Why Invasive Species
THE PURPOSE OF INVASIVE SPECIES
On a recent raft trip down a Montana River a glimmer of
reality peeked out for a moment. The riders were scientists
attending a conference and the guide was a fishery graduate student from a
Montana University. The guide explained about the “non-native”
brook trout and rainbow trout that were “crowding out” the “native
fish.” This occurred as the raft went by fisherman after fisherman
fly-fishing for those very “non-native” trout. When one of the
scientists asked what date was used to fix when something was “native”
(and after which new arrivals were “non-native) the guide replied “ we
like to think of the date of the Lewis and Clark expedition as that
date.”
Here on the East coast the date most often given as the “native
ecosystem” ideal is 1492 AD. In the southwest and on the west
coast, the arrival of Spanish explorers and Franciscan missionaries is the
date when some sort of mystical mix of plants and animals is fixed as the
“natives” of that region. Plants and animals brought from other
parts of North America or from other continents after those dates are now
being touted as “non-native” and somehow, mysteriously out-of-place.
Based on this native worship philosophy disguised as environmental
quackery, Americans are being told that thousands of plants and animals
should be eradicated because they are “out of place” (i.e.
“non-native”.)
A partial list of the proposed environmental cleansing (brought to us by
the same people who sold us Endangered Species by the way) would include:
Sika deer; brown trout; armadillos; Virginia creeper; most sparrows;
pheasants; cattle egrets; wild hogs; European boars; chukars; Hungarian
partridge; rainbow trout, walleyes, and muskies throughout the South;
Largemouth bass in the western US; striped bass in the West; and on and on
ad infinitum.
The costs of eradicating any of these would be astronomical. Many
folks, like me, would think the United States a much poorer place without
these species in abundance. To create a US without them would be a
catastrophe. When we protest that state and local control of
certifiable (i.e. provable) harmful species works well, Invasive Species
advocates dismiss us and clamor for more laws and tax money like
Endangered Species history has proven to be so good for their growing
power and harmful to the rest of us.
But you know all this. What about those dates? You know Lewis
& Clark, 1492, the Conquistadors; what do they all have in common?
Right! They were the arrival dates of the Europeans. Unlike
the arrival of Asians 9-10,000 years before, there is something different
about the arrival of the Europeans. While the Asians (today’s
American “Indians” or Native Americans) brought dogs and seeds and
fire and thousands of things from hunting methods to farming practices and
wars that drastically altered the environment, species mix, and
distributions of species for some reason their date of arrival does not
carry the import of the Europeans’ arrival dates. So what is the
difference?
The Europeans brought advanced civilization. They brought
Christianity. They brought different farming methods and animal
husbandry. They brought science and mathematics. They brought
organization and political history that gave birth to the greatest nation
on earth. They brought equality and a melding of different
religions, cultures, and ethnic groups unknown throughout the history of
man. They brought ideas that led to a Constitution born in a fierce
war of rebellion that is the envy of the world 200+ years later.
They brought values and willing commitments that even today are recognized
as useful to oppressed people from Nazi Germany to Iraq, Bosnia, etc.
Yet, their arrival date throughout America is used as a date when
environmental plunder and pillage began? The highest living standard
in the world is cause for reversing one of the most pleasing and
productive natural environments known to man? What is wrong with
this picture?
There is nothing wrong with this picture. It is accurate in all
regards. The Invasive Species advocates (politicians, bureaucrats,
professors, and the radical groups partnering with them) really want to
eliminate what makes this country great. From property rights to
hunting, logging, farming, ranching, trapping, animal ownership and use,
human recreation, rural living, and all the things that distinguish us
from China and Zimbabwe to Britain and Germany they want to change our way
of life and our relation to government. Government will no longer
answer to us; they intend to make it the other way around. Resource
use, animal use, sustainable management of resources, the use of private
property, and the availability of public property held by government will
all be denied Americans in the name of an all powerful government
dictating what is “best” whether we like it or not. Invasive
Species legislation, just like Endangered Species legislation, is intended
to do just that. Remember those dates the next time a professor goes
off or some politician or bureaucrat or radical outfit starts trumpeting
why you need to give them more money and authority to “handle”
Invasive Species. Just tell them you are proud of the US just like
it is and if they want to live where there are no Invasive Species try
Afghanistan or Rwanda. I’ll bet the environment there would be
much more “native” and much more to their liking.
Jim Beers
1 September 2003
Extinction?
CALAMITY OR OPPORTUNITY
I recently wrote an article concerned with Invasive Species and how the
arbitrary dates to classify things as “native” were simply dates of
arrival for European explorers and settlers. I further pointed out
how this “Invasive” or “non-native” hobgoblin campaign was a
thinly disguised attack on modern western civilization. Although I
didn’t mention all these things, Invasive Species eradication and
Endangered Species worship seek to eliminate the fruits of European
settlement from property rights, capitalism, and freedom to energy
development, transportation of choice, and rural living.
My remarks struck a chord with one New Englander who represents the
National Wildlife Federation. In addition to an obscenity, he, like
the guide I cited in the Invasive Species article, opined about the
current interbreeding going on between bull trout and “non-native”
trout. Setting aside his observation that I may be a bigot for
answering him under the subject of racial purity and bull trout, he has
sparked a thought worth sharing with you.
Our friends’ concern and that of the Montana State University graduate
student about the interbreeding between the bull trout and
“non-native” trout was calculated to disturb the public. Just
like Endangered Species justifications before passage of the Act and the
listing rationale for many Listed Species and now “Invasive Species”
promiscuity, interbreeding leading to “extinction” is a hobgoblin
worth exposing.
When the public is told by one of these “experts” that species X (bull
trout in this instance) is interbreeding with other species they picture
the African Veldt without say, lions. Gone forever with the cure for
cancer and leaving behind an ecosystem void that can never again be filled
as Mother Nature becomes further unbalanced. This nonsense is what
is behind the current legal debate before the courts (while enriching 2nd
generations of lawyers) about just what the Endangered Species Act means
by an “Evolutionary Significant Unit.”
Here’s a suggestion. The next time one of these guys moans about
something interbreeding itself into extinction – ask him what the new
critter or plant is like? Instead of thinking of the African Veldt
as overrun with uneaten wildebeests (since the lions are “gone”) think
of the African Veldt as full of lion/(leopard??) crosses or in the case of
our free-dating bull trout, streams populated with trout BETTER ADAPTED to
the western streams of the 21st century. These things don’t come
and go, THEY EVOLVE, hence the name EVOLUTION. We should study these
things and be aware of their consequences but also be very cautious of all
the hidden agendas behind all this “scientific concern” and the
proposals to grow government powers, tax bills, and the influence of these
environmental and animal rights organizations.
So don’t buy into the chicken-little, bull trout tales. Tell
anyone who will listen that the Endangered Species Act, just like proposed
Federal Invasive Species authority is hooey. And just laugh when
they ponder “Evolutionary Significant Units.” Saying you can or
even should control these things based on “science” is like letting
your Labrador Retriever bitch in heat wander around the neighborhood and
expect her to have purebred puppies. This stuff doesn’t happen no
matter what some “expert” says.
Jim Beers
2 September 2003
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