March 19, 2024

Letter to the Editor

Clarke County shreds the scenic edges of its rural rock roads. This is going on right now on the rural road that I have lived on for 10 years. The county engineer tells me that it will look like a “clean, clear golf course” when completed. The county engineer dismisses the value of the roads edges to small wildlife and plant life saying that he in not managing the roads for “butterfly gardens” and that prairie is the “responsibility of the DNR and that there are prairie parks established for butterflies.”

The county has adopted the most extreme of possible solutions and the long-term plan is then to use broad spectrum pesticide on these road edges. The county has not communicated its intentions to rural constituents impacted. It is handled as a kind of “surprise attack” and is underway before anyone knows what is coming.

Along the road there exists prairie remnants. Pesticide use will sterilize and eliminate these prairie remnants, these marginalized but very important food sources for pollinators.

Are there others in Clarke County who live along rural rock roads and have witnessed the first phase of this policy of road management and who did not know about the second phase of pesticide use? We need to speak out.