Are INVASIVE plants and bugs actually a good thing?
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- Опубліковано 17 чер 2024
- Controversial take: it’s possible that these moths are doing some cleanup work, opening up the forest canopy to let the light touch the forest floor for greater biodiversity.
Am I saying this is absolutely the case?
No I am not, this is just my interpretation of what’s in front of me.
#invasive #invasiveplants #invasivespecies #nativeplants #gypsymoth #spongymoth #moth #biodiversity #nativehabitat #deadtrees #trees #plants #permaculture
when ignorance runs rampant
Dont listen to the haters. Most of them know less than you do. They just think they are intellectuals
I agree that the moths are great for the shrubs and other plants that thrive without the large canopy the trees provide. By killing the trees they also provide new growth for saplings of the same species. But the issue lies in that the saplings then may be out competed by the shrubs and other plants that overtake the forest, and the native birds/fungi that feed on those trees will either die out or have to relocate. Given that these caterpillars wouldn't be overtaking this forest without human introduction, I have to say that they are truly a cancer for these trees.
Fair,and reasonable
Good point, but another thing to consider is that those trees are not the original natural landscape. That area has been clear cut and mono cropped for timber a number of times. We don’t know what exactly it used to look like. That isn’t to say that the moths aren’t a blight on these trees, but that there is more than 1 cancer affecting this area and we can’t say exactly what is to blame
I was out spraying invasive species of weeds and had thay exact same thought.
I would imagine things have always moved around the planet, and the way you describe it is about what I was thinking, lol.
I hope you find a proper venue to hear your thoughts.
Because i dont think those pesticides are doing anyone a favor.
Wouldn't that just be some convenient.
Problem is that environments can't maintain there ecology with to many invasive species. Things can become nativized in some ways, but it takes alot of time for them to become integrated in and find ways to fit in.
That makes sense to me
Yeah just to add, the problem with invasive species is that they're a species brought over in isolation. Their natural predators or herbivores or diseases or parasites are not always brought over with them. Plants and animals are limited by these factors. Without them they run rampant and destroy the natural balance. Not all introduced species are that bad and some may perform a 'positive' role, but mostly it's harmful to an ecosystem.
good on ya for keeping a curious and objective mind.
Hey Bud, just found your channel & Subscribex, we are in Appalachia, eastern ky!
What part of Appalachia are you in?
i get what you're saying and in very specific cases i actually agree, i.e the black locust in europe, but invasives are only beneficial in rare cases, for the most part the thing that makes invasive species invasive is the very thing that makes them extremely detrimental to biodiversity and ecosystem health, namely that they outcompete native species resulting in the loss of keystone species which shape entire ecosystems. for example oak trees native to europe are being outcompeted by american oaks while hundreds of species depend on the native oak trees for survival, also blocking out light for undergrowth species because they have a denser canopy. or something like dutch elm disease which wiped out nearly all elm trees in the uk and continental europe
isn't that still short-term thinking? Sure, some species will die and the biodiversity might decrease for a while, but won't that just open up new possibilities for nature to make new adaptations? It seems like a limited human perspective to think that we need to keep everything the way we're used to seeing it in our short lifetimes.
@@imageword5576 the damage we're doing by transmitting invasive species will take millions of years to recover. i personally would like to live in a world with intact ecosystems not destroyed by carelessness, if we dont take drastic action entire species will go extinct. they wont just reappear it takes millions of years for another species to evolve into their niche
There are two types of help. The first type of help one provides to another. The second type of help one provides for another. Can humans provide help for the natural Earth, or only to it?
Local species had thousands of years to adopt to local conditions. Including adverse disaster type conditions.
Invading species can eradicate local spacies under normal conditions, but when conditions change they will not survive and the locan species are not there anymore.
We the ecosystem will move down a level or complexity loosing most advance, most specialized species. This is not sustainable
I think it's great your considering the complexities of these things. But it's definitely not a good thing to wipe out hundreds of miles of hardwood. There's many species of native insects that are totally dependent on single species of trees. A lot of oak species for example can sustain hundreds of different species of caterpillars. Those caterpillars can't live on the pioneer species coming in and it will take decades before they can live in that area again.
I fully agree that people get too caught up in the idea that natives=good, but it is just as bad to go the opposite direction and just assume anything that throws off balance and reduces bio diversity is actually a blessing in disguise.
The destruction from gypsy moths isn't leading to better soil. It's leading to mass extinction of many native insects. This isn't a good thing at all
but isn't that short-term thinking? Nature won't just allow a vacuum of space to exist for long. New species will adapt/evolve to fit the new ecosystem over time, won't they? Sure, some of the species we're used to seeing will die, but that's just the limited human perspective of "we need to keep the species WE are familiar with alive forever" thinking?
@@imageword5576 will the biodiversity of earth eventually recover? Yes, most likely.
Does that excuse the extinction of thousands of species or make that loss unimportant, no not at all.
It has nothing to do with what people are familiar with. It's just biodiversity. There seems to already be a mass extinction event among insects and invasives like this exacerbate that. They aren't going to replace the existing species as a new fittest species. They are wiping out thousands of species before dying themselves and it's nearly impossible to actually predict the impact of loss on that scale.
All I'm saying is we know it's bad and we should mitigate it.
@@imageword5576 ya, those are in Eurasia already.. want to see what it looks like, go visit😂.. North America is unique because the geology led to unique species.. if you just take them away you lost a big percentage of what nature left us to explore
You're not allowed to call them gypsy moths anymore it's offensive the name was changed.......... I know I think people are stupid too
😮
Love this theory
Let it flow, mother nature knows what's best for sure. At least, pesticides are terrible for nature
No way Jose.. Native plants and animals are what makes a place unique..every invasive has a native cousin that performs the same functions.. the problem is that people dont have time to be land managers anymore.. invasive takeovers are just from people being lazy or overworked
sorry but, don't listen to this guy. this is some high thoughts best shared with a few irl friends in passing, not something to be pushed to hundreds of thousands of equally ignorant people.
Not sure how you are the expert, but cnn and NBC push out far more damaging ideas to hundreds of thousands of ignorant people. Often they knowingly lie. So...have you called them out yet?
We call them invasive. Because as humain we want things to stay as we know or can control to survive. But nature always change. We also are invasive species for others animals as we destroyed pretty mutch everything. And it's the nature. The strongest/smarter survived. Those who can't adapt die. Species grow as much as they can, stay at the top when there is no more ressources and then decrease on population.
Its circle about destruction, grow, balance and death. All species live with it. But we, human, decided to considering ourself out of the nature and controlling it. Instead of trying to living with it. Because if you live with nature you need to take care of it, living more slowly, buying less things, destroying less thing and its not good for business and compagnies lol
Allow me: NO.
That's not how ecosystems work. What is actually going to happen is all those trees will die at the same time and due to the sudden loss of all those tree's root systems there will be widespread erosion and it will take decades if not centuries for those ridge lines to recover (assuming there are not widespread wild fires amongst all the dead wood which will raise the ph of the soil and make matters worse).
How you can be a resident of Appalachia and think invasive species could possibly be good for the environment is astounding to me. Kudzu, fire ants, chestnut blight, spotted lanternfly and gypsy moths are just a few of the more prominent invasive species that are or have decimated the ecosystem in just the last century.
In response to the last part, this is me raising the question. Not having all the answers
Sorry, Ken. What degrees do you have in the natural sciences? Published any peer reviewed papers? Perhaps you've just spent your life studying ecosystems as a hobby? Where, exactly, do you derive your expertise? I'm dying to know
I understand what you're saying a lot of what you're talking about is based in fact but your main thesis is not based in reality. No one can call the Gypsy Moth invasion a "natural" occurrence since they quite literally would NEVER be able to naturally cross the Atlantic ocean without dying. They unnaturally were brought over here (intentionally or not) by humans. That's by definition is not a natural phenomena.
Another note: You're right that Bradford pears while are more likely to come up in nutritionally poor soils and disturbed sites, but it's irrelevant. Think about it. Yeah they may add nutrition to the soil but think about it. Once a bradford pear is established it aint never coming out of the ground. Cut the tree down? Great! You just created 100 new bradford pears that are now coming up as root suckers. Once a bradford pear is in the ground it aint never coming back out. Who cares if you're adding nutrition to the soil if no one can use it cause the entire are is being dominated by pears lmfao
You need to realize that while yes, it's good that theres now light being brought down to the forest floor to enable more biodiversity thats great but at the cost of a MAJOR keystone species. Oaks. Oaks are the BASIS of most of the forest ecosystems in North America. Without Oaks we have no forests over 500+ species rely on them TO EXIST. And what's the gipsy moth's favorite snack? OAKS. You see unlike pre-colonization when there were common low intensity forest fires all across the US, the Oaks would be fine cause they evolved alongside fire for millions of years. That cleared out the sick and dead trees opening up the canopy, clearing the leaves and letting light get to the ground, and improved biodiversity. The North American ecosystem and wildfire go hand and hand. And so the gypsy moths are mimicking that to you by taking out the oaks. But the problem is that unlike a forest fire, theyre killing the oaks. Hopefully i've illustrated how bad this is.
There are cases of Native predators eventually finding a taste for an invasive pest but this is not always quick and it may not happen at all. It's a gamble. Think about it. Chinese Privet has been terrorizing the southeast for over 100 years now and THIS YEAR I just noticed the white tailed deer starting to eat the seedlings. And I've only recently seen deer pressure on established privet. And that was just a freak accident. I don't think we're gonna see the same with the gypsy moth. I fear the Appalachians are gonna be unrecognizable to the one we grew up with (which ironically is totally different than what our grandfathers saw with the extinction of the American Chestnut tree)
Also I would agree that spraying BT (a naturally plant derived pesticide) is going to save a lot of oaks and a in turn A LOT MORE SPECIES than a few butterflies that get hit with friendly fire. Hopefully the USDA and department of the Interior got some plans cooked up to save our oaks. They've been in decline for hundreds of years since colonization and our removal of wildfire from the American continent.... I fear this gipsy moth invasion might speed up their extinction :/
Nature is forever changing, nothing is static. "Closed loops", like Yellowstone used to be before the big wolf kill off, are only 'closed' and self-sustaining for a relatively brief geologic period of time. All it takes is one foreign species (or even a local one with a sudden effective new mutation) to completely upturn so called established ecosystems, and those local species either adapt or go extinct. It's arrogant to think we can keep every ecosystem frozen in time, or that it's even ethical to do so. Even those species directly displaced by human activity, it is still adapt or die.
That's not to say we shouldn't maintain some semblance of ecological stability to ensure our own survival, like not poisoning our own drinking water, but to think we know exactly how nature should look like and operate is utter folly.
Well said :)
My concern is what is meant by "some semblance" of ecological stability. If what is meant are those actions that merely ensure our own survival (which is essential and necessary), we may be in danger of losing sight of the extent of exactly how an environment can be harmed by invasive species. Like all species, humanity itself is intimately linked to its environment and small local losses have the power to cascade into massive catastrophes. The notion that we're smart enough and powerful enough to manipulate the balance (or a re-balance) of nature once imbalance by specie invasion has set in is hubris - and hubris lends itself to foolishness (and even), dictatorial behavior by those in control.
The truth is that things can (and do) spin out of control quickly - or, as is more typical in nature - incrementally, and humans may be overcome by the impact of an invasion before we even discover the parameters of our loss. In other words, by the time we recognize the problem, the time may already be past for efforts at remedial action. Here's a couple of examples of how quickly things spin out of control: feral pigs and Mute Swans. Our only recourse now that they have become so entrenched into the common environment would be to engage in a mass slaughter of the invaders - and we may lack the means to do it, morally, legally, and politically. Even our science has its limits. Who has the knowledge to know what is to be done? I guess we just have to learn to live with change.
@@tomloewe8474 "I guess we just have to learn to live with change."
Exactly my point. The environments we have today were born after uprooting some other previously established ecosystem. Who's to say the ones we were cognizant of when we started recording history is the better of the two? We don't even understand the full extent of the ecosystems we still have.
The introduction of earthworms to North America was probably one of the most devastating blows to the continent's ecosphere it has ever endured in human history, and yet endured it has, even if thousands of leaf litter dwelling species went extinct in the process.
Very intuitive interpretation. I do believe (based in nothing but hopeful optimism) that outbreaks or die offs are a part of the cycles and though things change and not always for the better, in the grand scheme nature should be quite quite resilient.
That being said it’s not gonna be very good for our grandkids if any of this keeps going, soooo go make sure your township is actually recycling, I bet you they’re not or they’re only recycling like one thing. Those invasives are making your property worth less. You can increase your local economy if you steward your land well. Go make strides, as small as you want, but please feel empowered. Go and do well
good thoughts. thanks for sharing.
This tastes suspiciously like flerf. Please label this as parody for clarity.
Now do illegal immigrants
I love your energy
Wow! Thank you 🙏🏻