[APWG] Altering is too kind, destroy not strong enough

Wed Mar 5 16:32:57 CST 2008

Hi:

I really appreciate this contribution from Bob.  He said it all so
well, but  I would like to add some comments too, all in the
affirmative.    In the sake of brevity, I'm summarizing his points,
not always exact quotes.  Hope that's o.k. (his full text is below).

a) Re: ecosystem = interactive system:.  Yes, it is.  And that's why
ecosystems are constantly changing.  That's part of their resilience.
It is the integrity of the ecosystem itself that we should be
safeguarding, not just select plants.

b)  Re:  It's possible to destroy an ecosystem by bulldozing, etc.
Yes.  But genetic engineering involves the actual invasion and
deconstruction of DNA code.  This is a type of compromise to the
integrity of the ecosystem that can hybridize, mutate, interact with
pollinators, soil fertility, in all kinds of unpredictable ways.
These plants don't look different from other plants, so aerial photos
are going to be no help at all in detecting them.  This is
deconstruction of ancestral heritage.  What's at risk is the integrity
of the entire system, not just a habitat.

c)  Re:  definition of "destroy" = "to reduce (an object) to useless
fragments, a useless form or remains" .  Yes, and relevant to this,
genetic engineering is cutting and pasting the DNA code between genera
and kingdoms.  That's destruction through fragmentation and introduces
chaos, undermining the very organizational foundations of life.

d) Re:  many of the most hated exotics provide profound ecological
benefits...:  Yes, they do.  That's why they're there.  A living
system is an intelligent system and it tries to self heal.  In fact,
iff we were more botanically literate, we would understand that many
of these plants are also incredibly useful to us in other ways--- in
terms of animal feed, medicine, etc.  We would be harvesting them and
worried about running them into extinction.  However, since we rely so
heavily on established industries, petrochemicals for fuel, drugs,
etc., we are doing little to harvest these valuable plants for our own
benefit.

e) RE: "Efforts and resources aimed at eradicating plants that alter
ecosystems detract from efforts and resources that might be focused on
activities that actually do "destroy" ecosystems."    Yes!  Herbicides
and even the introduction of biologic predators  are quite harmful.
And we are being distracted from bigger threats.  Genetic engineering
is posing a real threat, not to just certain plants, but to the
integrity of the ecosystem itself.   I believe our concern about
invasive species would be better placed here.

f) RE;  "language affects tactics" "Our culture in America teaches to
hate our enemies" etc.  Yes! Yes! Yes!  The war paradigm is everywhere
in everything.  It is in the video games, in the movies, in our
strategies, in our rules for effective composition, in our rules for
intelligent "debate", in our sports, in our "problem solving"
strategies,  etc. etc.

Why are we worried about TAKS scores when our children all over our
country (and now other countries too) are walking into school armed to
the gills, and shooting one another and then themselves.  These are
the problem-solving tactics we have taught them.   And they are taking
it literally.  The subconscious mind tends to do that.

So, if we can just put down that Round-up can for a moment.... that's
right..... just back up slowly now.... easy. . .  nobody needs to get
hurt here . . .

: )

best regards,

Gena Fleming

On 05/03/2008, Bob Beyfuss <rlb14 at cornell.edu> wrote:
>
> This is an interesting topic for discussion and it seems to have awakened many readers on this listserve. I do think that language matters in discussions and I think that thoughtful discussions may prevent rash actions that end up doing more harm than good.
>
> The term ecosystem was coined in 1930 by Roy Clapham, to denote the physical and biological components of an environment considered in relation to each other as a unit. British ecologist Arthur Tansley later refined the term, describing it as the interactive system established between biocoenosis (a group of living creatures) and their biotope (the environment in which they live).
>
> It certainly is possible to "destroy" an ecosystem by bulldozing and paving it over, thus removing the living components.  When a Utility company blows the top off a mountain in West Virginia to mine coal, I would say that the Mt top ecosystem has been destroyed. If left alone, i.e. not paved over, a new ecosystem will arise. That new ecosystem may consist mostly of exotic plants. I don't think any ecosystem is destroyed when  living organism such as plants are introduced. I also believe that humans are integral parts of ecosystems. The ecosystem is changed or altered when exotic plants are introduced but ecosystems are never static to begin with and are constantly changing. Environmental changes (man made or not) dictate that different life forms will be favored at the expense of others.
>
> Efforts and resources aimed at eradicating plants that alter ecosystems detract from efforts and resources that might be focused on activities that actually do "destroy" ecosystems. There is an important distinction here. We can only fight so many battles at one time, the tricky part is deciding where to fight and how much one is willing to spend on the fight.
>
> Please see my comments below following Phillips accurately quoted definitions of "destroy".
>
> tto reduce (an object) to useless fragments, a useless form, or remains...(I contend that no plant can render an ecosystem as useless. Useless to who? to what? Many of the most hated invasive, exotic plants such as Tatarian honeysuckle, Autumn olive, multiflora rose, etc provide profound ecological benefits to native wildlife. The 50+ species of wildlife that feed on these and other invasive plants would not consider it useless at all.)  As for fragmentation, we build roads into pristine environments literally "destroying" parts of that ecosystem with blacktop, truthfully fragmenting those ecosystems into pieces that needed to stay connected to function as they once did and when the roadsides are colonized by exotic plants we blame them for the ecological damage?
>
> 2. to put an end to; extinguish (since ecosystems are comprised of living organisms integrating with the environment, unless the living things are all killed by paving, the ecosystem can never be extinguished by invasive plants)
>
> 3. to kill; slay (invasive plants don't kill all the existing plants, some allelopathic invasive plants may actually kill some species of existing plants but never will they kill the entire living components of any ecosystem)
>
> 4. to render ineffective or useless; nullify; neutralize; invalidate ( see definition # 1)
>
> 5. to defeat completely ( I do not see how an ecosystem, can be defeated as one might defeat an opponent in a football game, i.e. we destroyed those guys!)
>
> 6. to engage in destroying things
>
> The value judgments implied by language that concern me are when someone decides that a plant is good or bad based entirely on the origin of the plant and then tries to impose those values on me!
> People who are allergic to poison ivy or oak may very well hate the plant. They have the right to eradicate it if they want on their property but those people who are not allergic and who appreciate the value of poison ivy as food for wildlife or its pretty fall color have a right not to have someone else come onto their property to eradicate it.
>
> Although seemingly unrelated, a couple of recent posts to this listserve are really relevant to this discussion. It is highly likely that Thomas Jefferson would be appalled to see the current efforts to eradicate periwinkle from his estate in Monticello simply because it is exotic. Hating anything because of its ancestry is not something I condone. Especially when "nativeness" is so arbitrarily defined as "prior to 1750". The plant resulting from a bird flying north from Mexico depositing a seed in California in 1749 is "native' but if that same bird deposited the same seed in 1750 or 1760 , what results is an "exotic" plant?  The "definitions" of "native" and "exotic" imposed by the Clinton administration in the 1990's are so arbitrary as to render them completely indefensible.
>
> Language affects tactics. Our culture in America today teaches us to hate our enemies . We engage in a war on "terror" as if terror were some sort of specific entity. Now we are encouraged to engage in a war on "alien,  invasive exotic plants" Emotional language elicits emotional responses. It is hard not to hate  "exotic, invasive aliens that are destroying our ecosystems". The natural response is to kill them off but we have no idea what will follow when we have killed all the bad guys. We do know that killing off the bad guys is expensive in terms of resources used and does not necessarily result in the outcome we desire.
>
> I show students a slide of a patch of the invasive, exotic, garlic mustard growing on the edge of a forest I walk in. I ask the students what they would do when seeing this on their property. Some say, just spray it with herbicide to get rid of it. I then show them a slide of the same patch of garlic mustard where I have pushed the foliage aside with a stick to reveal the rare trilliums growing beneath it.  The herbicide spray would surely have dripped down and killed of the native perennial trillium forever since this plant rarely reproduces by seeds but the biennial garlic mustard would come back even more vigorously due to its huge soil seed bank. In this case the garlic mustard is actually protecting the trillium from the ravages of the oversized local deer population which have eaten all the other trillium in this forest that are not protected by the weeds the deer do not eat. This issue was also touched on by a recent post regarding the periwinkle extermination in Monticello urging caution when eradicating anything.
>
>
> At 02:55 AM 3/5/2008, Philip Thomas (www.HEAR.org) wrote:
>
> If we're going to talk semantics, let's be sure and get it right.  See below* for my Webster's definitions for "destroy."
>
> Not one of the definitions states or implies anything about anything being "bad."
>
> However, definition 2 is certainly applicable, with respect to the native ecosystems (if the native ecosystem is "replaced," as you suggest).
>
> Definitions 2 and 4 also apply, if "use(fulness)" includes the sustenance of native species or systems.
>
> pt at hear.org
>
>
> *1. to reduce (an object) to useless fragments, a useless form, or remains...
>
> 2. to put an end to; extinguish
>
> 3. to kill; slay
>
> 4. to render ineffective or useless; nullify; neutralize; invalidate
>
> 5. to defeat completely
>
> 6. to engage in destroying things
>
> Now
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Beyfuss <rlb14 at cornell.edu>
> To: Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company <Craig at astreet.com>; apwg at lists.plantconservation.org
> Sent: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 4:22 pm
> Subject: Re: [APWG] Altering is too kind, destroy not strong enough
> Hi Craig and all,
> Replaced is the correct term.
> Destroying implies a value judgment that the invasive plants are "bad" and
> the plants that they are replacing are "good". In science there are no
> "good" or "bad" plants as there are no "good" or "bad" ecosystems. Nature
> lovers may not like or may not find attractive the ecosystems that occur,
> for example, in a vacant lot in an inner city but that does not make those
> ecosystems "bad'. There are particular ecosystems that humans want to
> protect for many reasons and that is fine but these are human value
> judgements. If a scientist studying any particular ecosystem did not know
> ahead of time that it was dominated by invasive, exotic plants, it would be
> impossible for he or she to determine if the plants present on site were
> native or exotic based on the biology of the plants and their
> interactions.  Let me cite a real life example to make my point. A few
> weeks ago a client called me looking for information on how to eradicate
> invasive, Asiatic bittersweet that she had found on her property.  I asked
> her if she was certain that it was the Asiatic variety and not the native
> bittersweet. She replied that she no idea how to distinguish them. I asked
> her if it turned out that the bittersweet on her property were the native
> variety, would she still want to eradicate it? Her answer was "of course
> not". Her only criteria for wanting to eradicate the plant was the
> supposition that it was exotic. In my mind that is not a good reason to
> eradicate anything, especaill\y when there are no guarantees that the
> plants eradicated will not be replaced by something even less desirable.
> When science is reduced  to name calling to provoke an emotional response,
> it is not science.
> Bob
>
>
>
> At 03:13 PM 3/4/2008, Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company wrote:
>
>
> Dear All,
>
>
>
> I am very surpised to read the discussions on the semantics, of what to
>
> call exotic plants and their impacts on local native ecosystems.
>
>
>
> I can only speak from the California perspective, where 99% of the
>
> understory of our native ecosystems between 2 and 2,000 feet elevation,
>
> have been replaced by over 1,000 species of exotic plants.
>
>
>
> What do you call that effect, using words that express such a complete
>
> extermination of native ecosystems, within only 150 years or less?
>
>
>
> Ecosystem genocide?  Permanent native vegetation extinction, continuing
>
> through geologic time?
>
>
>
> Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333
>
>
>
>
>
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> --
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
>     Philip Thomas        Hawaiian Ecosystems at Risk project (HEAR)
>      pt at hear.org         P.O. Box 1272, Puunene, Hawaii  96784  USA
>                                   http://www.hear.org/
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-- 
Gena Fleming, MS, LAc
www.plantbyplant.com