WELCOME TO AMERICA - The New Wild: Why Invasive Species will be Natures Salvation - page 44

They got their wish two years later. An executive order created the National Invasive Species Coun-
cil, charged with ending the “environmental harm” done by aliens. Heavily advised by the aforemen-
tioned scientists, the council defined harm as “biologically significant decreases in native species pop-
ulations, alterations to plant and animal communities or to ecological processes that native species and
other desirable plants and animals and humans depend on for survival” (my italics).
This was a problematic definition. It meant that almost any change—any “alteration to plant and an-
imal communities”—was regarded as harmful. A great many ecologists disagree profoundly with that.
Change and “alterations” are natural and the norm. This definition also means that any damage to native
species is found to be harmful, whether or not it has any impact on overall biodiversity. We seem to
have gone a long way from any interest in biodiversity. The interest is entirely in protecting natives and
avoiding change. 44
This seems to me a perversion of ecology, a frame-up against alien species. It was compounded
the following year, when many of the same top conservationists, headed by their most senior member,
Mooney, published a statement on the future of global biodiversity in the twenty-first century in the
journal Science . 45 It amounted to a clarion call to protect biodiversity. Who could quarrel with that?
Except that, in the first paragraph, they declared that “our definition [of biodiversity] excludes exotic
organisms that have been introduced.” They did not explain or justify this statement. I find it extraordin-
ary to arbitrarily exclude one large and growing element of biodiversity.
For this group, alien species don't count and are not counted. They do not exist as part of nature.
They have no place. They are un-nature, if not anti-nature. They should be gone. Under this definition,
biodiversity in the twenty-first century can only go down. Extinction could cut the number of species,
but introductions could never increase it. Thus the inconvenient fact that alien species actual increase
real biodiversity in many places is simply defined away. Big Brother in George Orwell's Nineteen
Eighty-Four would be proud. Franz Kafka would be proud. Joseph Heller would have added an ecolo-
gical chapter to Catch-22 , had he known. It sounded more like ideology than good science.