We are bad at dealing with the problem of invasive species
Our gardener, who has created a tropical paradise in our yard in Goa by patiently transplanting cuttings from the area, reprimands me when I pay money for saplings of nativel plants and dismisses them as junglee. And even though I have known about the problem of invasive species since I took an environmental science class in high school, I hadn’t stopped to consider that our garden could spell disaster for local biodiversity and habitat.
We tend to define invasive species as those organisms that are brought to a new environment and adapt to it well enough that in doing so they eat other local species’ food or mess up their habitats causing long term large scale disruption.
I also just learned that one of the most common guidelines issued to people to help address the issue is that they should ensure that they don’t buy and plant invasive species in their gardens. The advice is not only disproportionate to the magnitude of the problem, it lays the onus on people to seek out information that’s not easily accessible, while also resisting beautiful plants that are likely popular, advertised and the pride of their friends’ gardens.
What makes the whole situation worse is that the approach to dealing with invasive species is quite drastic. Measures have included the introduction of viruses, chemicals, or other predator species. Sometimes forest officials take to chopping down trees on vast swathes of land.
Take the case of the nutria, an otter-like rodent from South America, which was brought to the coasts of North America with hopes of launching a fur industry. When ranchers failed, they released the nutria into the wild. The nutria proceeded to flourish on the wetland grasses and destroyed the nesting sites for local fauna.
The damage to the local environment and economy was bad enough that in Maryland the state launched a large-scale coordinated effort with hunters to track down and hunt the 8500 nutria in the local ecosystem. It took them two years of wading into the marsh and locating and shooting at sight the creatures who were doing nothing but living in a place they had been brought to.
There’s a huge disconnect between the messaging around invasive species and the measures that communities end up taking to try manage them. And neither seem proportionate or well considered.
