Vote to help our community!

In 2024 the law was changed to allow volunteers, under appropriate supervision, to apply herbicides for the purposes of controlling invasive plants on land owned by local governments. This bill simply expands the law to apply to volunteers working with state agencies on state owned land such as State Parks. At Machicomoco, many invasive plants are thriving unchecked by DCR. Nearly one-quarter of the parks 645 acres have been taken over by the invasive Callery/Bradford pear over the past 8 years (how that happened is another matter). The volunteer-led Friends of Machicomoco organization has committed countless volunteer hours in efforts to remove these invasive trees, however, we need passage of this bill in order to make a lasting impact on the parks ecosystem. Please pass this commonsense, no cost bill that would enable and engage volunteers to make efforts to reclaim portions of our Virginia Public Lands impacted by invasive plant species.

I would like to limit invasive species in Va. Therefore I am encouraging voting yes for these bills.

We must do better to protect our natural surroundings. Invasive plants are costing Virginians millions of dollars each year. These bills will help stop the spread of invasive plants across the Commonwealth by allowing regulators to add plants to the Noxious Weeds List based on merit and science, by ensuring that invasive plants are not planted along our state highways, by empowering local jurisdictions to raise funds to treat and control invasive plants, and by giving state agencies flexibility to use volunteers to help control invasive plants on state lands.