Burm hunt video

[Mendel's Balls]

thats the most ignorant thing i have herd about invasives!!

nearly all invasives have been human introduced and many are causing shifts in the ecosystems that will cause native animal populations to crash meaning no more native animals. with a large preadator like burms, who knows what the extent of the damage will be. weither killed or kept it is a postive step and i wish there would be more programs like this for other invasives.

Most exotic or non-indigenous species (NIS) pose no threat at all (see http://www.invasive.org/101/moreinfo.cfm) and some species typically labeled " invasive" actually do provide benefits. An example of a ecological benefit would be a non-native plant attracting more pollinators for the overall plant community (see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0516125934.htm). Most of our food chain is dependent on crops that were not native at some point. And many invasive plants are being considered as biofuel sources. So there are often overlooked economic benefits to NIS as well.

See the link below for more info on some of the economic benefits

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA544...veSpecies.html

I'm also seeing a lot of confusion in this thread and the other thread about invasives. The problem is with the term "invasive" The term "Invasive species", historically, was a value-ridden scientific term/category. Scientific terms in which values are connected are not operationally very good scientific terms! Scientific terms should be neutral; they should be objective and judgment-free. Traditionally, invasive meant a species non-native species "bad for the environment" that had the capability to propagating tremendously in its new surroundings, often rapidly, and displacing native species by predation, competition, or some other means.

The problem is that "bad for the environment"- This cannot be measured objectively without the injection of some values. After all, nature has winners and loser in it.......see this paper for more information.

http://planet.botany.uwc.ac.za/nisl/...ndMacIsaac.pdf

The above paper gives the example of the mosquito fish which was introduced to decrease larval mosquitoes, but also harmed native species of fish and amphibians as well as some non-target insect species. Mosquitoes went down that's good for the human environment, but is it good ecologically? There are often positive and negative effects of introduced species.