In October, I returned from a trip to Hawaii during which I was the keynote speaker at the Landscape Industry Council of Hawaii Conference. Now, you’re probably asking yourself, “Why is a guy from Massachusetts keynoting a conference 5,000 miles from home? And why is he speaking on, of all things, the Endangered Species Act?” Pull up a chair, my friend.
You see, the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP) has an annual Leaders Forum, which typically takes place at some tropical destination during the first few weeks of February. I don’t usually attend this event, but in 2023, the Leaders Forum was in Hawaii, so I decided to make an exception and attend. I was even going to bring my lovely wife with me. It was going to be fun!
Alas, it was not meant to be. I received a phone call from my boss telling me that he had received a request from a state landscape association for someone to speak at their annual conference at the same time as the Leaders Forum. Trust me when I say that I wasn’t terribly disappointed; I love my job and I love public speaking, so it was all good.
“So, where am I going?” I asked him. “Montana,” he replied. Montana? I’ll be in the Rocky Mountains during the second week in February? Curious, I looked at the weather history for my destination for the prior year. During 2022, the low temperature there was more than 20 degrees below zero!
I was going to die. I just knew it.
I didn’t, and I actually was in awe of Montana’s indescribably vast and majestic landscapes. At many places you can get out of your car and look in every direction and see absolutely nothing except the horizon. It’s an experience much like being out to sea.
Back to the recent keynote: A federal court recently ruled that the EPA must comply with provisions found in the federal Endangered Species Act when registering pesticides, and the agency must do it quickly. This is of great concern to us because we utilize specialty products to protect landscapes from insects, diseases, weeds and invasive species. If EPA does not accurately account for the way we use these products, they could be removed from the market unnecessarily with no benefit for endangered or threatened species.
We made an effort to engage with EPA as it began working through this dilemma. Documents were published; we commented on them. Meetings were held; we attended and asked questions. One day, an email arrived from a scientist with EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs asking me if I wouldn’t mind meeting with her and some colleagues to discuss turfgrass management on the Hawaiian Islands. Panic set in … I have never grown warm-season turfgrass, and I’ve never been to Hawaii. But at the same time, I cannot reject the meeting. What to do, what to do …
Then I recalled the Leaders Forum. Perhaps someone on the NALP staff met someone from Hawaii at the conference? And that’s how I met BrightView’s Matt Lyum. He and Dan Husek, director of golf maintenance at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai, graciously agreed to attend the meeting with EPA to explain the similarities and differences between growing turf on the mainland and on the islands.
That meeting was part of EPA’s preparation for a document they call the Hawaii Pilot. Once they published the document, the agency announced it would be holding an invitation-only workshop in Honolulu. That same panic returned, because I knew turfgrass was on the agenda.
I needn’t have worried. Lyum was there again to speak on behalf of our industry, and all the feedback I received from those who attended told me that he hit it out of the park. We’re still waiting for the next iteration of the Hawaii strategy to be published, but I have every confidence that we are in a much better place having engaged at every opportunity.
So, what’s next? How are we going to protect the nearly 40 percent of all endangered and threatened species in the U.S. that live exclusively in the state of Hawaii while at the same time protecting our customers’ landscapes from weeds, insect, diseases and invasives? The answer is tricky and will require all the professionalism that we as an industry can muster.
