Have virus, will travel.

prevent introductions from region to region. Meanwhile, the international community has failed to prevent a stream of species from flowing around the world, with the exception of a 1951 agreement to prevent introductions of plant pests. President Clinton's executive order creates a federal interagency Invasive Species Council whose members include the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, the interior, agriculture, commerce, and transportation, along with the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The council will develop a comprehensive plan to minimize the economic, ecologic, and human health impacts of invasive species and determine additional steps to prevent their introduction and spread. An advisory committee will provide information for the council, including recommended actions at local, state, and regional levels. The management plan, due in July 2000, will review existing programs and authorities to control nonindigenous species and recommend measures that legislatures and health agencies should take. The council will also establish a study on exotics in federal territories and waters. The council also must find methods of establishing greater international cooperation to prevent species from the United States from invading other countries, while stopping invaders to this country at their sources overseas. Simberloff is optimistic about the executive order, calling it a good start. The effectiveness of the initiative, he says, partly depends on congressional appropriations. President Clinton's budget for Fiscal Year 2000 proposes an increase of $28.8 million in funding to fight invasive species. Windle worries that the executive order will be too little too late, and that not enough money will be available for hiring new staff. "People who need [funding]," she says, "are poor, strapped state resource agencies." The executive order itself is not specific on how the problems of invasive species will be solved. "The machinery it sets up could have a big influence" on slowing the spread of alien species throughout the United States, says Simberloff.