Cross-Species Warfare
Dean
Florida has a problem with a certain type of fern that grows as a weed and has spread like wildfire throughout much of the state. To combat it, believe it or not, the USDA has released 100 moths of a special Australian variety that they believe will bring the fern problem under control. Since the ferns are from that part of the world originally, and the moths' larvae like to eat those ferns, it seems like a smart idea. Click here to read the story.
This, to me, illustrates the futility of efforts by some environmentalist purists to preserve "pristine" ecosystems. There simply is no such thing anymore, and can't be. People travel the world, and various species inevitably travel with them. Those ferns were not native to Florida, and neither were the moths, but soon both probably will be.
This is why in my mind there is a difference between what I think of as emotional/religious environmentalism and common sense environmentalism. You cannot do the impossible--there's no practical way to get rid of those ferns now that they're here, and they're crowding out other native plant species. So you have to ask what is pragmatically possible and what makes the most sense: bring in a species that will eat them.
Yes, it's possible the moths will create their own problem. Or, that the moths will fail to prosper in Florida. But the scientists are making the best of the situation that can't be undone. And if you read the story carefully, it looks like they worked pretty hard to get it right before trying this. It certainly seems a better bet than constantly spraying herbicides all over the state.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Man vs. nature
- Cross-Species Warfare
To return to a "pristine" environment would require rooting up a lot of species that people think of as native.
Now, if we could only find a moth that eats kudzu.
I am in agreement though. I've been irritated in the past by some of the more strident environmentalists who seem more interested in "saving the planet" than improving quality of life, even when those two goals would seemingly coincide.
Using one non-native species to control another very seldom has positive long-term effects. On NPR just this morning, Newshour was talking about the threat posed to Australian native life by a toxic non-native toad. How did the toad get there? It was introduced to control a non-native beetle back in the seventies. Now the local government down there has had to introduce a program encouraging the locals to beat the toads to death with cricket bats and golf clubs.
Even when all the continents were joined in Pangea, there were environmental and climatic differences enough to ensure speciation. When climates changed, so did the flora and fauna. Non-native species become native after the passage of sufficient time. In the meantime, they're almost always disruptive on some level, whether it was killing off the huge mammals when men first entered the Americas, or losing native species when dogs or rodents are introduced to environments that lacked them previously.
The only real difference is that of intentionality: some species are introduced into new environments for particular purposes. The guy who thought it good to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare to the US had good intentions probably, but I suspect that many people would like to put his starlings in an uncomfortable portion of his anatomy now.
You can take responsible measures and reasonable precautions. You can think carefully before you make a change. You can follow the path that seems the least risky or harmful. No, let's go farther than "can": you should be cautious, as best you can understand it.
But life will always surprise you. We'll never succeed in keeping everything the same, because the organisms involved are all busily trying to improve their place in the ecology.
They say the best way to kill these poisonous toads is to freeze them. These toads release noxious secretions.
Speaking of a lack of common sense, ‘animal rights’ groups protect every species but humans - the only species that pays their salaries.
Of course, I'm sure that the toads are in fact a serious problem, but the fact that the two most prominent solutions suggested are to beat them to death with blunt objects or to make poison toad-cicles is just funny as hell. It's like a perfect minature allegory of mankind's attempts to control our environment.
Wasn't that the country into which rabbits were artificially introduced? For much the same reasoning that they are talking about moths to control unwanted trees? And wasn't that also the country that had to build a supposed rabbit-control fence all the way across the australian continent in order to alleviate the continent-wide nuisance the rabbits caused?
I'd be careful of gimmicks for ecological purposes, be they natural gimmicks, or man-made ones. And I would certainly be careful about any such suggestions that come to our attention from stralia. Where, from observable fact, the women are gorgeous but the men seem block-headed.
(By the way, mates. How did that fence work out?)
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Mother Nature is laughing...
Moths + old clothes + old folks = old clothes with lots of holes worn by old folks
Are you sure?
Yours,
Tom Hawkson, aka Wince