There is a key bit in this article that isn't expanded upon. It's something I only learned about after spending hundreds of hours controlling invasives and talking to other people.

Plants that are considered noxious weeds and plants that are harmful to our natural environment are pretty different things.

If you look at who has authority under the Federal Noxious Weed Act, you'll see it is the department of agriculture. They really don't care about natural areas much at all, they only care about how much agriculture you can get out of a piece of land. If a plant impacts this, it is considered noxious.

A prime example of this is the USDA noxious weeds list for my state, https://plants.usda.gov/java/noxious?rptType=State&statefips...

It doesn't even include truly heinous invasives like Privet, japanese/amur honeysuckle, or garlic mustard, but DOES include a couple of natives like grape vines and butterweed!!

It's pretty disheartening, because a lot of people don't realize this and it can cause some issues. I am friends with someone at a local nature center where they remove butterweed due to it being considered a noxious weed even though it is not at all invasive and is a native wildflower.