Fighting Invasive Plants: The Ones We've Got and Those We Think Are Coming
The all-out focus on managing invasives that are here now may be standard procedure, but when that's done at the expense of monitoring and prevention efforts, it can exact too high an environmental price, according to invasion ecologists. We must look ahead as well.
This is particularly critical on the larger scale, in conservation. Even for gardeners whose far smaller decisions may impact beyond their backyards, though, scientists urge a shift from being exclusively reactive to taking proactive steps.
Overlook the early warning signs, or disregard invasion risk factors, and pay the price.
'If we're not proactive, the number of invasions we're going to be dealing with in the future is only going to be bigger,' said Evelyn M. Beaury, assistant curator at the New York Botanical Garden's Center for Conservation and Restoration Ecology. 'It's so much easier to do something about an invasion when it's in an early stage. Your chances of success are much higher.'
The impulse to attempt eradication may not always be the best course of action. With invasive species that are not yet widely established, elimination may indeed be the path to pursue, said both Dr. Beaury and Mason Heberling, who is the associate curator in the Section of Botany at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.
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