There are few surer ways to mark oneself as a moral leper these days than to be a “nativist”: to imagine that over time the particular inhabitants of a place form a naturally balanced community, with an organic harmony that the mass importation of aliens is likely to disrupt, often with catastrophic results. To harbor such thoughts in this brave new world is to be a xenophobe, a bigot, a hate-filled “right-wing extremist”. It is double-plus-ungood; it is crimethink.
In case you have any lingering doubts, have a look here.
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I don’t know, Malcolm. I thought the take-away was that there’s “…way too much ideology and not enough good science associated with the anti-non-native species perspective.”
Perhaps. But the debate maps so neatly onto common political dispositions — no coincidence, I think — that I thought it deserved comment. I detected a familiar moralizing odor.
Moreover, it certainly seems to me that the effect of alien species is very frequently to radically disrupt the local ecological balance; examples abound. Rats, cats, etc. disembarking from anchored ships have often wiped out entire island populations; the South is being suffocated by kudzu; zebra mussels are the scourge of the Great Lakes, and so on. I don’t think it is an easy case to make that such invasives often have a salubrious effect.
Here’s a helpful resource.
Well, where would Italian cuisine be without the noble tomato? And then there’s the ubiquiitous potato; and corn/maize. And that’s just the top invaders from the New to the Old World — a very, very limited sample which nonetheless ought to give one pause.
The main problem, from my perspective, is that people too readily make “inferences” (actually great leaps across chasms of ignorance) from often poorly understood scientific theses to socio-cultural-political pronouncements. There’s also the blatant politicization of actual science, with “ecology” being one of the main cesspools. Too many people, even those with solid training in ecology, can’t distinguish between ecology and environmentalism. I think that’s at least a part of what’s troubling the authors of the Nature article in question.
Bob, the items you mentioned haven’t entered the broader ecosystem at all; they exist only as cultivated plants. So their effect on ecological balances in the wild is neither positive nor negative. (That said, they do serve as good examples of non-native species that have been introduced without harm.)
I quite agree, though, that “people too readily make “inferences” (actually great leaps across chasms of ignorance) from often poorly understood scientific theses to socio-cultural-political pronouncements.” I thought I caught a distinct whiff of exactly that in the Nature article, but in reverse: a creeping expansion, into the biological sciences, of a commonly held socio-cultural-political bias against ethnonationalist “nativism”.
Aside from the usual distaste for ‘alien invasions’ here in the South, I notice a few that have been heartily accepted – any variety contributing to psychoactive properties in a certain invasive plant is immediately issued a green card.
The fact that humans actively cultivate a plant as a crop species doesn’t negate its status as an invader — not from a non-politicized ecological viewpoint. Indeed, if one considers the acreage devoted to just the three plants I mentioned, it is beyond question that their “effect on ecological balances in the wild” is massively negative. When you replace vast swaths of natural habitat with cultivars (typically as mono-cultures), you can’t then discount those areas in your assessment of the “state of nature.” That’s not scientific.
Right, fair enough, in a broad sense. But in that sense you’re just removing that acreage from the wild ecosystem, affecting the wild ecosystem in a way that has nothing particularly to do with what species you are cultivating (or whether you are using the land for growing anything at all). Admittedly certain crops might affect the wild ecosystem by attracting certain insects, or something, but that’s very different form the displacement of species that happens when you introduce rats to a small island, or kudzu to the south — where the alien really does spread invasively through the wild, often wiping out native species.
From the “perspective” of native plants, the alien cultivars I mentioned have certainly “spread invasively through the wild.” Human activity is not a “separate sphere” from the point of view of ecology.
Well, then so do parking lots, suburban lawns, rail-yards, etc. I do grant your point, though.
But then it seems we are drifting away from the usual discussion of “invasive species” per se, which as I understand it is customarily about species that, once introduced, spread willy-nilly in the wild, without further human assistance. Even though I concede your point in general terms, there’s an important distinction in any practical sense, because what makes invasive species so troubling is the difficulty we have in controlling them once they get established. We’d have no such trouble controlling tomatoes, if we were to decide they’d got out of hand.
It’s a constant struggle in ecology to find terms that don’t carry misleading connotations.
A quote from the authors of the Nature piece:
“Invasion implies so many values. We need to consider the impact of these terms and approaches and how they affect scientific perception, public perception, and in turn, decision-making in conservation and restoration management.”
Yes, but is this really a problem? I think we all know what we mean when we’re talking about invasive species — something not indigenous to the local ecosystem, brought in either deliberately or accidentally, that then runs rampant, with radical effects, and is difficult to control or eradicate once it gets established.
Cane toads. Leafy spurge. Snakeheads. That sort of thing.
But it’s precisely the point of the authors that in a non-politicized ecology, identifying a species as ‘invasive’ in a particular habitat does not imply that it “runs rampant, with radical effects, and is difficult to control or eradicate once it gets established.”
Well, what does it mean, then? As far as I know, nobody bothers to talk about a species being “invasive” unless it’s displacing the locals and otherwise causing trouble.
The whole thing smells like mush-mouthed PC-speak to me:
The point?
Not all natives are “good”, you know! And to “malign” these poor immigrant species, who after all are just doing their best like any of us would, is just nasty, and it’s wrong.
I detect more than a trace of liberal goodthinkfulness here. Nobody is saying that all local species are good, and furthermore why should anyone care if somebody “maligns” a cane toad? When non-native species breed like mad and start causing problems, we call them “invasive”. (Obviously if these alien species had not brought with them a lot of unwelcome and unintended consequences, nobody would be complaining. We actually have an interest, though, in whether our boats and water filters are fouled with zebra mussels, or our landscape starts to look like this — and the language reflects that.) We don’t use the same term for troublesome native species, that’s all; it wouldn’t make any sense to do so. What’s the problem?
What’s next, a DREAM Act for Asian carp?
If it wasn’t for “great leaps across chasms of ignorance,” I wouldn’t get any exercise at all.
If it wasn’t for great heaps of exercise despite ignorance of musculature, I wouldn’t get back spasms at all.