Mr. Barnett is ringing the alarm bell just in time, one hopes.

To those people with allergies the relentless spread of Scotch Broom from Vancouver Island to the Mainland and beyond is a catastrophe.

http://www.nps.gov/redw/scotchbr.htm

Scotch Broom was imported from Europe to an estate on Vancouver Island and it "escaped" from the estate to invade and displace native species of plants and grasses.

The yellow blooms are very pretty but absolute agony to many allergy sufferers.

Hopefully they will deal with it now and not let it go like they did the pine beetle, or have a study done on it, but somehow.......

hmm...
noxious weeds...
so, plants, then
as opposed to the 11 year old next door who's growing and acting like one)

which plants, exactly?
in all your "sky is falling" verbosity, you didn't say...

Be prepared to spend lots of money to fight noxious weeds. There are several of them, like the dandelion. How much would it cost to get rid of this. As much a disaster is the introduction of animal pests. Eliminating these would cost a fortune. Rats, for instance. If it is necessary to do this, then by all means go ahead, but do so with eyes open. It will almost certainly fail in the long term, and it will cost, and cost, and cost so the gun registry looks like a piggy bank that got broken.

So, I guess we should get right on this.

No sense waiting for an out of control situation before someone does something.

Those who know what the problem is and where it is should get right on this.

And, no sense asking anyone for permission who doesn't understand the problem for permission to act. Look what happened the last time an ecological problem was identified. Let's learn from our mistakes. Percy

The question really becomes waht type of habitat this plant requires and whether it is noxious or not.

Here is a better description of the conditions the plant supposedly requires:
http://akweeds.uaa.alaska.edu/pdfs/species_bios_pdfs/Species_bios_CYSC.pdf

It will not survive in forested areas, except after trees are harvested or are killed by natural disturbances.

It withstands temps to -13F, which is not a probelm these days ... but also needs 150 frost-free days for reproduction ... I thnk that is still hard to come by these days, although that too could change ....

at the moment it is listed in Calif. Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon and Washington as noxious.

It seems in many places people are planting them on their property .....

these look nice ...
http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/profiles/images/0023001.jpg

I wonder how this rates against the Canada Thistle. Seems to me that has a greater impact.

http://ianrpubs.unl.edu/weeds/ec171.pdf

It is like it always is....instead of dealing with it while it is small and costs a small fortune it is put on the back burner until it is way out of hand and costs a huge fortune...typical stuff...can't see it changing anytime soon either....