The entire article presumes that novelty is a degradation -- yet offers no evidence for it Isn't the point rather that the novelty itself isn't the degradation

The entire article presumes that novelty is a degradation -- yet offers no evidence for it Isn't the point rather that the novelty itself isn't the degradation, but the disappearance of the other native species as they get replaced by other species which already exist elsewhere, thereby decreasing overal number of individual species should the native ones go extinct? You could then argue that less species isn't a degradation because on a huge timescale that might not matter. However on a more 'current' timescale, I'm not sure how else to treat the man-made huge biodiversity loss other than a degradation.