The six national and regional weed science societies supported two letters that would improve invasive species management. The first letter (CEQ letter) requests that the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) approve the Department of the Interior’s request for a number of categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for invasive species control. Without the ability to use categorical exclusions to promptly control invasive annual grasses after a fire on federal lands, those invasive grasses have spread rapidly while federal land managers have to go through the NEPA process, which has taken years in many cases, before those invasive grasses can be managed. The second letter (S.626) supports legislation in the Senate that would fix a flaw in the Lacey Act, that came about through a federal court case, where the court interpreted that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) could not regulate interstate commerce in injurious species, notwithstanding decades of generally accepted practice during which FWS had exercised that authority.
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