Illegal plants

[Malbri]

I was looking through liveaquarias plant packages, and noticed they wont ship to maine. i said something about this in chat, and they said it was probably cause of a state law. Are aquatic plants illegal in maine or something. It only says it on the plant packages and not just plain plants

[Mgamer20o0]

one or more of the plants must be illegal there. i know of a few plants that are illegal in Cali.

[Malbri]

is there a place I can see a list of illegal plants here?

[ergo sum]

http://www.maine.gov/dep/blwq/topic/invasives/invaquarium.htm

[Malbri]

none of those were in the package

and most of those is milfoil, if i wanted that, i could go to the lake a few miles down the road
It was fine a few years ago, some1 got milfoil in there, in one year, it was FILLED impossible to swim in
a bit better this year but still discusting

[wataugachicken]

there's a sticky about illegal plants in the classified ads section, i don't know how helpful it will be.

[Malbri]

oh i thought i had seena sticky on that, i just ddidnt know where

[midiamin]

You should check federal and state agriculture restrictions.

[5Bettamom]

Why would plants be illegal?

[sumthin fishy]

Why would plants be illegal?

Because irresponsible people dump them into native waters. Some of the plants will take over native plants and starve them out. This is also reason some fish are illegal.

[Malbri]

ya, the lake I used to love to swim and fish in is now filled with milfoil cause it mustve been caught on a boat or something, its so nasty and slimy. Anyway I ended p emailing dr foster and smith and the person who replied did say that they could not ship becasuse of state laws here

[plantbrain]

And unlike an oil spill which goes away over time, Pest are self replicating and only get worst with time, not better.

They are also not eaten by the native critters, some they are displaced as well and have fewer resources. Some are poisonious and taste bad. They can lower property values. They can provide good habitat for mosquitos.
They clog water conveyance systems(drinking farming shipping etc).

Control and killing them is a very dauting task and in some cases like in FL, they just try and keep the water ways somewhat navigable, they gave up trying to kill Hydrill in the ecosystem. In CA, we nail the Hydrilla asap, that way treating a small pond, area etc is cheap and simple.

The longer you wait to treat a pest issue, the worst it gets.
The best way is to prevent the weed from coming into the state in the first place. If that fails, then a rapid response plan is the second best method.

The USA loses about 5 Billion $ a year due to Aquatic weeds.
We spend about 250$ million to control it.

What would you use to kill a weed that's in ther drinking water supply?
and other wonderful questions........

Most of the 300 or so plants we keep are not weeds.
And the pond hobby tends to be the worst group, although Calupera came from a Marine aquarist.

Various web sites discuss the issues, check them out if you are interested.