Mike Tooley wrote:

> I know the Gov.Ag.people spend alot of time and taxpayers money
> trying to get
> farmers to eradicate these plants,but I wonder if maybe these plants arent
> really the demons they are made out to be.(example-they say muskrats avoid
> loosestrife.In this area they have been trying to curtail muskrat
> erosion to
> riverbanks for years,now they want to eliminate loosestrife)
>  I sense it is 'politically correct'to jump on the non-native species
> bandwagon.Just count me in the 'let nature take its course'group.

I've been thinking a lot about that myself lately.  As I understand it,
gradual changes in what grows and lives in a particular geographic region
has been ongoing for thousands of years.  Stasis is not the natural state of
our ecosystems.

It has been a hot, dry summer so far in Eastern Ontario.  Normal daily highs
this time of year are 26C; predictions are for 33C today, and it has been
like that for weeks.  There is often rain in the forecast, but not on the
ground,  I've had two rainfalls in the last two months.

Except for a few days after the rain falls, my bees are heading for the
local wetlands, where they are finding purple loosestrife.  There are many
other things growing there as well (I've looked), but as far as I can tell
only the loosestrife is giving anything to my bees.  I think about that, and
I think about all the money my government is spending to introduce creatures
who will destroy what is to me a valuable resource.

There are different perspectives on this issue just as there are on any.  It
doesn't seem that the beekeeper's perspective on this issue gets considered
at all.

Frank.
-----
The very act of seeking sets something in motion to meet us;
something in the universe, or in the unconscious responds as if
to an invitation.  - Jean Shinoda Bolen