Invasive What

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Invasive What?
American Wildlife Conservation Foundation
Scott Shupe February 2007

• By sea, by land, by air, beneath the ground
• What future?

2
Characteristics of NAIS

• Early maturation, profuse reproduction,
  adaptation for spread, late season leaves
• Plants tend toward long seed life/viability
• Shade tolerance, allelopathy, or other
  suppression mechanisms affecting natives
• Lack North American pathogens/controls
• Effects decreased light availability, upped
  water use, depleted nutrients, altered soil
  chemistry, native niche alteration

3
The Costs

• 50,000 foreign species now in USA
• 42 of ESA list is due to NAIS
• 138 Billion/year damage estimate in 1999
• Loosestrife in 48 states - 45 M/yr control
• Cats cause 14 B/yr damage to birds
• Pigeon damages 1.1 B/yr
• Crop pests destroy 13 - 33 B/yr loss

4
Invasive population growth shape
300,000 people 2 millennia ago population
doubled in 1600 years, has last doubled but in 36
years!?!
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Effects of growth

• What may be inferred?
• What geographical, financial, humanitarian,
  sociological, and political dimensions change?
• Awareness, concern, and commitment challenge the
  sciences that have become so specialized that
  much of the research is not read by workers in
  otherssometimes the relatedfields.

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New Yorks Barn Door

• Baitbucket Biology Too late for regulations.
  Rusty crayfish, European rudd, and red wigglers
  are examples of invasives for which no controls
  are likely. Meanwhile, the plants of less robust
  waters, where commercial baits are dumped, will
  probably severely compromised.
• Play Catchup We have no official state lists.
  NYS has the Official Garnet, Beaver, Ladybug,
  Sugar Maple. We prohibit few, if any, invasive
  plants, forest pests, baits, birds, or disease
  vectors. Other states look beyond animal
  rights, and actively manage against noxious,
  alien, or invasive species that threaten
  resources. Why is not NYS a leader in this war?

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Beyond the Bait Bucket

• Few earthworms are native, at least 15 invasive
  non-natives all common fishing worms are
  non-native species.
• Arrived with soils and plants brought from
  Europe. Ships used rocks and soil as ballast
  which was dumped on shore. Immigrants imported
  European plants that likely had earthworms or egg
  cases in their soils. Widespread use of
  earthworms as bait spread them to more remote
  areas of the northern states.
• In northern soils, increased earthworm biomass
  correlates with a 50 reduction in density and
  abundance of herbaceous plants, and a 75
  decrease in density and abundance of tree
  seedlings.
• Prolific non-native plants with small seeds that
  can germinate on thin forest substrate (like
  garlic mustard) can have an advantage over native
  species.
• Big trees survive, but many young seedlings
  perish, along with many ferns and wildflowers.

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Forest Pests

• NYS Nurseries produced Russian autumn olive,
  Asian honeysuckles, and multiflora rose for
  wildlife cover. Foresters and wildlifers need to
  talk more!
• Butternut canker, introduced via St. Lawrence
  Seaway European traffic, will by 2015 kill 99 of
  the northeasts Juglans cinerea.
• Christmas trees were under quarantine in Erie and
  Niagara Counties in the 1992 by 2006 the pine
  shoot beetle was in a dozen Southern Tier
  counties.
• Packing material in Fulton in 2004 brought the
  sirex wood wasp, Sirex noctilio to NYS by 2005
  it was a threat to white, red, Austrian and
  Scotch pines in 22 counties.

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Death by 1000 Cuts

• Japanese Knotweed
• Giant Hogweed
• Zebra mussels

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Future Implications

• Managing our borders will but slow the
  transformation of a diverse landscape into one
  that looks Eurasian.
• Must economies be threatened to the brink of war
  over scarce natural resources, before governments
  will be ready to impose active management of
  native resources.
• Or is there a groundswell of informed
  citizen-scientists and back-yard ecologists who
  now recognize the need to change a paradigm?
• It is time to start actively managing for
  endangered species and against invasive ones.

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Next

• Ed Mills, Director of Cornells Shackelton Point
  Research Station, NYS ITF member, and Oneida Lake
  Association Board Member

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BIOLOGY 101

• Wal-mart sells good meat cheap you should only
  shoot wildlife with a camera!
• We cant turn back the clock! Ramifications of
  an un-natural human population expansion have led
  to an artificial lifestyle that cannot be
  sustained. Other resources are limiting.
• Religious war, ethnic cleansing, economic castes
  are these not really just manifestations of too
  many people competing for space?

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