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There are definitely some species that are actually not native to an area and are brought by human activity alone. Granted humans (and all our creations) are al
by ethanbond 3y ago
There are definitely some species that are actually not native to an area and are brought by human activity alone. Granted humans (and all our creations) are also natural, but the challenge is that we’re good at creating extreme change over very short timeframes.
- jakear 3y agoAll true, but who is to say that the impacts of human-accelerated stochastic gradient descent are necessarily evil?
- BuyMyBitcoins 3y agoIsn’t this just an argument of nihilism? If it doesn’t matter because native/weed is an artificial distinction, or because it is by definition insignificant on a geologic timescale, then why get upset at people trying to change or reverse “the gradient” in any way?
- jakear 3y agoI’m not upset at anyone, though people seem upset at me for pointing out the futility. I suppose the resources could be better spent doing something else, though I couldn’t tell you what that’d be.
- BuyMyBitcoins 3y agoAll I’ll say is that while I am not a biologist or an ecologist, I do know several who work on conservation projects and efforts to counteract invasive species. This story shares so many similarities with other cases of an introduced species radically changing the regions ecology and that in and of itself is incredibly alarming to them. Yes, at the end of the day the Earth doesn’t care and life will go on. But trying to maintain some semblance of a minimally invaded ecosystem is valuable to these folks and I greatly respect their efforts.
- rcoveson 3y agoHow to better spend resources than commenting multiple times per hour in defense of the idea that nobody here can prove that an effort to cull an invasive weed will have an impact on the ecosystem in a million years? You could go lie down and listen to music or something (though I warn you, I can't prove that it will have any effect on a geological timescale).
- goatlover 3y agoYes, but so what? We speed up evolution and force more adaptation. It's not good or bad. It just is.
- llamaimperative 3y agoWell it very likely could be bad for us which I care about for a while. And it’s actually anti-Darwinian to even refer to “speeding up evolution.” There is no destination here. Things do not necessarily get better, more interesting, more beautiful, and so on. They just change, and they are already changing in ways that don’t seem desirable. Of course “desirability” itself is subjective as well, in theory. In practice I suspect almost every human would prefer a world that is more biodiverse over one that is less biodiverse, all things being equal. Still a human value, but of course those are all we have when we need to make decisions.
- jakear 3y agoPlease provide a reference for the claim that the introduction of this plant to the area will result in less biodiversity across geo-biological timescales. Without that you’re just spitballing.
- UncleEntity 3y agohttps://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/29/560292442/bats-and-tequila-a-once-boo-tiful-relationship-cursed-by-growing-demands#:~:text=You%20can't%20have%20tequila,bats%20over%20thousands%20of%20years https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/29/560292442/ba.... The plants that the bats rely on in Arizona is already on the protected species list and, coincidentally, in the area discussed in TFA.
- jakear 3y agoOne species in one small study does not biodiversity across geo-biological timescales make.
- BoiledCabbage 3y ago