Invasive Species

Evan Duchow
11/3/11

Invasive species is a topic that has been underrated and needs to take a higher priority. There are thousands of exotics species throughout the country, some of which are not. Invasive species spread fast and can crowd, poison, damage and out compete native species for resources. They can be spread from wildlife and largely by humans, vehicles, transporting plants and cargo. People need to start looking at their own land for invasive species and try to remove or teat before they can take over. Some species like buckhorn can be very devastating to forests, I have seen buckhorn with a diameter over 8 inches, in will take over the understory and midstory of the forest. Once an invasive species takes control of an area it is very hard to eliminate. When it comes to invasive species we need to pick our battles, some are too good of competitors that it is not cost effective, but these can do more damage ad should be controlled in some form. There are many ways to treat invasive species, sterilization, shooting, trapping, pesticide, biocontrol, hand removal and more. The all methods have their ups and downs, some can be considered cruel, some have negative other effects on the environment, and biocontrol is a risky if the agent could be an invasive species and do more harm to the ecosystem even more. Biocontrol can become very effective, I have seen fields of spotted knapweed that were once solid with their purple flower and how because of the biocontrol agents there is now some native plants that can grow there. Biocontrol would be my choice of treatment, it doesn’t require a lot of labor and can cut the cost of supplemental treatment down, it also gives you the ability to continue to spread the biocontrol to more areas. Pesticides can be effective with a good kill rate and can cover a fairly large area is a short time compared with other methods. It takes a lot of people and time to hand pull and would cost more in the end than using pesticides. Sterilizing animals might be more humane than shooting them, but it is much more costly and not very effective because it still leaves the animal in the environment where it can still do damage. It is important to learn about different invasive species that could possibly establish on your property, use native plants for landscaping and to clean anything that could spread invaders. All along road sides and highways there are invasive species, once you have been treating invasive species for a few years all you can see on the side of the road are invasives.