With trade and travel an every day occurrence, there is honestly not much hope in the eradication of invasive species, particularly plants.
Everywhere I look around my city, in unkept areas, it’s full of invasive species. I truly believe that we (humans) have altered ecosystems to a point we don’t really understand yet.
You can try to do your best to limit the spread in your yard/community. But when there are so many that are running rampant in public areas, I feel like it’s pointless.
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People are an innate part of a habitat. Including when we are predators to a species for whatever reason.
Nerd
I think it’s more managing the spread and growth of it. Every seen I am Legend or The last of us? Nature would eventually reclaim most things over time, certainly at ground level.
Yes, it is still worth removing them from areas, especially at the government level, because it can stop the spread significantly.
An aquarium I was at once told us how long it takes for a new species to fully integrate into an environment. I don’t remember what it was but it was a long ass time, like at least a few hundred years. People are just doing their best to stop the spread of the invasive species from totally wiping out native populations.
Maybe for some but we’ve gotten better and better at it with time.
Complete eradication isn’t always the goal either. We exist in managed habitats and even our definition of natural areas are often managed. For example, the Kirtland’s warbler would be extinct without active management of forests (because we don’t want wildfires). There’s some evidence that our stereotypical US natural areas had been managed by native Americans and weren’t free of human impact when colonists arrived.
And NZ is leading the way eradicating mammals from larger and larger areas. It’s incredibly impressive. Computer vision is going to make their efforts even more efficient.
Control is possible. Eradication? Almost never
I know right? And disease, cancer, war and infertility has been trying it’s damnest to succeed.
You gotta treat em like they’re ISIS. We can’t eliminate them but we can make them irrelevant. (Sometimes)
Yes, this is the biggest thing I learnt when working in conservation (specifically dealing with invasive plants in native forest) it was hammered into me that we can’t get everything because it’s just an impossible task. Rather, focus should be spent on the invasive plants that really do damage to the ecosystem, and then the focus should be on eradicating adult plants capable of seeding before seedlings etc.
This is definitely an unpopular opinion too. I think pretty much everyone I worked with started with an opinion of total eradication was the idea and very quickly changed their mind when they started to understand the massive task that total eradication would be.
I understand why the opinion of eradication is popular, because of course in an ideal world this would be awesome! I would love to see a piece of nz bush with no invasive species and all the extinct native plants and animals living the way they would’ve pre humans but those species are gone or have changed due to population bottlenecks. Even if we do manage eradication of everything invasive the ecosystem will never be like it was in the past. I think most people just don’t really have a great grasp on how plants work and how they spread seed or germinate and therefore they think it should be easy given enough time, effort and money not understanding the full scope of the issue
There’s a big difference between noxious species and exotic species. Some are worse for non-native ecosystems than others. Kudzu in the Southeast and Himalayan Blackberry in the Northwest are exotic and noxious. Exotic Atlantic Salmon in the Great Lakes turned out to be exotic, yet not noxious (the noxious were the zebra and quagga mussels, and even THEY had their benefits in creating an oligotrophic lake system which was clean and clear, thus enhancing tourism.) It’s extraordinarily complex. Humans are noxious and exotic to most systems….
Management is key. Balance. Yadda yadda. Do what you can, make it vibe.
Sort of. 🦋☘️ We got to try to protect our habitat