS deserves credit for considering major revisions to its general approach as well as to its specific regulations on plants for planting. We want to encourage you in this process. Also, we look forward to supporting the agency, especially by working to provide the resources needed to move forward. Meanwhile, we ask that you address the following.
There is ample evidence that APHIS' current regulatory system is outmoded, ineffective, and not keeping pace with growing imports. Nor is it responsive to APHIS' explicit responsibility to protect the environment under the Plant Protection Act of 2000. That is, strong protections for native ecosystems and biodiversity, both terrestrial and aquatic, have not been integral to past regulations but are essential now. New standards should provide high levels of protection from both the pests and pathogens that plants for planting can carry, as well as from plants for planting that are themselves invasive or potentially so.
Section 1. Collecting Data
Accurate Labeling Must Be Employed and Enforced
Effective regulation cannot exist without proper identification of imported biological material. In the ANPR, APHIS announced its intent to amend regulations so that shipments of plants for planting list their contents by scientific name. We urge that this be a high priority and that shippers by required to provide at least the genus and species names and the variety or cultivar, when appropriate. Improperly labeled shipments should be rejected and those responsible for them should be fined enough to deter further violations. Without this step, additional data collection could be meaningless. That said, we strongly support APHIS' plans to collect the sort of information required to make more effective policy.
Specific Question #2
APHIS needs to institute a statistically-sound sampling program that can independently verify whether import data is accurate.
Section 2. Establishing a New Category...Pending Risk Evaluation and Approval
Invasive and Potentially Invasive Plants Should Be Excluded
Hundreds of plant species imported for horticulture or other limited uses in the United States have become established and invasive in the wild. In Florida, for example, 90 percent of the species listed, in 1995, as most invasive by the state's Exotic Pest Plant Council were deliberately introduced. In California, 1,152 non-native plant species are established in the wild. Nearly 450 of them were introduced as ornamental or aquarium plants. By one estimate, more than 50 percent of the invasive plants in the co-terminus United States continue to be offered for sale.
Yet weeds of natural areas, as well as marine weeds, have received almost no regulatory attention until a high-profile invader has had significant impacts. Given that imports of fewer than 100 weed varieties, species, or genera are limited as Federal Noxious Weeds, the arrival, establishment and spread of additional, seriously invasive plants is foreseeable and, without regulatory improvements, inevitable. Examples of introduced plants for planting that invade and damage natural areas include: arundo (Arundo donax); Asiatic bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus); Chinese tallow (Sapium sebiferum); fountain grass (Pennisetum sp.); gorse (Ulex europaea); Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica); Japanese and Eurasian climbing ferns (Lygodium sp.), multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora); purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia), tamarisk (4 species of Tamarix).
The nation urgently needs a comprehensive system for evaluating the risks of plants for planting before import and for excluding those known or likely to harm native ecosystems and biodiversity. This will certainly require pre-import screening for invasiveness for those plant species intentionally imported. Species already shipped in significant amounts should not be presumed safe and excluded from this process - since the ANPR suggests they have not been evaluated, even for their quarantine risks. Standards for such a screening program should be: highly protective and measurable; transparent and scientifically-based; and subject to frequent public review. Where pathways can be effectively analyzed and closed, APHIS may be able to avoid species-by-species approaches.
In the short-term, the process by which plants are designated Federal Noxious Weeds should be examined, streamlined, and used aggressively. Many more species should be added promptly to that list - something APHIS has been contemplating and experts have been urging since before the original weed legislation was passed in 1974.
For a long-term solution, APHIS should immediately begin developing the means to exclude from import certain taxa of plants for planting until their risks are assessed and approved. Emergency eradication campaigns typically cost more than a million dollars, with Federal, state, and local agencies bearing the burden. For example, the campaign to eradicate the Mediterranean strain of Caulerpa taxifolia in California has cost more than $3.5 million so far. Stronger emphasis on prevention will save taxpayers' money. Steps should also be taken to ensure that those who benefit from imports bear the costs when things go wrong.
Specific Question #2
See above - "significant" amount of taxa should not be excluded.
Specific Question #4
The same species of plant imported from Africa and Asia may carry the same risk of invasiveness - or they may not, depending on their populations' genetic make-up. They are quite likely to pose quite different quarantine risks. If revised regulations are to provide a seamless and comprehensive system of protection, groups of plants imported from different regions must be treated differently.
Section 3. Programs to Reduce...Quarantine Pests
Better Agricultural Inspection, Alone, Is Not Sufficient
At least 14 of the most damaging non-native insects and pathogens - some with the potential to devastate North American forests and other ecosystems - were likely introduced on imported plants. Some were imported early in the 20th Century, like chestnut blight. Several, though, have been imported since the late 1980's, breaching modern US border protections. Examples of pests and pathogens probably introduced on imported horticultural stock include: balsam woolly adelgid (Adelges piceae), butternut canker (Sirococcus clavigignenti-juglandacearum), chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica), citrus longhorned beetle (Anoplophora chinensis), dogwood anthracnose (Discula destructiva), European viburnum leaf beetle (Pyrrhalta viburni), larch casebearer (Coleophora laricella), lobate lac scale (Paratachardina lobata lobata), sudden oak death (Phytophthora ramorum), white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola).
Also, there is strong evidence that moving inspectors from USDA to the Department of Homeland Security has been detrimental. The number of available inspectors, the number of inspections and pest interceptions, and the level of morale have all dropped, according to credible sources. Even with the improvements planned, the agricultural border inspection system cannot both keep up with growing imports and also quickly develop the technical means to detect small and buried pests or non-symptomatic pathogens effectively. Therefore, the United States government should not rely on border inspection alone to prevent harm.
The factors above argue for different and much stronger measures to protect important US resources. A truly high level of protection from unintentionally imported pests and pathogens could be reached by limiting imports of plants for planting to tissue cultured plantlets, certified seeds, or plants shipped to secure containment facilities employing stringent best management practices. We recommend that USDA take this approach.
Best Management Practices Specific Questions #1, #2
The Draft Voluntary Codes of Conduct developed in St. Louis are one part of a set of best management practices, not necessarily a potential "core" of one, as the ANPR states. These codes, which UCS staff helped develop, were intended to deal only with imported plants' potential invasiveness. Thus many elements of quarantine and pest control which they do not address. They are a starting point. There are many additional programs, e.g., for voluntarily certifying forest products, that could provide useful information, depending on their effectiveness.
Sections 4, 5. Combining Existing Regulations and Reevaluating Taxa Currently Prohibited.
Limited Resources Require Addressing Highest Risks First
APHIS' limited resources need to be marshaled carefully. Combining regulations and re-evaluating currently-prohibited imports - while likely to be helpful - are lower priority than undertaking measures that could protect the nation from high-risk enterprises. We suggest that APHIS first develop a long-term plan, with stages and deadlines identified, for elements 2 and 3. Meanwhile, the agency can begin collecting data to help make key decisions as the plan is implemented.
Small Businesses and Other Plant Groups Should be Protected Where Possible
Many of our members, activists, donors, and staff are gardeners and plant-lovers. Thus, we do not want to restrict imports of non-native plants unnecessarily nor limit plant use in the United States to only native species. Harm to nurseries, related businesses, plant societies, and other botanical organizations should be avoided when possible as APHIS revises its regulations. We believe that areas of consensus exist among responsible industry groups and environmental ones.
However, the risks to native species and ecosystems from the current regulatory system are unacceptably high. We look forward to helping USDA/APHIS cut these risks while causing the least disruption to the businesses and other groups on which so much enjoyment depends.
Sincerely,
Phyllis N. Windle, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
Global Environment Program
Washington, DC
References
Brasier, C. 2005. Commentary: preventing invasive pathogens: deficiencies in the system. The Plantsman. March. Pp. 54-57.
Doyle, M. 2005. Agriculture inspections fall off. Growers fear infestations after Homeland Security took USDA's border duty. Sacramento Bee, March 14. P. D1. On the web at:
Lambrecht, B. 2004. Focus on terror weakens fight against pests. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Sept. 9. P. A1. On the web at: www.sacbee.com/content/politics/nation/v-print/story/12561259p-13416312c.html.
Reichard, S.H. and P. White. 2001. Horticulture as a pathway of invasive plants introduction in the United States. BioScience, Vol. 51. No. 2, Pp. 103-113. Can be reached on the web from: http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/white/references.htm
US Government Accountability Office. 2005. Homeland Security. Much Is Being Done to Protect Agriculture from a Terrorist Attack, but Important Challenges Remain. GAO-05-214.
