IUCN Standard to support global action on invasive alien species

UngulateNerd92

UngulateNerd92

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IUCN today launched a global standard for classifying the severity and type of impacts caused by alien species, known as the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT). This tool will alert scientists, conservation practitioners and policy makers to the potential consequences of invasive alien species, guiding the development of prevention and mitigation measures.

IUCN Standard to support global action on invasive alien species
 
After seeing the video, I believe American bullfrog, red-necked wallaby, African clawed frog, monk parakeet, Asian giant hornet, and sacred ibis among others are species that may be classified as they are shown in the opening of the video.
 
Ugh....broadly the kind of thinking, wrapped in dogma, that led to predator bounties in an earlier age*. Panama meet Columbia...Alaska, say farewell to Siberia. Humankind...get over yourselves.

*outside of island environments and maybe, as it regards some species, Australia.
 
Pleistohorse said:
Ugh....broadly the kind of thinking, wrapped in dogma, that led to predator bounties in an earlier age. Panama meet Columbia...Alaska, say farewell to Siberia. Humankind...get over yourselves.
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What ? o_O

What do you mean by this ?

*Its Colombia by the way with an "O" otherwise you are referring to a province of Canada or a district in the USA and not the Northern South American country bordering Panama.
 
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I think a lot of the hysteria regarding invasive species is overblown. Pigs in Europe are woodland engineers, but the same species in North America is destructively rooting and wallowing and befouling. Environments change. Few will agree...but I stand by it.
 
Pleistohorse said:
I think a lot of the hysteria regarding invasive species is overblown. Pigs in Europe are woodland engineers, but the same species in North America is destructively rooting and wallowing and befouling. Environments change. Few will agree...but I stand by it.
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I think that is quite a lazy assessment. Some of it may be overblown and hysteria but these are anthropogenically facilitated biological invasions and not natural occurences.

Invasive species introductions and spread are accelerating species extinction through disease / pathogens, hybridization, predation and competition.

Is this a positive thing in your opinion ? or just not worth worrying about ? Is attempting to conserve species threatened by biological invasion misguided and a case of humans "needing to get over themselves" ?

Because I would counter that for humans to "get over ourselves" our species needs to actually develop a civilizational maturity and begin to take full responsibility for our impact on the natural world and part of that involves tackling anthropogenic drivers of biodiversity loss such as invasive species.

I'm just asking to gauge where you stand on this issue.
 
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We are probably not going to agree on the 10% of this issue where we differ. In the United States I believe invasive species have increased biodiversity...on balance. There are winners and losers, certainly. On Islands (Hawaii, New Zealand) ok...I generally agree that invasive species can be fairly catastrophic. On continents, in terrestrial environments...I just don’t agree. And I think the urgency in which money and science are used to “correct” the problem is just wrong. Example: Mountain Goats in the Olympic Mountains.

Now I know it is not a popular opinion and one could even argue that it is wrong...what it is not is uninformed. But it is just my opinion. I have almost no influence to affect environmental policy so we should not get to excited about it.

But I like the fact that pythons live in Florida, Banteng are secure in Australia, Dromedaries live as fully wild animals in the Outback, and one can occasionally see Emus along the backroads of Texas. Environments change and species adapt and the movement of species across the planet...wether it is facilitated by continental drift, rafting, wind blown flight, or human transportation is a natural occurrence.
 
Pleistohorse said:
I think a lot of the hysteria regarding invasive species is overblown. Pigs in Europe are woodland engineers, but the same species in North America is destructively rooting and wallowing and befouling. Environments change. Few will agree...but I stand by it.
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Pigs are native to Eurasia whereas peccaries are the only comparable animal native to North America.Feral pigs are invasive in both North and South America and represent a huge risk to native biodiversity. I have seen the damage they do with my own eyes in the Cerrado ecosystem here in Brazil.

Environments do change indeed but what exactly is the point that you are making here ? because I am not following you. We are talking about high speed anthropogenically accelerated landscape and ecological changes which are not natural and are leading to a catastrophic loss of biodiversity (not the background extinction rate).

Your user name seems to suggest that you have an interest in paleontology and in your first comment you referenced the Columbian exhange with the massive ecological changes and extinctions caused by the colonization of South America by the North American mammals. You also referenced the Bering landbridge connecting North America to East Asia and animals (including man) crossing from one continent to the other.

Are you aware that these were colonization and extinction events that occurred naturally due to climatic and geological phenomena ?

You do realise that these are in no way comparable to anthropogenically induced climate change and introduction of invasive species right ?
 
Pleistohorse said:
We are probably not going to agree on the 10% of this issue where we differ. In the United States I believe invasive species have increased biodiversity...on balance. There are winners and losers, certainly. On Islands (Hawaii, New Zealand) ok...I generally agree that invasive species can be fairly catastrophic. On continents, in terrestrial environments...I just don’t agree. And I think the urgency in which money and science are used to “correct” the problem is just wrong. Example: Mountain Goats in the Olympic Mountains.

Now I know it is not a popular opinion and one could even argue that it is wrong...what it is not is uninformed. But it is just my opinion. I have almost no influence to affect environmental policy so we should not get to excited about it.

But I like the fact that pythons live in Florida, Banteng are secure in Australia, Dromedaries live as fully wild animals in the Outback, and one can occasionally see Emus along the backroads of Texas. Environments change and species adapt and the movement of species across the planet...wether it is facilitated by continental drift, rafting, wind blown flight, or human transportation is a natural occurrence.
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So if I follow the "logical" extension of your argument then it then follows that human induced climate change is also a natural phenomenon , right ?

Dude... are you s****** me ?!

Questioning the cost effectiveness of the removal of invasive species is a more reasonable argument but then once again by the "logical" extension of your argument the conclusion reached is that extinction and biodiversity loss is fine and dandy.

You may like that there are pythons in the everglades, that banteng are surviving in Australia while they are declining in population in many parts of South-East Asia (which is true I agree and somewhat of a singularly positive accident of historic introduction of non-native species) and that you can see emus walking around in Texas , however, isn't this just based on your own aesthetic preference ?

In which case aren't you also just projecting your own personal ontologies regarding nature onto the world and could I then suggest that perhaps it is you who needs to get over yourself?

Let me ask you something because I'm kind of curious, are you an "animal rights" activist ?
 
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Pleistohorse said:
Yes, in that manner of thinking. No. Yes. Maybe...ok, probably. No.
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Its just I'm trying to work out where you are coming from. I have to be honest with you I'm really not understanding any of the reasoning behind the worldview that you have.

What I'm seeing so far is a bizarre mischaracterization of the naturalistic fallacy that equates natural geological and climatic processes in deep time and the natural background extinction rate with a mere 180 years (for anthropogenic climate change) / 500 years (give or take in terms of acceleration of global holocene extinctions) of human history.
 
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