And there ya go. I OTOH do tend to care more about being “green” than about preserving jobs and economic growth. So we just have different values there.
BTW you come across as awfully angry. Just FYI.
I have literally zero interest in economic growth, jobs *or *being “green”.
Well, I’m not. FYI.
Huh. Did someone hack your account to write “that’s cold comfort for the guys who just saw their entire livelihoods go up in smoke”? Sounds like “jobs” to me.
Sounds like giving a shit about people.
I know I’m not. What I am axiomatically privileging are more biodiverse ecosystems (as opposed to just nett biomass). If invasives lead to that, I’d say that an argument can be made for them. Could you give any examples of invasives leading to an increase in biodiversity rather than a loss?
Well, yes…but it’s kind of tautologous. The Hawaiian Islands. When they first popped out of the sea, they were absolutely barren. All of their biodiversity is from “invasive” species.
“foreign” and “invasive” are not synonymous though, are they ?
ETA : I didn’t mean to be snarky, this is a candid question
Something I linked to upthread said that it did often result in more local biodiversity but ultimately less global biodiversity. It’s a rigged game if we’re talking global, because it really can’t increase biodiversity globally, not on any reasonable time scale.
But I don’t agree with your axiom in any case. We live in a much less biodiverse world than the one that the dinosaurs lived in, and we probably couldn’t survive (or evolve in the first place) in that world.
ETA: Upon further consideration, I don’t even necessarily want max biomass if it involves things that eat me, sting me, or give me respiratory allergies. I want a pleasant, verdant but safe environment to hike or canoe in. If an invasive species is directly harmful to me in one of those ways, I would support eradicating it. But I would also support doing that if it’s a native species, so it’s sort of beside the point.
True, and valid. (And I was mostly just being silly…)
But, do consider that the Hawaiian Islands were populated over many, many successive waves of plant and animal immigration. So, a first wave of plants might have arrived by typhoon winds, and gotten settled in, only to be displaced by a second wave of plants brought by birds.
“Invasive” and “natural” are not necessarily antonyms. Also, some foreign or imported plants can enhance diversity, while others might limit it… But the same is true for natural plants.
I live in the zone where oaks meet pines. Where you have oaks, you usually have a very rich undergrowth, with lots of diversity. But where you have pines, you usually have a very thin undergrowth. Oaks are compatible with sumac and sage and chaparral and poison oak (aiee!) but Pines kill their competition, by toxins in the soil.
(Both also compete by shading the sunlight, but they’re about equal at that.)
If one wanted to maximize diversity, for diversity’s sake, killing pines would be one way to engineer that. But they have been native to this area for a damn long time, and it doesn’t seem justifiable to embark on that kind of genetic cleansing.
(And…as noted above…it isn’t feasible anyway!)
Agreed. Worse, we live in a less diverse world than we had a measley 10,000 years ago, and a hell of a lot of the fault is our own. We humans have killed off a lot of plants and animals, and destroyed a lot of acreage.
At very least, can we all agree on a principle of reducing the number of species extinctions which are caused by our own activities? I can accept the idea of removing all the eucalyptus from California…but not the idea of killing all the gum trees anywhere, ever.
I’m good on making gardens of some areas, but I want to leave other areas (and much larger ones) as wilderness preserves.
David Quammen, in Song of the Dodo, goes into some detail on the question of wilderness preserves and how to strategize the land-use. He explains the debate between “One Large” and “Many Small” preserves. The sad fact is that a whole bunch of small preserves don’t work as well at saving species from extinction as does a single, very large preserve. The former produces islands, and, alas, islands tend toward rapid turnover of species.
Finally :).
Yes. So would we. That’s kind of what puzzled me about your whole line throughout the debate. You seem so hung-up about the geographical angle of things.
But people don’t try to combat “invasive species” because they’re exotic, they do because they’re harmful to the environment they have been introduced to, and directly harmful to you (and me). The label “invasive” is a more accurate descriptor, as well as a shorthand to explain why a species is *that *successful spreading in a short a period of time, that’s all.
Had the zebra mussel been a brand new form of a local species, one that had somehow mutated or evolved into the horrible horrible unpredated pest that it is, people would try to stop or curb its spread all the same. For the sake of enjoying their big fishing lake cum convenient water source, if nothing else. It’s marginally less convenient if you have to spend half a million dollars every other year scraping the inside of every pipe as far as the eye can see.
And the reason countries and states protect their borders against foreign species is not *because *they’re foreign, but because nobody can predict whether the introduction of an exotic species into the local ecosystem(s) will be benign or disastrous. If and when it were disastrous there’s usually no way to go back. When there is, it still takes a large amount of time, effort and money to redress the problem, not to mention the cost of the damages themselves (not just in terms of money, but also in terms of pleasance, verdance and safety).
A quick check at the border is cheap and reasonably effective in preventing all of that. So that’s what they’d rather do.
That’s not beenmy understanding.
Again, you’re clearly ignorant about the subject you speak of. The world is much more biodiverse now than in dinosaur days - just to name some large clades which have only really taken off since then: flowering plants and insects. Sure, they both existed then, but the full spread of their diversity is more recent. Ditto fish and mammals. Hell, there aren’t evenany less dinosaursaround now than there were then - they just conquered a whole different niche.
Cool! That’s a misunderstanding I had fallen prey to as well. I had thought the world had not ever fully recovered from that or any of the other major five extinction events. Nothing I was ever formally taught, just the impression left from reading. Thank you for setting this clear.
(But…I am on secure ground when saying we have lost overall diversity in the last 10,000 years, largely from human activity?)
Naah, extinction events are often followed by a massive radiation of diversity as the remnant groups expand to fill in the newly-open niches. Look at the radiation of dinosaurs after the Permian event, or the bird and mammal radiation after the K-Pg one. I’m not an expert, but I wager you’d find similar in ocean fauna and plants as well.
Note that it is true that entire clades may be knocked out (ammonites, for instance, or trilobites) but they will rapidly be replaced by equally-diverse other groups that weren’t able to exploit those niches before. And often-times, those clades were on the wane before the extinction event anyway (the two I just mentioned, definitely, were already on the outs,)
Definitely. Largely because we’re not in the habit of replacing anything in a niche, we just remove entire rich ecosystems (NA prairie, Amazon rainforest) and replace them with artificially-maintained monocultures (Kansas cornfields, Brazilian beef farms) not sustainable ecosystems.
There are two evolution pop sci / philosophy positions that are really popular, particularly in the West:
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Evolution is a wondrous thing and humans must not stand in its way.
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Whatever happens is evolution. So, e.g., if humans routinely customize their entire genome one day…well, that’s still evolution.
I think it is inconsistent to hold both positions, yet many people do (in my own case I hold neither btw).
The OP for example seems to be holding both positions because (s)he is saying we shouldn’t interfere with invasive species, but at the same time our initial interference in helping the species cross continents is OK.
That’s my personal take on it, BTW - we moved those species in the first place, we can eliminate them too.
My state probably has more “recently introduced” species (meaning roughly since the appearance of humans circa 12-15,000 BCE or since the appearance of Europeans circa 1492 CE) than anywhere. We find some definitions to be useful. “Exotic” species are those introduced here, purposefully or accidentally, from a natural range outside of this state. A “Naturalized Exotic” sustains itself outside of cultivation (but hasn’t ‘become’ native). An “Invasive Exotic” has not only naturalized but is expanding on its own into native ecologic communities.
And also useful is to categorize the effects of invasive exotics on native flora and fauna. Some species are identified as Category II – “Invasive exotics that have increased in abundance or frequency but have not yet altered native communities”. And Category I refers to “Invasive exotics that are altering native communities by displacing native species, changing community structures or ecological functions, or hybridizing with natives.”
We have a plethora of exotic species that are found in relatively low numbers (even if widely distributed) and do not breed/multiply. Several species of parrot as well as many ornamental plant species come immediately to mind. We also have literally hundreds of species of naturalized exotics, including relatively innocuous species (so far, anyway) that are encountered in limited numbers occupying specialized habitats. The Cuban Brown Anole is one such. Then there are the nightmare species like Brazilian Pepper or the Giant Marine Toad or the Lionfish. These are all Category I invasive exotics that profoundly damage multiple ecosystems, cause severe economic loses, may be directly harmful to humans, or all three. When discussing such with the general public I often add the word “noxious” to the description. “Noxious invasive exotic” species are the ones against which control and/or eradication campaigns are waged.
And protecting California’s agri-business as well as any of California’s property owners who have ornamental plants, dooryard fruits, or animal pets from noxious invasive exotics that might attack, infest, or supplant them is the reason for those “border checks” to which the OP so strenuously objects. Mediterranean fruit flies whose larva are living in an orange in someone’s picnic basket, or a cute baby Asian Snakehead in a goldfish bowl are just examples of the things people unwittingly carry in their cars/RVs. Florida does the same. These states in particular are open candidates for invasion due to climate and geography. And both have enormous agricultural economies that could be devastated.
Yup, exactly what I thought. But indeed, check out this chart:
http://www.priweb.org/globalchange/bioloss/bl_01.html
Seems like only the big Permian-Triassic extinction event really had any kind of lasting effect, but even that has been totally recovered from and then some. So…why the panic over loss of biodiversity? Looks to me like we’re in a “biodiversity bubble” anyway!
Maybe you should look back at my OP. I did not frame my point as about non-interference. It’s about finding it dumb to undertake heroic efforts to protect weaker species from stronger ones. I would rather see them just duke it out in a Darwinian battle to the death, if need be–especially if that is the easier/more passive and less intrusive option.
But I never said I was horrified or incensed by those efforts to battle invasive species, just that I “roll my eyes” at it. I also said I thought it was pointless, like trying to bail out the Titanic with a colander. (And I’d add that I can think of a lot better ways to spend that money, like boosting teacher pay f’rinstance.)
P.S. It’s “he”.
There are lots of compelling-sounding reasons to junk the Bill of Rights. Never mind dooryard fruits: you could catch a lot more child molesters, murderers, rapists, etc. if the police everywhere had the power to stop and search any vehicle they liked for any reason or none at all. But that’s an affront to our way of life. We give up some security (which could actually cost our very lives, or our loved ones’ lives) to preserve our civil liberties, and I’m glad of it. So I think we can also sacrifice some agri-business profits to maintain those same liberties.
Please. Driving a car has never been held to be among our sacred liberties and isn’t mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Rather, under the law driving is “a privilege” subject to regulation. Drivers can be stopped and required to produce their license and even submit to sobriety testing. Most states make such submission “implicit in the acceptance of a driver’s license” and require no further permission. An actual search requires either your permission, or probable cause, but your vehicle does not enjoy the same level of privacy as your “castle”/home.
And, as I told you way back toward the beginning of this thread, the border guards will not prevent you from entering the state. Nor will they search your vehicle without permission. But they are empowered to prevent your vehicle from entering, with its possible hidden cargo of noxious invasive exotics, until they are satisfied that no such cargo is present. Don’t want to let them inspect it? Fine! Leave it parked and walk in, or turn around and drive someplace else. Your choice.
As for your hand-waving about “some agribusiness profits” being traded off, 'cause LIBERTY! – your argument is foolish. There are some pests, for example Mediterranean Fruit Fly, that could reduce all citrus harvest in the state by perhaps as much as 80% if uncontrolled. They lay their eggs in the fruits and their maggots live inside. Such fruits have limited marketability (:eek: Would you buy oranges full of maggots?) and once inside, the larva are insulated from insecticides. “Control” would mean multiple additional pesticide applications per year, and still some level of fruit loss would be inevitable. The multi-billion dollar citrus industry runs on small profit margins and already has trouble with competition from foreign countries. Med-fly costs could cause it to completely collapse, resulting in huge job losses and a devastating cascade throughout the economy. That ain’t just “some profits”.