As climate change alters temperature and rainfall patterns around the globe, the threat posed by invasive species is becoming greater, and scientists and the UN are calling on all participants at the climate change conference in Copenhagen next month to agree to actions which would strengthen ecosystems and protect biodiversity.
"Climate change is creating some difficult conditions for a number of living organisms and most of the invasive alien species are more resistant, more opportunistic than the organisms in a given place," says Kalemani Mulongoy, the principal officer of scientific matters at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
The CBD considers the combined effects of climate change and invasive species to be the main drivers of biodiversity loss across the planet.
Stas Burgiel, policy director at the Global Invasive Species Program (GISP), adds "invasive species can change whole ecosystems by altering hydrology, fire regimes, nutrient cycling, and other ecosystem processes. Biological invasions by non-native species impose an enormous cost on agriculture, forestry, fisheries, wildlife, as well as on human health.
As conditions change due to altered temperatures, drought, or abundant rain, a number of organisms will be outcompeted by invasive alien species.
According to the CBD, biological incursions by invasive species result in significant economic losses. In the US alone, the yearly damage and control of invasive species is estimated to cost more than $138 billion. Worldwide, these costs are estimated at more than $1.4 trillion annually.
Invasive species around Philadelphia
Learn more about invasive plants. Attend Pennsylvania Resources Council workshop: Controlling invasive plants without destroying the planet. Thursday 11/19, 7pm see website for details.
Japanese Barberry and Japanese Knotweed are just two of the invasives in the Wissahickon section of Fairmount Park. It is believed that the overabundance of deer help make this problem worse because the invasives are not palatable to the deer, who overbrowse the natives instead. The deer population is so huge that they are wiping out the woodland understory of the park.
PA DCNR has a very informative site about invasive plants in the state, with a list of PA invasives. Download this list and carry it with you whenever you are purchasing plants for your garden. Many of the plants on this list are still being sold as ornamental plants.
The Natural Lands Trust is steward to more than 20,000 acres of protected land in the Philadelphia region. They are engaged in a war to control invasive plants on this land. This is a war that is repeated year after year and at significant cost.
Parts of Cape May, NJ are being completely swallowed by Porcelain Berry. Ro Wilson is fighting back.
Profiles of the "Most Hated" plants is an ongoing feature at Ecosystem Gardening.
What invasive species are your worst nightmare? Let's discuss in the comments.
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Comments
To see the worst invader of all, go into your bathroom and look in the mirror. The human race has wantonly destroyed wild nature everywhere on the planet, and the so called 'invasives' merely follow that path of destruction like carrion birds on the war field. Simply stopping mowing your yard and planting a garden can help ALOT! It's a shame to see this issue militarized like so many others. The solution is not biological warfare with herbicides, rather the integration of more plants in our yards and more wild space. In 2010, tell your neighbors, "don't be a mow-ron'. Ask them, "Got Garden"?
Nicholas, the choices we make in our gardens can make a huge difference for wildlife and the health of the environment. Click my bio, then click Ecosystem Gardening for a full discussion of this subject.
Respectfully Carol, if the issue is divided between having a lawn, or having a garden (of mixed native and not native composition, site dependent), I come down on the side of garden, transitioning into forest. Anyone who thinks the ecologies of the future will composed of only native, indigenous plants is very naive. The climate is changing quickly, the genie can't go back in the bottle. We have and will have a 'melting pot' of native and non-native species in the future. But even that future is in serious jeopardy if people don't re-green their environments and face climate change realities.
The climate was at least as warm as it is now during the medieval warm period and we today obviously have the variety of wildlife that exists now. The climate has varied naturally since the world formed and has been both much warmer and colder than it is today. The life that survived has done so without any so called help from man and life will continue to flourish in myriad forms whatever the climate does in the future.
These forms will not always be the same and real science would not expect this to be the case.
Changes of this kind are in no way a proof or evidence that mans co2 emissions are causing warming and this theory is still lacking a convincing proof.
To Jes,of course it's true that climate changes, and always has. Whether or not human activity is affecting the speed at which it changes is less important than the knowledge that sudden changes can cause BIG disruptions around the globe. Sudden migrations of large numbers of people into already over-crowded resource poor regions can cause tremendous stress on societies, and combine that with periodic droughts, floods and storms, disease and war, it's a bad scenario. That's where we are headed. We can ameliorate the difficulties of surviving in the future by good planning now. Restore forests, grow a garden, hope that solar energy really becomes feasible. Stop mowing and using herbicide, those habits are gravely destructive in ways most people don't understand.
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