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Our state government seems to be of two minds concerning
the French. Not long ago, our governor refused to meet with
the French consul in Los Angeles, since the Gallic
government opposed our efforts in Iraq.
And then
last week, the governor signed an agreement that will allow
a French company, Meristem Therapeutics, to grow some
mutant maize in Phillips County.
It pains me, as a life-long Coloradan, to confess that I have never been in Phillips County, which is almost in Nebraska. But I do hear about it when I talk to Bob Ewegen, the other member of the Colorado Association of Red-bearded Pundits. He grew up out there, and still has an interest in the family farm. Thus he can discourse at length about drought, hail, high prices for seed and tractor fuel, low prices for corn and wheat, and the other staple topics of breakfast discussions at High Plains diners.
From his discourses, I gather that the farmers of Phillips County would welcome a profitable crop. And this French operation is for a good cause -- about as good as causes get.
Meristem now has the state's permission to plant about 30 acres of corn that has been genetically altered to produce a special protein. After the ears are harvested, that protein will be extracted to be used in an experimental drug to treat cystic fibrosis.
If you've ever known a cystic fibrosis victim, you'd like to see a cure real soon -- like yesterday. This method promises to produce the research proteins quickly and in quantity, making it a big improvement on fabricating the proteins in a laboratory.
But we should note that while our state government is granting a permit for one exotic plant, it's also working to eliminate other exotic plants. And most of these plants, like the Meristem corn, arrived here as the result of good intentions.
At the start of this year, the state declared that the Russian Olive was no longer a drought-tolerant ornamental tree, but instead a noxious weed that is illegal to sell or plant in Colorado.
The Russian Olive did not come to Colorado because some
malicious people thought let's infest the state with a
hardy tree that takes resources from better trees and
provides wretched wildlife habitat.
Instead, it was
distributed with good intentions, to provide shade and
windbreaks; the Colorado State Forest Service even provided
low-cost seedlings to landowners.
Or consider the current leader on the 10 Least Wanted
Plants
list -- the tamarisk, also known as the salt
cedar. It grows along streambeds in the southwestern United
States.
Rep. Scott McInnis, a Grand Junction Republican, denounces the tamarisk with a fervor he generally reserves for non-motorized recreationalists, wilderness advocates, would-be regulators of coal-bed methane drilling on private land, and other subversives who threaten the interests of his campaign contributors.
The tamarisk, he points out, grows along the Colorado River, and provides no known benefits to humans or wildlife, while consuming perhaps 4.5 million acre-feet a year -- about the same amount of water as California gets under the Colorado River Compact.
Even though McInnis is a foe of federal spending, he's so opposed at the tamarisk that he sought a $1 million appropriation to study ways of eradicating it. And it's probably just a coincidence that the study will be based at Mesa State College in Grand Junction.
The tamarisk, a Eurasian native, did not come to this country because some enemy discovered that it was a cheap and efficient way to remove water from an area that was already a desert. A century ago, the salt cedar was deliberately introduced into the Southwest by people who had good intentions: windbreaks, streambank erosion control, and more attractive yards with these low-maintenance imported trees.
The Colorado Weed Management Association lists 50
Troublesome Weeds
and Ornamental Weeds.
I
didn't check them all, but of the ones I did examine,
almost all of them were introduced deliberately.
Leafy spurge, yellow toadflax, Russian thistle, black henbane, poison hemlock -- they were all planted in Colorado for reasons which seemed sensible at the time. And now rural counties, already strapped for cash, are trying to find ways to eliminate them.
And if you're betting on the outcome of this War on Plants, consider the billions spent every year to eliminate the hemp plant, which continues to thrive -- even on the grounds of the governor's mansion.
Plants may be introduced into Colorado for the best of intentions, and treating cystic fibrosis is among the noblest of intentions. But history shows that no matter why they got here, the imported plants can turn into major threats to our environment and our economy.
So it does seem strange that our state government fights invading plants at the same time that it welcomes another exotic plant.
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