Invasive. Not Invasive.

What marks an invasive species, really? We all hear the term and those of us who bother to notice can see the effects of an invasive species on a native ecosystem.

Is the definition actually for a species that is currently in place where it does not belong? If so, Homo sapiens is highest on the list, since we likely should only be where we evolved: Africa. But that's not going to change until we go extinct, so back to the real issue.

There is no doubt--to use an example--that pythons are a harmful invasive species in south Florida and in the Everglades National Park. The ecosystem of that part of Earth slowly evolved over millions of years without the presence of a vast, aggressive constrictor snake in its midst. The sudden introduction of such an animal is resulting in the decimation of the native animals that did evolve there and which do belong there. I have no problem labeling pythons in Florida as an invasive species.

Further, there are invasive animals that are present in a foreign ecosystem which are not--apparently--harmful within that environment. When I go kayaking on the Silver River in Florida I generally encounter bands of feral Rhesus monkeys. I won't go in to how they got there (humans brought them, of course), but I often used to wonder if they were harmful to the system in which they found themselves living. I did some reading about it, and learned that apparently they are not considered particularly harmful. General browsers, they don't seem to eat enough of any particular food item in the forests to hinder the lives of the native animals and plants around them.

So. Not all invasive species are harmful.

Some of the worst invasive species are not mammals, reptiles, mollusks, or fish. Many of the most destructive of these things are plants, insects, and pathogens (think of the American chestnut blight). Again, to take Florida as an example, the list of plants that are changing and destroying native ecosystems is off the scales. Quite actually every waterway in Florida is home to any number of invasive plant species. Once established, how do you even begin to remove plants that are fast-growing and endlessly clogging rivers, lakes, ponds, and streams? It's probably an impossible task. The thing is to try to keep it from happening in the first place. But where humans are concerned, the problem seems to be ongoing and never-ending. People are going to acquire and dispose of exotic plants where they should never have been allowed to have them in the first place.

But in the case of plants, what constitutes a harmful invasive species? I actually do have a definition of that which meets popular consensus:

Characterized by:

rapid growth
multiple reproductive methods
wide dispersal and survival
broad environmental tolerance
and resistance to management. (I'll get back to this later.)

And the problems they cause are:

loss of recreation
severe oxygen depletion
stunted fish populations, fish kills
water-flow restrictions, flooding
navigation restrictions
accelerated sedimentation
habitat destruction
loss of biodiversity
reduction in property values.

What strikes me about the list of problems is that they are so centered on the troubles presented to human recreation and human economics. The concern for the local animals and plants is really just something that sits there and is only noticed for its tendency for causing an inconvenience to humans.

Fuck that.

These are problems that beset the web of life in which we all live. Economic concerns are moot. Humans are at the base of the situation, sitting on the web of life that supports everything and methodically plucking out the strands until the whole thing collapses. This constant degradation of Mother Earth is not just going to result in the extinction of some species of big animals, or even of some entire environments that have been present for tens of millions of years. Currently we are in danger of witnessing the total collapse of everything that gives us the air we breathe, the water we need, and the food that sustains us. No more rhinos? No one cares. Hemlock trees extinct? Big deal. Invasive carp eating and out-competing every fish species they encounter? Feh.

We keep plucking out the bits of the web, one string at a time.

Implosion will arrive. And it's not as if we didn't see it coming.

In reference to that list--humans can't manage the Earth. We either live within the limitations of not causing the planet irreparable harm, or we kill it and die with it. You can't manage something with trillions of moving parts. You flow with it, or perish while breaking it.

We have chosen to ignore every warning.

Back in the early 2000s I set about searching out and viewing the big groves of ancient Eastern hemlock forests before they were all extinct from the introduction of an invasive insect species. So that's what I did--I hiked all over the southern Appalachians finding the old trees before they could all succumb. And I saw as many of these places as I could. Those groves? They're all gone, now. All of them. Mankind at its most selfish and pernicious.

The End is Near!

I hate to sound like one of those old religious fanatics that the media used to parody back in the 50s and 60s. But the end really is near.

Humans have been rending the ecosystems that birthed us for a long time. Our presence here wasn't a problem for Mother Earth until we developed technology. And it wasn't terribly complicated technology that started our rapacious destruction. Something as simple as stone spearheads and fire and organized hunting led to the first mass extinctions at our hands. You can track megafauna destruction across all of the continents (except for Africa) by following the spread of Homo sapiens sapiens as we moved into new territories outside of our native continent (the aforementioned Africa).

The removal of major species is bad enough, but since the 1800s we've been tearing at the actual fabric of the planet and the situation has reached a point where the systems just can't take any more abuse. We're now eating the crust of the planet and vomiting hundreds of millions of years worth of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. If you think we're going to just walk away from this crime with no penalty, you are mistaken.

These days it's not just a situation of us taking down the animal companions with whom we've shared the planet for the past 100,000 or so years. We continued to multiply and spread long after we'd exterminated the Mammoths, the Wooly rhinos, the Glyptodonts, the Megatherium, the saber-toothed cats, Diprotodon, Aepyornis, the Marsupial lion...I could draw up a list that would run into the thousands. The problem now is that we've passed a threshold and it's not just that we're killing everything that is wild and dependent upon untouched ecosystems. We've hit the point where the planet has changed and it's not just ceasing to support the animals--It's going to stop supporting us, too.

I keep reading about pipe dreams idiots have of going to Mars and terraforming it. Hell...we can't even care for the planet for which we evolved to live. What makes anyone think that we can take an already poisonous place completely inimical to life and exist there? The idea is insane, and part of the constant misdirection we have to suffer while Earth is ravaged and depleted for the benefit of such a few at the expense of so many.

I keep repeating this answer when people ask me (and a lot of people do ask me), why I spend so much time hiking and backpacking into wilderness areas. And it's because I want to see these places while they're still relatively intact. I don't mean to imply that I am going to live to see them all collapse around us, but they are going, and they are going quickly. If you haven't seen a truly wild place and the plants and animals that exist in them, then I suggest that you do so. Because they're coming apart at the seams. Everything that men do is destructive and if you wish to see it before it's too late...time is short.

Will your children or your grandchildren live to see a planet with no elephants, no tigers, no wolves, no butterflies, no bees, no redwood trees? Probably. And what then?

Briefly: We were warned. And quite frankly there's nothing to be done about it, now. Of course I've known this for many years, and it's why I will continue to do my best to see what's left before it's all gone.

As for your grandchildren...they're screwed. Remember to thank one of our energy corporations. But what you really need to do is drag those board members and executives out of their homes and hang them from the nearest power line.

The end isn't "near". It's already here.

We're Killing Everything

It's obvious to me that our Earth's ecosystem is in the final stages of dissolution. You don't even have to go very far to see it. Just in the area of the Carolinas you can witness the devastation wrought by invasive species introduced by that most horrible of invasives, Mankind. There are so many of our native plants and trees in peril of extirpation and extinction that I tire of thinking of it. So, too, are many of our animals at risk of vanishing entirely from the scene.

We sit and watch as oil companies destroy our seas, and coal companies wreck our watersheds, and timber companies denude our forests, and real estate firms pave over our rural green spaces and farmlands. Every day we lose unique areas forever. With each passing hour we see ancient species wiped away.

And there's nothing, apparently, to be done for it because we are led by a tiny group of masters whose goal it is to gather about them indescribable personal wealth. And all of this wealth at the cost of the very things that support us all. We sit and do nothing to stop these greedheads when, in fact, they should all be killed.

We're never going to see things put right. Of this I am finally convinced. All we can do at this point is wait while the tiny group at the top of the mass of humans finishes off what remains of Earth's Pleistocene glory. Like an overpopulation of pests degrading their own environment until their system collapses, we seem to be aimed like an arrow at a target we know as extinction. We'll never reach the stars. We'll never touch the planets. We'll never again venture outside the orbit of this globe whose atmosphere we are even now poisoning beyond repair.

As I have learned in my relatively brief life: generally speaking, the bad guys win. Alas.

Thanks for small favors, you pro-corporate Tea Party assholes.

And the Hits Keep Coming:

Reptiles,

Amphibians,

Mammals,

Fish,

Birds.

Unfortunately, the human population keeps soaring. Where's a good world-wide plague when the Earth really needs one?