Interstate Botany: Comments on Interstate Highway Vegetation Mangement
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.
To be sure, interventions will still be needed to preserve safe driving conditions, and control noxious plants and animals occasionally. But we need not spend scarce public resources on needless intervention. A review and revamp of right-of-way management goals and guidelines seems to be long overdue in Virginia. How about in your neck of the woods?
Latest Articles