Invasive alien animals: What are they and why should we care?

Hello everybody! We are two university biology students at Memorial University of Newfoundland. As part of our Conservation Biology class, we are offering this blog as an opportunity to help both ourselves and you understand more about invasive alien species and their significance to conservation biology and management. Specifically we are exploring how the topic of invasive species here in Newfoundland and Labrador and relating our situations and approaches to the issue compared to the wider world.

Invasive animal species sounds like a grim issue, and it often is just that. Around the world, animals are moving into new places and having negative effects on the native environments, their flora and their fauna by outcompeting native species, decreasing biodiversity, affecting economically significant species, depleting ecosystem resources and invoking economic costs in for management efforts (Levine, 2000). This issue is not just an issue for “hippies” conserving nature (although there are many obvious and not-so-obvious reasons to do this) but is a huge problem that is affecting everyone, impacting everything from our agriculture to our fisheries. It’s even estimated that in the United States, the damage and control costs of invasive species costs taxpayers more than $138 billion annually (Pimentel et al., 2005).

The reason why we are offering this blog is so that we can all better understand and appreciate the significance of invasive species and its various impacts on both the natural world and our society. It is important to raise awareness and inform the public on both occurrences of invasive species and possible ways to deal with it by taking a closer look at various examples that are affecting Newfoundland and Labrador. It is our hope that through this blog, together we can become well informed and help with some of these ecological problems our province is facing.

If you’re interested in learning more about invasive species in Newfoundland and Labrador, be sure to check out this brochure: http://www.env.gov.nl.ca/env/wildlife/biodiversity/invasive_alien_species/exotic_species_brochure.pdf

Thanks!

Amanda & Morgan

References:

Levine, J. M. (2000). Species diversity and biological invasions: Relating local process to community          pattern. Science. 288 (5467): 852–854.

Pimentel, D., Zuniga R. and Morrison, D. (2005). Update on the environmental and economic costs          associated with alien-invasive species in the United States. Ecological Economics. 52 (3): 273–     288.