“Invasive What” ?

1. American Wildlife Conservation Foundation Scott Shupe February 2007 “Invasive What”? 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!?!

5. 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 others–sometimes the related–fields.

6. New York’s 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,willprobably severely compromised. • Play Catchup:We have no official state lists.NYShas 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?

7. 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.

8. 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 northeast’s Juglans cinerea. • Christmas treeswere 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 Fultonin 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.

9. Death by 1000 Cuts • Japanese Knotweed • Giant Hogweed • Zebra mussels

10. 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.

11. Next • Ed Mills, Director of Cornell’s Shackelton Point Research Station, NYS ITF member, and Oneida Lake Association Board Member

12. BIOLOGY 101 • “Wal-mart sells good meat cheap – you should only shoot wildlife with a camera!” • We can’t 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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