Challenge of Ecosystem Conservation and Sustainability Rests with Relatively Affluent People

            What if the challenge of ecosystem conservation and sustainability actually rest with the relatively affluent people who already live here that are ruining the Chesapeake Bay, and not the world's masses fleeing oppression and seeking a better life (v. Immigration is an environmental issue September 03, 2013| By Tom Horton) ?

 

            Fred Tutman, the Patuxent Riverkeeper asks, "Isn't it the technologically advanced nations that contribute most to the loss of greenhouse gasses and create climate effects that give rise to drought, famine and floods? Aren't some immigrants refugees of ecological catastrophes in their own homelands?"

 

            Tutman has given me permission to post his comments in full.

 

            "I think that if the Bay were populated primarily by immigrant populations it would possible be better off than than under the current population and regime that seeks to preserve a certain social status qou (albeit while cleaning up the trash and saving turtles) instead of seeking ways to share our natural resource wealth with those humans less fortunate than ourselves.

            When we speak of "population" in abstract terms it gives rise to why some detractors see environmentalists as lacking in compassion. We appear to be all about protecting the earth without much stomach for addressing the plight of its human population--aside from assessing how surplus populations threaten our 1st world incumbency.

            So not only is population a tough subject, it is one potentially laden with classist significance depending on who is doing the finger pointing and making the policy recommendations. That's all I was trying to convey. That the Chesapeake Bay is perhaps not the best illustrator of forum for population concerns.

            The troubling thing that I have learned after ten years of Riverkeeping is that the movement to address this problem (i.e poverty, population etc), has almost nothing at all to do with the "Save the Bay" cause movement as currently configured. In fact "Baysavers" will for the most part struggle to keep the focus on natural resources rather than on human impacts and problems. So, the aim to save crabs and oysters has managed cheerfully (and sadly) to isolate itself from much striving to restore justice and fairness to actual people and communities. The more I travel and interact with other environmentalists outside of the Bay States, the more I realize how ideologically parochial our regional movement has become.  

            Moreover, because of who generally funds and controls environmental movements in our society, there is far more interest in saving nature than in protecting the oppressed and those with few hopes of environmental decency or dignity-- or for that matter very little bandwidth for expanding our potential as humans who live in a natural world. We'll "educate" folks before we will use our powers of activism to help them acquire a living in a decent environment.  The mere mention of the term "environmental justice" conjures up visions of minorities or civil rights which many in our movement see as way "off message" for "the Bay" or at least a separate and far less fundable movement. Actually these themes are much more  fundamental and complex and really hard to control. In fact, they are problems way bigger in scope than the primary focus of Tom Horton's article (the Bay).

            My overall point is, changing the dialogue or its frame of reference generally alters who gets to control the messaging and who reaps the benefits of our efforts. So for me at least, this is ultimately just as much about freeing the minds of those with the most influence over what we regard as "environmentalism" and challenging entitlements. By the way, I have noted that while 1% funders do not always directly tell us what we can and cannot work on, nonetheless funding considerations often severely limit the range of ideas and themes many of us are willing to consider.

            While my ideas are not at all fixed on any of these points, I am always eager to find ways to look at environmental problems with a different lens. The old one hasn't work as well as I might like."

            Environmental justice is a major issue that rarely comes up in ecosystem discussions, a fact about which I have commented in 2008 in a blog post on this site: Minority involvement in environmental conversations.

   

Invasive species 'boxbug' tries to sneak past APHIS

Gonocerus acuteangulatus (Goeze 1778)
boxbug
image from British Bugs web site

               Invasive species are all around us. The eat our lunch, they make us sick, and they change our landscapes. Invasive species cost us money...lots of money...some say over 130 billion dollars a year in the United States alone. Most of only get excited about invasive species when they directly and immediately injure us personally.  We remain landscape illiterate convinces that food comes from stores, and clean water from pipes.

               The United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) works to stave off the introduction and establishment of harmful invasive species.[1] APHIS and its ever-smaller budgets is faced with more "stuff' coming in to US ports each year. And who is APHIS' stakeholder that should be clamoring for increases to protect our pockets, food, and health? Why we the very people who have no clue. Somehow we have the idea that the infrastructure started by Lincoln and enhanced by Presidents through the 1960s now needs no support at all. Our arrogance is only unsurpassed by our inability to see tomorrow.

               If you live in the Mid-Atlantic you already know about the stink bug because it decided to not only cost the fruit industry millions but more importantly for you, because it moved in by the thousands to your personal space and caused you discomfort. So you call on APHIS and demand to know why and then fail to give it the money to prevent the next critter from moving in.

               With little support from the calmly disinterested public (those without stink bugs, pythons, flying fish and rock snot in their lives so far), the dedicated employees of APHIS and its sister organizations ARS and the Forest Service) work to keep the next invader out of your personal space. They work tirelessly to safeguard the United States much like the heroic 'Little Dutch boy' who stuck his finger in a hole in the dike to save his world from certain doom.

              And what has APHIS done lately for you - especially those of you who garden or make your living selling plants? In December, the keen eyes of USDA APHIS port inspectors in Baltimore, Maryland spotted for the first time a Coreid, Gonocerus acuteangulatus (Goeze 1778). G. acuteangulatus, commonly called known as a boxbug in the United Kingdom, id a "relatively large reddish-brown squashbug, distinguished from the commoner Coreus marginatus by the narrower abdomen and more pointed lateral extremities of the pronotum. Nymphs have a green abdomen." The website, British Bugs, goes on to describe this new invader to the US as historically very rare in the British Isles and known only from Box Hill in Surrey, where it feeds on box trees (boxwoods). British Buigs continues its report noting that the "bug is expanding its range and now occurs widely in the south-east of England and beyond. It is exploiting different foodplants, and has been found on hawthorn, buckthorn, yew and plum trees." Reports from England report that it seems prefers berry bearing species such as hollies and ivies.[2]  The boxbug is also reported as a major problem for hazelnut production in Italy.[3]

               APHIS also reports that the recently intercepted boxbug, G. acuteangulatust is a primary pest of boxwood, but is also recorded feeding on important landscape and garden plants such as hawthorn, buckthorn, yew and plum trees. According to a report in the Washington Times, the boxbug, referred to as a squashbug in the article, was "destined for Eldersburg, Md.  CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) issued an Emergency Action Notification to the importer requiring the shipment to be re-exported or destroyed."[4]

               The possible introduction of this invasive pest would add to the litany of invasive species problems facing farmers and gardeners in the United States. We, all of us, should be actively supporting enhanced funding for USDA APHIS. It is worth noting that APHIS also quietly protects natural areas from invasive species that creep through our trade routes into our ports and out into our fields and woods.
 

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[1] The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is a multi-faceted Agency with a broad mission area that includes protecting and promoting U.S. agricultural health, regulating genetically engineered organisms, administering the Animal Welfare Act and carrying out wildlife damage management activities.  These efforts support the overall mission of USDA, which is to protect and promote food, agriculture, natural resources and related issues.

To protect agricultural health, APHIS is on the job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week working to defend America’s animal and plant resources from agricultural pests and diseases.  For example, if the Mediterranean fruit fly and Asian longhorned beetle, two major agricultural pests, were left unchecked, they would result in several billions of dollars in production and marketing losses annually.  Similarly, if foot-and-mouth disease or highly pathogenic avian influenza were to become established in the United States, foreign trading partners could invoke trade restrictions and producers would suffer devastating losses.    http://www.aphis.usda.gov/about_aphis/

[2] The Essex Field Club. http://www.essexfieldclub.org.uk/portal/p/Species+Account/s/Gonocerus%20acuteangulatus

[3] Vaccino et al. 2008. Detection of damage due to bug feeding on hazelnut and wheat by biochemical techniques. Bulletin of Insectology 61 (1): 189-190.

[4] Jerry Seper. December 12, 2012. ‘Squashbug’ nabbed at Baltimore Harbor. The Washington Time. [accessed January 19, 2013] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/12/squashbug-nabbed-baltimore-harbor/

"The importer plans to fumigate.

Upon Friday’s discovery of the bug, CBP forwarded the specimen to a USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Plant Protection and Quarantine entomologist for identification. CBP agriculture specialists work closely with USDA to protect the nation’s agriculture resources against the introduction of foreign plant pests and animal diseases.

CBP agriculture specialists have extensive training and experience in the biological sciences and agricultural inspection. On a typical day, they inspect tens of thousands of international air passengers, and air and sea cargoes nationally being imported to the United States and seize 4,291 prohibited meat, plant materials or animal products, including 470 insect pests."

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/12/squashbug-nabbed-baltimore-harbor/#ixzz2IQluwQPK

Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

HEAR CLOSING - a message from Dr. David Duffy (PCSU/UH)

November 6 2012

HEAR CLOSING - a message from Dr. David Duffy (PCSU/UH)

A message from Dr. David Duffy, Pacific Cooperative Studies
Unit/University of Hawaii:

    "Because of a lack of funds, the Hawaiian Ecosystems at Risk project (HEAR) (http://www.hear.org) may close as soon as December 15, although there may be enough funds to extend it until February 15. This will mean several things. The web site will be placed on a new server although it is not clear who will pay for the server or for transitioning the site. HEAR data will not be updated. The Pacific Ecosystems at Risk (PIER)
site (see http://www.hear.org/pier/abtproj.htm) will also become frozen, as will numerous books, reports and papers. As software evolves we will likely lose the ability to access the data. The various list servers will need new owners, otherwise moderated lists will cease to function altogether, while other lists will not be able to add or delete members. The Starr photo collection will remain accessible, but only through a third party site that will charge for access.
    I should point out that we have already lost the original home of the Pacific Basin Information Node (PBIN) website, although it has found temporary refuge. Together with HEAR, this site represents the corporate memory both here in Hawaii and across the Pacific of efforts to sustain our natural ecosystems and agriculture against problems caused by
species alien to the islands. HEAR also serves as the glue that holds the community together, providing information and facilitating communication. I just hope hindsight is kind to this decision."

               Invasive species are all around us, but most of us never see them. Except for a small group of dedicated people, who over the years have studied and documented the changes in the landscapes of our world, most of us remain oblivious to the changes that are happening to the environment. To those who watch and know the changes brought about by the introduction of novel species, the spread of invasive species is like a wild fire consuming the habitats that shelter life as we know it.

               Invasive species destroy our crops and reduce the food supply that 7 billion people need. Invasive species foul our waters and cost us resources that most of us do not even know we have. Our expectations allow us to presume that resources provided by the diversity of life will always be available to us. As we allow our physical manmade infrastructure to crumble, the ecological systems that surround and support them are changing fast and costing us more.

               The free access of information that once was found in libraries is growing ever smaller, and in the world of invasive species the little electronic portals of knowledge are blinking out along with their hardcopy brethren because some of us feel there is no role for common access to science and experience. In some ways the loss of information will result in a world that knows nothing of the problems facing us as invasive species reduce the resources once at hand. In a tangled twist, the absence of information is validation to many that there is no problem. Without access to species information and their impact on ecosystems, communities will each have to learn anew the effect and cost that some novel species can have on our daily lives.

               The fisherman will see no problem until the lake loses its many species to an exotic flying carp; the farmer will be oblivious until the stink bug reaches his soy bean fields; the gardener will know nothing until the running bamboo takes out the foundation of the home; the child's parent will be content until the python attacks at dusk; the sick will not realize the impact of the insect bite until the doctor speaks of mosquitoes from a distant land; the homeowner will be amused until he learns the cost of termites from a place far far away.

               Then, and only then, when it is too late, will the costs of ignorance come home to roost.  HEAR and PIER provided information in depth to one and all. Individuals and their communities who bear the cost of invasive species and who are unable to pay individually for research information are the losers. They will pay in damage to their fields, gardens and public lands because we did not have the will to provide knowledge to one and all as a public infrastructure service. James Madison wrote to W.T. Barry in 1822:

"A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."[1]

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[1] Kurland & Lerner, eds. 2000. Epilogue: Securing the Republic,  Chapter 18. © 1987 by The University of Chicago. [accessed November 6, 2012]  http://press-ubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35.html

Oplismenus Menaces the Mid Atlantic

Oplismenus hirtellus (L.) P. Beauv. subsp. undulatifolius (Ard.) U. Scholz

Flatbed scan of a herbarium specimen (Uebel, 1,651C) collected at Liberty Reservoir, Baltimore County, Maryland, USA on 26 Sep 1997

     A dangerous-to-a-local-ecosystem invader with pretentions of beauty, even possible ornamental use as a "naturalizing" ground cover, is quickly spreading throughout the parks and woodlands of the Mid-Atlantic from Maryland through northern to western Virginia including the Washington DC region.[1] This relatively new invasive species seems to have arrived in the early 1990s, perhaps even the late 1980s. a time that allows for its early efforts at over-coming the odds of successful establishment. Armed with a scientific, generic (genus) name that is daunting, the name Oplismenus, comes to us from the ancient Greek hoplismenos meaning 'armed' referring to due morphological feature of a glume with awns. (Chase, 1910)      


    Today there is a chance to reign in its spread before it replaces major parts of the ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay region. Dr. Marc Imlay and is band of weed warriors is seeking funding to quash the invasion before it becomes so big as to be unstoppable. The land managers know they can contain it and "weed" it out now; that they have a fighting chance to stop the spread, or at least to surely slow it down enough to mitigate and limit the ecological harm it may cause as it replaces the native species in the food web that occupy unique niches in the present ecosystem.. Doing something now costs far less than waiting to try to control it once everyone knows there is a problem. With invasive species, by the time the every one feels or sees the problem, the costs of control, containment or eradication exceed the resources available. The weed warriors seek 3 million dollars to eradicate the expansion and reduce the acreage under attack. Smaller amounts of funding mean smaller reductions of this pest, and a resulting limited reduction in effect control. Of course any reduction is better than none, but they know that they could get it all now even as they watch it spread to that point of no return while we dither and say perhaps there is no problem at all.



EDDMapS shows the current distribution.  Marc Imlay, a relentless weed warrior, told me in 2006 [Nov 27, 2006 New Invasive; Early Detection; Rapid Response] that "Paul Peterson at the Natural History museum identified the grass as Oplismenus hirtellus subsp undulatifolius. He published a note on this grass in 1999 along with Charlie Davis, Ed Uebel and Rob Soreng, when it was found to be a new record for North America. Ed Uebel discovered it in Patapsco Valley State Park, (MD) and another site several miles north of the park, occurring in small to medium sized patches. It is native to southern Europe and southeastern Asia. It certainly sounds like it has the potential to be another invasive since it is stoloniferous, has seeds that stick to clothing, and appeared to be spreading according to Ed Uebel." I note that in that posting the nursery industry's variegated ornamental species was suspected as having mutated and escaped, a premise which since has been dismissed as information from genetic testing has confirmed a distinct difference.
(Talley & Ramsey, 2009)



    The spread of this non native grass has reached the mountains and woodlands of the Shenandoah and shows no signs of slowing down. Folks say that this Oplismenus from Japan can "eat" Japanese stilt grass, (a major invasive species, Microstegium vimineum (Trin.) A. Camus), for breakfast and keep covering the forest bottoms in a dense carpet creating a biological desert. At first there was controversy as to whom to blame, and taxonomic lumpers and splitters trying to decide exactly "which of what" was invading. The apparent genetic plasticity found in the literature for the last two centuries of the species world wide is a likely indicator of potential invasive tendencies, but the recourse to absolute science has a tendency to hold up any action until the end of the play. So for a decade or so the species wandered taxonomically and ecologically in the wilderness of inattention. Searches through the scientific literature since the early 19^th century suggested that the genus was remarkably prone to interspecific crosses. In other words this was a plant that could adapt easily and readily to the north side of a mountain as well as the south side and produce quickly seemingly different species based upon location and morphology. The point is that the genus can survive in a wide range of ecological conditions.



    The genus Oplismenus is globally dispersed and has challenged categorization since its first mention by that great naturalist and botanist, Ambrose-Marie-François-Joseph Palisot de Beauvois, around 1810. An aristocrat who travelled to West Africa, caught in military actions between the French and British, forced to leave due to illness for Haiti; he continued his collecting with a strange aside into the politics of slavery. Once more finding his collections burned and this time forced to leave because of the revolution, unwilling as an aristocrat to return to revolutionary France, he set out for the United States. Destitute he arrived in Philadelphia, joined the circus as a musician and began "…curating the private botanical collection of Charles Willson Peale. He joined the American Philosophical Society, contributed to its Transactions, and resumed his collecting with the sponsorship of the French Attache, Paul Adet, a scientist in his own right. Palisot's collecting trips in the United States ranged from the Ohio River in the west to Savannah, Georgia in the south. He made several valuable discoveries, including that of a new species of rattlesnake, and he passed several months among the Creek and Cherokee Indians. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society, to which he communicated a part of his observations. Palisot finally received word from Paris that his citizenship had been restored, and began planning his return to Europe, especially the freighting of his collections. Dogged by misfortune, these collections were lost in a shipwreck off Nova Scotia in 1798. Palisot returned to France in the same year." [2]


    To say that the taxonomy has been a little less than clear is to not do justice to the two centuries of expert discussion. Ursula Scholz describes the contortions of taxonomy clearly showing the pathway to the present epithet. She writes that "…historical consideration of the genus proves clearly how difficult the separation of the species from one another is. This was made especially evident through the very objective research methods of Davey & Clayton. From that one may doubtless conclude that through a classical systematic approach no fully satisfying results can be expected." [3]  (Scholz, 1981)


    As usual this problem can be boiled down and thus simplified to: who cares? For most people one grass is the same as another as long as it green. Few people are willing to pay more to clean weed a park; a place they see was "wild" already and suitable for weeds and other scary things. A few suggest that those who love wild natural areas should bear the financial burden of maintaining what they love so much. For them natural areas are a resource to be protect only when it is generating economic value directly to them individually. A natural resource that is not being exploited is simply wilderness waiting for human labor to turn it into something worth while. The dumping of our biological refuse onto unmanaged lands is not seen as a problem but rather one of the principle uses of untamed, unmanaged, undeveloped landscapes. If the land has not been shaped for a better use, why pay money to remove just another plant that someone does not like? And finally there is the group that believes that whatever problem may or maynot happen, we will deal with it when the time comes if the problem is big enough we shall overcome somehow, but in the meantime we have present problems of enormous cost that need dealing with on a more urgent basis than removing one somewhat aggressive species from the woods. So the question remains: Who cares? -our modern version of Cui bono? 
     Do you?

 

[1] EDDMapS. 2011. Early Detection & Distribution Mapping System. The University of Georgia - Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health. Available online at http://www.eddmaps.org/; last accessed January 4, 2011.

[2] Palisot de Beauvois  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisot_de_Beauvois

Palisot biography - Scarab Workers http://www-museum.unl.edu/research/entomology/workers/APalisot.htm

[3] Scholz, U. 1981. Monographie der gattung Oplismenus (Gramineae). Phanerogamarum monographiae Tomus XIII. J. Cramer, Vaduz, Germany. 217 pp. With 46 figures and 2 tables. Englush translation by Anthony McIntyre, Spencer Atkins, and Felix Tweraser. Published by A.R Gantner Kommandit community, FL-9490 VADUZ; © 1981 A.R. Gantner Verlag K.G., FL-9490 Vaduz; Printed in Germany by Strauss & Cramer GmbH, 6945 Hirschberg 2

ISBN 3-7682-1292-0

"The genus Oplismenus was not always unanimously defined.  Palisot de Beauvois (1810) identified seven species in addition to the type species O. africanus. Persoon (1805) had previously put these together as two species groups: “Spic. composita, spicul. compressis secundis” . Valid combination changes of these species that Persoon quotes from Panicum, are first found in Palisot de Beauvois, Essai d’une nouvelle Agrostographie: 53 (1812). They are as follows: O. bromoides, O. burmannii, O. compositus, O. elatior, O. helvolus and O. hirtellus. In addition, the species O. foliaceus and O. undulatiflolius were named. The designation of “foliaceus” is clearly due to a typographical error in which O. loliaceus is named a synonym, as only Panicum loliaceum Lam. appears in the index of the Agrostrograph.

The case of O. undulatiflolius is more complicated. In text S. 54 O. undulatifolius – like the other speciesl – is listed as nomen nudum. In the Index s. 168 “Panicum undulatifolium And (Ard.)” is listed as a synonym for O. burmannii, and “Panicum undulatifolium ? L.” is listed as a synonym of O. undulatifolius. As no Panicum undulatifolium exists this combination is invalid (Niles & Chase 1925; Becherer 1929).

The type species of the genus O. africanus was described, illustrated, and nameed as a separate species next to Panicum hirtellum L. and Panicum loliaceum Lam. by Palisot de Beauvois. No voucher specimen is cited. Two specimens can, however, be studied, as they were well known to Palisot de Beauvois and have comments on them: “types de la Flora d’ Oware et de benin” (G) and “dedit Palisot de Beauvois” (LE). Both plants are similar in their habit (very delicate), they are however, relatively strongly differentiated in their inflorescence characteristics.  The specimen 1 from Geneva corresponds to the depiction in the Flore d’oware et de Benin and should therefore be considered the lectotype. The specimen 2 from Leningrad is intermediate between O. hirtellus subsp. fasciculatus and subsp. setarius.

Like Palisot de Beauvois, R. Brown also tightly circumscribed his genus Orthopogon (Greek origin: όρθός straight, πώγων beard) and only compiled species under it that have awns in the outer three glumes and whose spikelets are pressed together from the sides. He lists Orthopogon compositus (= Panicum compositum L.) and three further species that he described, Orthopogon aemulus , Orthopogon flaccidus and Orthopogon imbecillis.

The genus Oplismenus is described with similar circumscriptions by Roemer & Schultes (1817), Raddi (1823), Nees von Esenbeck (1829 and 1841) , Bentham & Hooker (1883), Domin (1915), Hitchcock (1913 on following pages), Koidzumi (1925) and Honda (1924 and 1930). In contrast to this circumscription, which we consider to be Oplismenus s. str., are the interpretations of Kunth in Humbolt, Bonpland & Kunth (1816) and Kunth (1833), Desvaux (1831 and E. Fournier (1816) who sxpanded the genus to include the genus now known as Echinochloa as a section of Oplismenus.  Even so Sprengel (1825) also recognized Orthopogon. Later however, like the earlier Poiret (1816) and after him Steudel (1854), Sprengel reduced Orthopogon to a section of Panicum, while Trinius, in earlier works (1820) accepted Orthopogon s. str. Mez (1917 and 1921) accepted Oplismenus (s. str.), but added to it some species that belong in different genera.

Schechtendal (1961-62) divided Oplismenus into two sections, base on characterisics of the awns. Species Oplismenus sect. Orthopogon (= sect. Oplismenus) have strong, red-gold, smooth awns, whereas members of Oplismenus sect. Scabrista have delicate, whitish, scabrous awns. This division appears sensible as the make-up of the awns is an important criterion, both in physiological as well as in dispersal.

Davey & Clayton (1977), in their study of some of the species of the genus, adopted new interpretations. They analyzed the species O. compositus, O. hirtellus, O. undulatifolius O. aemulus , O. imbecillis, O. rariflorus and O. setarius according using discriminate analysis (Cooley & Lohnes 1971). They compared all the species and attempted to separate them. They concluded that some species are easy to separate when one considers them within individual geographical regions, such as America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. When comparisons included specimens from multiple regions, however, they found some species to be non-separable species, O. hirtellus, O. compositus and O. undulatifolius. They concluded that there were no distinct boundaries between these three species”

  

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Invasive Plants & Butterfiles - A Collision of Desires

Spring has sprung in Washington and with it comes the fulfillment of the pent up urge to go out side and garden, to become one with nature, and to do good. On Twitter this morning (@InvasiveNotes) I found this tweet: @ionxchange: 75 Plants That Attract Butterflies Mistkitscom blog http://bit.ly/aS2f1i . This inherent goodness and wholesomeness of planting flowers and encouraging pollinators especially the ostentatious, non threatening butterflies compels attention and gives form to a garden plan of action. The dream of shirking clouds of summer iridescence draws us to lists of plants that are known to attract the butterfly.

If you truly want butterflies of course you need to provide them plants that help them more than just at the end of their lives. For before there is the wonder of the shimmering display of summer garden visitors there is the caterpillar eating its way through your garden securing a resting place mostly oblivious as it hide from your brood of song birds waiting for a meal. And worse perchance if you use chemicals, the caterpillar which can reduce a favorite spring plant to a stems and stalks is easily killed by wanton chemical applications. While butterflies are feeding off nectar and are not to particular as to the source, they are usually specialists in their fuzzy not so glorious to some caterpillar stage of life. In other words caterpillars tend to be specialists feeding on only one species of plant, not necessarily the one that you would plant for summer season flowering fireworks. And sometime the plant species with which they have evolved is one you also want to eat, thereby creating a collision of desires. Do you want the parsley, fennel and dill or the Black swallowtail, Papilio polyxenes asterius Stoll?

To me then falls the Grinch’s role of pointing our gingerly that there is a collision of desires lurking within the wonderfully created list. Invasive species, garden thugs that quickly climb the garden fence and escape into natural areas upsetting the native balance and sometimes displacing most of the native diversity prized in natural settings can be dangerous beauties. (Dangerous Beauty and other Invasive Species Traps Monday, May 25, 2009) In our fascination with homogenizing the world’s landscapes, we seek garden plants that will grow from Arizona to Maine and include Alaska and Hawaii too. Armed with this list we select those plants that are known to produce nectar in quantities readily available for the more flamboyant lepidopterans. We are not choosing plants for the caterpillars and in fact our one-size-fits-all lists have been written in part show-case plants that are not greatly affected by the endless hunger of caterpillars.

So in come waltzing the invasive species: butterfly bush, (non native) honeysuckles, privet, (non native) wisteria disguised because in deed they will supply nectar to butterflies even as they do not provide a food source for the caterpillars. Because invasive species are a global issue determined locally, what is invasive in your area o=is not necessarily invasive for some one in another part of the country. Many perennials like some species of daylilies, ground covers like English ivy, and beautiful shade trees like saw-tooth oaks may be invasive in certain situations and locations. I add the oak because all oaks are great food sources for 100s of different butterfly and moth species, but not all oaks are necessarily appropriate in your garden. Be careful what you wright; gardening is both a simple pleasure and a complex philosophy filled with dangerous beauty.

Invasive Species and Ecosystem Service Loss

Yet another species’ existence is threatened by a non native to the ecosystem, recently introduced invasive. We know about the potential loss of baseball bats (ash trees) as the emerald ash borer mines its way through the forests of the United States and Canada (Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ontario), and possibly the region around Moscow. Now we learn about a killer isopod, an invasive species perhaps introduced as a hitchhiker on the trade routes with our Asian markets. The target, a west coast mud shrimp (Upogebia pugettensis), of the parasitic exotic, “blood-sucking bopyrid isopod Orthione griffinis”, does not have the cache of a 90 foot tall, dead tree crashing through the roof of a suburban home. And of course the litany of species extinction delivered one species at a time results in a dreary resignation or indifference to the loss. The reaction to the species homogenization tends towards the ‘who-cares’ model. picture above: www.michiganash.org/eab.jpg
Image may be subject to copyright.

picture: www.entomology.wisc.edu/.../EAB-D-shape2.jpg
Image may be subject to copyright.

Keeping to the theme we have the “…zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) (which) is a small, non-native mussel originally found in Russia.” This non green card bearing visitor causing “…the near extinction of native American unionid clams in Lake St. Clair and in the western basin of Lake Erie.” And to add to the sense of impending doom, the invasive zebra mussel is now moving west with recreational America.

picture: oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/photos/orthione.jpg
Image may be subject to copyright.

Daniel Simberloff offers a sober assessment of biological loss in his article, “Introduced Species: The Threat to Biodiversity & What Can Be Done.” (An ActionBioscience.org original article). A list of loss over time includes:
· GONE: American chestnut and ten moth species that could live only on chestnut trees
o Asian chestnut blight fungus
· GOING: sawgrass
o Australian paperbark tree
· GONE: ten of the eleven native bird species from the forests of Guam.
o brown tree snake

This collect of loss sounds like a chant from the Dies irae and is irritating to those who feel that nature exists as a raw resource to be exploited with no cost. Forests are meant to be logged, bogs drained and paved, mountains mines and leveled, schools of fish caught until extinct, herds of buffalo eliminated for food and sport, and insignificant plants such as Leopold’s Draba verna reduced to the obscurity of no present value.

picture :www.missouriplants.com/Whitealt/Draba_verna_f...
Image may be subject to copyright.

Invasive species; endangered species

Invasive species issues are a wicked problem, a wicked inconvenience. Because the issues of invasiveness and invasion are complex existing on many levels of understanding simultaneously, the invasive species which through domination of the landscape create monocultures that become in turn biological deserts; invasive species which alter the structure of soils creating pathways for secondary invasion; invasive species which provide fantastic exotic colors and forms while removing habitat for indigenous species, replacing food sources or shelter, all of these challenges compete for our attention and are part of any effort to define the problem. Adding to the problem of understanding is the concept of scale. We can see immediate change up close, but as we increase the time span or the geographic expanse, we quickly loose our sense of place. And, then, because invasive species issues are a type of wicked problem, they influence other wicked problems or are influenced by them.

Invasive species are a major threat to endangered species. Invasive species are the reverse of the endangered species problem. When the two meet, easily held ideas begin to melt. Lauren Morello, ClimateWire reporter, writes that “the Quino checkerspot butterfly is being squeezed out of the real estate market.” Because of habitat loss and climate change as well as development, she continues, the butterfly’s habitat is severely constrained, the species endangered to the point perhaps of no return. The solution may be to move the native species to a cooler location,

Ah, the tangled webs we weave when we begin down this path. Ms. Morello notes that “…it could turn an endangered plant or animal into an invasive one, wreaking havoc on the new ecosystem's native plants, animals and insects.” Trying to balance all the needs of all the stakeholders comes to the fore ground. What is native? Do we let one species decline to protect a “natural” eco-system?

“Keeping the distance between the old and new habitats short is also key, she (Camille Parmesan, a global change biologist) said. Since many invasive species problems can be tied to continent-to continent hops by plants and animals, scientists should limit their targets to within 100 to 500 miles of a species' original home.” The assumption that non indigenous species from North America are less harmful than non native species from Europe opens yet another avenue of contention.

The problem is not that the goals are bad but that they are at some level mutually exclusive. Saving an endangered species by moving it seems simple enough. Moving enough of the eco-system to ensure that it continues to survive, sounds like an exercise in horticulture. Defining what native means in the context of climate change is daunting. And all of this within the discussion of what is an invasive species. How do we know what will happen when an organism is moved. How can we tell the effect of the new habitat on the introduced species, or the impact on the eco-system by the new species?

Of course there is the non option of doing nothing. Or the option of realizing that everything we do has the potential effect of the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in Mongolia.

reprint of article send to me by email from a colleague

"Like many Southern California natives, the Quino checkerspot butterfly is being squeezed out of the real estate market. The insect once ranged from Ventura County, Calif., down to Baja California, Mexico. But in recent years, its habitat has declined by nearly 80 percent, thanks to increasing development in San Diego and Los Angeles and rising temperatures along the Mexican border. Now, threatened by climate change and hemmed in by development, the endangered butterfly's best hope may lie with a once-unthinkable solution: allowing humans to move the species to a new habitat in a cooler climate. The idea, called "assistedmigration" or "assisted colonization," gives many conservation biologists pause. Such a move could fail, further reducing a dwindling species' numbers. Or it could turn an endangered plant or animal into an invasive one, wreaking havoc on the new ecosystem's native plants, animals and insects.

Yet, in the face of rising temperatures and changing weather patterns, many scientists say it's an idea they can no longer afford to reject. "I would talk to people about it at conservation meetings 10 years ago, and it was totally, completelydismissed," said Camille Parmesan, a global change biologist at the University of Texas-Austin. "Five years ago, people were mumbling about it. Two years ago, papers started coming out."

Now Parmesan and colleagues in Australia and England have authored the first framework to help biologists and policymakers decide when such a radical move may be appropriate. Their paper was published yesterday in the journal Science. "I think it's a great paper," said Jessica Hellmann, a biology professor at the University of Notre Dame who is organizing a new scientific working group to examine the concept. "I think it's important for people to talk about [assisted migration]. This is an issue that is not going to sit around and wait very long for us to figure it all out."

'A difficult pill to swallow'
To Parmesan, the seemingly radical response to climate change is a natural outgrowth of her large-scale studies of global warming's effects on hundreds of plant and animal species and more detailed research of butterflies. "When you start doing that work, you realize that climate change is having a huge impact on where species live," she said. "A lot of biologists still think it's into the future. They don't realize we've already got enormous numbers of observed changes."

Still, supporters of assisted migration couch their comments in caveats, viewing it as an unpalatable, but increasingly likely, option. "When I first heard it come up, it was discussed almost with revulsion that we would really tamper so heavily with ecosystems," said John Kostyack, director of wildlife conservation and global warming programs at the National Wildlife Federation. "It's a very difficult pill to swallow to think we would be involved with that level of intensive management. It's a major paradigm shift."
“Now,” he said, "people are thinking of it as a realistic option that has to be considered -- recognizing again that it's a last resort."

May be the only survival route for some species Bob Davison, a senior scientist with Defenders of Wildlife, agreed. "I think it is something that probably -- in very limited circumstances -- we should be considering," he said. "It might be the only way for corals or some other species." But it would require moving forward with extreme caution, experts said. To avoid the possibility of creating a new invasive species, scientists should only consider moving species whose habits are well-documented, Parmesan said. "For a lot of species, we just don't know enough, and we wouldn't consider them good candidates. Really, it's a tradeoff between how much you know about the species you want to move and how degraded the area is where you want to move them." Keeping the distance between the old and new habitats short is also key, she said. Since many invasive species problems can be tied to continent-to continent hops by plants and animals, scientists should limit their targets to within 100 to 500 miles of a species' original home.

In the case of the Quino checkerspot butterfly, the risk of creating a new invasive species is low, she said. "It doesn't compete with other species," Parmesan said. "It's not aggressive and it doesn't defend nectar sources. It eats a very common plant and never does much harm to plant populations. And when you put it somewhere, it tends to stay there." The butterfly's poor mobility is one reason human intervention may be necessary, she added. Other species that may be good candidates for assisted migration include those that are highly mobile but find their paths blocked by cities or agricultural fields. "Even the best disperser is not able to go 300 miles past large urban areas," Parmesan said. "The Midwest is a real barrier for a lot of southern
species that are trying to move north."

But even after clearing the scientific hurdles, political difficulties may remain. "My biggest fear is that people will misunderstand and think about this as a solution for climate change biodiversity problems -- but it's not," said Hellmann, the Notre Dame biologist. "It could never be a solution for a lot of species. So greenhouse-gas reduction should still be the No. 1 priority." Kassie Siegel, director of the climate program at the Center for Biological Diversity, said she also is wary of how policymakers may interpret the idea. "I think the big danger here is that we allow really reasonable, farsighted thinking about assisted migration to be allowed as an excuse by decision-makers to avoid mitigation measures," she said. "The devil's in the details."

There is also the risk that assisted migration of a species could simply fail. "The trouble is that the climate hasn't stabilized at its new level yet," Parmesan said. "It's a continually moving target. Until we get our atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases stabilized, which we're way far away from, we don't know what the new climate is going to be." Without a worldwide plan in place to drastically cut emissions, it's impossible to pinpoint where climate change might stop, Hellmann added. "We often talk about 2050 or 2100 like we'll be done [with climate change] or have a new climate by then," she said. "But we don't know when climate
change will be ending." In the end, though, climate change may force scientists' hands, said Kostyack.
"If you are reduced to functional extinction, to captive breeding program with no hope of returning a species to its original range, [migrating a species] seems to be a better option than having it go extinct."
Moving a 160-year-old species north Despite those concerns, at least one group outside mainstream science is already moving forward with plans to revive a species by moving it to a new home beyond its natural habitat.

The Torreya Guardians, a loosely defined group of "citizen-scientists," horticulturists and ecologists, are planning to plant 31 seedlings of an endangered evergreen -- Torreya taxifolia, also known as the "stinking cedar" -- in North Carolina later this month. It's part of a last-ditch effort to save the Torreya. Ravaged by warming temperatures and fungal diseases in recent decades, the 160 million-year-old species
is now found in pockets of land along Florida's Apalachicola River and in southern Georgia. Of the thousand or so wild Torreya taxifolia trees in the United States, just one is healthy enough to produce seeds, scientists believe. With that in mind, the Torreya Guardians are busily harvesting seeds from Torreya trees living in nurseries and private gardens, such as those at the Biltmore estate in Asheville, N.C. They're convinced that moving the species to a cooler climate offers the best hope for its continued survival. "We realized when it comes to plants, if you have access to a private seed stock and someone's property or horticultural nursery, you can take those seeds and plant them on your property, wherever you live," said Torreya Guardians member Connie Barlow, explaining the group's strategy, which allows it to operate outside the bounds of the federal Endangered Species Act."

7/18/08 2:10 PM Endangered species: As climate warms, scientists consider a new Noah's ark -- 07/18/2008 -- www.eenews.net
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2008/07/18/2
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