"Invasive species", or "survival of the fittest"?

I hadn’t heard this about herbicides, but I guess it “makes sense” if you are so intent on fighting this quixotic battle. Hoo boy.

Probably true - I mean, the places where we live were probably once part of the sea bed, or a desert, or scoured clean by glaciers or something at some point in Earth’s history - and were subsequently colonised by fresh populations of various species, probably different from the previous ones.

How are we quantifying ‘harm’? It’s rare that they are harmful to humans (although there are cases where that’s true), but for human-introduced invasive species, there is often another species displaced or out-competed; brown rats, cats and dogs introduced by humans have driven numerous island species to extinction or nearly so; here in the UK, the grey squirrel has significantly displaced the red squirrel; the American signal crayfish will probably eventually wipe out our native white crayfish, and so on. Are these cases of harm? If not, what is?

Probably true, but I don’t think that’s a reason to celebrate.

What you’re calling “harm”, I’m calling “survival of the fittest”.

No one is saying you have to celebrate. Mourn, if you like. But how about we stop spending a ridiculous amount of money and restricting people’s civil liberties, moving heaven and earth in an effort that is doomed to fail?

Of course it’s that, tautologically, but so what? We can also call it reduction of biodiversity. I imagine very little harm takes place if the word has no definition for you.

Again, if it’s inevitable, we are mainly just arguing about how sad to feel about it–right? You on board with shutting down the pointless attempts to stick fingers in the dike, at least?

That said, I do find it silly to try to thwart evolution’s inexorable progress by artificially maintaining a weaker species’ niche in an ecosystem. Not (to perhaps belabour the point) however as silly as trying mightily to do so without any real chance of success.

The real issue is whether it is better for humans to attempt to manage their natural environment for, ultimately, what they perceive to be their own benefit, or not.

To my mind, it isn’t even a close question - managing our environment for our own benefit is what humans do, all the time. We have to, our whole way of life fundamentally depends on it.

That being the case, attempting to manage invasive species is simply another struggle that humans are going to engage it; it is part of the larger struggle, to encourage species we like (or depend on) and discourage those we don’t. In the case of invasive species, we are managing nature in the name of promoting biodiversity - something our other efforts at management often discourages (think monoculture agriculture). Gradually, humans are becomming aware that managing our immediate environment for our own benefit means dealing with issues such as biodiversity - that we cannot simply grow the tastiest crops and care nothing for the rest of the ecosystem, as this is not, fundamentally, good management.

The fact we cannot “eliminate” most invasive species is totally irrelevant. Humans have been unable to “eliminate” rats, bedbugs, and cockaroaches. Does that mean we are happy to allow our houses to be overrun with rats, bedbugs and cockaroaches? Or that it is somehow philosophically “right” not to interfere with these creatures, because “evolution”? No - we attempt, as far as we are able, to “manage” our immediate environment, and control (not eliminate) these creatures when they proliferate. I for one am okay with that.

Managing invasive species is the same process writ large.

SlakerInc,

You claim to be an environmentalist, which means to me that you believe that humans should take some consideration about the effects their presence have on the environment. But in reality humans are just another invasive species. From your point of view those species like the passenger pigeon that couldn’t handle our presence were clearly unfit to survive. Just in the past several decades we have decided that some consideration should be given to preserving the ecosystem as it stands now, and that the radical changes that has been occurring due to our presence is not “good”. Introducing an invasive species into a new area can radically change that ecosystem, destroying the balance and wiping out many species in the process. Its basically just the same things as humans are doing but at a smaller scale. So any arguments that you can present in favor of environmentalism can also be used in favor of managing invasive species.

I recently read a piece by Chris Packham on the issue of invasive species, especially the grey squirrel, which has largely supplanted the native red in Britain. Reading it made me re-think some of my views on the subject.

Not at all. inevitability need not automatically lead to resignation. It is inevitable that I will one day die. I’m not planning to curl up on the floor tonight and stop eating and breathing, in the face of that fact.

Not all cases are pointless, and even if we can’t win, slowing down the encroachment may in many cases allow the invasion to integrate into the existing system with less destructive impact.
This includes human impacts to things like agriculture and timber industries - the change may be inevitable, but if it happens all at once, it can be devastating.

Invasive species. It’s kinda like the macdonaldization of nature. Everywhere you go, is just like any other place. There’s nothing natural about it either way. We’re past that point where we’re not the shepherd of nature. Although it’s rather a moot point, since we don’t have the power to turn back the tide and stop invasive species.

Excellent point; if an “invasive species” is harmful, we might be able to reduce the harm, even if we can’t eliminate it entirely.

Here is a link to a very short article on the “eucalyptus wars” near San Francisco.

To be honest, I’m not at all sure which side I’m on! I like eucalyptus trees, and think that they don’t do so much harm as to require large-scale removal. They “crowd out” other trees, but all trees do that! There are constant (very slow) wars between the native oaks and pines. (And the ghastly fast-growing impenetrable ceanothus! You do not want that stuff growing wild in the canyons below your house!)

Obviously, some invasions are terribly harmful, such as feral cats on some small islands. Aggressive control measures are justified there, at least.

nm.

Except that the authorities do not limit themselves to trying to keep these pests out of their own homes, but insist on searching my car if I want to enter California. I’m not okay with that, just as I wouldn’t be okay with my neighbours being able to come into my house and inspect it for mice or roaches. Inspect your own damn house and leave mine alone.

Furthermore, dovetailing with the attempt to “manage” invasive species is an attempt to protect the ecological niche of native species (an analogue to protectionism in a way). I’m totally cool with preserving species in zoos if they are otherwise going to go extinct; but I don’t like the idea of moving heaven and earth to keep a species from going extinct in its natural habitat. Preserve the habitat, yes: stop suburban sprawl, clean up the air and water, quit fracking. But then let the flora and fauna in that preserved habitat duke it out and don’t try to play favourites. Otherwise it’s more of a garden than a forest/prairie/etc.

If you had a rat problem on your property that was also causing problems outside of your property (e.g. rats breeding like crazy in your basement and spilling over into other properties constantly), would you be OK with government-initiated intervention (assuming you failed to control it yourself)?

If ypu lived in an apartment, and yours was constantly invaded by waves of roaches and rats from the guy next door because he never bothered to control them or clean his place, you might feel differently on that score.

Species are no respecters of human property lines, so any effort to manage them cannot be, either; though naturally, there has to be some sort of reasonable balance between individual rights, and the imperatives of management.

The real issue isn’t preserving the red-toed lesser tree shrew or whatever - such efforts are usually “proxies” or legal excuses for protecting the bit of forest or whatever they happen to be living in (as in, “you can’t drill for oil in this woodland, it is the last habitat of the red-toed lesser tree shrew!”).

The real issue is - reasonable management, by humans, of the natural environment. The notion that humans should not be in the business of doing that is simply a romantic myth - the myth that, if we don’t conciously manage, ‘nature can take its natural course, free of human intervention’. Or as you put it “let the flora and fauna in that preserved habitat duke it out and don’t try to play favourites. Otherwise it’s more of a garden than a forest/prairie/etc.”.

Well, sadly, that’s a nice myth, but that’s all it is - a myth. Without concious management by humans, what you get is not ‘nature in its pure, natural state’, but a whole lot of unconcious management by humans - unless you were somehow able to enirely exclude humans and human influence on that environment (which, on our planet, is pretty well impossible). We don’t just leave nature alone, we interfere with it in countless - and increasingly intrusive - ways. We “play favorites” though our actions - and those “favorites” so chosen may be ones we don’t like in various ways, that lead to monoculture (rather than complexity), that lead to the extinction of species useful to us or aesthetically pleasing, that are more inimical to humans in the short or long run.

One of the ways that humans “unconciously” manage the environment is by moving species from place to place, where they otherwise would never have gone. Invasive species is a form of human intervention.

I, for one, do not see any upside to allowing unconcious management by humans to dictate the shape of our natural environment, as opposed to putting our brains and science to work in attempting to conciously manage our environment for the better.

As I understand his position, he’d be OK with authorities catching/controlling rats as soon as they crossed outside his property line. But he’d refuse to allow his car to be checked as he drove out with a trunk (boot) full of rats.

**Mangetout **and Malthus, your very similar analogies do not hold up. They are not searching specific cars they think are causing trouble, as I understand it–but just any car that comes through. So the analogy would be if authorities felt free (as they presumably would in, say, China) to just inspect everyone’s home for roaches or mice.

It wasn’t my analogy - it was yours. You wrote:

What, exactly, is your complaint? That your stuff is inspected crossing a border? My heart is not exactly bleeding for that.

Being searched, without a warrant or probable cause, crossing a border from one state to another, which has never* happened to me in years of driving all over the country. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call that un-American; I have to think it will be challenged at some point to the Supreme Court and found blatantly unconstitutional. The Fourth Amendment does not have exceptions written into it for “invasive species”.

*As I explained up thread, it still has not happened to me: I only have read about it. if it does ever happen to me, knowing how stubborn and ornery I am about things, I expect I’ll get my revenge by doing everything I can to sneak the species in question across the border and spread them in various spots where they would be the most likely to gain a purchase before being discovered.

u-s-a!! U-s-a!! U-s-a!!