Environmentally Friendly Methods for Reducing the Damage Caused by Exotic Weeds in Natural Habitats: Conflicts of Interest, Safeguards and National Policy

The keynote address for the symposium, "Invasion of the South: The Ecological Impact and Control of Exotic Weeds in the Southeastern United States" was based on this paper. The purpose of the paper is to provide a national pest management context for subsequent papers of the symposium on specific impacts and control technologies, particularly biological control of weeds. It describes a typical conflict of interest in implementing alternative pest management technologies, briefly explains the intent of the National Environmental Policy Act to encourage a balance of societal benefits for any significant federal action, defines the respective roles of the primary federal organizations that regulate the use of pesticides and natural enemies, explains the safeguards in granting permits for the importation and use of natural enemies, enumerates recent national policies that encourage the use of biological control and integrated pest management, and lists current United States Department of Agriculture programs for biological and chemical control of weeds. Actual environmentally friendly methods, those with minimal non-target effects, are presented in the following papers.