Invasion of the Invasive Species

The science geeks will enjoy this one. With Kyoto effectively dead after the G-8 summit, there's apparently a new approach from the envirowackos to control all land and access to it - legislation against invasive species (from the Corner):

As the great R.J. Smith has pointed out, legislation against invasive species (which a USGS scientist compares to terrorists!) would be the "ultimate anti-human, total land-use control tool." There are currently over 50 bills on the subject floating around Congress. And, as RJ says, "If the Greens are able to keep the Invasive Species section in the Surface Transportation Bill (Highway Bill) it will give the Greens the same power over the nation's roads that they gained over the nation's forests. They will be able to stop each and every highway project in each and every state - because they are spreading non-native species and harming native species."

Biodiversity, it seems, isn't so important to the Greens as you'd think.

The words "invasive species" just sort of sounds scary, like Martians trodding across the land in War of the Worlds. However, sometimes these 'invasions' turn out to be beneficial, must to the distress of the envirowackos:

"That kind of information is dangerous," scolded Jodi Cassell. Cassell, who works with the California Sea Grant Extension program, was speaking at a symposium on "Alien Species in Coastal Waters: What Are the Real Ecological and Social Costs?" at the February American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C. She wasn't alone in her alarm. "We have members of the press here," warned a member of the audience. "I am very concerned that they might think that his view is the dominant view."

The target of this shushing was Mark Sagoff, a philosopher from the University of Maryland who has worked with Maryland's Sea Grant program to determine how the Chesapeake Bay's unique ecology defines a sense of place. Sagoff's sin? He'd had the temerity to point out the benefits that the much-loathed zebra mussels had brought to the Great Lakes.

Introduced via discharged ballast water from European freighters in the mid-1980s, zebra mussel populations have been exploding in the Great Lakes. Tens of thousands of the tiny, striped shellfish can occupy a square meter of any hard surface--like rocks, docks, and boat hulls. Observers initially feared that zebra mussels would clog water-intake pipes for municipalities and power plants and perhaps out-compete native shellfish for food. However, it turns out that the things are voracious "filter feeders." They strain algae and nutrients like fertilizer runoff from the lakes' waters. As a result, zebra mussels have played a significant role in improving water quality by clearing the lakes of polluting organic matter.

"There has been a striking difference in water clarity improving dramatically in Lake Erie, sometimes six to four times what it was before the arrival of the zebra mussels," according to the U.S. Geological Survey's Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database. "With this increase in water clarity, more light is able to penetrate deeper allowing for an increase in macrophytes (aquatic plants). Some of these macrophyte beds have not been seen for many decades due to changing conditions of the lake mostly due to pollution. The macrophyte beds that have returned are providing cover and acting as nurseries for some species of fish." What's more, zebra mussels provide food and habitat for all sorts of native fish and ducks.

Having Sagoff point out such positive developments was more than his colleagues on the AAAS panel could bear. To them--and to most professional ecologists--zebra mussels are simply "bad." So too, say ecologists, are all other "non-native" or "invader" species that set up shop in ecosytems different from the ones in which they originated.

If you're going to rid North America of non-native species, you're not going to have much left:

There's another important point worth making on behalf of the invaders: We have reaped enormous benefits from non-native species. Ninety-nine percent of crop plants in the United States are non-native, as are all our livestock except the turkey. "There is no basis in either economic or ecological theory for preferring native species over non-native species," said Sagoff. He further challenged his fellow panelists to name any specifically ecological criterion by which scientists can objectively determine whether an ecosystem whose history they don't know has been invaded or not. Are invaded ecosystems less productive? No. Are they less species-rich? No. And so on. Tellingly, the panelists had to agree that there is no objective criterion for distinguishing between "disturbed" ecosystems and allegedly pristine ones.

To the perpetually scared and fearful crowd, this may be the next bandwagon that they all jump on in order to extort money from the taxpayer and cripple capitalism, which of course is the real goal.