Bighead carp are one of two non-native species of Asian carp causing widespread concern among Great Lakes advocates. The other is silver carp.

Great Lakes advocates are calling it a “conservation emergency” now that non-native Asian carp have been detected within seven miles of Lake Michigan. They want an immediate closure of locks and gateways leading to the lake in a literally”last-ditch” attempt to keep the fish out.

The fear is that the giant fish will disrupt the valuable Great Lakes sport fishery by outcompeting species at the top of the Lake Michigan food web, consuming the forage fish the established species depend on — and like many of the other 180 non-native aquatic species already in the Great Lakes, causing general ecosystem disruption.

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With the attention on first generation corn ethanol fading, the next big thing on the sustainable fuel horizon is nonfood biofuel crops. Within that category, inedible weeds are taking a front-row seat due to their relatively low demands on water, pesticides, and herbicides, and their reduced need for tilling and other mechanized soil prep. Some weeds with biofuel potential can also thrive on contaminated soils, absorbing and cleaning pollutants in a process called phytoremediation.

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Recent forest fires resulted in a quarter of the Angeles National Forest being burned to a crisp. More than 160,000 acres of wood and chaparral were destroyed.  Impassioned editorials are calling for the restoration of the forest’s beauty spots and trails, but what is the political cost of restoring the environment at a pace faster than nature’s, or of failing to do so?

Natural regenaration causes its own problems

The chaparral will reappear within a couple of seasons,  and the trees will begin to regenerate although for some species, seed germination won’t be possible until years of rain-water leaching remove the carbonised layer of ash and debris from the soil surface. While pines are willing to push through anything, oak is less rugged, and seedling trees don’t tolerate soil acidity as nearly as well, tending to fail before the end of their first year if they can’t get their roots down into rich humus.

Without tree cover, there is more damage on the way. If there are strong winter rains, then landslides will sluice fallen branches and trees down the steep slopes, pushing over remaining plants and creating debris jams in the watercourses with two results: denuded hillsides and flooded lower lands. Jams mean that water can’t run cleanly or well and that means that fish like trout, which rely on clear, fast running streams, die.

Recreation versus regenaration

But The Angeles is not just an area of forest – it’s a massive escape route for the people who live near it. From Patrick Swayze, who owned the five acre Rancho Bizarro at the foot of the forest, through to the poorest Angeleno who hitches to the Angeles to backpack the forest trails, the National Forest is both a green lung and a vast playground.

Not all visitors are enthralled by the beauty of the landscape: biker gangs frequently cut new trails through the woodland, and are hunted in turn by rangers, while gangs growing marijuana find or create clearings in which they can establish their crops. One of the strangest illegal activities in The Angeles is the searching out of hidden Native American sites, often to be found in caves hidden in the hills, and the looting of sacred items left there by previous generations of shamans and artists.

Another area of conflict that will appear very rapidly is that when a quarter of a habitat disappears, many animals need to relocate. They will move into other areas of the forest, but because human habitation now presses right up to the edges of the forest, they will also move into backyards and gardens, and while the odd rabbit or raccoon might not present too much of a problem, the migration of rattlesnakes will present many families with nightmares and mule deer stripping suburban yards of all their carefully nurtured plants will be very unpopular. And that’s without the mountain lions and bears …

Managing habitats requires funding and people

So funding the restoration of the habitat has to be a priority, for several reasons – the tourism factor, the need to ensure Los Angeles has enough greenery to act as a pollution soak, and the simple fact that failing to remedy the effects of fire will lead to greater problems later as invasive species, both plant and animal, take over the scorched spaces.

The great problem is that the earliest re-growth is the ecosystem that requires most management. Chaparral is a mixture of hardy small trees and shrubs such as scrub oak and ceanothus, Manzanita and bush rue, many of which will, in seven to twelve years, have become largely old, dead wood. This wood acts as a tinder to forest fires. And managing chaparral is a labour-intensive business – it has to be stripped out by hand or grazed by goats or mountain sheep, and the Forest has been understaffed by rangers, let alone foresters, for years.

However, there’s no obvious political will as yet to establish a large-scale reinvestment programme for the Forest and until some substantial replanning of the Forestry resources occurs, it will continue to be a fire risk.

National Forest courtesy of Rennet Stowe at Flickr under a creative commons licence

1. Pennycress

Photographer Karen Phillips describes Pennycress as a “cool little Brassica” that can grow in nickel-contaminated soil that would kill most plants. A pennycress biofuel facility is in the works for Peoria, Illinois, and upstate New Yorkers are also looking into the weed, more colorfully known by the locals as “stinkweed.”

Image: karenphillips on flickr.com.

2. Amaranthus

Also known as pigweed, Amaranthus is a highly competitive, classified noxious weed that proves how good bad can be. The pesky little devil has garnered praises from researchers at the University of New Mexico for its ideal traits as a biofuel crop including drought tolerance, high rate of photosynthesis, and resistance to disease and pests.

Image: Just chaos on flickr.com.

3. Kudzu

Biofuel could be the redemption song for kudzu, the voracious creeper known as “the plant that ate the south.”Aside from absorbing trees and bushes into an eerie green moonscape, kudzu boasts a hi-carb content that could be converted to ethanol using a yeast-based process. To offset the expense of harvesting kudzu from the steep hillsides that it favors, researchers point out that there are no costs for fertilizing, irrigating, or planting the invader, which was imported to the U.S. from Asia in the 1870’s.

Image: Alabama kudzu by Alarob on flickr.com.

4. Arundo donax (giant cane)

Able to grow almost three inches per day in the summer, giant cane (Arundo donax) could be the superhero of the biofuel world, producing multiple harvests every year on poor soil. Left unmanaged, though, it turns to the dark side. At least six states from California to Maryland have reported it as an invasive species.

Image: Shizahao on wikimedia.org (creative commons license).

5. Castor

The lovely castor plant is a noxious weed in Australia, introduced in 1803 and firmly establishing itself as a pest in every state except Tasmania. Meanwhile over in Israel, the company Kaiima Bio-Agritech believes that it has found a way to manipulate the chromosomes of biofuel crops to double their yield, with castor showing particular promise - at least in countries where it can be cultivated without overwhelming native species.

Image: pizzodisevo on flickr.com.

6. Jatropha

The jury is still out on jatropha, which achieved biofuel superstar status a couple of years ago only to see its star tarnished by charges of land grabbing, deforestation, and even biopiracy, including the replacement of food cropland for jatropha cultivation. Lesson learned: whether it’s a food or nonfood crop, biofuel cultivation has to be balanced with regional and global nutrition.

Image: prashantby on flickr.com.

7. Chinese Tallow

We have none other than Benjamin Franklin to thank for Chinese Tallow, also known as Florida Aspen or more colorfully as the Gray Popcorn tree. It grows profusely in ditches and dikes from South Carolina through the entire Gulf Coast. Though trees aren’t usually thought of as weeds, the Chinese Tallow is in a class by itself: considered a noxious invader in the U.S., it joins algae and palm oil among the top three vegetable oil crops.

Image and background information: BaylorBear78 on flickr.com.

Wangari Maathai

She was giving the keynote address at the second World Agroforestry Conference in Nairobi and her concern was that imported tree species often became invasive and when they did so, two things happened. Either the trees took over the ecosystem and then, when they were felled, left nothing behind, or they damaged elements of the environment that were essential to local people and wildlife. She used the example of eucalypts, which are often planted in African agroforestry programmes and said, ‘they [the trees] are over promoted for commercial reasons. These trees are good for beauty but consume a lot of water when they are planted along rivers, wetlands and water shed areas.’ Maathai fears that such plantings cause havoc in Kenya’s complex biodiversity.

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They are Australia’s largest invasive species, and the government is spending $19 million AUD to deal with the excess population of desert dwellers. The country’s solution? Slaughter them from helicopters and serve them up as camel burgers, camel pies, camel sausages, camel steaks, and camel mince.

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Controversial proposals by the Australian government would mean shooting more than 650,000 camels from helicopters - and even making camel burgers.

Camels have become a problem in Australia’s remote Outback.

There are now about a million camels, and the population doubles every nine years. The animals were introduced to the Australia in the 1840’s by explorers who relied on them to journey through the desert. But now, camels are competing with livestock for food - and are apparently scaring people by destroying water pipes and bathrooms as they search for water.

Sky News has reported that the Australian government believes the population needs to be culled by two thirds - and they have a budget of $19 million AUD to take care of the situation.

That means the mass killing of more than 650,000 camels.

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View of Blüemlisalp and Oeschinen lake, Bernese Alps

As climate scientists scour the Earth’s surface looking for indications of climate change impacts, freshwater lakes and reservoirs are becoming the sentinels of choice for many investigations. Although they make up a small percentage of the planet’s surface area, such bodies of water–small to large–are providing clues to past climate fluctuations, as their sediments and “catchments” (the total chemical and biological material that results from the presence of the body of water) often record ancient climate shifts and impacts and offer indicators of current climate change.

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searocket plants (cakile maritima)

In another addition to the “secret life” (and mysterious abilities) of plants, a recent study demonstrated that a native, perennial plant, The Great Lakes Searocket (Cakile edentula), responds to the presence of related and non-related plants differently.

If the searocket is place in beds with plants that are not related to it, it will begin to stimulate its root system to grow more rapidly, which is a tactic that many plants use automatically in order to compete with others (for space, light, nutrients, etc.), indiscriminate of relatedness. But when placed in pots with related (sibling) plants, the searocket does not do this. Somehow–and no one has discovered how yet–the plant is able to detect similarities and differences (perhaps genetic, chemical, or physiological) in its local, vegetative environment. Many animals are not able to do this.

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According to research recently published in the journal Conservation Biology, Earth is now experiencing its “sixth great extinction event” with disease and human activity as the major driver, leaving a devastating toll on vulnerable species, particulary in the South Pacific and southern hemisphere.

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Select hunters have been given permits in Florida to hunt and kill non-native pythons in the wild.

Experts say the alien constrictors number in the tens of thousands in Everglades National Park, and they are wiping out native endangered species. An official with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the hunt is just the beginning of a much larger eradication program.

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When you think of wakame (if you do at all), you’re probably imagining miso soup or a macrobiotic diet, but this variety of kelp (Undaria pinnatifida) is one of the world’s worst invasive species. Native to Japan, China, and Korea, wakame was found to be inhabiting New Zealand about 20 years ago, and recently has been making itself at home in coastal areas of Europe. San Francisco Bay is its latest victim, and the alien seaweed is posing a threat to native species there.

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Florida’s Everglade’s National Park has faced an invasion from giant pythons that prey on nearly any animal, big and small. But according to park biologist Dave Hallac, the problems caused by the spread of pythons pale in comparison to the proliferation of exotic fish species in the Everglades.

Walking catfish, African jewelfish, and around fourteen other species have been found in the Everglade freshwater marshes. The catfish began invading the everglades long before pythons entered the scene, with reports beginning back in the ’60s.

”In some ways it’s a form of pollution,” said biologist Jeff Kline.

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That vicious mammal was brought over by European settlers…and quickly multiplied until Australians put up a rabbit-proof fence in the middle of the country to protect crops and native species. And now it’s back in full force, as the rabbit’s booming population on the island has already caused 24 million Australian dollar in damage since the removal of the cats that were keeping its numbers in check.

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The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) this week adopted a new rule that lets state and county animal control agencies take in non-native animals whose owners can’t — or don’t want to — take care of them anymore. No questions asked. No penalties.

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Now, a new report co-authored by Nature Conservancy scientists says that biofuel crops could also become invasive species — and that the risk needs to be evaluated before these crops are planted.

The Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP) and Conservancy scientists have identified all the crops currently being used or considered for biofuel production and ranked them according to the risk they pose of becoming invasive species.

GISP calls on countries to:

• Carry out risk assessments before they plant biofuel crops,
• Use low-risk species of crops for biofuels, and
• Introduce new controls to manage invasive species.

Major Findings of the Report

• Damage from invasive species costs the world more than $1.4 trillion annually — 5% of the global economy. The United States alone spends $120 billion annually on the control and impacts of more than 800 invasive species infestations.
• The giant reed (Arundo donax) is a proposed biofuel crop from West Asia which is already invasive in parts of North and Central America. Naturally flammable, it increases the likelihood of wildfires — a threat to both humans and native species in places such as California.
• The African oil palm is another example of the havoc an invasive species can wreak. Recommended for biodiesel, it has already become invasive in parts of Brazil, turning areas of threatened forest from a rich mix of trees and plant life into a homogenous layer of palm leaves.
• The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 9) represents the best chance in a decade to take global action against invasive species. The Conservancy and GISP are calling on delegates to recognize the dangers invasive species cause and recommend risk assessments before biofuel crops are planted. The two groups also call on the scientific community to conduct more desperately-needed research into this topic.

The Bottom Line

“Prevention is better than the cure,” says Stas Bugiel, The Nature Conservancy’s senior global invasive species policy advisor, “We need to stop invasions before they occur. The biofuel industry is a relatively new concept so we have a unique opportunity to act early and get ahead of the game — we mustn’t throw that away.”

1. Pennycress

Photographer Karen Phillips describes Pennycress as a “cool little Brassica” that can grow in nickel-contaminated soil that would kill most plants. A pennycress biofuel facility is in the works for Peoria, Illinois, and upstate New Yorkers are also looking into the weed, more colorfully known by the locals as “stinkweed.”

Image: karenphillips on flickr.com.

2. Amaranthus

Also known as pigweed, Amaranthus is a highly competitive, classified noxious weed that proves how good bad can be. The pesky little devil has garnered praises from researchers at the University of New Mexico for its ideal traits as a biofuel crop including drought tolerance, high rate of photosynthesis, and resistance to disease and pests.

Image: Just chaos on flickr.com.

3. Kudzu

Biofuel could be the redemption song for kudzu, the voracious creeper known as “the plant that ate the south.”Aside from absorbing trees and bushes into an eerie green moonscape, kudzu boasts a hi-carb content that could be converted to ethanol using a yeast-based process. To offset the expense of harvesting kudzu from the steep hillsides that it favors, researchers point out that there are no costs for fertilizing, irrigating, or planting the invader, which was imported to the U.S. from Asia in the 1870’s.

Image: Alabama kudzu by Alarob on flickr.com.

4. Arundo donax (giant cane)

Able to grow almost three inches per day in the summer, giant cane (Arundo donax) could be the superhero of the biofuel world, producing multiple harvests every year on poor soil. Left unmanaged, though, it turns to the dark side. At least six states from California to Maryland have reported it as an invasive species.

Image: Shizahao on wikimedia.org (creative commons license).

5. Castor

The lovely castor plant is a noxious weed in Australia, introduced in 1803 and firmly establishing itself as a pest in every state except Tasmania. Meanwhile over in Israel, the company Kaiima Bio-Agritech believes that it has found a way to manipulate the chromosomes of biofuel crops to double their yield, with castor showing particular promise - at least in countries where it can be cultivated without overwhelming native species.

Image: pizzodisevo on flickr.com.

6. Jatropha

The jury is still out on jatropha, which achieved biofuel superstar status a couple of years ago only to see its star tarnished by charges of land grabbing, deforestation, and even biopiracy, including the replacement of food cropland for jatropha cultivation. Lesson learned: whether it’s a food or nonfood crop, biofuel cultivation has to be balanced with regional and global nutrition.

Image: prashantby on flickr.com.

7. Chinese Tallow

We have none other than Benjamin Franklin to thank for Chinese Tallow, also known as Florida Aspen or more colorfully as the Gray Popcorn tree. It grows profusely in ditches and dikes from South Carolina through the entire Gulf Coast. Though trees aren’t usually thought of as weeds, the Chinese Tallow is in a class by itself: considered a noxious invader in the U.S., it joins algae and palm oil among the top three vegetable oil crops.

Image and background information: BaylorBear78 on flickr.com.

“An armor-plated alien invader is eating its way through wildlife in Britain’s waterways”

So reads The Daily Telegraph this week. Who said that environmental journalism can be dull?

The invader in question is the American Signal Crayfish (pictured), described as a six inch long killing machine and voracious predator that has already annihilated the native White Claw species, and now threatens to completely overwhelm many fragile aquatic eco-systems.

The problems started during the 1970’s when Signal crayfish bread in farms for the restaurant trade managed to escape. So successful have they been, with their lack of natural predators, rapid breeding rate, and willingness to eat absolutely everything including plants, insects, fish, snails, detritus and their own young, that they have quickly grown into an aquatic army of almost plague proportions.

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Which is why I was impressed to learn about Stetson University’s Native Plant Initiative.

I confess I’d never even heard about Stetson University when I came across a DeLand newspaper article about the Garden Club of DeLand’s Home and Garden Tour, which features a tour of Stetson University’s new Vera Lea Rinker Native Plant Garden. The acre-plus garden features more than 80 different types of trees native to Florida, as well as hundreds of native shrubs, flowers, ferns, grasses and palms.

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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) this week released new climate maps showing that Burmese pythons, an invasive species of snake now comfortably at home in the Everglades, could extend their range to as much as a third of the continental U.S. by 2100 as the climate warms. 

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