David Glick - 50 Ways to F**k the Planet

If you are to fully achieve your objectives, there are a couple of things to bear in mind. First, ensure that the salmon you release are sexually mature and capable of breeding with other fish. The last thing you need is millions of frustrated farmed smelts flabbing out and admiring their trim wild types from afar, but unable to do owt about it. Secondly, time co-ordinated attacks on the sea farms to fall between September and November when the local wild salmon are spawning. Farmed fish might carry a few extra pounds, but this at least can equip them to bully young pure-bred salmon out of the best spawning spots of rivers. Job done, they then head out to sea, never to return.

With a good wind behind you, Operation Bite Back IV will be recorded in history as achieving the biggest ever release of man’s salmon progeny. The potential is staggering. Already, between 2005 and 2007, 70 million smelts were squeezed into sea cages around Britain. Up to two million farmed salmon are estimated to have been released so far this century due to accidents and the battery of rough seas. And up to 90 per cent of salmon returning to rivers in Ireland, Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and Canada are already believed to be fugitives of farmed origin.

* Security measures at fish farms stepped up on police advice after series of attacks cause a few modest releases. Certainty.

* New virulent disease destroys farmed-salmon populations across the world. Bad news turns to good when mystery parasite then begins assailing wild populations. Likely.

* Farming of salmon declines in favour of farmed cod. Again, grim tidings lead to joy when move leads to resumption of wild-salmon fishing. Plausible.

* Animal activists fail to significantly disrupt fish farms because of new policing powers and tougher legislation to deter such activities. Probable.

* Despite lack of successful militant action, continued number of escapees from fish farms blamed for denuding wild-salmon numbers. Population falls to ‘critical’ levels within ten years. Strong possibility.

Likelihood of wild Atlantic salmon being extinct by 2015: 61%

The root of all problems

* Savage gardens

* Put down monstrous roots

* Rupture the infrastructure

The aliens landed some time ago. For a while they kept themselves to themselves and even seemed relatively well behaved. But, in truth, they were biding their time, waiting for the moment when world domination could begin. Naturally, being aliens, they would first have to morph into something terrible. And so they became a Triffid-type monstrosity, a rapacious superweed replete with superpowers. They became indestructible.

The Japanese knotweed, brought back to Victorian Britain from the Orient as an ornamental delight, is probably your favourite plant. A splendid-looking piéce de résistance with the armoury, faculties and, most of all, ambition to subvert Europe’s existing ecosystems. Knotweed is unstoppable. Labelled ‘unbelievably strong’ by the government’s admiring Environment Agency, it can burst through concrete pavements and tarmac and topple brick walls. Floorboards have been ruptured. Roads have been split. And now, the knotweed has set its sights on the rape of Europa. More dangerous, according to Britain’s leading scientists, than anything they have created with genetically modified organisms, knotweed is the second gravest threat to Europe’s plants (beaten only, and marginally, by reinforced concrete). She – the invaders hail from a single female ancestor – is a fabulous, wily specimen, capable of reproducing effortlessly on her own. And she is in a hurry, with each clone capable of growing a metre a week. Horticulturists, almost hysterical with shock, claim to have actually seen her grow.

Out in the wild, knotweed has no natural enemies. Only man stands in her way and, quite frankly, he just doesn’t cut it. Despite desperate and repeated efforts, nothing has been found to tame the knotweed. Trips to Japan to find a solution have yielded little. Hopes that voracious aphids and fungal rust may work crumbled long ago. Even supposedly impermeable mats laid on land have been, literally, punctured. The government is panicking. This problem plant costs nothing to spread but millions to defend against. Officials have spent more than £1.6 billion, 170 times the amount allocated to their biodiversity plan, but have got nowhere near the root of this knotty problem. Specialists can charge £40,000 to clear 5 square metres of the weed. Such is the concern that the government has recently started treating it on a par with nuclear waste. The removal of a solitary plant resembles a military operation. The Environment Agency, petrified of this ingenious nemesis, has produced a 37-page knotweed manual, which recommends digging away an area 7 metres around each plant and 3 metres deep: almost 600 cubic metres. The specimen should be removed and incarcerated 5 metres deep at a licensed landfill site. This is the only way to kill her for sure, but it has become so expensive and time-consuming that no one can be bothered. Call it natural selection, call it botanical genocide, call it what you will: the day of the Triffids is getting closer. You will hasten that day, helping this nefarious weed to overrun Europe, and sending indigenous species fleeing for cover.

Good day, Earthlings. Another Monday morning in 2017, the start of another working week under the occupation. The traffic bulletin offers a round-up of the usual pandemonium. Gridlock again on the M25 due to a weed burrowing beneath the fast lane. Near Doncaster a derailed train lies on its side after subsidence caused by a rampant plant. In the streets, commuters trudge to work in the shadow of towering stems that have pushed up through the pavement. Everywhere, the city’s streets are avenues of solid, swaying greenery. In this twilight world, cars flash past with headlamps on at midday. The news brings little respite. A school in Wales has been crushed by a falling wall, pushed over by an untamed tendril. Knotweed has burst into the House of Commons, this time directly through the speaker’s chair. The Queen is reportedly throwing a hissy fit because the Buckingham Palace herbaceous borders – the most heavily defended flowerbeds in the UK – have, again, been overrun.

Spreading the knotweed is child’s play, but the plant’s destructive tendencies ensure ultimate satisfaction. All you need do is ferry some cuttings about the continent and scatter them liberally whenever and wherever the mood takes you. Unarguably, this is one of the most straightforward means of defacing the planet. The challenge lies in blanketing an entire landmass in her shade, the creation of the first monocultural continent. This is the true meaning of going green.

Evidence indicates that Europe’s entire collection of indigenous fauna and wildlife could not survive a knotweed kingdom. When the plant wrested control of a Cornish valley in 2007, choking the landscape with a 7-mile bank of weed, naturalists recorded a mass exodus: dippers, grey wagtails, Daubenton bats, bluebells, and thrift all scarpered. Even the yellow flag surrendered without having time to change hue. Species have a choice; they either fight or flee. And the recent past shows that the former is futile.

To get Europe knotted you will first need to locate the weed. This won’t be too problematic. Already she has spread from Land’s End to the northern tip of the Isle of Lewis, her striking good looks immediately noticeable; a touch of bamboo bristling with fluffy white flowers and orangey-yellow roots, quite fetching on every level. Only the Orkneys have escaped so far. Scour rubbish tips or derelict land; deserted places where you won’t be disturbed. If you are, merely pretend to be a good citizen cutting down the ubiquitous weed (cutting or mowing encourages its spread, but you will conveniently forget to mention that bit). Knotweed spreads using its rhizomes – its roots – and a fragment as light as 0.08 grams – fingertip size – is all that is required to grow another plant. With her labyrinthine roots encompassing an area the size and depth of a subterranean swimming pool there is no shortage of incendiary material.