Invasive effects

Politico on Invasive Species:

The [European-American] population will fall to about 30 percent by 2060 from the current 39 percent, affecting politics and public policy in the nation's most populous state. Whites [European-Americans] currently lack a majority in only Hawaii and New Mexico.

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Invasive Culture

Invasive Culture in CA and the effects on the local cultural ecosystem:

In a small town two miles away, the thefts now sound like something out of Edward Gibbon’s bleaker chapters — or maybe George Miller’s Road Warrior, or the Hughes brothers’ more recent The Book of Eli. Hundreds of bronze commemorative plaques were ripped off my town’s public buildings (and with them all record of our ancestors’ public-spiritedness). I guess that is our version of Trotskyization.
The Catholic church was just looted (again) of its bronze and silver icons. Manhole covers are missing (some of the town’s own maintenance staff were arrested for this theft, no less!). The Little League clubhouse was ransacked of its equipment.
In short, all the stuff of civilization — municipal buildings, education, religion, transportation, recreation — seems under assault in the last year by the contemporary forces of barbarism.

For those who do not leave the area, silence for now remains the norm. We pick up the litter from our farms on the implicit logic that the vandal — and, indeed, the state as well — expects us to, given our greater worry that his garbage would be likely to attract rats, flies, and other historical purveyors of illness. Dead cats, dirty diapers, used needles, baby carriages, shattered TVs, chairs, sofas, rotting lumber, broken windows, concrete blocks, tree limbs, used paint cans, household poisons, bags of used toilet paper and tampons, broken toys, fast-food boxes, toddler’s pools, tires, rotting chickens and dogs — anything that does not have easily detachable clean steel or copper — I’ve picked them all up from my vineyard and driveways.

I do not (yet) move wrecked Winnebagos and trailers onto my single-family-zoned rural parcel to garner rental cash, as do many of my neighbors. After all, some must not, if the careful zoning work of a century is to survive. When one dog in four is not licensed and vaccinated out here, we have a problem; when four out of four will not be, we should expect a 19th-century crisis. When there are three outdoor privies used daily behind a neighbor’s house, the local environment can still handle the flies, the odor, and the increase in the chance of disease; but if there were to be 100 in a half-mile stretch, civilization itself would break down.

Effects of Invasives on Native Cultural Habitat

Cynicism is the result. We pay no attention to news accounts of new state measures to check the source of metals presented at recycling centers, because we know these efforts are futile — as futile as the “seminars” in which we are told to fence everything in, to buy huge guard dogs, to install video cameras in trees, and to acquire electric gates — as if we were not so much being protected but being held prisoner.

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Invasives: What to Do

The best way to avoid invasive plant problems is prevention.  Simply put—do not purposefully introduce plants known to be  invasive into your garden or yard.

The second easiest method for controlling invasive plants is early detection followed by  a rapid response. One invasive plant is much easier to control  than thousands!

-North Carolina Botanical Garden, 2007

Invasives: global challenges

“The spread of invasive alien species is creating complex and
far-reaching challenges that threaten both the natural and
biological riches of the earth and the well being of it citizens.”

-Yvonne Baskin

“We must make no mistake . . . we are seeing one of the great
historical convulsions of the world’s fauna and flora.”

-Charles Elton

Removal of Invasives

This is an example of the local community coming together to preserve the local ecosystem by removing invasives.

Help us preserve the beauty of Airlie Gardens while learning valuable information you can use in your own yard. Attendees will receive a brief introduction to recognizing and removing invasive plants, which can lead to the decline of our native plants when left uncontrolled. After the lesson, we will go to work on removing the invasive plants at Airlie. Preregistration is required. Be sure to wear long sleeves, long pants and closed work shoes. Bring your work gloves.

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Invasive Species: A Definition

Invasive species, also called invasive exotics or simply exotics, is a nomenclature term and categorization phrase used for flora and fauna, and for specific restoration-preservation processes in native habitats, with several definitions.

• The first definition, the most used, applies to introduced species (also called "non-indigenous" or "non-native") that adversely affect the habitats and bioregions they invade economically, environmentally, and/or ecologically. Such invasive species may be either plants or animals and may disrupt by dominating a region, wilderness areas, particular habitats, or wildland-urban interface land from loss of natural controls (such as predators or herbivores). This includes non-native invasive plant species labeled as exotic pest plants and invasive exotics growing in native plant communities.^[1] It has been used in this sense by government organizations^[2][3] as well as conservation groups such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the California Native Plant Society.^[4] The European Union defines "Invasive Alien Species" as those that are, firstly, outside their natural distribution area, and secondly, threaten biological diversity.^[5] It is also used by land managers, botanists, researchers, horticulturalists, conservationists, and the public for noxious weeds.^[6] The kudzu vine (Pueraria lobata), Andean Pampas grass (Cortaderia jubata), and yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) are examples.

• The second definition includes the first, but broadens the boundaries to include indigenous or native species, with the non-native ones, that disrupt by a dominant colonization of a particular habitat or wildlands area from loss of natural controls (i.e.: predators or herbivores). Deer are an example, considered to be overpopulating their native zones and adjacent suburban gardens, by some in the Northeastern and Pacific Coast regions of the United States.

• The third definition identifies invasive species as a widespread nonindigenous species.^[4] This one can be too broad, as not every nonindigenous or "introduced" species has an adverse effect on a nonindigenous environment. A nonadverse example is the common goldfish (Carassius auratus), though common outside its native range globally, it is rarely in harmful densities to a native habitat.^[4]

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Invasive Species: A definition

As per Executive Order 13112 an "invasive species" is defined as a species that is:

1) non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration and
2) whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.

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