The U.S. Federal Government wants authority to tell you which plants, and only which plants, you may have in your lawn, garden, pasture, crop field, and forest. Same for animals. Violators would be subject to Draconian punishment.
This falls under “permissive” law, which is just the opposite of the way it sounds. Under permissive law, everything is prohibited except what is specifically permitted.
Fescue is high on several environmental organizations’ hit-lists for banning under the proposed regulations. You would be required, under threat of severe legal penalty, to eradicate fescue from your lawn and pasture, and could not buy or sell fescue seeds. In Missouri and adjacent States, elimination of fescue would result in most lawns and pastures being converted to exposed, bare dirt, and ranchers being forced out of business. Although fescue would be banned, there is no suggestion about what would be used as a replacement. Ladino clover? Nope, ladino’s proposed for the hit list, too.
As with nearly every other idiotic, destructive, anti-human proposal to come from our federal government during the past couple of decades, this one is rooted in United Nations World Government policy, specifically in the Convention on Biological Diversity, a treaty which the US Senate refused to ratify. To get around the problem that an unratified treaty is not valid, President Clinton issued on 3 February 1999 another of his infamous Executive Orders, this time Executive Order 13112 on Invasive Species.
There are valid reasons to control some plants, bugs and animals which arrive from other parts of the world and become pests in the United States. There are existing laws and programs authorizing control of those pests. But President Clinton’s Executive Order 13112 goes far beyond weed control, and makes illegal the ownership or production of dogs, cats, wheat, barley, fescue, cattle, and every other plant and animal that is not “native,” anything that came here from somewhere else and can be classified as an invasive alien species.
This is much more than badly crafted federal weed policy. It has no more relation to the real world than the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming has to climate. Both are aimed squarely at control of American people to illegally implement United Nations policy. The Kyoto Treaty would strangle our access to energy. EO 13112 would reduce our access to food. Providing or withholding food is a weapon that governments use in their perpetual war against their own people.
EO 13112 states “alien species means, with respect to a particular ecosystem, any species including its seeds, eggs, spores, or other biological material capable of propagating that species, that is not native to that ecosystem.” Invasive Species “means an alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.” Introduction means “the intentional or unintentional escape, release, dissemination, or placement of a species into an ecosystem as a result of human activity.” Ecosystem “means the complex of a community of organisms and its environment.” Environment means, well, who knows what environment means?
“Environment” can be microbes in a mud puddle, or the entire mid-American prairie, or the whole earth, or the universe. “Environment,” as used here is a rubber weasel-word meant to stretch to include everything used in agriculture and everywhere that humans live.
Under authority of Clinton’s Executive Order 13112, the Department of Agriculture has drafted proposed legislation that regulates movement of plant products, including fines of a minimum of $1,000 to a maximum of $250,000 for each violation. This even includes home gardeners, and people conducting seed exchanges, and preservation of endangered plant species. All exchanges or purchases of plants and seeds would be banned, except those plants specifically approved on the government’s lean List.” That eliminates well over 99% of the planet’s plants and animals for use by American citizens.
Although not specifically mentioned in the draft proposal, the Clean List fits perfectly with asset forfeiture laws which allow personal property to be seized if that property is involved in commission of a crime, such as an automobile used by drug dealers. Allowing an unapproved plant to grow on your land would be defined as a crime and could result in confiscation of your land by a government agency under assets forfeiture law, with no payment to you the land owner as required by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
So, just as the Kyoto Treaty has no bearing on climate, the ultimate purpose of Clinton’s EO13112 seems not to be controlling noxious weeds, but more likely is designed to provide another avenue for destruction of Constitutionally-protected rights of private property ownership and illegal acquisition of even more land by the government. “You there – yes you with that cabbage in your garden! You are under arrest. Come quietly and we won’t use force, at least not much more force than we feel like using on an enemy of United Nations World Government such as you, you home-gardening slime-ball.”
At this time, legislation to implement this outrageous proposal has not been submitted to Congress. Please contact your elected representatives in Congress and make sure that the proposed legislation is NEVER submitted, and that Clinton’s Executive Order 13112 is voided and the plant police program which that Executive Order spawned is shut down permanently.