Blitz, Nuke, Annihilate, Smash, Devastate, Destroy and of course War are just a few of the words that have been adopted in our approach to weed management. Herbicide names are by default war like terms and include Wipeout, Arsenal, Roundup, Weedmaster, Gloricide, Brush Killer, Slasher etc… These war based terms and names are perhaps quite appropriate, given that many of the techniques of chemical and machine weed control that dominate land management now, were all developed during the various wars of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Personally, I’ve never quite gone down the road of waging war on weeds, in the words of Norman Whitefield (The Temptations) “War… Huh… Yeah! What it is good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again y’all”.
War is hell and we should not need to be reminded of this. It has very little if anything to do with vegetation management whether it be farming, forestry or natural areas. Yes of course weeds need management if they are preventing or degrading ecological restoration (when we can afford to do so…), but to be angry at a plant just because we have labelled it with the rather xenophobic term of weed, well that’s seems to me a bit pointless and a distraction from the real game of understanding a managing these plants and unleashing natures ability to restore, heal and be abundant. It may seem like semantics and bordering on philosophical (ok fair enough, yes I have jumped the border into the heart of philosophy-land) but to use the words of war in weed management can taint our actions and cause us to react in a short-sighted manner with fear and anger, rather than taking a long-term, rational, open-minded, observational course of action.
Using a phrase like “war on weeds” and the mentality that it encompasses, is as appropriate in describing how we should be managing weeds as it would be if we were to say wage a “war on grass” (e.g. mow it) to create lawns, or wage a “war on the bush” – when we burn it for hazard reduction or ecological purposes, wage a “war on trees” when we harvest them for timber, wage a ”war on animals” when we harvest them for food, wage “war on the oceans” when we go fishing… Ok as I write this last paragraph I realize that most of what I’ve listed above (apart from perhaps the lawns), that yes, it could be argued that we are in fact fighting undeclared wars against, under the guise of management, harvest etc… and that perhaps we need to ask ourselves some deeper questions about this whole war thing that we are so prone too…
Even in Europe and North America (the cultural epicentres of the war on weeds) a few centuries back there was no war on weeds, probably no actual plants called weeds (at least in the way we think of them now), just natural vegetation to be managed and harvested. This could be done either directly e.g. wild fruits harvest; or via grazing animals e.g. part of the fallow cropping cycle; or by fire e.g. the burning of the heather uplands to diversify habitat and grazing potential; or last but not least, to provide cover for the restoration of woodlands e.g. for timber, charcoal and a host of other resources.
Of course, we’ve mucked things up around the earth over the last few centuries by moving, plants, animals, fungi, minerals, gasses and ourselves etc… and created unprecedented ecological instability, but when looked at in this broader context, a war on weeds exacerbates the problem by focusing on the problem rather than the solution, which is long term planning and action / management for ecological restoration and balance. We need to be working on long term ecological restoration / sustainability goals and actions that are planned for decades, centuries and millennia. We have lived in balance with the earth in the past, we can do it again now and in the future.
