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This Week’s Book Review: Unnatural Texas? The Invasive Species Dilemma
Book Review
‘Unnatural Texas’ is testimony to the law of unintended consequences
By MARK LARDAS
Mar 5, 2019
“Unnatural Texas? The Invasive Species Dilemma,” by Robert W. Doughtry and Matt Warnock Turner, Texas A&M University Press, 2019, 272 pages, $32
Texas has many species not native to Texas. Some, like the longhorn, are a positive part of Texas’s heritage. Others? Maybe not so much.
“Unnatural Texas? The Invasive Species Dilemma,” by Robert W. Doughtry and Matt Warnock Turner, examine the impact of some of these less welcome imports.
The book looks at around a dozen widespread nuisance species in Texas. Examples include birds, aquatic plants, mammals, land based plants, and insects, all with negative impacts. Some may surprise you.
There’s a chapter on sparrows and starlings. Non-native birds, they were imported from England to eat urban insects and introduce animals mentioned in Shakespeare. Instead they went after farmers’ crops and are crowding out native species.
Water hyacinth and hydrilla take up another chapter. The authors examine their negative impact on southern waterways and the difficulties of eradicating them. Yet in Florida, water hyacinths provide food for endangered manatee, making eliminating them an issue.
There are separate chapters on Chinese Tallow and Tamarisk, two species introduced to improve the landscape, which ultimately had undesired impact. Chinese tallow are destroying Texas’s coastal prairie.
One chapter is devoted to feral cats, and a second to feral hogs. Each provides a menace to native species; cats in urban areas, hogs in the countryside and suburbs. Cats kill birds, while hogs will hunt people. Fire ants are the focus of another chapter.
The authors examine means of controlling invasive species. It’s tricky. Biological controls work best, but (as with carp to control water hyacinths) could themselves become invasive species.
“Unnatural Texas” is testimony to the law of unintended consequences. These nuisance species were introduced with the best of intentions. Sometimes, as with the concept of importing every species mentioned in Shakespeare to North America the intention was crackpot. The book closes by illustrating the conflicting nature imported species with the monk parakeet. Endangered in its native habitat, it adds color to Texas cities, while posing a nuisance by nesting in transmission towers.
“Unnatural Texas” provides food for thought on a complex topic. The authors show that frequently no simple answers exist for environmental problems.
Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, amateur historian, and model-maker, lives in League City. His website is marklardas.com.
Published in Environment
Any discussion of what species we would find in Texas if we went back 1,000 years? What about 10,000 years? Why is the default position that the species that exist here now, or the climate that exists now, the natural state of affairs and anything that deviates is unnatural? Or why is it an unnatural result of survival of the fittest if humans transport a species somewhere new? Are we not part of nature?
Ratz. It’s not cheap and my university library doesn’t have it, either.
Meh. Today’s invasive species is tomorrow’s native species. The environmentalists who fret loudest about immigrating species are the same for whom evolution is a cornerstone of faith. For them, ecosystems may change in distant history, but never in one’s own lifetime. The nerve of some animals!
One can attempt to stave off a new population in its earliest stage. But typically the battle is over as soon as it’s recognized. Wild boar, kudzu, lionfish, Chinese carp, bamboo, European starlings… are all here to stay. Those are native species now.
Previous species can suffer, but that’s nature for you. It takes time for an environment to reach a relative equilibrium. In the end, losing species usually survive in lesser numbers.
I believe the politically correct term is Undocumented Immigrants.
Yikes! Hopefully there is a an unlimited season so people can hunt them back.
I’m surprised to hear conservatives rail against humans controlling nature. Environmentalists have come around to the idea that nature isn’t a pristine balance, and that humans are an influential part of it, only to run into criticism from conservatives for coming around to their point of view. Some people insist on not being happy, I guess.
it is this law that gives me pause before allowing any government to try to “fix” the climate
This is about practical reality. Set aside whether or not we should prevent migration of species. More often than not, that is not within our power. Decades of attempts by both governments and private groups in many countries have proven ineffective.
For Catholics and many other Christians, the ethical model of environmental protection is stewardship. Nature was made for us, for our use and enjoyment, as well as to glorify God. Thus, we are stewards of Creation who must honor the great gifts we are given by managing them respectfully… and yes, even shaping them into “gardens” of sorts, establishing order from chaos.
But how about some humility? We can’t control all aspects of nature. And how about respect for humanity? We are not just one animal among many. We are the focus of it all. If mainstream environmentalism reflects either of those principles, I have not seen it.
Last year I went to a talk on prairie restoration given by one of the former grad students at my old workplace. I’ve sometimes thought of turning some of our pasture into restored prairie, despite the fact that it was never prairie in the first place. So I’ll probably not do it, but I do find the topic interesting. Most of the people in attendance were ecological- and environmental-minded people, as am I. The speaker pointed out that you aren’t going to create a place of prairie vegetation without continual human intervention. There is no such thing as creating a balance of nature on your little acreage and letting it take care of itself, and in fact the vegetation of almost the entire North American continent has been the product of interaction with humans since long before Europeans arrived. I must admit that I once had to get used to these concepts myself, as my first idea, years ago, had been to just set up a prairie area and leave it alone rather than treat it as a garden to be tended. But the others in attendance seemed to be receptive and accepting of this concept. I think it might have been different back in the 70s.
Whether that’s because their first principles are changing, I wouldn’t dare to guess. I don’t think my own first principles have changed, and those are much the same as yours.
I also have a little wooded area in our acreage that I had mostly neglected during the last decade when I was working. About the time I retired I became aware that black swallow-wort was growing there. I had noticed it a few years earlier, wondered if it was something that should be protected and encouraged, then found out what it was, and then saw that it was taking over. I’ve spent a lot of time during the past four summers or so, trying to get it under control. It might be a losing battle, but I’m giving it a reasonable shot. Some people say these are bad for monarch butterflies, which confuse its pods with milkweed pods, and lay their eggs in it. But the eggs will not develop in black swallow-wort. I’m skeptical that this poses any real danger to monarch butterfly populations. We also have a lot of milkweeds in one corner of our pasture, and they are doing well, and we have had monarch butterflies the past few years. (Another concept to get used to is letting the milkweeds grow; when my wife and I were growing up they were considered noxious weeds dangerous to cattle. You were a bad, irresponsible farmer if you let them grow.) So while I’m skeptical of the need to eradicate black swallow-wort for the sake of the butterflies, they do interfere with other vegetation through allelopathic effects and shading. So whether or not I can eradicate them on my place, I want to keep them down.
I should also mention that my youngest son makes his living on invasive-species control of vegetation in our National Parks, and does a lot of volunteer work on invasive species control in some nature conservancy areas. I sometimes kid him about it — about all of the species being invasive, etc. And he takes it in good humor; it’s nothing he hasn’t heard elsewhere, and not anything he and his professional colleagues haven’t thought about. He and others seem to have a realistic view of what can and can’t be accomplished, and they are constantly evaluating the results of their efforts and re-evaluating. Seems to me a fairly conservative approach.
I’d wager to say that the entire invasive-species issue has been healthy in weaning some of the more doctrinaire environmentalists away from their unrealistic notions and back to a healthier reality. The book review seems to describe some of that process.
I don’t think the issue in this book is how far back invasive species go or whether they have a right to exist. The species cited in this book are destructive and undesirable. Who wants fire ants in their back yards? Or feral hogs? Or nutria? Is there anyone who really wants waterways choked with water hyacinth and hydrilla? Farmers hate starlings due to the crop damage.
The book’s real question is how you get rid of pest species? And what defines a pest species? Are monk parakeets a nuisance to anyone other than power companies? They filled an ecological niche formerly occupied by the now-extinct Carolina parakeet. The authors really do seek meaningful rather than simplistic answers. There goal is not returning the Texas environment to a state before Europeans got here. Wheat, cotton, cattle and a lot of other species are not native to Texas, and the authors do not advocate exterminating those. Their book is about is controlling nuisance species and (as Aaron Miller states) exercising our stewardship over the land.
Invasive species have been a thing since the invention of the canoe. It is all part of nature’s continuous change. Some people don’t accept that nature changes naturally.
FYI, the hot new invader of Texas is the zebra mussel.
They are only now reaching Texas? At least they can’t say, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.”
I don’t know if the season is unlimited, but it is pretty wide open. They reproduce at a rate that makes rabbit reproduction look slow by comparison.
What are all the exotics brought for private reserve hunting from India and Africa the authors mention? I noticed the axis deer on the cover. The reason I ask is we once saw- no kidding here- a dik dik that had been hit by a car just outside Austin and that got me wondering how many imported game species now have wild breeding populations in Texas. In Germany it’s the raccoon, for those who might be wondering.
I am concerned about unwanted invasive plant and insect species.
I’ve seen the lists in Massachusetts, and although some of the plants and insects are not truly invasive in the sense that they are spreading as aggressively as one might suspect given the word “invasive,” some like kudzu clearly are. The emerald ash borer that people believe was transported here from China in a wooden shipping crate has no known predators. Furthermore, it seems to like the food and temperature here. It has killed millions of ash trees in North America.
Unfortunately, the people attracted to this invasive species problem are sensationalists who are putting just about every plant they can identify on the current lists. They can’t set priorities because they don’t think that way. The reality is that there is only a handful of truly invasive species in any given zip code, but that handful is a momentous problem.
Plant species that are transported to areas that are not their natural habitat can choke out the plants that would be there normally. Two major sources of these relocations are actually the gardeners and garden centers in the United States. It makes perfect sense how this happens. Garden centers want to sell and gardeners want to buy plants that will be successful in their local areas. The plants that are most likely to do that (a) are able to thrive in a wide range of soil conditions and acid levels, (b) are drought tolerant, (c) do well in sun to part-shade conditions, and (d) have few insect or bacteriological predators. What meets all those criteria? Weeds from other similar locations. :-) It’s a problem if the native plant species are choked out. We need plant diversity to maintain the ecosystem that sustains human life.
I forget just which mideastern deer it was, but I was surprised to see some on a ride on back roads between Kerrville and Fredericksburg. I got on the internet and learned that they are thriving in Texas but endangered in the region they came from. And that there are some extreme environmentalists (if that’s the right word for them) who’d rather see them go extinct than be allowed in their new habitat. I don’t know any of those people, but I wonder if their animus is driven more by a hatred of American hunters and hunting than anything else. It’s possible these people are entirely sane and have good reasons, but if so that didn’t come through in the news articles I read.
It has killed all the larger ash trees on our place. Ash sprouts still grow up, and there are some young ‘uns out in our woods but I can’t tell if any grow large enough to produce seeds before they are killed off.
There have been efforts to slow down the spread by restricting the movement of firewood. In places around Indiana state parks, those who sell campfire wood from their front yards are supposed to go through some kind of permit system. I question how much good those regulations do, and whether some people are just giving in to the urge to regulate, though I think it is a good idea not to be transporting ash firewood for any but the shortest distances. Fifteen years ago it was amusing to see signs at Ohio state parks warning against people bringing in firewood from Michigan, sort of like people warning against diseases brought to the U.S. from Mexico. (The Ohio-Michigan rivalry is real.)
When my great-grandparents homesteaded in North Dakota at the turn of the 20th century the area was a treeless prairie. My grandfather loved trees, and planted a few acres on his own homestead, watering them by hand during the dry years. Many of these were ash trees. When I was little that had become a shady grove used for church picnics and such. Now there are ash trees everywhere, hiding some of the vistas on the Missouri Escarpment that could be seen when I was little. After the emerald ash borer reaches that country, it will probably become almost treeless again, but the shelterbelts around farmsteads will still be there, minus the ash trees.
Well stated: They don’t think that way. With the result that people don’t take their legitimate concerns seriously, either. But the people who actually go out and spend hours and hours of volunteer time on invasive control projects do tend to become realistic.
They do indeed.
My daughter and son-in-law met while they were volunteering for AmeriCorps years ago. They spent a lot of their time addressing invasive plant species on Cape Cod. Some like the Japanese bamboo and the common reed are just impossible to get rid of.
What are some success stories about actually eradicating or minimizing invasive species?
Here’s one of those I found while googling for that topic: https://entomologytoday.org/2019/03/08/invasive-species-success-story-eradication-european-grapevine-moth-california/
And I consider my war on the black swallow-wort to be a success story in that other species are starting to return to the floor of the woods, even though I haven’t been able to come anywhere close to eradicating them. But my woods are now a nicer place to walk.
Some random points.
First, this is a great conversation.
Second, fireants are jerks.
Third, them wild pigs can be delicious.
Fourth, a Ricochet meetup to hunt them would be fun.
Fifth, the Chinese tallows are pretty, and the honey the bees make from them is painfully sweet.
That’s a crucial point in this, I think. Small areas can be controlled. We can make gardens in the wilderness. We just can’t control the general flow of nature. I can keep blackberry vines and oak saplings from dominating my yard, but only within that limited area and only through constant management.
Also, like the Texas climate oscillates between droughts and floods over a course of decades, so animal and plant populations can shift without it necessarily signaling a permanent change in the ecosystem. Sometimes rabbits win. Sometimes coyotes do.
That example is unusual in a few ways. First, it was caught early and action began quickly. Why? Because, secondly, it threatened a major industry… and an industry with friends in government. Thus, an unusual amount of resources and agents were involved. Third, the environments invaded were farms, rather than wilderness, so more easily surveilled and managed. That leaves out other possible factors, like the stated regulations that changed vineyard methods, perhaps at great costs to the owners.
I’m sure there are other examples of success stories. But from common knowledge (which might be errantly selective), they seem to be rare. And, as I said before, the odds of success are much better before the species actually becomes a problem.
I’ll look for other examples later. Thanks.
Hey, what about the Burmese pythons? Are those little monsters slithering west from Florida? How quickly? Do Texans need to start manning the eastern border with shotguns to prevent that particular invasion? Even if that’s a bad strategy, should we try it anyway because it seems like fun and because we can shoot at other creepy reptiles while we’re at it?
Right. That kind of back-and-forth in the ecosystem most people consider normal. That’s really not what the concern is with invasive species.
The human body is actually a pretty good model for describing the problem. We are always surrounded by germs–bacteria and viruses. Our immune systems can handle nearly all of them. But every once in a while, an invader like the Spanish flu comes along that overwhelms our immune system and kills us. :-)
That model works for galaxies too.
This happens both with and without invasive species. Supposedly, Chinese carp outcompete native fish in our rivers. On the other hand, I remember when a disease devastated the Gulf’s saltwater catfish.
We should do what we can to preserve the wondrous variety in God’s creation. But some of these decisions are arbitrary.
I hear Chinese carp taste okay. Not every fish jumps into the fisherman’s net with such enthusiasm.
As I said, I spend all summer outdoor in my yard and gardens. I do follow the invasive species issues because there are a few in the woods around my house that are trying to take over my yard. When you see an ugly thorny vine climbing up a gorgeous oak tree, it’s sad, and I try to win those battles.
But the invasive species extremists lost me when they put Chinese forget-me-nots on the list. Goodness, there is no sweeter, less aggressive little flowering plant on the planet. The idea that they harm anything is just plain ridiculous. They aren’t native, true, and they do produce a lot of seeds, true, but their delicate root systems wouldn’t push anything out of the way, even if they tried with all their might.
(Photograph from Johnny’s Selected Seeds)
As everyone is saying, it depends on how harmful the invader is whether anyone really cares about it.
It’s important not to lose your native species too. It’s nice to have both–new plants and native plants. For one thing, aesthetically, the native plants usually look better in the landscape.
Texas doesn’t really have navigable waters like most other states.
What’s done is done, we can only try to live with the consequences as best we can.
Doesn’t mean we ought not try to keep from deliberately importing other species.
I know people who spend hours out in the cold hoping to come back with some gamey venison. Not for me. Now if I could go out and shoot my own bacon . . .