permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

On 12/29/04 1:48 AM, "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net> wrote:

> Over the past two decades, this
> arboreal predator has caused the disappearance of nearly all of the native
> forest birds on Guam, including the extinction of the Guam rail
> and the Micronesian kingfisher. Nine of the eleven avifauna species present 
> at
> the time of the brown tree snake's introduction have since
> been extirpated. Of the species that have become extinct, five were endemic 
> at
> the species or subspecies level.

And on and on. What they aren't saying is that all these species were very
hard hit by the US Navy's previous deforestation and development over more
than one-half of Guam (see David Quammen, "The Song of the Dodo"). So, many
species were already in serious decline from human-caused loss of habitat by
the time the tree snake showed up. Every time I've looked at a claim that
some invasive species has wreaked ecological havoc, it's turned out that
humans have set the stage before the new species arrived. If someone can
show me that the arrival of a new species has resulted in rapid multiple
extinctions in an ecosystem that was not already badly degraded by humans,
I'm happy to change my tune. There are probably cases of this somewhere, but
so far, I'm not finding them.

Toby
www.patternliteracy.com