Dear Editor,
I’ve just read—three times—the article in The Journal about the “invasive plant project” in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District (March 30). I was hoping to read a solution; hoping to find what is actually being done to actually destroy the weed infestation that has plagued us for two generations.
Over 30 years ago, friends visiting from Williams Lake noted the proliferation of knapweed in our dry belt area. They wondered what was being done about it. I did not know then, and I still do not know.
If the weeds are being destroyed and managed, how is this being done? What is being used to do so? I was told that Round-Up was banned some years ago. Are the weeds being burned? Cut down? Is another chemical being used? If so, what is it?
Controlling the weed in our area seems to have become a sort of folklore. And the idea that if you destroy one noxious weed “it only makes room for another invasive species” sounds like something Mark Twain would have written; tongue-in-cheek, of course. Well, we’ve been talking and talking and planning and planning and studying and studying, and the weeds keep growing year after year, as if nothing has been done about them. And, I daresay, nothing much has.
We are advised that another plan has been put in motion and is “being looked forward to being seen”. MLA Jackie Tegart wonders, “Who knows, maybe we can win the fight.”
Sounds more like shadow boxing to me.
Esther Darlington
Ashcroft