Center, Internet, Wildlife Damage Management
Human–Wildlife Interactions
The Non-mystery of Non-native Species
Date of this Version
Spring 2016
Document Type
Article
Citation
Human–Wildlife Interactions (Spring 2016) 10(1): article 18
doi: 10.26077/38jk-7r32
Special topic: Wildlife and wind energy: Are they compatible?
Abstract
In all disciplines of endeavor, we create dichotomies or trichotomies in which we distribute phenomena or patterns. We do so because these silos are overwhelmingly practical and pragmatic. Organizing the natural world into distinct categories often serves to assist managers, and the regulatory community in general, in the labyrinthine challenges of decision-making. And yet, despite these useful bins, we quickly recognize that a great many things cannot be comfortably placed in one category or another—that the world is full of exceptions, imperceptible gradations, and fuzzy inconsistencies. But this does not mean we abandon our goal to find patterns in a sea of variation.
. . .
We can now move virtually any species anywhere in the world in 24 hours; our capacity to do so has no precedent whatsoever in Earth history. That is one of the most critical issues. Along with addressing the impacts of native species, we are thus required to tackle the economic, human health, and environmental impacts of non-native species, and spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the United States alone to do so. And it is because of these impacts that we are strikingly motivated to prevent future invasions whose impacts may be more devastating than we could imagine.