OPINION/COMMENTARY

The Exotic Species War

Since 1992, the nations of the world have been waging a war against such foreign invaders under the Convention on Biological Diversity. In the United States the public regularly reads anguished stories about the "damage" being caused by alien invaders such as zebra mussels and purple loosestrife. Environmentalist groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the National Wildlife Federation fiercely denounce these foreign intruders, urging Americans to band together to force these invaders from our shores. In response, Congress passed the National Invasive Species Act and the executive branch has adopted a National Invasive Species Management Plan aimed at closing our borders to alien species. NASA warned recently, "Non-indigenous invasive species may pose the single most formidable threat of natural disaster of the 21st century." But is all this jingoistic furor justified? Some biologists and other analysts are beginning to doubt it. For example, University of California-Santa Barbara biologist, Daniel Botkin, points out in his article "The Naturalness of Biological Invasions," that "[b]iological invasion is a natural process everywhere, requisite for the persistence of essentially all species on Earth over the long term. Being able to seek new habitats and survive in them is essential in an environment that changes at all scales of space and time."....

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