Invasive Species

Article and stories about invasive species in our state and other places.

Not plagued by [black] locusts | NCPR News

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Not plagued by [black] locusts | NCPR News

By definition, an invasive species is from another ecosystem (typically overseas), is able to thrive and replace native competitors, and causes significant economic, ecological, or human-health effects. Examples like the emerald ash borer, Asian longhorned beetle, Japanese knotweed, and swallow-wort clearly fit that bill, causing billions in damage, but devoid of redeeming qualities.

I think it’s wrong to paint all invasives with the same brush. For one thing, given that there are more than 400 invasive species in NY State alone, the bristles would wear out long before you could finish the job. It is curious that black locust, which by some accounts was spread from its native range 500 or more years ago, has only been dubbed invasive in the past decade or so. On prairies, and grassland bird habitats generally, it can indeed be a problem. However, there are many other locales where it is clearly beneficial, economically as well as ecologically.

Study Finds Spotted Lanternfly Costing Pennsylvania $50M Annually | 90.5 WESA

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Study Finds Spotted Lanternfly Costing Pennsylvania $50M Annually | 90.5 WESA

The spotted lanternfly, an invasive pest from Asia that is wreaking havoc on valuable trees and vines, is costing the Pennsylvania economy about $50 million and eliminating nearly 500 jobs each year, according to a Penn State study released Thursday.

If the insect were to expand statewide, it could cause $325 million in damage and wipe out 2,800 jobs, the researchers estimate. The state’s $19 billion forest products industry would be especially vulnerable. Pennsylvania, with its vast unbroken stretches of forest, is the nation’s No. 1 producer of hardwoods.

Invaders at our southern border are not only taking our jobs, but our money too.

NPR

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A Christmas Tree Thrives On Farms, Struggles In The Wild : NPR

Adelgid aside, this stand of firs is pretty rare, Cory says. At the end of the last glaciation, about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, the area was a lot colder and the firs lived all up and down the mountain. As the area warmed, the trees had to move farther and farther to the top of the mountain. Today, the Fraser firs live on just seven mountain peaks in the southern Appalachians, and Roan Mountain is one of them.

Cory runs his fingers through a fir's soft needles — one of the characteristics that makes it a desirable Christmas tree — and says that, genetically, the trees that grow on Roan Mountain are the same as the ones on farms.

Are Numbers of Species a True Measure of Ecosystem Health? – Yale E360

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Are Numbers of Species a True Measure of Ecosystem Health? – Yale E360

But most spoken to for this article accepted the findings, while fearing that in the “large-scale reorganization,” most of the losers are rare, endangered, and endemic species, while most of the winners are common, generalist, and invasive species — rats, mosquitoes, water hyacinth and the like. That would explain the central conundrum raised by the findings — that species numbers remain high locally, while collapsing globally. The generalists are taking over — a process the authors of the paper call “homogenization.”

A debate has been brewing among ecologists for a while about the real state of biodiversity at different spatial scales. It is more than two decades since researchers first pointed out that the dramatic global loss of species did not seem to be reflected in some local ecosystems, many of which have more species than in the past. Such places range in size from small oceanic islands to North America, which has many more plant species since the arrival of Europeans.