While you might be right that some aren't as bad as they once seemed there are plenty others that are worse. And if you sit around and navel-gaze while they become established, you're really asking for trouble.

Whiskerfish

Have you read Out of Eden, by Alan Burdick?

http://www.amazon.com/Out-Eden-Odyssey-Ecological-Invasio ...

The description of the destruction of subterranean ecosystems by Eurasian grasses in Hawaii was frightening. The grasses have so dramatically altered the ecology above ground, above lava tubes, that entire ecosystems, ecosytems not even fully exlpored, are disappear below the surface.

I'll be back...

The poor little super-destructive tree-muncher has been in quarantine in New York City since 1996! Held captive by well-meaning but clearly racist Parks Department folks.

Free ALB now!

NJD

Perhaps through global climate change nature has started on a little control and eradication project?

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

However, now I work in the field and part of my job is monitoring and controlling invasive species.  Why?  Because for every exception to the rule, there are many invasives that do exactly what we imagine - they invade and dominate ecosystems until all that is left is a thriving population of a single non-native species.  Now, it's silly to think we can eradicate them once they're here, but we can try to manage them so that they do not become a threat.

Are "alien" species intrinsically bad?  I don't think so, but on practical grounds and (more often than not) for the sake of biodiversity, invasive species prevention should be a top priority and careful management of invasives is necessary.

Since humans use water for other purposes than environmental reasons, we also have to consider those.  Hydrilla has enormous negative impacts on recreational activities like fishing, boating, and swimming.  Not to mention it can clog drainage canals, creating potential flood hazards, and irrigation canals, reducing the amount of water reaching crops.

At this time, I would like to mention worms. I grew up thinking worms were everywhere! Perfectly normal and an indication of a healthy environment. Well... they apparently did not exist in glaciated portions of North America until humans accelerated the move north. And this is a problem because ecosystems do not have time to adapt. The plants and animals dominating northern forests are not used to having worms around...

http://www.nrri.umn.edu/worms/forest/index.html

Result? Worms rapidly consume organic matter. Northern forests contain trees and herbs dependent on a layer of organic matter for reproducing. The mature plants are still there, but they are not being replaced. All the insects, birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, et cetera dependent on those plants will eventually be gone. Entire ecosystems occupying a large part of our continent will no longer exists. Interestingly, the invading worms also reduce carbon sequestration! Ouch!

Anyway... who would have thought a few worms moved north by humans could cause such havoc? Do we really want to start accepting the movement of various species thousands of times their "natural" rate of migration across continents and around the globe as normal? I agree with Erik that it is "natural"... just like urban sprawl, DDT, benzene rings, and other human activity. But is it a good thing?

Moreover, say you import a tree for a nursery.  The tree itself may be benign, but it may harbor a disease (like Dutch elm or chestnut blight or sudden oak death) or a pest (like the emerald ash borer or the long-horned beetle) that ends up being devastating for native species.

Really, the only safe policy is to treat all non-natives as guilty unless proven innoncent.

I'm confused by this paragraph, for two reasons: either Erik is against anthropomorphic statements like this yet goes on to talk in these terms, or he is full on supporting this statement. In either case, it is a fallacy to talk in these terms, since these things are not human.

Free the ALB!!!

I don't call for blanket amnesty for aliens, to rip one from the US Congress. And of course there are many, many problems.

But read the study on Hydrilla (and naturescene, you'll have to contact the authors if you want more information and further observations). Consider the other examples. And there are more.

Wisc, Burdick's book is good if pretty basic. The grasses problem in HI is awful. Typical of islands. But it reminds me of the wonderful crab grass. Don't you hate how with hairy native colonizes an area like your garden, greedily pushing out the natives, choking out everything in its path? No blame necessary, it's just following its biological imperative and ecosystemic role: find and stabilize disturbed ground: keep the soil intact: just wait: a grateful tree eventually arrives...and that's how an invasive gets out of control, too. Just doing its thing.

Is my argument dangerous? Hardly. It's just a call to re-evaluate our personal attitudes so that we can be objective enough to treat these situations with cooler heads. That's what was needed to keep the crop dusters from covering an organic farm I used to work on in CO with 2,4,D so that the county could keep ahead some invasives on their adjacent open space properties.

And no, I don't stand by the anthropomorphic statements of the battle cries against invasives. Was merely pointing out how hollow they are.

I've got stands of beech on my 7 acres that I don't want to lose to the blight that's already on them. Heck, I would've had chestnuts, too, if it weren't for that whole other problem. But I've still got trees, glory be, and the relative population densities of the other trees have all increased, post-chestnut, so there's at least something of a bright side there.

Doesn't mean that there's a bright side to the invasives species debate. It's just an opportunity to examine hubris, IMHO.


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Tim Low's book "The New Nature" deals with this topic in an interesting way.

One can get all deep and subtle about this question but at the moment all that seems to do is confuse the living daylights out of everyone, and slow action to stop the spread of invasives all around the world.

In trashed ecosystems invasives sometimes have interesting roles to play, and can actually fill niches that have been abandoned due to local extinction etc. I've argued for the retention of stands of 'invasive' Eucalypts in farmland near Cape Town (because there's nowhere else for raptors to nest).

But I've learned the hard way that the second you get woolly about this, bad things happen. If you start talking about being friendly to exotics, people interpret that as a licence not to take the issue seriously.

A few years ago I went to Guam. Anyone who has any interest in alien invaders, and what they can do to an ecosystem, should go there. Alien legumes have invaded the forests. The invasive Brown Tree Snake has wiped out almost all the native birds and all 6 native reptiles. Funny bugs brought in on ornamental plants are killing of the endemic cycads. Because there aren't really any birds around anymore (except for very low numbers of introduced exotic asian sparrows, Phillippine Fruit Doves, and Taiwanese Drongos) spider numbers have shot through the roof and any walk through what passes for natural vegetation is like a trek through a bad horror flick - sheets of spider webs sticking to your legs at every step.

In fact, anyone interested in the effects of US civilisation on the environment and wants to get a fast-forward look at what the mainland is likely to look like soon should go to Guam. I has a massive concrete-covered military base, the world's largest Wal Mart, and a HUGE leaky toxic dump that no-one really wants to clean up - very fitting symbols of the US of A, I sometimes feel.

Whiskerfish

I want to make sure Erik undestands that I do not view his remarks as a hostile attack on a cherished value that must be blindly defended. The remarks are an excellent opportunity for reflection and asking ourselves why we hold certain views.

I myself have wondered whether every exotic must be defeated. I've asked myself whether I should really reject an otherwise attractive plant for my yard just because it is not from North America or even from southwest Wisconsin.

As far as the restoration community is concerned, there are elements that reject not only exotics, but plants that do not naturally occur more than, say, one hundred miles from an area. Taking it one step further, there are "purists" who insist seed for restoration should be collected no more than fifty miles from a site... we should use only "local genotypes". There might be sound scientific reasons for this, but I wonder whether such fundamentalists attitudes will prevent some projects from ever moving forward or cause the average citizen to decide it isn't worth trying to use native plants in their gardens.

Now for the two observations:

#1

Has anyone noticed that if Erik replaced the subject of "alien invaders" with the subject of "global climate change" he would sound much like a denier guy? Hey... species have always moved from one area to another... some replace the local species, but so what... who are we to decide that moving them faster is a bad thing... it's human arrogance to think that we can prevent change... it is really quite natural... there have been dramatic shake ups of ecosystems before... life goes on...

Just an observation, not trying to confirm nor deny the validity of his remarks. Perhaps it means we should have a little more compassion for the global climate change deniers? Maybe their point of view deserves more consideration?

#2

I'd swear Erik has criticized the release of GMOs as a hazard that might have serious unintended consequences and indicated that we should not take a chance by releasing even the most harmless looking genetically engineered cultivated crop that could never surive without human assistance. Yet here he suggests that we should let entire collections of potentially fecund species loose on unsuspecting ecosystems and just keep an eye on them to ensure they don't cause trouble. I've already suggested that some exotics are not worth fightening. Erik, are you prepared to not oppose, perhaps even support, the release of certain GMOs?

PEACE

It's not "alien-hating" that's going on here. It's more about us being uncomfortable with the wholesale changes humans are bringing about in natural systems, systems that we still have only a very rudimentary understanding of.

Bringing charges of racism into the debate is unhelpful, not to mention old hat (Michael Pollan may a royal ass of himself in the New York Times about a decade ago peddling the same kind of unscientific postmodernist PC crap). Many of our beautiful North American natives are invasive species in other countries. In the plant world, for instance, Monterey Pine is disrupting moist eucalypt forests in Australia; late goldenrod and giant goldenrod are fouling up meadows and conservation areas the length and breadth of continental Europe. The list goes on.

Most invasive species are accidental villains, transplanted by humans out of their evolutionary and ecological contexts into new environments where, for any number of reasons, they run amok. So, in one sense, they are innocent, unwitting accomplices to our crimes. Nonetheless, the important point is that serious ecological invaders do rewire ecosystems and generally leave them biologically impoverished in the bargain.

So the hydrilla study found that native plant species diversity increased over a period of 17 years. The authors claim that this is a "long-term" study. Rubbish. Just cos Nirvana were top of the pops back when the research began   doesn't make it anywhere near long term. Naturescence also pointed out other flaws in the metrics of the study.

To be fair, though, other researchers have found that some biological invasions have resulted in an increase in local species diversity. See the current issue of Conservation Magazine for an interesting if half-baked round-table discussion of this subject by a small panel of experts:

http://www.conbio.org/CIP/article82ali.cfm

But if you read the fine print, you'll find that the measure of diversity being used by the apologist crowd -- species richness -- is very crude and uninformative. Sure, if you add new species to an ecosystem, the number will increase. But species richness tells us nothing about relative abundance and what's really happening on the ground.

And, of course, the very important point they do concede is that biological invasions are causing global diversity to go down. This is why the wait-and-see approach is irresponsible. Yes, many invaders are disturbance-adapted species that are "only doing their thing" in response to humans mucking everything up. But it's the same small coterie of organisms doing their thing all around the world. It's leading to large-scale homogenization of the planet's ecosystems, and ultimately a loss of global biotic resilience.

Now, hands up anyone who wants that.

As for there being a strong central reactionary core movement against invasives in this country? Where is it exactly? We have pretty much zero regulation of what's coming in and going out of this country. It's countries like Australia and New Zealand, which have felt the full force of serious invaders over the last century or so, that have the taken the more precautionary "guilty until proven innocent" approach.

In the case of invasive species, we need to be less tolerant, not more so.

NJD

But the Formosan Termite just isn't quite a welcome sight.  You can research them yourselves but in the warmer south, and with global warming and swarms moving north, we have a big problem:  anything wood.

I won't explain the peculiar voraciousness of this species of termite, thought to be a hitchiker on a load of ship stevedore's wood.  It you don't think the Formosan Termite is all that bad, and is perhaps ethnically challenged by virtue of its name, let me introduce you to the Fire Ant, Indicus, courtesy of a mad professor who visited Brazil.  They're headed your way as we warm up.  Won't you please sit on a nice Fire Ant mound and see how long it takes before you have to go to the hospital.  Can you imagine your children doing that by accident?

This isn't funny and I take personal issue with the concept outlined by Eric, since the scientists and researchers take this stuff very seriously.  Nearly always, such very aggressive invasive species always reduce species diversity and diversity density.  The contra-positive to Eric's argument is that all invasive species are innocent "good" things that should be protected.  Awww, how quaint and nice-nice.

I'm not down any of that, sir.
sammmie

Onward through the fog

First, what do we do about the invasives already here?  I think this is pretty straightforward.  Basically, if an invasive is crowding out or harming native species, setting aside practical considerations, we should get rid of it.  Yes, some invasives aren't actually harmful or may even be beneficial (though, as Whiskerfish points out, this is mainly in trashed ecosystems).  Those should be much lower priority for control/eradication.

But the bigger issue is what we do about stopping future arrivals.  Here in the US, new exotics are arriving all the time.  Based on past experience, the wisest course of action would be to do everything possible to keep non-native organisms out.  But that sort of solution costs money (for inspections, etc.).  And it's really hard to justify taking expensive, pro-active measures when you have people saying "look! some invasive species are good!"  The Hydrilla story is the sort of anecdotal schlock that Republican representatives will be citing in their House speeches when they argue against spending money to stop invasive species.  

The bottom line is that the overwhelming evidence is that exotic species are bad.  Giving time to the "other side" is just counter-productive.

I have resisted getting into this since it seems like a black hole of logic, and has has been pointed out, there are some problems with the study.  

I grew up, as many people did, with the most successful PR image in U.S. history--Smokey Bear.  
Fire was my mortal enemy.  Smokey did his job, and I bought it.  Through school, I ultimately learned the place of fire in the natural landscape, and gradually turned my back on Smokey.  I now conduct prescribed burns as part of my profession.  Quite a turnaround!

But at the same time I learned about invasive species and the destructive impact they have.  So while I abandoned Smokey, I developed a fierce distrust of invasives.  For this reason, I can't get over what appears to be some inconsistencies and weaknesses.  I'll just say this about Hydrilla--for any isolated, questionable study I'll raise you hundreds of square miles of impacted wetlands, ponds, lakes, etc., weakened biodiversity, extirpated species, loss of habitat, etc., due to Hydrilla.  I'll do the same with hundreds of invasive species in all taxa.  To attempt to suggest that this means invasives are not a serious environmental issue is doing a severe disservice to the truth.  This is flawed research.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  

First, it should be noted regarding the phenomenon, that there are many species humans move around the globe, deliberately and accidentally, but it is only the ones which are invasive that get attention, because they have precisely the characteristics of invasives. The problem is that it is very difficult to tell the difference before introduction. It may not be even a short-term process.  

Second, it disappoints me to see Orion associated with this report, but moreso the seemingly blase attitude presented.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

Consider Eurasian honeysuckles. They green up early in the spring, bloom profusely, and produce an abundance of fruit. Good for pollinators and birds? NO! The honeysuckle displaces a large mix of native vegetation... there are the spring wildflowers and an assortment of shrubs and trees that bloom and produce nectar, fruit, seeds throughout spring, summer, and into fall. This provides a steady supply of food for insects and birds.

The honeysuckle leafs out early, shading other plants -- the gorund is bare underneath them -- and produces a short burst of flowers and fruit. Once they are done, there is no more food available. It is a monoculture that produces one large crop of fruit. All the other native plants are driven out. And the area previously occupied by diverse native vegetation is void of flowers, fruit, and seed for the rest of the year.

metalman, referring to invasive plants, wrote... "At least they give oxygen and shelter for other creatures." Sure. But oxygen and shelter is of little value if you have no food for you and your offspring.

Moreover, I do not understand him to be saying that we should at all relax our vigilance against invasive species.  And I am sure he agrees that we should never intentionally release a species into an environment to which it is not native.

On the other hand, I disagree with his assessment, "The usual human response to novel critters in the ecosystem is that they're guilty until proven innocent, and eradication is the rule."  What human beings is he talking about?  It seems that most people are extremely lazy about paying any attention to novel critters, until they personally suffer some loss on their account.  And so his invocation of Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo, John Kyl and their hard-hearted nativist ilk, as a comparison, is not apt.

NDunne -- whose plea for amnesty for the Asian Longhorned Beetle is very cute --  also wrote:
<<
Most invasive species are accidental villains, transplanted by humans out of their evolutionary and ecological contexts into new environments where, for any number of reasons, they run amok. So, in one sense, they are innocent, unwitting accomplices to our crimes.
>>

OK.  Just to get our ethical terms straight, right, the invasive animals and plants are themselves never to blame.  To call them "villains" begs the question.  As someone else here said (sorry, I do not remember who, and cannot now find the place), there is no "steady state" of fixed native environments for organisms: "Nature finds a way," which means that critters have always moved around.  The stowaway method, for example, typically accounts for the presence of terrestrial animals on islands: somehow, miraculously, that is how tortoises and land iguanas got to the Galapagos, drifting on clumps of vegetation.  And it seems that is how the Brown Tree Snake got to Guam -- but by inadvertent human conveyance.

Blame in this matter of course can only be assigned to human agents.  But it must be analysed into kinds, depending on the intentionality and sense of responsibility of those agents.

1. When critters "stow away," e.g. the Brown Tree Snake, the Asian Longhorned Beetle, and the beasty that causes Dutch Elm Disease, human beings are responsible for the invasion.  You can argue that they/we deserve blame, for insisting on practising global commerce, without taking proper precautions.

2. Human beings have, alas, often been responsible for introducing and releasing non-native species, for some beneficial purpose, whether economic, environmental or aesthetic.  There are plenty of horror stories that result, e.g. goats in the Galapagos, mongooses on Caribbean islands, cane toads in Australia.  Those people were fools, who deserve a great deal of blame, especially inasmuch as they were motivated by greed: ignorance (of what the effect of the invasion would be) is no excuse.  (As a matter of history, I would be interested to know when was the last time anyone did this sort of thing.)

3. Human beings have introduced non-native species, for economic or aesthetic purposes, believing that they would keep them permanently domesticated and under control.  This is the "Jurassic Park" situation: they often get out of control, and escape; "Nature finds a way."  The Nutria, in the Gulf states, is an example, I believe.  These people too are fools, though of another sort; and they too deserve a great deal of blame -- though possibly they deserve a bit of pity, even as John Hammond does.

4. Most foolish by far, those who truly deserve to be called "villains" IMHO, are the people who buy exotic organisms, intending to keep them "domesticated and under control," but then tire of them, and release them.  Such are those idiots who released the Snakehead fish into the Susquehanna and Ohio systems, the Burmese Python into the Everglades, and that monitor lizard which has been terrorizing a neighborhood in Orlando.  (Florida seems to elicit this kind of bad behavior.)

To WiscIdea: The business about the worms is interesting, if not quite persuasive.  I shall have to think about it more.

To Sammie: Why do you say that the Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle is "invasive" on the Texas coast?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I also think it's fair to say that the best policy is to "keep them all out", as burger suggests, provided burger means preventing any new exotic species from entering an ecosytem.  And I agree with NJD that the "wait-and-see" approach is irresponsible; if newly introduced population is still small enough that eradication is feasible, better to be safe than sorry.

I don't think it's fair, however, to dismiss Erik's arguments as they apply to established exotic invasive species.  It's easy to say, yes, let's get rid of kudzu.  Not so straightforward if we bring herbicides into the picture.  Or when we have to kill golden eagles to protect the foxes on California's Channel islands.  (The eages are protected under the Eagle Protection Act but are not native to the islands).

We have a limited number of resources with which to manage exotic species and it's not cheap or easy.  So it makes sense to evaluate the costs and, yes, the benefits, of an established invasive species to an ecosystem, as well as the costs and benefits of trying to eradicate it.  That way we can make the most out of the limited resources we have.

At the national park, my two coworkers and I barely made a dent in cutting back the exotic invasive plant species, and I'm sure most of plants grew back the following year anyway.  Perhaps if we had focused on just getting rid one of the most noxious species, we could've successfully eradicated it from the park.  Perhaps if we'd also focused more restoring disturbed areas and preventing further disturbances, rather focusing solely on the symptoms--invasive population explosions, we'd have been more successful.  

That said, I think Erik is right on to question whether a "pristine" ecosystem ought to be our ideal.  The vast majority of forests in this country are not virgin forests and are constantly changing due to forces of nature and man.  Deeming one moment in history as an ecosystem's "pristine" state to aim to replicate seems rather arbitrary and silly.  Perhaps "healthy" is a better adjective to work towards.

As a side note, what about native invasive species?  Whitetail deer, juniper, red maple...

Hey, Canis:

I referred to the study that was cited and the writeup here as a 'logical black hole', because neither made a lot of sense.  I read the short condensation of the study which left lots of stuff out.  Two serious apparent flaws--there were no control plots or base line data referred to, and seem to be absent.  The other is they did not address the simultaneous changes in nitrogen levels in the Chesapeake during the study.  Those are concerns specific to the study.  

The other logical issues are specific to the writeup here.  I am concerned that Orion's director took such a blase stand on the entire issue of invasives.  I would expect a much more robust critical stand, since this is one study of one species in one area that by many accounts is flawed.  Even if it wasn't defective, the study does not invalidate a host of observations and studies that prove the global destructive character of invasives.

We really do need to make clear the distinction between natural species spread and the human-caused kind.  The natural kind is how we have the global species richness present before humans started to travel.  But since humans and the other hominids moved out of the Rift Valley, and then later the Euphrates, we've been doing two highly deleterious things--exterminating natives and introducing non-natives, and these can be completely independent or intimately joined.  

We've known about the ecological destructiveness of invasives for much longer than we've known of GHG and AGW, yet it is responsible for a great deal of global biotic depauperization, perhaps even magnitudes more, and in spite of this many of the same people who champion reductions in GHG and AGW apparently could not care less about the great damage from invasives.  We could reverse AGW and still have an 80% loss of species richness.    

We have tremendous global anthropogenic destructive forces actively causing loss of biodiversity.  Attempting to dismiss any of these great destructive forces seems like a useless distraction.  At the very least the writeup should have been much better done.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

Dear Sustainable David,

yes, sure, I see what you mean.  Erik Hoffner is not the most powerful writer, and perhaps missed an opportunity to say something truly impressive about the issue of invasive species.  Nevertheless, on balance, I think rather better of him and his post than you do.

Thanks to JennyT and her memoir.  I did not know that golden eagles were being killed over the Channel Islands.  That is very sad.  It would be lovely to have some golden eagles, from southern California -- the cool kind, dontcha know?! -- imported here to the lower Hudson River valley.

I already have an idea for a concept for a full-length animated romantic comedy ...  Angelina Jolie does the voice of the eagle from California ...  Well OK, if the budget is trimmed, Paris Hilton ...  : (

David, this paragraph is fascinating:
<<
We really do need to make clear the distinction between natural species spread and the human-caused kind.  The natural kind is how we have the global species richness present before humans started to travel.  But since humans and the other hominids moved out of the Rift Valley, and then later the Euphrates, we've been doing two highly deleterious things--exterminating natives and introducing non-natives, and these can be completely independent or intimately joined.  
>>

Unclear whether either Homo habilis or Homo sapiens paused long in Mesopotamia (aka Iraq: there is something auto-genocidal about the big story in current events), but whatever.  It is an excellent speculation.

Let us leave Galliformes and other fowls aside.  (Cluck cluck!; Aflac!)  In the Old World, human beings were able to domesticate five kinds of artiodactyls: pigs, goats, sheep, cattle and camels; and two kinds of (very closely related) perissodactyls: horses and asses (not arses; aka donkeys).

In the New World, the Andean peoples domesticated the artiodactyl camel-kin guanaco, a remarkably beautiful creature, and bred it to produce the more manageable llama, as well as other sub-species.  Later on, some of those New World guys in NA fell in love with introduced horses very deeply: "elk dogs," they were (bizarrely) called.

And of course everybody everywhere seems to have had true dogs, such as this little white worm-dog snoozing a couple of feet from me.  (She just got a very short haircut, so her body feels wormy.)  (Unclear where Homo sapiens and Canis lupus/C. familiaris first crossed paths: central/east Asia seems the best recent suggestion.)

Cats are a beautiful but weird alternative companion.  Talk about slouches not paying their taxes!  But according to Kipling, that primeval cat caught that primeval mouse which was terrorizing the primeval woman up on her primeval chair, and that was that.  So cats are all the fault of women (ha ha).

One rather philosophical question that we might ask is: In what generation, exhibiting what new phenotype, does a native organism, subjected to breeding by human beings, become an invasive new species in its own native range?

As for "exterminating natives and introducing non-natives," so far as domesticated animals go, this is probably an issue for paleobotanists.  Nineteenth-century America, what with bison vs. cattle, is probably not typical.  This should be better presented by people studying the history of domesticated Bovidae in Africa and Europe, as well as by those trying to reconstruct attitudes both pro-conservationist and pro-eliminationist, regarding wildlife, in earlier societies.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Certainly, as Candide would have it, "il faut cultiver nos jardins". For better or worse we are the gardeners of the world and will deal with weeds as best we can, and some of our most successful weeds do fall into this emotive "alien species" category. But I find quite distasteful the attacks on Erik for even bringing to Gristmill the notion that all aspects of all such species imports are not necessarily universally harmful.

A modest proposal: perhaps we should put a bounty on the head of these problem plants (hey - and why not the animals too?) by specifying them as feedstock for agrifuel projects. They'd disappear in no time at all.

Just as an aside, I seem to recall that in the final transatlantic dash of Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days" the hero demands the cannibalization of the ship itself as fuel for its own boilers in order to win his wager. What a fine metaphor for our voracious appetite for dispatchable energy at any cost!

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

I happen to consider humans and their activity just as natural as any other process, so I would be more inclined to interpret the current state of affairs by saying: humans have thrown nature severely off balance by accelerating the rates of change;  we move minerals, energy, biological organisms, and dead biomass around at an unprecedented rate. And the current natural systems are not able to adapt fast enough. As a result, there is a decline in biological diverity.

I'm very concerned about one of the views popping up in this thread... that alien species are a sympton of an underlying pathology, we created the problem, unless we are willing to fix "the system" we should accept the outcome, and it is time to losen our grip and let nature clean up after us. This is frightening. Anyone who suggests that we can sit back and let alien species reproduce for a while has apparently never tried to deal with an invasive plant or animal in a relatively natural area. What appears to be a fairly benign plant, something that can be dealt with later, can become a monster demanding weeks of solid labor and hundreds of dollars -- year after year after year -- to eliminate it from an area as small as a half acre. Anyone who suggests that we can sit back and let alien species reproduce for a while has apparently never looked at the loss of biodiverity in an area dominated by an alien species.

Sure, there is no pristine nature left on Earth. But that is not a good reason to throw up our hands and allow further damage. We don't know what the tippong point for each ecological system is. We don't know how many alien species can move into it without converting it to entirely different, perhaps novel, habitat. We don't know exactly what an alien plant is doing, what species are affected. For example, it was recently discovered that garlic mustard excudes a compound from it roots that inhibits growth of soil fungus essential for reproduction and healthy of North American hardwood trees; it took years for this particular problem to become apparent, but  it might be too late to rein in garlic mustard. God only knows what all the other alien plants and animals -- moved from one continent to another -- are doing to the native ecology.

In my opinion, if there is one core value uniting all conservationists and environmentalists it is the desire to PRESERVE BIODIVERITY. The more connections we have, the more resiliant the system. One can argue that plants and animal move around... so what if they move faster? Hey... someday the Sun will expand to become a red giant and the Earth will be a charred cinder... should we just detonate our collective nuclear arsenal this afternoon and get it over with?

In my opinion, all other concerns of conservationist and environmentalist are ultimately efforts to preserve biodiversity. For example, we are worried about global warming, not because we dislike balmy weather, but because we want to preserve biodiversity... for aesthetic, moral reasons, and pure selfishness. We should also be concerned about moving plants and animals from one habitat to another because it threatens biodiversity.

Erik has mentioned that a certain technique for manipulating organisms should not be used because it is violent and dissolves natural boundaries. Focusing on natural ecosystems, what could be more violent than moving a plant or animal across the natural boundary of a mountain range, desert, or ocean and infliciting it upon an enire community that has never encountered it before and has no natural defenses?

1. I want to state that I'm not at all for allowing more non-native species onto N. America or just watching them go crazy once they're here. I'd like to see all countries and industries enact smart anti-movement measures, so we can all figure out what we're up against with the current lot we've got, identify those critters that pose major risks, and also those that don't. And deal with each accordingly, with a cool head.

2. I don't think genetically modified organisms are the same as invasives, and would actually prefer the latter to bizarrified critters ranging around the landscape. Send some Alaskan pink salmon to the Connecticut River if you must, but spare us the altered atlantic salmon now under genetic development which will grow 5 or 10 or whatever times as fast as is natural. Those will surely push our remaining atlantic salmon to extinction (and literally in the CT River, there are about 100).

3. David: I'm not the director of Orion, or even employed by Orion magazine. If I were a better writer, maybe I could be ;) - I coordinate a program that lives under the same roof, but that's it. It's a mistake to assume that my personal view on this topic has anything to do with the editorial viewpoint of Orion magazine.

"Each year I hear arguments like this, then I go for a walk and lo and behold, there are hundreds of bees, insects and humming birds feeding freely on the dreaded invader."

I do not know where you live, but I just checked the dreaded invader in my yard and it is no longer blooming. It is done for the year. There was a burst of flowers a few weeks ago. They do smell wonderful. But now they are gone.

There is a monoculture of honeysuckle where there should be a diverse mixture of native plants, one blooming after another throughout summer and into fall. The ground underneath is covered with deep shade and void of plants. Because the honeysuckle leafs out so early, there were no spring wildflowers that might have offered the insects nectar and pollen before the honeysuckle bloomed. The dreaded invader provides a bounty of nectar... for a short time... and then nothing. It is a monoculture.  There is nothing for the bees, insects, and humming birds throughout the rest of the year.

Please check your honeysuckle bushes throught the year and let me know how many bees and hummingbirds you see.

"I don't think genetically modified organisms are the same as invasives, and would actually prefer the latter to bizarrified critters ranging around the landscape. Send some Alaskan pink salmon to the Connecticut River if you must, but spare us the altered atlantic salmon now under genetic development which will grow 5 or 10 or whatever times as fast as is natural. Those will surely push our remaining atlantic salmon to extinction (and literally in the CT River, there are about 100)."

For the record, I have not and do not advocate genetic modification of "wild" plants and animals... expcept, maybe, specific disease vectors and, definitely, to save a plant or animal  from human-caused extinction (e.g., American elm or American chestnut). It is reckless to genetically modify a "wild" plant or animal and release into an environment where it will compete with non-modified "critters".  As far as agriculture is concerned, I do not support genetic modification of animals to increase growth rate, make factory farming more practical, and numerous other reasons... there might be exceptions.

The crown vetch, sweet clover, field bindweed, Eurasian thistles, wild parsnip, honeysuckles, teasle, European buckthorn, and other plants taking over my 2-acre prairie remnant and depriving native insects and birds of habitat are a MUCH GREATER threat to biodiversity that the genetically modified corn or soybeans growing on the neighbor's farm.

While obviously all of these are invaders, I don't see how these plants are deleterious, since all flower similarly to native counterparts and produce abundant food for both exotic and native animals.

I think we have to get off the topic of 'aliens' and start talking about invasives, since established introduced species cause little damage. Invasive species, whether native or exotic are abundant, let's talk about those. Beech is really bad in the forests in the NE for example. It's difficult to deal with it.

Hey, Canis:

"horses and asses (not arses; aka donkeys)."  Ah, I was SO ready to assume that "asses" were the helmet- and breastplate-wearing Spanish/Dutch/French/English/Portuguese explorer passengers on the horses!   Hey, with boots on, they COULD be mistaken for perissodactyls....

Regarding the initial writeup, I am extremely wary of messages that seem to reveal a motive that is less than honorable.  By this I mean attempts to promote a personal goal rather than a larger unselfish cause.  I tend to filter everything (even what I write) in this way, so when I read things that fly in the face of established ecological principles (established not without some serious support) I become skeptical.  I am sure Mr. Hoffner will be rehabilitated, but there has been some loss of stock value.  

I especially like what Naturescene wrote (Message # 7 in chronological sequence) about invasives doing exactly what we have expect them to do, also strongly suggesting that the Hydrilla example is an exception not to be taken seriously.

There is another distinction to be made, and a value judgment.  This distinction is between range extensions or expansions of native species ("invasive natives"(?)) and invasives deliberately or accidentally caused by humans.  The first is far more naturally cyclical, and the second is much more profound and yet artificial.  Unwise human land use practices (e.g., fire suppression, clearing/exhaustion/abandonment of farmland) cause/allow/promote range extension of native species.  Although a problem, it is not nearly the problem that invasives cause.  In my own part of Texas we have both plenty of invasive species AND brush encroachment due to poor land use practices, and the encroachment is far less destructive and easier to reverse compared to invasives.  In many cases, the encroachment has a superficial character (many of the original habitat components hang on in the understory/periphery/seedbed), but the coverage by invasives can cause greater rates of extirpation of species.  

Yes, JennyT, I too acknowledge your efforts and your struggle to understand the scale and contradictions in things.  It sounds like you are well-suited to gain a deep understanding of the issues.   To apply what Thoreau said, if we all 'strike at the root' instead of merely whacking at branches we'll get much further faster.  

Yeah, Paris voicing a pretentious, vacuous, prissy, protected, privileged lap dog in an animated feature--talk about your typecasting....  (After that, I need a mental spiritual culture-redeeming shower.)  

I am feeling rather perverse this morning, so this bit of perversity had to come out.  The same political culture that denies evolution by natural selection then invokes the exact same principles to rationalize the spread of invasives as being 'natural', and even applying them to GMOs, too.   So typical of the intellectually dishonest Machiavellian machinations (aw, what the Hell--lies) of the corporate oligarchy, it is about time these lies cause the collapse of their corrupt system.  The pendulum swings but it needs to be tethered in a more egalitarian mode for a few centuries.  Yeah, the selfish descendants of the Fundies will long for the 'good ol' days'.  Hey, rehab is 'cool' these days.

To conflate several threads in a really perverse tasteless manner, just imagine a sweaty Charlton Heston in the last scene of the future-movie clinching out the words "Biofuel-Green is KITTENS!"  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

Perfectly correct. Nature has a way of taking  care of its own. Just not on a timescale that suits our suburban-garden concept of what is "natural".

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Hey, Erik:  

I wrote my last message without seeing your message ("thanks") and I apologize for misrepresenting you.        

To set the record straight,
Erik Hoffner's comments do not reflect those of the Orion organization.

If I wasn't such a militant or didn't have so many scars, much of this ignorance and superficiality would not matter.  Several people here immediately reveal their stark deliberate ignorance of ecology and the destructive scale of human impacts. There really is no excuse.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  

"Any vegetation is better than none."

The honeysuckle is NOT invading bare ground. The honeysuckle spreading around my home is invading a site currently occupied by... native coreopisis, lead plant, bee balm, big bluestem. little bluestem, prairie dropseed, wood betony, hoary pucoon, side-oats grama, rosin weed, blue-eyed grass, evening primrose, wild roses, false sunflower, wild petunias, assorted blazing stars, New Jearsey tea, and a large numer of additional native plants. A monoculture of honeysuckle -- standing over bare ground -- is replacing ALL of that diversity, which feeds and shelters insects, spiders, and birds throughout the year. Even the enormouse ant hills that bring nutrients from deep below the surface to feed prairie plants disappear when the honeysuckle take over an area.

If you are interested in preserving the few species using the honeysuckle, it would be much better to replace the Eurasian shrubs with a diverse mixture of native shrubs.

Regarding you exagerated suggestion that I might be drenching poor animals with herbicides and pesticides, I DO NOT. Why would I spray an entire area with herbicide to eliminate a single species?! The collateral damage would render the activity pointless. I also check the alien shrubs for nests before cutting them... if there is a bird nest, I wait for the youngsters to leave. I've even moved spiders from plants to avoid harming them. Most of my efforts to control invasives depend on careful pulling by hand, limited application of herbicide to cut stumps, and prescribed burning. And burining is timed to avoid harming insects, birds, and other critters. We even spray clumps of dropseed with water during a burn because we know rare insects overwinter in them. Control of invasive plants can be done to minimize harm to other organism.

Perhaps, someday, a plant like honeysuckle will become integrated... but what will be left? After centuries, there might be no native seed left in the soil where the honeysuckle now stand. And that is just one plant.

I fail to undertand why you have more compassion for a Eurasian shrub and the few native organisms that MIGHT benefit from their appearance in an area than all the native plants, insects, animals, fungi, bacteria. spiders, et cetera that can no longer thrive in that area.

We are not talking about vegetation vs. no vegetation. We are talking about a dense monoculture vs. a diverse multi-layered ecosystem.

I WISH deer and rabbits would eat the !@#$ things. But they don't. There is absolutely no sign of nibbling on the leaves, branches, and trunks. Critters will girdle every valuable sapling in an area and never touch a Eurasian honeysuckle.

Well, the 'pause for commercial messages' now comes, along with the dismissals and the 'pseudo-' charges.  

Somebody help me here: what is the statement about the Devil's greatest trick was convincing everyone that he didn't exist?  Plus a handy distraction?  Now warmed over and turned over, we are told something we thought was bad isn't, and was only due to something else that was worse.  

Two evils don't make a right--rejecting the impacts  of invasives as being a contrivance of soulless petrochemical tycoons hoodwinking both professionals and garden club types is a typical ploy.  Go back to the starting line, or better yet, back to the bench.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!          

metalman:

Please suggest a plausible mechanism and time frame, by which honeysuckle will become integrated into it's new environment. Keep in mind that it overruns other vegetation and shades most of those plants to the point of death. Other organisms dependent on those native plants disappear from the area.

When do you expect the native prairie plants and animals to rally their genetic heritage and manage to resist further invasion of their habitat? Is natural selection ready to take on this task?

I've expressed this elsewhere on the Grist website and will present a similar concern here.

It appeared that Erik was a bit upset about the use of chemicals to control alien plants. It appears that you are a bit concerned about efforts to erradicate alien plants because there are now other organisms taking advantage of them. And both of you have implied that it is unnecessary and perhaps even harmful to eliminate alien species... that there are actually advantages to keeping them around.

Well... if you are worried about chemicals and other species, why not post an article and comments about the need to use ecologically sound methods of controlling alien species. Why not warn people that they should immediately replace those alien plants with appropriate native species? Why not help people plant a diverse array of species that will be relatively roboust and permit the system to change gradually as the climate changes?

Instead... both of you imply that the activity itself -- eliminating alien species -- is BAD. I think both of you actually just oppose the methods. Both of you know we need to preserve biodiversity. Both of you know alien species can harm local flora and fauna. Why cloud the issue by questioning whether control of aliens is necessary?

metalman wrote:

"Any vegetation is better than none."

How clever: manufactured, shallow, presumptive, distractive, fear-based false choices.  Where is there "none" where there should be 'some'?  

Like the blind men examining the elephant, if you ain't there at the right time and place you'll get the wrong impression.  Ever seen a playa in the dry season?    Or a desert the day before a rain?  Or a fresh talus slope 50 years before succession provides any hint of life?  How about a deciduous upland forest in the dead of Winter?  Maybe Mt. St. Helens 24h post eruption?  A native prairie in a drought?  Xeric tundra in Winter?  A sandbar after a flood?  Where would you put your oh-so-casual
"any vegetation"?

Of course, all of this is assuming you are not a denialist troll, and instead have a reasonable grasp of real natural systems, cycles, succession,  and not the artificial ones you seem to prefer. Yer startin' to clank, dood.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

From a review of this book in the journal ecology:
"Specifically, invasion biologists will
be surprised to learn that their work is isolated from the rest of biology, that their research is solely motivated by xenophobia with historical roots in Nazism, and that '[p]sychotherapeutic counseling has been successfully used to reduce racial prejudice in individuals, and could be used to help anti-invader extremists.'"
Deprogramming Invasion Biologists?
http://striweb.si.edu/basset/PdFs/Longino2004Arthropods.p ...

Not that I enjoy defending myself, but this statement of yours: "both of you imply that the activity itself -- eliminating alien species -- is BAD. I think both of you actually just oppose the methods" begs me to quote myself from above:

"I'd like to see all countries and industries enact smart anti-movement measures, so we can all figure out what we're up against with the current lot we've got, identify those critters that pose major risks, and also those that don't. And deal with each accordingly, with a cool head."

What do you think I imply for dealing with those that "pose major risks"? More study? Nope. Chemicals, physical eradication, etc must be used in those cases.

The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more

Evolution is a dynamic, second by second occurance, yet most Gristers see it in terms of plaster diarramas from the 81th street Museum of Natural History.  

Yeah, that's a great place to sit outside and get a knish or to watch Laser Floyd, but it ain't evolution.

"I'd like to see... [see recent comment] ... deal with each accordingly, with a cool head."

This is NOT at all the original tone of your post! And it does not appear until the 30th comment or so in the thread!

The original post and most of the discussion implies that the activity itself -- eliminating alien species -- might be a bad idea. It does not look like your were interested in discussion of how that activity should be conducted.

metalman... why do you hate reptiles?  :)

I don't even rule out the use of toxics there. I just feel that toxics ought not be the first response when looking at a perceived threat. Using "too many toxics" is using more than absolutely necessary, in my book.

You can't say I've implied something when it's right there, calling for controlling problem critters.

The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more

Peace.