Nor does purple flowered milkweed, and brilliant orange flowered butterfly weed, both hosts for the wonderful Virginia State Insect, the Monarch Butterfly. How many 10's of thousands of butterfly host plants were mowed in Augusta county alone in July and August? How many Monarch larva caterpillars died? Such an ignoble fate for our wonderful state insect, at the hands of our state government.
Have we gone bonkers and lost sight of the aesthetic forethought that has gone into these roads? Is it necessary to mow fence to fence? Apparently in some jurisdictions the mowing of only 15 feet or so of the shoulders is an acceptable standard. Must we maintain the coarse fescue cover for ever? Or can we allow a diverse meadow or savannah condition to develop that will enhance our highways and reduce our maintenance expenditures. Can we plant or encourage our own beautiful native wildflowers as replacements for the mid-western and western species now often used to provide the brief splashes of colors, often at high cost. And what of the possibility of using these expanses to re-establish the native tall grasses that once flourished in the native savannahs of the pre-settlement Shenandoah Valley? To my knowledge no such vestiges of the once native prairie still exist in Virginia. What a wonderful place to re-create these habitats, along the very routes used by many of the settlers that arrived here to change this very scenery.
We can come up with a much more coherent, cost effective, and comprehensive way to manage our interstate corridors. We must regard them as resources, rather than right-of-ways and initiate a concept of stewardship towards their management. We must implement policies that direct managers to practice minimal intervention. We must look for opportunities to use these resources to accomplish other worthwhile and desirable environmental goals such as preservation of species diversity.
