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
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  1. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Vance Richards (View Comment):
    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 . . . 

    There is no season and no limit on feral hogs in Texas. When I was in Anderson County, friends trapped them. I got a carcass one time. It was tough, but flavorful. Janet made sausage from part of it, but had to add suet because it was all lean meat. I still have memories of that sausage.

    My Australian shepherd Dixie, who was known as hyper-hound by our kids and Wigglebutt by the vet, when crazy even by her standards when we brought in the cooler with the meat, dancing around it. We had to put her outside, but she got the bones after we got the meat off.

    Best thing to do with feral hogs is trap them, then feed them up on deer corn for a couple of weeks before dispatching them. (My friend used a 1911 .45 for that.) 

    • #31
  2. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    A rancher I knew shot them from his porch. He aimed for the ones about the size of his grill. It’s almost like fishing.

    • #32
  3. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Is there a chapter on Texans being an invasive species?

    I generally have little sympathy for the invasive species argument.  It’s just natural selection at work, isn’t it?  

    I agree with Seawriter’s comment #9 about pest species, which are a problem whether they are invasive or not.

    • #33
  4. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    My father-in-law still tells stories about great jackrabbit drives back in the 1950s somewhere out west of Fort Worth.  A nuisance no more?

    On a related note, if you haven’t read Bill Bryson’s telling (as only he can) of a rabbit infestation in Australia…well, you should.  (I recommend the audio book read by the author so you get it in his voice too.)

    • #34
  5. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    jaWes (View Comment):

    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?

    Well for one thing, bureaucrats and politicians love any issue that allows for governmental control and governmental growth. You cannot find an issue that brings about more need for more agencies and more bureaucrats than the non native issue.

    On the non-native plant and tree side, it is a win/win for herbicide manufacturers. Sure once in a while an environmental group will come in and spend hundreds of hours trying to tame a Calif non-native plant such as the star thistle. But in the end, the local governments will decide on pesticides. This will be much to the dismay of bee keepers who report that when star thistle is left alone, it is the best stuff in the world for bees to feed on. (In Marin much of the star thistle is on government owned land, so this is not about farmers losing their shirts due to star thistle.)

    And for those who own tree cutting services, the non-native discussion is another boon. for awhile, the eucalyptus invasion of California grasslands was a big topic. (Probably still is, I am semi retired from environmental causes.) So you get these goverment- paid for  studies and reports that give the go ahead on cutting down all the eucalyptus in Dogtown, near Bolinas. You read through the report and they assure the reader that when the baby squirrels and the birds who have nested figure out the euks they live in are gone, they will meander off to the other trees. Except the other trees are a good six or seven miles up the road!

    No mention in the report is made that the euks are about the only trees in Dogtown, and the residents wanted them kept alive.

    • #35
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