Intro
Invasive species
Define Natural
Natural processes - Species move around
Impact of invasive species
Intervention is Unnatural?
Conclusion / re-thinking “alien” or invasive
Regardless of where you live, chances are invasive species are making headlines. Governments spend millions of dollars trying to fight carp, zebra muscles and other invasive or 'alien' species. In his book "Where Do Camels Belong" Ken Thompson asks how dangerous they actually are and whether there is a point in fighting them.
Thompson, a senior research fellow in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, believes that the case against them is frequently overblown. Invasive species, after all, are hardly a new phenomenon. In…show more content… This is especially true when environmental or climatic conditions change. Some are successful in their adaptations and others are not. Some species are so successful that they push established species out. It is a sort of evolutionary game of musical chairs.
So, why are alien species suddenly seen as such an enormous threat? Environmental conditions have certainly been changing over the last few centuries. “We’ve chopped down forests, built dams and turned the whole world into a giant cattle pasture, and then we’re surprised that some species quite like what we’ve done. We shouldn’t be surprised,” said Thompson in a recent interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). [1]
One difference the author mentions, is the speed with which species can spread. Because of modern transportation, a new species can jump from the waterways of Russia to the waterways of New York in a matter of days.
Another difference is the economic impact. While the zebra muscle is a threat to some species, it is its economic impact which causes the greatest alarm. The animals, which first arrived in the US in the 1980s, cost the power industry alone 3.1 billion between 1993 and 1999. [2] With such a measurable impact it is not surprising that invasive species tend to see swifter government reaction than most environmental