For now. Maybe not for long.
4 Likes
Which is why some of the arguments about us being “just another animal” sound specious to me. I understand that such arguments are, in some cases, a pushback against human hubris; but the other side is that they can also be used to deny any moral responsibility. The present-day reality is that there is huge power imbalance between our species and the non-human world. Pretending that we are no different than any other animal is a major disconnect in that regard.
3 Likes
In the United States, the landscape has been thoroughly changed by colonists in the past 400 years. It’s hard to overstate the impact. 99.9% of eastern forests have been clearcut at least. That means that if you’ve traveled all along the forests of the east coast, only around 0.1% of it is actual virgin forest. It’s an unparalleled level of ecological change. There’s also things like the introduction of earthworms (which were extinct from most of North America for the past 10k years) which has radically altered soil ecosystems in ways native plants haven’t adapted to. Even the sweetgrass that is extremely important to many Great Plains native peoples is a European species (Hierochloe odorata). The native species (most likely H. hirta) was thoroughly cut down and replaced by the species that Europeans preferred.
Like I said it’s extremely difficult to overstate the scale of the colonial reconfiguration of native habitat. There’s also the problem of the definition of invasiveness.
Most usage of the term is a categorization based on threats to commercial or agricultural interests. Ecological research is slow to accumulate and there’s often very little scientific backing to say that a species classified as invasive is actually a threat to a native ecosystem. Given the inherently political nature of this, there could be very large differences between countries decisions. Based in large part on what agricultural products they grow and how they grow them.
5 Likes
In my conservation biology class, I was taught about acclimatization societies. These were organizations formed in European colonial states such as the United States or Australia, where they would deliberately try to import non-native species, particularly European species, to introduce to their country. There were multiple reasons for doing this: non-native species are often useful for food, resources, ornamental value etc. There might have also been nostalgic reasons (i.e. missing the native flora and fauna of where they came from), and mixed into this was a bit of chauvinism/imperialistic worldview (see this article from BHL):
Australia’s Acclimatisation Society was governed by the colony’s most eminent scientists who believed that Australia’s plants and animals were greatly inferior to those in Europe. The Society’s first president Edward Wilson argued that animals indigenous to Australia were practically useless, providing only ‘a little sport and an occasional meal’ (Gillbank, 1984).
Many people have correctly(!) pointed out that the definition between non-native and native can sometimes be blurry. In terms of raw numbers, I strongly suspect there are more native-to-Europe species in North America than vice versa, with many organisms following the patterns of European colonialism.
5 Likes
South Africa has - pine and eucalyptus for timber, erosion control by Australian wattles, wheat not wild oats. Cecil John Rhodes brought us Himalayan tahr and European starlings. Oaks and palms.
Still battling a local (colonial heritage) mindset that sees fynbos as generic ‘green stuff’ versus an oak or a pine, those are REAL plants. Trees are silver bullets.
6 Likes
This mindset is generally harmful to nature protection (especially biodiversity protection). People seem to have an almost spiritual connection with trees. There are a lot of people with a “fix climate change? just cover the earth in trees!” attitude…
…which is not helped by the fact that apart from climate change, the current ecological crises seem to be largely unknown to the general public. (And even for climate change we seem to lack the will to try to prevent the worst of it)
But that’s a different topic.
This is so wild to me. It makes me wonder which of today’s beliefs will be looked back at like we look back on this.
4 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.