Advocating for native plants only is a mistake
In my opinion the idea that we should only plant native plants and must eradicate invasives is comparable to ideas like allowing only white people and deporting brown people.
Plants, like people, have been migrating since ever, through different means of transport like long shoots extending the area of growth and seed dispersal by wind, water or animals. There is no point in history we could point to and say "This is the distribution of plant species over the planet that's desirable and we should strive to return to that." Just like there's no point in history where human people were distributed on the planet in a perfect way we should strive to go back to.
19 replies
this isnt an unpopular opinion. its a wildly misinformed
Well then bring on the information, that's what I'm here for! Edit: typo
When we talk about neophytes, from a biological perspective we’re referring to different species. People of different origins are (despite perhaps having different skin colors) one and the same species. Therefore, your comparison doesn’t hold up.
If we apply the human perspective to the neophyte debate, it would be like planting maple trees from Canada in a maple forest in the U.S. 200 km further south... which is a marginal ecological problem because they’re the same species.
😆 I think for starters, the basic difference between animal ecosystems and human society is: A wolf will eat sheep. And with humans, it's pretty unheard of how one kind of people eats people with a different ethnicity. At least here in the city where I live, people don't do it. (Plus we're all the same species anyway. Either deport entire humankind from the planet because they're an invasive species. Or don't bother with the regions.)
Invasive plants destroy environments and reduce the diversity. Your comparison with "brown people" is very very unfortunate.
The problem is multifaceted.
Basic premise: We humans need functioning ecosystems to survive. At the same time, we have already damaged these systems in a wide variety of ways, thereby making them less resilient.
In addition to the disturbances we have already caused, invasive species represent a further stressor for ecosystems. In a natural ecosystem, this would be a normal process leading to the system’s adaptation following a period of disturbance. However, humans have already caused systems to become disrupted on a global scale, making them less able to cope with further disturbances. In addition, humans depend on the use of these systems for their survival.
Compared to other sources of human disturbance, invasive species represent “low-hanging fruit,” since it is easier to prevent at least the intentional introduction of species than, for example, the effects of global agriculture on ecosystems.
It is also true that right-wing parties seize upon the environmental issue (which they otherwise have no interest in, since nature conservation is merely a hindrance) to justify racism. However, people of different skin colors are not species with different ecological niches like plants and animals, so the comparison does not hold.
My personal opinion: We should do a better job of protecting our ecosystems in general, and preventing the introduction of non-native species into new areas is part of that.
If a species appears for the first time in an area, control measures may make sense; however, if the species has already established itself over such a large area that control becomes uneconomical, we must let nature take its course and, where possible, support natural adaptation processes if that is feasible and sensible.
You are pointing out that what we actually want is a functioning ecosystem, and I'd fully agree with that, but why is it implied that 'non-native' equals 'unhealthy'. I'm also not sure invasive are 'low hanging fruit'. To me they look like a topic humans latch onto because 'something needs to be done' when it's actually completely impossible to ever get rid of the 'invasive', and by focusing on a scapegoat plant we can keep ignoring the root causes of damaged ecosystems, which are very rarely damaged by invasive plants alone.
I don't doubt that invasive plants can cause damage (or rather annoyance to humans) in the short and medium term, and that we should make an effort to keep ecosystems healthy. But what do we do when native plants start covering large areas? And what happens when an invasive has depleted the special mix of nutrients it needs to live - I guess it makes space for other plants, like it would happen with a native plant.
Nobody so far has managed to give me a 'desirable restauration point' in time when plant distribution was 'ecological' and 'healthy'. Are US citizens going to send all the European agricultural plants back to the old continent? Or just the obnoxious weeds? And if the plant made the way to a new continent without human help, does it become an honorary native? I don't even have to start assuming that plants are conscious entities to have things not quite adding up here.
I do think we should work with the framework of 'healthy ecosystem' and foster biodiversity where we can, but lose that label of 'native' and 'non-native' and stop fighting invasives with violence. If we want them to leave we have to work the soil, the water, the (micro)climate of the place. Or wait till the job they came to do is done, which is usually a kind of regulation that might be better than all the possible human interventions.
This might get a bit lengthy but I'll try to formulate an explanatory answer.
If a new species is able to establish in a habitat it either fills a ecological niche not already occupied or has a competitive advantage over the species currently occupying that space. In case of successfully establishing neophytes they usually out compete native vegetation (otherwise they wouldn't establish in the first place). Reasons are, for example, advantages in nutrient assimilation (looking at you Fabaceae) or in most cases a lack of herbivores adapted to them as food source.
Hence neophytes usually act as a disruptive disturbance in ecosystems. While disturbance per se is a natural phenomenon (as I already stated above) it usually imperils the ecosystems former functions (which we rely on) at least temporarily, which is why, by human standards, neophytes replacing native vegetation is deemed unhealthy in the form of disturbance.
This is the default and in this case there are usually already a number of mechanisms in place (adapted pathogens, herbivores etc.) which will cause the system to bounce back to the former, dynamic but stable state. Neophytes lack these adapted control mechanisms until the organisms already present evolve accordingly. The balance between disturbance and stability is a key factor shaping the diversity of habitats.
There is no such thing as a 'special mix' a species relies on. Most plants rely on the same macro and micro nutrients and, if asked, would grow on the same spot with enough sunlight and humidity. Instead of 'special nutrient mix' plant communities are shaped by competition and environmental factors which act as exclusion barriers for most species.
There's also the special case of the Fabaceae which, different than most other plant families, have the ability to fixate nitrogen from the air via a bacterial symbiosis. While most other plants are limited by the available nitrogen in the soil these species possess an nearly endless supply and are therefore extraordinary competitive in habitats naturally low in nitrogen.
That's not the point of, at least the scientific, debate around neophytes at all. The major problem with neophytes is their role as additional disturbance and subsequently the threat they pose for the human use of ecosystems and the threat they pose to already (thanks to human activities) threatened species.
The problem isn't that a plant makes it to a new continent per se but the rate at which this happens (leaving ecosystems little time to adapt) and additional disturbance in brings upon systems already damaged by human activities. Compare it to global warming: It's not about the rise in temperature but about the speed of the warming.
I'll point to my opinion piece above:
Already broadly established neophytes:
Let nature adapt, there's not much we can do about it anyways.
Newly introduced but establishing with still little occupied habitat:
Fight them with violence. If we can eradicate a species shortly after its introduction this might safe some native species from extinction and protect the resilience of our global ecosystem.
Furthermore:
Limit dispersal of new non-native species as good as possible. Already stressed systems don't need additional stressors just because some gardener though 'but it's flowers are beautiful!'.
Yes, but if we rely on the ecosystem services imperiled by the new species in the mean time this might not be a practical option. (For example, we probably can't afford to stop using wood for 100 years until the forest has adapted to the introduction of the round-leaved tree-wrangler. )
To finally give a global answer to 'why non-native bad?':
The bigger the diversity in an ecosystem the more resilient it is to disturbance. If we freely exchange all species between all continents we'll most probably end up with a global melanche of the most competitive ones while losing the rest. This would greatly reduce our global biodiversity and hence make our global ecosystem more prone to disturbances (with fatal outcomes for human society which relies on this system to function).
Just a thought experiment: If, instead of the many different species that exist today, there were only a handful of tree species left in the world’s temperate forests—species that had prevailed over all others following a phase of global exchange—a newly emerging pathogen might wipe out, in one fell swoop, perhaps one-sixth of the total timber stock in these forests worldwide. Today, a pathogen would emerge locally—for example, in Asia—and cause problems there, but the temperate forests in Europe, North America, New Zealand, South America, etc., would not be affected. In the latter situation, we humans could adjust our plans; in the first scenario, we as a global society would likely face serious problems.
You know, I really want to upvote this because that is such a wildly Incorrect statement; it seems unpopular because it's extremely unpopular with folks who know things about ecology.
But in reality, I don't think that's too unpopular of an opinion. Have you seen the state of the American yard?
So I think I'm going to downvote because you are both wrong in your conception of the issue and that I don't think that's actually too unpopular in society.
Thankfully things are beginning to change.
Also, your race comparison thing is legitimately insulting to humanity.
I start thinking that treating plants as unconscious nonthinking entities is insulting to them, but to each their own.
I mean to say, I believe uncontroversially, that comparing racism to native planting is in bad faith or simply ridiculous.
This coming from a person who is highly invested in plants in both time and money.
Invasive plants don’t behave like people
Plant and animals are a system if you let Japanese invasive bamboo take the place of your indigenous flowers you’re affecting your polenisers and follow your birds, etc. etc.
I'd argue that invasive plants are exactly like people. They don't care about the damage they do to the area, they just kill anything in their way and expect the rest to adapt.
They are absolutely like white colonizer
One of the rare opinions that is objectively wrong. By definition, an invasive species is harmful to its new environment. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species
They're called invasive species for a reason. The issue isn't that they're not from here but that they often overtake the living space of native species and the effect on the ecosystem is going to be net-negative in the long run. Lupines are a good example as they're quite the nuisance around here. There are meadows here that otherwise would be filled with hundreds of different flowering native plants but once lupine takes over the entire field is going to be just that. That's not multiculturalism.
Hmm, immigrants are called like that because of made-up lines on a map and a history of colonialism, so I'm not sure something is true because we call it so. And it's not always like you describe. Lots of non-native plants blend in well and start taking functions in the ecosystem. In many regions native plants cover large areas in the same monocultural way you describe for invasives, for example the white broom that covers all the mountainside here. Nothing else grows there, people hate it, but it's native. What it does: it repairs the soil, in the long term. And I suspect that while so-called invasives might be damaging in the short and medium-term run, they will improve the ecosystem in the long run more than human intervention, because that's what plants do. Bare soil is a bad problem, so I believe that removing the plants without immediately filling the empty space with some other plant is more horrible than just leaving things alone.
Edit: changed 'Nothing else grows there, people hate it, but it's invasive.' to 'Nothing else grows there, people hate it, but it's native.'
you got my upvote. they have been doing native plantings in many parks near me and its amazing how its improved the land health of the areas. Night and day.
Depends on the area. If it's somewhere that has already been destroyed by artificial agriculture, then I don't see a need to insist on only planting something that was native 200 years ago.