While "non-native" species can be a problem, depending on what management regime one might want for a piece of land, they present a unique condition when seen in the light of "natural area management." Illinois has a state law, and at the time was the first in the nation I believe, that set up a commission to establish and protect a set of officially designated "natural areas." These can be on both public and private land, and they are mostly dependent upon being habitat for a species that is on the state of Illinois' threatened and endangered species list. Once designated, the Nature Preserves Commission works with the local IDNR natural
heritage biologist and either the land owner or the land management agency to craft a "management plan" for the specific area. Their protection has the force of law, and, in some urban areas, their consideration has caused developments to be altered.

Many of the designated natural areas are very small pieces of land of only a handful of acres that are surrounded by farmland upstate in Illinois. Unlike in the hills of Southern Illinois, they are beloved but they are subjected to heavy human intervention. Well, many of the Shawnee natural areas are also, but it's recreational overuse, for which planning and law enforcement have been ineffective in preventing, and not direct management purportedly for a particular purpose.

The Shawnee National Forest, being federal, doesn't really have to comply with the Illinois Natural Areas Law - well it's a good question anyway. They probably would tell you they don't. I don't know if the IDNR would agree with that kind of black and white analysis. But, the Shawnee does recognize the Illinois designated natural areas that are on the Shawnee in it's land and resources management plan. However, oftentimes these designations have been made with as much politics as actual on the ground conditions. There are places on the Shawnee where they have drawn arbitrary boundaries around areas and called them "natural areas" where on one side of the boundary is just like the other with no good explanation as to why one side is "natural area" and other not. And then there are places where areas subject to disturbance ended up inside natural area boundaries.

While it is good that the areas where some of these rarer species exist are known, in reality the "natural areas" protection program is completely inadequate to deal with problems like climate change, the carbon cycle, and larger landscape issues of environmental protection such as severe fragmentation and isolation of habitats, chemical and nuclear contamination of the environment, and long term sustainability. But these problems are making it more difficult to maintain many of these areas in conditions theorized to be before white man settled. (although the accuracy of that is a whole other issue)

If a particular natural area has a condition in which a known population of rarer species is being invaded by an agressive newcomer, then that population should be removed manually, and very carefully so as to minimally disturb the environment in which the species is currently maintaining a population. That does not include using man-made chemical poisons as removal agents. These compounds don't even exist "naturally," so how can they be appropriate for "natural areas?"

Otherwise, careful monitoring of the situation in which exotics are in natural areas to determine which components of the natural area are adapting to the exotic, how rapid the spread is, and perhaps establishing small test plots in which manual techniques for successful removal with minimum impact are studied, is a more appropriate management strategy.

It is more appropriate because undisturbed environments provide benefits to humans just by existing. They remove CO2 from the atmosphere, collect carbon and put it in the soil, protect watersheds, provide shade cover for the earth, produce oxygen, clean particulates from the air, and are utilized by native species, even if non-native species are present. Unmanaged environments in our temperate forest area provide these "ecosystem services", which economists are starting to give dollar values, and they provide these benefits with no costs.

Heavy handed agency management, such as burning, chemical pesticides, and mechanical tree cutting, cost the public significant sums of money in planning, in materials, and in labor. In addition, when an area is burned, it allows CO2 that is being stored by the forest to be released into the environment and to go directly into the atmosphere, where already CO2 levels are nearing, according to many of the top scientists, a "tipping" point where environmental changes will become so sudden, severe and unpredictable that it will test man's ability to survive. It puts significant amounts of particulate pollution into the air. Already particulate pollution in the ambient, everyday air that we breathe are high enough, and particularly in some places, to be a threat to human health. These are but two examples of how the value of the ecosystem services after the action has been degraded by the action.

But, land management agencies see an opportunity to fund large "exotic species control" actions. It's an action that could requires materials and manpower and planning - good for presenting in a proposed budget. It's typically the way that agencies view these kind of issues. And none of these issues are black and white. But, it is important for the public not to get sucked into a false choice that the agency will present that we either need to "treat" this area or that, but to examine the Forest Service expenditures and management activities against a backdrop of their total budget and where the money is going and not going and how that relates to the public interest.

There are many many hundreds of "exotic species" and many of them are well established across a large geographic area. It would be a gargantuan, impossible, and extremely expensive undertaking to try and remove all of the exotic plant species, or even just the more agressive ones, across their entire ranges of existence. And, even if that were possible, which it isn't, then what would come next over such a large geographic area having been manipulated? Agencies like the Forest Service have a very poor record of accurately predicting the results of their management. They have been repeatedly wrong, and the consequences have been severe. In fact, many of the worst problems of exotic species were caused by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, of which the FS is part and parcel. And in the end, the agency says that the public benefit is to "increase biodiversity" but they have no credible way to measure it. It's a very esoteric benefit that is not apparent in day to day life, although "biodiversity" as an issue is a real issue. So the legitimate question is, with the costs, both dollars and environmental costs, and the less than apparent benefits from this expenditure to the general public, should we be spending it?

If the agency is to "maximize net public benefit," then shouldn't the priorities be to invest in making the land user friendly to the public, while protecting the ecosystem services? Isn't ultimately that what maximizes net public benefits? A more realistic and holistic look at the expenditures and priorities of the Shawnee National Forest would reveal that while careful exotic species control management does have a place in their plan, that place is modest, in the context of the tight federal budget and the federal deficit. The costs are too high and the benefits not enough. With deficits soaring and every federal dollar under review, the entire budgetary priorities for the U.S. Forest Service needs close scrutiny. The national forests are a great legacy, and yet they have been allowed to get in disrepair and are less than user friendly for a lot of the public. So let's have some close scrutiny by the legislators of what the Forest Service is doing with our tax dollars, and what the public is really getting for their money.