Stuck in the Weeds: The Invasive Plant That Thrives on Bureaucracy

Cy Tongate, a mid-level bureaucrat with Texas's Rio Grande Vegetative Management Program, has spent years battling Arundo donax, an invasive bamboo-like plant colonizing the Rio Grande Basin and complicating border operations near Shelby Park. When the Texas National Guard took over the park in January 2024 as part of Gov. Greg Abbott's "Operation Lone Star," Tongate's herbicide-spraying work was hamstrung by military bureaucracy—National Guard troops questioned his clearance, mistook his drones for drug-smuggling tools, and their new roads and fencing paradoxically triggered the plant's more vigorous growth through its underground stem network. Arundo, which spreads asexually and can grow four inches daily, now covers tens of thousands of acres in Texas and infests waterways in at least 25 states, outcompeting native species and increasing fire and flood risk. Tongate's multi-year struggle reflects a broader pattern: despite developing effective killing techniques in the early 1990s, scientists and land managers across North America have mostly failed to control Arundo due to jurisdictional conflicts, underfunding, bureaucratic failures, and two corruption scandals. Though Tongate maintains long-term optimism, he acknowledges the immediate reality—federal and state agencies fighting each other, upriver Arundo stands threatening to re-infest cleared areas, and the plant's relentless biology defeating most containment efforts.