16 Apr Read Emma Maris: It’s Time to Stop Thinking that All Non-native Species are Evil. Read this quote by Beth Sanderson et al. It highligh
- Read Emma Maris: It's Time to Stop Thinking that All Non-native Species are Evil.
- Read this quote by Beth Sanderson et al. It highlights that many ecologists call for more funding for prevention and eradication of non-native species, due to their effect on biodiversity.
"Non-indigenous species (NIS) pose one of the dominant environmental threats to biological diversity (Vitousek et al. 1996 (Links to an external site.), Simberloff et al. 2005 (Links to an external site.)) and are cited as a cause of endangerment for 48% of the species listed under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) (Czech and Krausman 1997 (Links to an external site.), Wilcove et al. 1998 (Links to an external site.)). In 2005, NIS cost the US economy in excess of $120 billion (Pimentel et al. 2005 (Links to an external site.)), and the occurrence and ranges of NIS are steadily increasing. Despite these high environmental and economic costs, little funding is devoted to tracking the distribution and spread of NIS (Crall et al. 2006 (Links to an external site.), Lodge et al. 2006 (Links to an external site.)). Consequently, we do not know enough about NIS impacts on native species to make educated prevention and management decisions (Parker et al. 1999 (Links to an external site.)). This lack of information is especially of concern with regard to threatened or endangered species." (from Sanders et al. 2009. Nonindigenous Species of the Pacific Northwest: An Overlooked Risk to Endangered Salmon? BioScience 59(3): pp. 245-256) - Read this excerpt from "Inside Out: Invasive Plants and Urban Environments" by S.H. Reichard.
Discussion prompts
Address these prompts in your discussion post.
- Given that the negative effect of non-native species on biodiversity is well established, outline where you agree and where you disagree with the author Emma Maris. Use evidence to support your opinion – you must do this. Do not cite the articles that I assign – you must have outside sources. Cite your sources. Do not use quotations – put the information in your own words. You will be marked off if you use any quotes. I want all material in your own words. You must have and cite sources. Canvas page on citing sources.
- Considering the articles, how would you propose managing species diversity in urban areas versus areas with a lot of wildlands?
- Comment on the following statement: "Change is part of the history of life and we should let nature run its course rather than interfering with it."
Opinion: It's Time to Stop Thinking That All Non-Native Species Are Evil
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140724-invasive-species-conservation-biology-extinction-climate-science/[8/8/2014 8:04:47 AM]
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By Emma Marris in Missoula, Montana for National Geographic
PUBLISHED JULY 24, 2014
Giant Aldabra tortoises are a non-native species on the islands of Mauritius. The country introduced them in 2004 after losing all its large tortoises.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JACK ABUIN, ZUMAPRESS/CORBIS
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Opinion: It's Time to Stop Thinking That All Non-Native Species Are Evil
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140724-invasive-species-conservation-biology-extinction-climate-science/[8/8/2014 8:04:47 AM]
What should be done with the wattle-necked softshell turtles on the Hawaiian island of Kauai?
The turtles came from China, starting in the 1850s, brought by sugarcane farmers who liked them as soup. Today, they're endangered in China and considered invasive—the term for non-native species that cause undesirable effects—in Kauai. But conservationists don't believe the animals are safe from hunting in their home range, so there's little point in boxing them up and sending them back.
It's a head scratcher: Should we remove the turtles from Kauai to preserve the native ecosystem there —the turtles could potentially eat native fish—and risk the extinction of their species, or should we keep them alive in Hawaii?
Those kinds of knotty questions are becoming more commonplace in ecology, as global change accelerates. And so a new attitude is emerging that's less reflexively hostile toward invaders. It was much in evidence at a symposium held last week at the North American Congress for Conservation Biology in Missoula, Montana. I participated as a journalist but not a disinterested observer: I've argued in the past that it's time for a more nuanced approach to the non-native plants and animals among us.
Invasive species are scary. It was ecologist Charles Elton, back in the 1950s, who introduced the militaristic "invasion" metaphor to describe exotic plants and animals—but there's no question some can be extremely destructive.
The brown tree snake has eaten a dozen kinds of forest birds in Guam to extinction; zebra mussels clog pipes around the Great Lakes; the common house cat turns out to be, in Australia, a mercilessly effective killer of cute, fluffy marsupials like the bilby and the numbat.
As scientists have sounded the alarm about these pests, the public has gotten the message. Citizen groups rip out non-native plants. Native gardens have become increasingly popular, both as ways to celebrate the unique flora of each region and as tiny hot spots of diversity. Native trees provide food for native bugs, which feed native birds. Food chains developed over thousands of years of co-evolution unfold in our backyards. We're even going native in the kitchen, with fine restaurants increasingly focused around locally hunted, foraged, and grown ingredients.
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Opinion: It's Time to Stop Thinking That All Non-Native Species Are Evil
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140724-invasive-species-conservation-biology-extinction-climate-science/[8/8/2014 8:04:47 AM]
So we've learned, scientists and lay people alike, that native species are good and non-natives are bad.
Julian Olden, a biologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, who co-organized the symposium, recently polled nearly 2,000 ecologists. Among his findings: A substantial number of them said they would immediately eradicate a hypothetical non-native forest plant, even if it were shown to have no effect on the forest. Olden calls this the "guilty even when proven innocent" approach.
That kind of approach is not very useful on a rapidly changing planet.
Exotics Are Everywhere
Climate change is making it harder even to decide who the invaders are.
How, scientists at the symposium wondered, do you define "native" on a warming planet, when plants and animals are already moving toward the poles or up mountainsides in search of climate conditions they can tolerate? Should we consider them "invasive" in their new homes? Regardless of what we label them, conservationists will be reluctant to remove them from their new environs—to do so would stymie their chances of adapting to the warmer future we're creating.
And then there are the non-natives that we actually like. Most domestic crops are exotic in most of the places they're grown, but there are even wild exotics that "do good," forming useful relationships with native species.
Edwin Grosholz of the University of California, Davis, told the recent symposium about one such relationship. On beaches in his state, non-native spartina grass has become important habitat for the endangered California clapper rail, a plump shorebird with a downward curving bill more at home on land than in the air. A project to rip out and poison the spartina—which grows in dense swaths that exclude many other shorebirds—saw clapper rail numbers go tumbling downward.
There are other examples like that. The endangered southwestern willow flycatcher nests in "invasive" tamarisk shrubs. Many native (and beautiful) Hawaiian flowers are now pollinated by the Japanese white-eye bird—because the native pollinators have been driven extinct by other non-native species.
Should we impose further risk on already endangered natives by severing these relationships? Or should we admire the resilience of nature and let such "well-behaved" exotics stay?
Weirdest of all is the puzzle of the invasive species that are themselves endangered, like the wattle-necked turtle. Dov Sax, an
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