Seems orange hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) has raised the heckles of a bunch of Alaskans, according to this report at Yahoo! News. Last summer Talkeetna Airport had to abandon plans to spray herbicide on a hawkweed-infested patch of land, after protesters decried the use of chemicals on the landscape. The protesters even went so far as to develop an official "Hawkweed Manifesto" that they distributed in flyers, recommending that people plant more hawkweed and listing places to buy the seed. State officials responded by working with State Representative Gabrielle LeDoux to file a bill that would ban both orange hawkweed and another, relatively newer Alaskan invader, purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). While the article alludes to the manifesto being on the web, I can find no traces of it nor of the protesters. Meanwhile, this story is apparently serious enough to have made it into the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Database. Interested readers will also want to check out this older story from the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.
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