My mind also went directly to invasive species and why I consider it to be beneficial to try and control these. However, harmful does not necessarily equate to invasive. There are several earlier discussions on this forum about the definition of invasive and its near-synonyms. Likewise, as @critters_pnw points out, it is important to consider:
In my country, for example, wild boar are native yet they are often considered “harmful animals” because they can cause damage to crop fields. A similar argument could be made for e.g. deer in North America. Elephants are often considered harmful animals across ther native ranges because of the damage they may cause to crops as well as the danger they may pose to humans in their path. Where I live, native wolves and bears are similarly considered by many to be a danger to humans and livestock and therefore “harmful animals”. I am not sure where OP is living, but there’s a good chance that parakeets are a native species that simply pose a threat to the state’s economic imperative.
Of course, all these species are essential components of the ecosystems they inhabit and help shape, so we (I) really don’t want to see our governments try to eredicate these “harmful animals”. I think there’s a healthy level of skepticism when it comes down to trusting the political will and mood of the moment to make appropriate definitions of terms like “harmful animals”, in addition to the question of
Certain kinds of litter worms are native to Canada, but earthworms are not. Soil worms tend to be very slow dispersers, and after the last major glaciation the species of earthworms that are native to North America had not had time to recolonize Canada, New England, and a few other northern US states.
Then colonists introduced European earthworms, both intentionally and accidentally, and their introduction has had profound effects on the vegetation of the region.
This is the observation. Deleted by moderator - The OP chose not to post a link to their own observation that they were discussing and this should be respected.
Monk parakeets are introduced in Europe. However, it must be understood that parrots are some of the most intelligent animals, which means that there is a considerable ethical problem with harming them, more so than most other birds. I feel that the rights of pest animals are too often overlooked.
It’s not unambiguously good to make location information for pest animals public. It’s an ethical dilemma. Control may be good for the environment, but is it worth the ethical cost? No one would be willing to kill humans for environmental reasons, what makes other sentient animals different? Especially if they’re as intelligent as 2-year-old humans.
To some extent, there is also a dilemma somewhat like this for non-sentient pests such as weeds. Killing weeds is bound to kill animals. Sometimes, a weed could actually be beneficial, like it may compete with worse weeds. But meanwhile if it were in an area with native plants, it would be harmful as it would compete with them.
“Weeds” are just plants that grow in areas they are unwanted. Its a general term. Weeds can be anything from a native oak tree to an invasive grass. In that regard, no “weed” is beneficial because its all subjective to the observer, time and place.
That being said, yes most things we would consider “weeds” in native plant restorations would be non-native invasive.
Depending on the animal, letting it live freely in that area may have a higher “ethical cost” than containing or culling it due to all the harm it causes on the native species. I understand the argument of hiding the location of native animals that are killed due to causing property damage, but protecting invasive species which by definition cause harm to the local ecosystem? I don’t think an invasive species is worth more than the native organisms they will harm in their lifetime.
I do agree that you don’t have to cull, but it’s the most effective solution to deal with invasive species. Containing it and preventing it from reproducing (ie destroying eggs and nests of invasive birds) is a good solution for those who don’t want to hard cull. I’ve seen people do this with invasive sparrows, letting them live in a big enclosure in their garden, then just replacing their eggs for fake eggs and smashing the real eggs, so they wouldn’t reproduce and create more harm.
I wouldn’t say that killing is the most effective way to control “invasive” animals. In some situations, sterilisation can be more effective, because it has the benefit that sterile animals compete with fertile ones.
Another thing is that when you trap animals, you don’t have to kill them as you can keep them in captivity or relocate them instead. Trapping is equally effective whether the trapped animals are killed, kept in captivity or relocated.
Another thing is that how can we be so sure that killing pest animals is justified, when too many of us underestimate their ethical value? Some say that non-human animals don’t have the right to live, so there’s nothing wrong with killing them as long as they don’t suffer. This is a horrendous stance in my opinion. Killing sentient beings is worse than making them suffer. To think otherwise makes one’s approach to animal rights/welfare completely inconsistent with our usual approach to human rights, in which we generally consider killing to be the worst.
And some don’t realise that some sentient animals are sentient. Arthropods are a good example of this. Many also deny the self-awareness of some animals while recognising them as sentient.
Lethal control may be justified in some situations, but I don’t trust a society that underestimates the ethical importance of most animals, as our society does, to only kill animals when it’s justified.
Indeed!!! Consider the ‘naturalist’ culture that was initially brewed in the daze of Darwin, etc. Financed by monarchies, accompanying missions with intent toward conquest of new realms, killing and collecting everything in sight, not just a pair of individuals. Drawers and drawers of death and dermestid dust. Insane, truly.
One of the countless wonderful aspects of inaturalist: collecting doesn’t require killing or capturing.
This really depends on the kind of animal and the kind of sterilization you are talking about. Releasing sterile male mosquitoes to make it so the females can’t lay eggs? Good, works wonders. The only case where I can think that humans use sterilization of an existing animal for unowned population control is with cats, but it’s proven (more than one time) to not work and poses many ethical concerns, creates poor welfare, and causes disease spread.
The vacuum effect, which is what you probably described by saying “sterile animals competing with fertile ones”, doesn’t exist in the cases where they don’t have to compete. That effect only works if there is actual reason to compete, like for mates, food, or shelter, which are all provided for or irrelevant to sterilized unowned cats, so that effect doesn’t even work in that case.
You are correct that when you trap an animal, you don’t have to cull them! You can keep them in captivity, which is exactly the example I mentioned of the sparrows. Relocating to a non-native range will just spread the invasive species out so it will only make things worse, and relocating back to it’s native range is very costly, risks introducing other organisms or diseases onto the native range, and there’s animals who don’t even have a native range.
I personally don’t like hard culling, and I personally dislike the idea of culling a healthy animal, but ethics can’t ignore the entire situation or the harm those invasive species cause. In the end, we must do what’s actually effective to protect the ecosystem, otherwise it’ll collapse and take most of the living organisms with it, including the invasive ones.
It refers to animals which have been domesticated for so long that they have become a different species from their wild ancestors. A domestic cat is not equivalent to an African wildcat; a domestic dog is not equivalent to a wolf; and domestic cattle are not equivalent to extinct aurochs.
Individuals would be reasonably described as “loose”, especially if they are formerly cared for by humans. However there are many places where populations of domestic animals have naturalized and spread on their own. In these situations, it makes sense to describe them as invasive (pigs in much of North America for instance).
A recent example of this is the all-female crawfish species Procambarus virginalis, a highly invasive species with no known native wild populations that is used in the aquarium trade. It is thought to have originated from P. fallax, a species native to Florida
I do agree that some of the responses to the original poster have been a little short on understanding and sympathy. My impression is that the OP was horrified to see their local authority destroying a long-established parakeet nest and became concerned that this might have been triggered by their sharing location data on iNat (or that this might happen in future). I would guess also that the OP is an amateur interested in nature and not someone who has long exposure to the debate around control of invasive species.
First, while iNat observations provide valuable data on all sorts of invasive species, I’ll say that it seems very unlikely that local authorities are using them to track nest locations for invasive parakeets. Given that the birds are noisy and brightly colored, I’m pretty sure that when authorities decide to control parakeet populations they have a pretty good idea of nest locations already.
Second, it doesn’t seem that there is a consensus on the impact of monk parakeet populations in Europe. Some view them as harmful; others don’t. Also, it’s possible that the destruction of this nest was a targeted local measure (e.g. to protect the tree) rather than part of a broader eradication campaign.
On the broader issue of invasive species control, there are a lot of emotive issues involved and it’s important for the scientific community to take the time to understand how the general public feels if they want to get public support.
Relatively few people are troubled by plans to control species such as Argentine ants or Japanese knotweed, and their concerns might be mostly around issues such as pesticide toxicity. For more charismatic species, such as monk parakeets or feral cats, then public support for control is a lot less certain.
There is also the moral question that @cyanfox raised. When humans have introduced an intelligent species such as parakeets to a new environment, how do we weigh the right of individual sentient beings to survive against our desire to redress an ecosystem imbalance that we caused?
As @insectobserver123 outlined, individual observers should make their own choices about which observations to share. At a platform level, protecting threatened species is appropriate, but system-wide protection for non-native species that authorities may legitimately want to control would be to take an approach that currently has little backing.
Domestic Goat Capra hircus ssp. hircus is the biggest ungulate pest in my park (Paparoa NP) and several other parts of NZ.
We have a local hunter who has culled over 3000 by himself locally.
The 2023 National Goat Hunting Competition resulted in over 10,000 being culled (Verifiable by tails). There is also Departmental Hunters, who cull thousands per year.
The reality is, its hardly a dent. They are far from some loose farm animals. There are hundreds of thousands of them.
I’ve always wondered, given that humans have proven ourselves so good at hunting things to extinction, even incredibly abundant species like the passenger pigeon, why can’t we effectively put that skill to good use when it comes to invasive species like feral hogs or goats?