Lakeshore Living. News on lake ecology, lake pollution, land use, natural resource management, community, and lakeshore living.
The Conversation:
“When migratory birds like this sea eagle appear outside their typical range, ornithologists call them “vagrants.” The scientific language of belonging draws on a shared cultural vocabulary for both human and nonhuman beings. Terms like vagrant, native, invasive, migrant and colonist all emerge from centuries of political discourses describing which persons belong where.”
PHYS.ORG
“In a review article published on Thursday, Oct. 6, in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Sax and two co-authors pointed out that most research on non-native species focuses on their negative consequences. They argued that long-standing biases against non-native species within the scientific literature have clouded the scientific process and hindered public understanding. In the new article, the authors try to shift the focus to consider the benefits of non-native species for a more balanced discussion.
”Positive impacts of non-native species are often explained as serendipitous surprises—the sort of thing that people might expect to happen every once in a while, in special circumstances,” said Sax, a professor of environment and society, and of ecology, evolution and organismal biology. “Our new paper argues that the positive impacts of non-native species are neither unexpected nor rare, but instead common, important and often of large magnitude.””
bioGraphic:
Nick Hawkins/NPL
“How this beautiful interloper from eastern North America got to this place is unclear, beyond that it was part of a human-aided diaspora that loosed brook trout into high-altitude lakes and creeks across the West, from northwest Washington to southern New Mexico. There, brookies’ voracious appetites and rapid sexual maturation have spelled trouble not only for native trout like bull, rainbow, California golden, and cutthroat, which they outcompete, but also for a host of other aquatic organisms, including frogs and salamanders.
As Miller and Field shock and scoop their way upcreek, though, a pattern that could be the key to Leandro Creek’s salvation becomes apparent. Brook trout may greatly outnumber the Rio Grande cutthroat here, in some stretches by more than five to one, but nearly every single one of the brookies the crew captures is male.
That’s because many are a lab-produced variety known as “Trojan” brook trout. They are unique in that they carry not one, but two copies of the Y chromosome that codes maleness; they have no X chromosome to pass on. Unlike many creatures, including humans, fish can survive without an X, and seem unimpaired by the lack. And since 2018, Miller, the lead researcher on the project, and his predecessors have been carrying out a bold new experiment, stocking various streams across the Vermejo reserve with this strain in an attempt to tilt the brook trout sex ratio so far male that eventually the population will stop breeding and blink out on its own. Similar efforts are also underway in a handful of creeks in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, and Nevada plans to embark on its own stocking program this summer. ”
Yale360:
NK SANFORD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
“Author Emma Marris and Macalester College biologist Mark Davis, among others, have pointed out that only a small subset of “alien” species wreak damage on already resident species, and that the categorization of wild creatures as either “native” or “alien” obscures as much as it elucidates... Now, a growing number of scientists say that conservation policies based on the native-alien dichotomy could actually threaten biodiversity. Today’s climate-driven range shifts are “one of the only solutions for species to adapt to climate change,” says ecologist Nathalie Pettorelli, who studies the impact of global environmental changes on biodiversity at the Institute of Zoology in London. Ensuring that wild species can make life-saving movements and establish self-sustaining populations in new habitats, while also protecting already-resident species, will require new ways of evaluating species — not just on their origins and historical value to society but on their ecological functions and how they can contribute to the novel ecosystems of the future.
For some long-time critics of the native-alien paradigm in conservation, it’s the fundamental principle of evaluating species based on their origins that needs to go. “Whether because of climate or because people move them, species need to be evaluated on their own effects,” says Macalester College’s Davis, “and not on whether they are natives or new natives or non-natives or non-natives moved by humans.” Critics such as Davis essentially call for the dissolution of invasion biology and restoration biology as they’ve been traditionally defined. “I don’t see the value of keeping those distinctions,” he says.”
Invasive biologists’ value judgments cannot be supported by science (i.e., values are not in the realm of science). Labeling species as native/nonnative, invasive/noninvasive, good/bad often limits pragmatic management. Categorization leads to prejudice, prejudice leads to contempt, contempt leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side. We need to be pragmatic and binary thinking is destructive.
FiveThirtyEight:
“This isn’t just trivia. Invasive species control is always expensive, and you only get the resources to launch a full-court press against a plant or animal — like the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the last six decades to get sea lamprey populations under control — on the rare and shining occasion when everyone in power agrees on what “harm” is. And so the definition of invasive species has also created fights within the biological sciences. In 2011, Mark Davis, a biology professor at Minnesota’s Macalester College, published an essay in Nature in which he and 18 co-authors argued that the field of invasion biology had become too weighted toward viewing all non-native species as bad and worthy of eradication. “Harm,” he argued, had come to mean “change.” “And, boy, this world is a bad place to be if any change is viewed as bad,” Davis told me.”
Are Technica:
“Humans, and the invasive species we bring with us, are frequently viewed as destroyers of ecosystems. But we alter them just as often, inadvertently picking winners and losers from among the species as we transform their environment. A paper out in today’s Nature describes a case where our actions made a butterfly species a winner but then changed the game so fast that the local population went extinct. All of this because one man died and his cattle ranch shut down.”
"be not too eager to deal out death in the name of Justice ... even the wise cannot see all ends.” Gandalf, Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
One wonders if our in haste to control non-native species at almost all cost that our selection of so-called "good" species might be misplaced and unwise.
Smithsonian:
“In the 19th century, European and American landscape architects expressed a patriotic pride that was sometimes tinged with nativist suspicion of “foreign” plants. In the 1930s, the Nazis took this concept to the extreme with a campaign to “cleanse the German landscape of unharmonious foreign substance.” One target was an unassuming Eurasian flower, Impatiens parviflora, which a 1942 report condemned as a “Mongolian invader,” declaring, “[A]n essential element of this culture, namely the beauty of our home forest, is at stake.”
Today’s critics of invasive species rhetoric are quick to clarify that they aren’t calling their colleagues racist. But Macalester College ecologist Mark Davis, for one, questions whether our modern campaign against non-native species has gone too far.
Davis is perhaps the field’s most notorious heretic, lead author of a widely-read 2011 essay in the journal Nature, co-signed by 18 other ecologists, that argued for judging non-native species based on environmental impact rather than origin. He believes that invasion ecology has been led astray by its central metaphor: the idea that non-native species are invading native ecosystems, and that we are at war with them. “Militaristic language is just so unscientific and emotional,” says Davis. “It’s an effective way to bring in support, but it’s not a scientific way.””
Yale Environment 360:
“Among the plants that survive on the family property where [Emily] Dickinson confined herself for much of her adult life are picturesque old trees called umbrella magnolias (Magnolia tripetala) — so named because their leaves, which can reach two feet long, radiate out from the ends of branches like the spokes of an umbrella.
The trees, believed to have been planted by Emily’s brother Austin, have jumped the garden gate in recent decades and established wild populations not far from the poet’s home. This new location is a couple of hundred miles north of the tree’s native range, centered in the sheltered woods and ravines of the Appalachian Mountains, and is the first evidence that native plant horticulture in the United States “is giving some species a head-start on climate change,” according to Smith College biologist Jesse Bellemare.
Ironically, the denizen of the Dickinson homestead is also challenging basic precepts of conservation practice, such as what is the definition of “native”? Are climate refugees that hitchhike north via horticulture less worthy of protection than plants that arrive on their own? Do they pose a threat to existing native species? Should native plant gardening, the domestic form of assisted migration, be used to help plants stranded in inhospitable habitat? ”
Who are you to judge the merits of a new arrival? Remember species are judged based on our values -- the ecosystem does not care. See ‘My Science Articles’ for an article on non-native species management that is just creating environmental wrecks.
For more information on Emily Dickinson's gardens see this recent New York Times article.
New York Times:
“Dr. Thompson and other scientists have called for a more nuanced approach to evaluating whether the presence of a species is harmful or beneficial. Eradicating most invasive species is virtually impossible in an era of globalization, they note. And as climate change pushes more species out of their home ranges and into new areas, the number of so-called invaders is likely to multiply exponentially.
Yet the notion that a species should not be judged on its origins is highly controversial, as Mark Davis, a biology professor at Macalester College in Minnesota, discovered when he and 18 other researchers submitted an article in 2011 saying just that in the journal Nature...
But in the five years since that contentious exchange, the idea that invasive species should be assumed guilty until proven innocent has begun to wane, the shift prompted in part, Dr. Davis speculated, by concerns over the use of chemical pesticides and the disruption of landscapes caused by many eradication efforts.”
See this blog article
Sustainable City Network:
“Toby Query has worked as a natural resources ecologist for the city of Portland, Ore., Watershed Revegetation Program since 1999, and manages several hundred acres of forests and wetlands in the city. Under his watch, more than 3 million native seedlings and many tons of native grass and wildflower seeds have been planted. He also is the founder of Portland Ecologists Unite!, a monthly discussion group working to improve land management practices and increase the resiliency of the community of ecologists.
Through the years, Query said, he has slowly shifted his thinking from one that “combats evil invasives” to a more nuanced approach.”
Many are doing great work on preventing non-native species movement to our wild places. In Lakeshore Living, Kristof and I advocated continuing this important work, and we spoke to the need to rethink some of our other efforts relating to non-native species. We fear that the system has become too Black & White. Why do we think this? Some invasive species management should be considered wrecks. Let me explain this and my concerns.
First, environmental harm, ecosystem harm, or ecological harm is purely a human concept. Every ecological study of a non-native species finds that the non-native created “environmental harm” or had a consequence to the environment (consistent with the Ecological Principle - that Many things are connected to other things). Second, if a species causes economic harm (or human harm) natural management agencies will manage the species, whether native or not (e.g., wolf, cormorant, or sea lamprey). Thus most invasive species thought today can be simplified to:
Non-native = BAD
Non-native species management is really a question of values – Human Values. Aldo Leopold recoiled on the anti-weed talk in his time. We are recoiling on the same phenomena today. War on Non-natives… War on Terror… War on…. Our language is anti-nature. We recoil at the Black & White, and we recognize the nuances and complexity of this issue.
One example of our invasive species management wreck is curly-leaf pondweed management in many lakes. Why do I say this is a wreck? First, we are allowing the destruction of fish habitat. Second, since we are taking an action, the burden is on us to demonstrate in the range of lakes that are now treated that there is little or no negative impact to native plant communities. This has yet to be done. Therefore, these treatments seem imprudent. The science has not changed substantially, but attitudes have.
Some history. Minnetonka Lake, an important Minnesota lake, had curly-leaf pondweed near the turn of the last century. In 1937 Dr. John Moyle recommended planting curly-leaf pondweed. Some of you might wonder why Dr. Moyle advocated planting of curly-leaf pondweed. Moyle was always ahead of his time — he was the only genius that the MN DNR has employed. On this issue, he is still ahead of his time. I suspect that once we get past the current Black & White view of non-native species, that management agencies will be recommending the use of curly-leaf pondweed in limited conditions. It may be the best aquatic plant for fish habitat in some of our altered lakes.
Our Black & White system now targets genotypes of a native species, common reed (Phragmites). This requires genetic testing. How impure does a population have to be to be called invasive? The control of common reed in our lakes seems irresponsible, given that humanity has substantially reduced the common reed in many lakes. It should be noted that that it has not been demonstrated that the genetic code or the different haplotypes of common reed were introduced by humans. Phragmites has a cosmopolitan distribution, and common reed stands are protected in Europe and North America because of their important ecological functions. Phragmites has considerable genetic variation, with geographical varieties.
Is there a problem with our NON-Native Species Fundamentalism? We think so! It decreases the value of species like Phragmites and may reduce our commitment to protecting similar species. I worry that our risk assessment is not inclusive of the ecological values of Phragmites regardless of the varietal designation, and the various actions related to promoting the perceived ‘evil' nature of this plant has decreased the perceived ecological value of this important plant. I have seen this with my own eyes — government staff denigrating this native plant because of the application of an 'invasive' label. I’m saddened by this fact.
Since non-native species management is really just a question of values. Scientists are beginning to probe those values. For example, Fischer et al. 2014 [PLoS One] investigated Professional vs. Public Attitudes on Non-Native Species in a limited context. They stated: “Professionals tended to have more extreme views than the public, especially in relation to nativeness and abundance of a species.” Also from this study was the finding that professionals perceived non-natives to be less beautiful, more abundant, and detrimental than the public. Less beautiful?
Instead of the simple equation where non-native = bad. We encourage you to think about some of the complexity, to address values directly, and to have more goals than a simple statement on reducing invasive species.
We advocate for the reduction of human-assisted migration of unwanted species. In our book we suggest three additional goals. First, if a species isn’t threatening something we value, then we shouldn’t manage it at the expense of other species. The first principle we should have regarding non native species is the ‘First Do No Harm’ principle – Recently arrived non-native organisms may be managed provided that little or no harm occurs to others. For curly-leaf pondweed, we may be harming native plant communities in many of the lakes allowed to be treated. The management science related to curly-leaf pondweed is still young; therefore, we shouldn’t be allowing the current level of habitat destruction.
Second, natural-resource management agencies should prioritize places where they wish to re-create and maintain the native co-evolved diversity. Where exactly does the management agency wish do this? Can it say or list? Why or why not?
Third, recognize that a big all-out war on non-native species cannot be won. It seems old-fashioned to manage for yesterday’s conservation goal of native biodiversity — managing for wildness rather than nativeness seems more important today. We can admire the beauty of all organisms regardless of when they arrived. I’m working for nature and conservation of natural features. I’m not at war with other species. We should prudently increase species diversity in our domestic places, and conserve diversity in our wild places. And we could communicate these thoughts to the public.
Shouldn’t we have the courage to challenge the current fad or fashion, such as latest war on non-native species living with us today? And finally, we, as biologists, should have the wisdom to see the beauty of nature, no matter when it arrived or how it got here.
Garry Hamilton, writing for Conservation Magazine:
“The scene at Florida’s Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge in Kings Bay last October would have been familiar to anyone who has ever engaged in the battle to control the spread of invasive plants. Eager volunteers scurried about the shoreline of this manatee wintering ground, carting large plastic bins stuffed with water hyacinth, a notorious aquatic weed that’s caused headaches on five continents. Closer inspection, however, would have revealed the activity to be anything but business as usual: instead of hauling water hyacinth out of the bay, the conservationists were putting it back in—almost 4,300 gallons’ worth by day’s end...
Ultimately, project supporters hope that yesterday’s enemy could be tomorrow’s friend. They believe the hyacinths can play an important role in a conservation strategy that also includes reducing nutrient runoff and restoring spring flows. “Since these invasive plants are here and we can’t get rid of them,” says the University of Georgia’s Evans, “I think it’s counterproductive to be killing them and not taking advantage of their functions. These are important tools. We should be using them.””
Dan Egan, reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Despite their vastness, for thousands of years the inland seas above Niagara Falls were as isolated from the outside world as a Northwoods Wisconsin pond. That all changed in 1959. The U.S. and Canadian governments obliterated the lake’s natural barrier to invasive fish, plants, viruses and mollusks with the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of channels, locks and dams that opened the door for ocean freighters to sail up the once-wild St. Lawrence River, around Niagara Falls and into the heart of the continent.
Small boats had access to the lakes since the 1800s thanks to relatively tiny man-made navigation channels stretching in from the East Coast and a canal at Chicago that artificially linked Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River basin.
But the consequences of opening a nautical freeway into the Great Lakes for globe-roaming freighters proved disastrous — at least 56 non-native organisms have since been discovered in the lakes, and the majority arrived as stowaways in freighter ballast tanks.”
New species additions are a natural part of ecosystem life. Rejoice for those around you and admire the beauty of all organisms. Mourn a changed ecosystem do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealously.
Dave Levitan, writing for Conservation:
grafvision - shutterstock.com
“When we discuss invasive Asian carp, we’re usually just talking about a few specific species of carp, the silver, black, and the bighead. This is with good reason—in some parts of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers those fish now make up 97 percent of the total biomass, with no predators around to hold them back. The grass carp, meanwhile, though found in all of the Great Lakes and plenty of other places, was actually introduced—theoretically, this was done quite carefully—and has not been considered a nuisance species at all. But new research suggests that even those invasives we think of as beneficial, often aren’t.”
You will find only what values you bring in.
Kate Shaw Yoshida, reporting for Ars Technica:
“Invasive species take a toll on their surroundings. But that doesn’t mean that invaders are universally destructive. Ecosystems are dynamic, and once an invasive species arrives, it can develop intricate relationships with other organisms. Sometimes, an invader becomes an integral link in a delicate ecological web, complicating efforts to eradicate it...
In most cases, the overarching goal of conservation efforts should be a healthy and well-functioning ecosystem, rather than the complete and immediate eradication of an invader.”
Clapper Rail - USFWS
To answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not. In war, a danger there is, of losing who we are. War with new arriving species, win you will not. A different game you should play.
Robert Boyle, reporting for the New York Times:
“Since they arrived in the Great Lakes in the 1980s, two species of mussels the size of pistachios have spread to hundreds of lakes and rivers in 34 states and have done vast economic and ecological damage.
These silent invaders, the quagga and zebra mussels, have disrupted ecosystems by devouring phytoplankton, the foundation of the aquatic food web, and have clogged the water intakes and pipes of cities and towns, power plants, factories and even irrigated golf courses.
Now the mussels may have met their match: Daniel P. Molloy, an emeritus biologist at the New York State Museum in Albany and a self-described “Bronx boy who became fascinated by things living in water.””
Center for Limnology article:
““Invasive species are often thought of as species that take over wherever they get in,” says Jake Vander Zanden, a UW limnology professor who directed the research. “But, in our experience studying lakes and rivers, in most places they weren’t all that abundant. It was only in a few places where they got out of hand.” If that pattern held true, the researchers realized, then invasives were acting a lot like their native counterparts.”
A species place of origin does not determine whether if it is inherently nefarious in a new area.
Lakeshore Living and Walleye. This blog builds upon these books, which provides insight into relevant aspects of environmentally-sensitive lakeshore living and the life of walleye. This blog may provide some meaning for people interested in improving lakeshore living and understanding walleye and fisheries management.
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