Where do Camels Belong - Ken Thompson
- Thread starter jay
- Start date
His 'thesis' is that all the fuss over native/non-native animals (anywhere in the world( is a lot ado about nothing. He aims to show that most introduced species don't do any harm, in fact many do good andf that conservation needs to move on from the idea that there was ever such a thing as a pristine environment. I haven't read it fully yet.
The camel is a major argument. Where do camels belong? North Africa and the Himalayan plateau where the two species originated. Australia where the only true wild dromedarys live, South America wher there is the most diversity of camelids or North America where they originally evolved but became extinct?
One thing I have notc=iced so far is that he completely glosses over the harm that three introduced specied=s have done to Australian fauna, the cat, fox and rabbit. They only came up because the dingo, another introduced species, keeps their numbers down. He also has a focus on prohrams that eradicate introduced animals from small islands, NZ Maquarie, etc, that had unintended consequences. (such as eradicating cats allowed ships rat numbers to explode and thus affecting native sea birds). The tone comes across to me that he believes the cats shouldn't have been eradicated, trying to remove introduced animals from small islands is a waste of time.
That is something that he does not say.
But he does say, that one has to be very careful in planning eradication measures and be sure that the treatment is in the end not worse than the disease.
I read the whole book 2 months ago and I find it a very interesting story, with a lot of good points in it (allthough his argumensts are not always very strong...).
His major point is stating that we should not just say invasive species are bad and that we should eradicate them. But to keep the whole overview of the role of that invasive species (also the positive effects they do have) and be sure that the eradication methods do indeed take care of the real cause of the negative effect and not of one of the symptoms, which the invasive species often are.
He does not state that invasive species are not a problem, allthough that is what one could read if one reads not careful enough...
zooboy28
Well-Known Member
Ok, that does sound a bit odd. IMHO, invasive species are almost always bad in some ways, and the only ones that maybe shouldn't be eradicated are those that have been there for so long that they have become an important part of the ecosystem and removing them will do more harm than good, e.g. dingos in Australia, rabbits in the UK.
It sounds like Ken may share similar opinions with this guy who sent Australian camels to a Korean zoo recently: Trade of wild camels to South Korean zoo the catalyst for more exports - ABC Rural (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
It sounds like Ken may share similar opinions with this guy who sent Australian camels to a Korean zoo recently: Trade of wild camels to South Korean zoo the catalyst for more exports - ABC Rural (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
I haven't read the book, but it's probably worth pointing out that "invasive species" is not actually equivalent to "introduced species".
Sorry to bump up such an old thread, but I've just got round to reading this book and managed to finish it in just over a day. I found it a fascinating read, and would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone with an interest in the subject.
It should be noted the book focuses mainly on introduced species in Europe and North America; the only reference to Australia for example is about the role of the dingo in controlling other non-native predators.
Something I found particularly interesting as someone from Britain was the number of supposedly native species that may in fact not be so - the nearest place to Britain where the snakeshead fritillary flower is genuinely native is Poland, all of the country's poppy species came over hidden among crops and the white-clawed crayfish, a species that huge amounts of money is being spent conserving, has a lot of evidence suggesting they were introduced from France in around the year 1500.
It should be noted the book focuses mainly on introduced species in Europe and North America; the only reference to Australia for example is about the role of the dingo in controlling other non-native predators.
Something I found particularly interesting as someone from Britain was the number of supposedly native species that may in fact not be so - the nearest place to Britain where the snakeshead fritillary flower is genuinely native is Poland, all of the country's poppy species came over hidden among crops and the white-clawed crayfish, a species that huge amounts of money is being spent conserving, has a lot of evidence suggesting they were introduced from France in around the year 1500.