Why Do Invasive Species Get So Much Hate? (Ft. Hank Green)

welcome back to nature league when I'm in the complexly office working on scishow psyche or nature league I get to cross paths with some really fun and interesting people pink green is one such person though we've only been able to scratch the surface on some interesting personal topics while passing in the halls or filming something else one of these topics is invasive species Hank and I are both from Florida where there are record numbers of invasive reptiles and amphibians and we also enjoy learning thinking and feeling about ecological issues because of this Hank and I have found ourselves talking about the intricacies of invasive species several different times but always had to stop because we were doing something else so we decided to take some time to sit down and finally talk through these topics in detail and we recorded it to share with all of you I was actually thinking it'd be cool to do a thought experiment so perhaps let's say we're from a different planet we're from somewhere else coming down to earth and we're looking at laws and we're looking at scientific articles published and we're seeing this phrase come up invasive species are non-native species exotic species I want to approach it from that point of we've not heard of this okay and we're investigating it right here's humans a species yeah talking about these other ones as invasive or non-native and like what do we think here so gut reactions my first reaction like if I am actually if I'm like a very intelligent alien I think I see that those people that species yes those ones standing on sea legs do yelling they are talking about species that affect them mhm not about species that affect their environment because if they were going to be talking about invasive species as species that hurt the environment like the number one obvious one is then they're like well we'll ignore ourselves moving on like by far the most invasive species of all time five Blake orders and orders and orders of magnitude like it's not like it's not like knapweed has dug like a mountain into it hit into it a pit like that's only us though that would be impressive I I wouldn't say that no species like other species have big impacts on the environment that's like not like we do I studied this for my undergrad I did this while I was at University of Florida and was in the Everglades and did some of the Python work and all the invasive herpetology so amphibians and reptiles and the law is pretty explicit and it's actually the same for the United States and globally and the way that we say what something is when it's invasive so for the u.s. there is in the 70s kind of an idea about exotic and then I became a base 99 before exotic we also just had weed yeah right with just anything that in silence that is like I don't want you it doesn't matter whether it's native or anything that you're sitting on there I can chair get out of my lot and you can't just say exotic or non natives because those like there's lots of useful non natives like it's not like apple trees are from America like they're just great and we like them and we want them to grow so we don't consider apple trees invasive right and so that and I think if that was taken into consideration when then in 1999 what was signed in was the actual definition that we still use for invasive which is when you have a non-native or exotic or alien bunch of synonyms but one of those that does harm right and legally it says to economics human environment oh not human or human health human yeah so two or three yeah how does it affect us but that distinction is really important because of those that you just mentioned I think about the honeybee and the like millions of dollars of the industry that's yeah they're not they're not from around here here don't leave my lawn right yeah and there's something I think philosophically and definitionally a little messed up about that again if we're coming from a different place we didn't know anything like wait you call that something different not only call it something different but then have the legal jurisdiction to treat it differently and in fact kill it and eradicate it and also there is a moral element to in the environmental movement that like that we have sort of this distaste for non-native invasive species like the knapweed is a beautiful plant like it is a beautiful flower it's like whenever I'm like this is gorgeous but also like the way that it's talked about is like I think that there is some amount of concern about biodiversity but largely it's just because like cows can't eat it like it's like you have this this negative feeling toward it because it is not productive for us and I like that you brought in the word feeling because I think that what we're up against here is both psychology and culture when we think about again in our alien thought experiment we would read the headlines coming from either Europe United States we'd read headlines about human and human and talking about literally invasions and the idea of non native or alien I mean this is where we talk about each other you're in human to human there's a militaristic great invasive species we needed a word to say that that well that it's not from here and that it persists because there's lots of things that you can plant in your yard oh yeah aren't gonna like spread out and become Australian pine or Phragmites or whatever yeah like so but so like you need a word to talk about the things that like they go into the native ecosystem they're like actually I'm extremely good at this my natural predator isn't here I make a lot of babies and reproduce really young you guys you guys aren't good at exploiting this niche at all I am way better exactly that's what Burmese pythons did right well yeah there there's also this idea of you know in the United States there's there's tens I think like close to 50,000 species listed by US Fish and Wildlife Services as non native okay but only a couple thousand listed as potentially invasive and there's that persistence element as well so is it here but then girls are doing when I was doing the Python work we found one of the world records for pythons eBay which is a different species it's the African rock python not the Burmese python but we've found the world record for length fur for a male and then also found some others that were gravid so they had eggs and that were fertilized and like doing great and there was an argument at the time this was in the late 2000 like 2008 2009 about do we list this and when do you list it as official on the you know Florida State registry of like this is an invasive species and I was looking around and I thought to myself it's book five we don't want to say Voldemort's back because it'll make people pin it but ball board is definitely back and why is everybody now looking at this Python see basis and we just found but like what if yeah and it was turns out so is it just like Fish and Wildlife Service is just like led by Cornelius fudging doesn't want everyone to know about it right that is correct I want to go further and talk about hippos in South America where I always want to do where so this is these are an invasive species now they were brought in as zoo animals basically for to show off but there were a bunch of aquatic mammals that went extinct when humans arrived in South America yes and so the hippos are kind of taking over that niche that had been vacated by natural species that were there that we killed or that were killed when the big cats reached yeah yeah so like there's kind of a space for them and so the question is like at what point are they native because like every species invaded at one point in the past there's an issue with when we say in the legal definitions both for the US and worldwide flag the Convention on Biological Diversity world why life on these huge groups they list it right it's saying you know you're non-native if you if this is not your current or past natural range and so now we get to this word natural and there becomes this massive dividing line between humans and nature because we do not consider something non-native if it just dispersed if we say naturally if it naturally dispersed somewhere we call it a non-native if humans brought it in mm-hmm follow that logic and that saying humans are not natural so this is it right really on the edge of a very big discussion I can read I can you know obviously in frontal philosophy is a big topic I can see the argument that we are not natural of course we are of course we like we are biological we are animals like yes but instead examine it from the angle of okay this animal or plant this organism did not reach this place through biological means it reached it through technological means if like I had an insect in my hair and I brought it on and I like went to South America that's a biological transmission of that so don't distinguish that finally yeah but like like ballast water in a sugar striking on pants we do not distinguish we just say a human did it yeah but I also like if it's hitchhiking on my pants like if I walk to South America that's natural I'm not going to so I can see the word using the word natural as a shortcut but I think that we need to be honest with ourselves that there are two things we're protecting one economics money and the other is this idea of a pristine perfect natural environment which isn't a real thing in the US and the them yeah and and that's exactly when I think about the the main points that are brought up about invasive species is that they harm environments they harm biodiversity and they harm money money well guess what that's our own thing we say what we prioritize and we put money in to do it and like if it's cost it like zebra mussels are a huge problem for hydroelectric plant yeah they cost money and so we spend money to fix that problem and it's like alright that's on you guys this first one about they harm ecosystems again this goes to this it's a fallacy this balance of nature and this pristine idea in these lines that have been drawn that might have worked in the 1970s I mean it wasn't right back then but a prevailing thought how can you be someone who loves biology and not recognize that evolution is at play here how can you on the one hand promote things changing over time and on the other hand say yeah this is the ecosystem the way to do that is to say the change is happening much faster now and that is a that is causing an unnatural amount of extinction but then the question is if humans are another species just playing this game if you can't adapt and survive to these changes then extinction like is it not fair to say that and if something else does that that is not well then lives there is the quiz sorry is the question you're asking is mass extinction okay because it's natural not necessarily but when we think about the Secession of things and say this non-native is out competing this native species it comes to again this this this psychological and culture idea of us and the other so like I think about a local example which is a rainbow trout introgression so the like movement of genes and we're like interbreeding hybridization and our breeding between them and native cut cutthroat trout and this idea of and this is like verbatim from like publications and things we need to protect and maintain the natural genetic resource that is the cutthroat trout genome right like oh yeah we brought the rainbow trout in like what is this protecting a native genome what is this protecting a native ecosystem besides this kind of psychological bias of like a little bit of evolved xenophobia like oh yeah it feels a little xenophobic it feels a little like pre who's the guy who wrote that fudge Cornelius the art nailed it it also seems like a little pre Darwin when we were like not we didn't really understand that organisms changed and we didn't understand that extinction happened like there was a period that was you know it's it's weird to think but the idea of extinction is a relatively new idea which is really wild yeah it's very cool yeah so the those pieces that that I just don't know wind up being being justified it and then we get to this ethical and moral piece which is what is the responsibility so what is what I like to ask on this channel and ask myself like daily if not hourly is like what does a good happy and healthy Anthropocene look like so what does a good happy and healthy era look like that is dominated and influenced by humans what does that look like and and one of those is okay if you want to eradicate something because it was not originally in this place did humans bring it there in which case where does that responsibility lie like when you're removing those pythons like you had a bunch of us we just kids out there that love snakes mm-hmm we loved those things like we yeah we're studying these things because we love snakes but then the fact that they then need to be killed and then researching whatever whatever like there's something in the back of my mind that was like this sucks yeah like this snake did not ask to be released into the Everglades yeah it lives in Burma like where does responsibility fall ultimately like I'd like I'm not I might be wrong not concerned about the life of the individual Python Brad the Python is a good guy he didn't have a choice in the matter he did he fought pretty hard on our trip only one person got bitten got bitten twice two different incidents oh god those guys don't let go you can kill it it'll still be biting you that is correct so I'm glad to have never been bitten by any constrictor or any snake well I've been bitten by snakes but only little ones I think that ultimately if it is harm to biodiversity if it actually is like having this like demonstrable negative impact on the rest of the environment if they're eating all of the rabbits and there will be no rabbits left and then they themselves will go extinct because they ate all the rabbits like that seems like we can try to fix this problem but like but like we life has fines away and like in general and vaisya species management is almost never about invasive species eradication unless you're talking about a very small space like a small island and you can like really you know drive the snakes out of Ireland yeah never snakes in Ireland where the snakes in Ireland that's what said Patrick was supposed to be say that he drove the snakes out of that's one of his miracles Saints next day we should have a Saints next day again getting a ethical moral around here but but why do those rabbits have more of a right but what the Germans so in that snake so I think that like in at least modern ecology when I was learning it because they have a role in the ecosystem that they are playing and without the rabbits other ecosystem things might fall to pieces and that's not that's the that's the thing is I've in since my education been reading about sometimes when invasive species come in and biodiversity increases yeah local biodiversity can go up just like oh come on I've known all very confusing it is and I'm living in this confusion gray area of rebuilding right now that I'm thankful for but also hate just what we got yeah yeah but there was such like I just thought it was so easy and some of that comes from being younger and studying this at a younger age but like but like it none of it as black and white and it's nuanced and it's we're in that gray area but I'm I'm like I'm proud to be in that gray area cuz I think I'm thinking more critically and the fact that I'm bothered and like little doing this when I read a new paper is good because I like to challenge my assumptions you know the other thing that's good about it is that like we're doing the research to figure out that for example invasive muscles in America have yes super decreased biodiversity like there were many many species of freshwater mussels and there are now much fewer competed yeah so in that case you can see that like you've got now one species and that's probably not good it's better to have a diversity of species because they're doing you know they you create opportunities for evolution and for survival the job could be fill that niche Cree feel the same where you talk about hippos in South America but if it's filled by one species sure then you open up a whole can of worms of like why why is biodiversity better than then less diversity I think more diversity is better than most diversity I think that both on a moral level and on a scientific level and I'm not saying that there isn't a moral level there I think honestly I think like when it comes to like my sort of like base level of morality I actually think that diversity has a big piece to play in it because it is where like interestingness and and a fight against entropy happens well we should never fight entropy hank it's a law of thermodynamics they're going to increase entropy is the only thing to fight literally a law that we can slow it down who are you delta g not saying that we're going to win Gibbs free energy you're gonna slow it down I'm talking about energy flows rather than just the idea of this okay sure so I feel like an exothermic reaction like yeah I'm saying that like the more diversity of life on the planet the better the planet is at capturing and utilizing the energy that yeah or isn't this is like personal philosophies don't never talk about I love that this is me every day every hour but it's me alone and like made my cat my like if there's gonna be out there gonna be anything to sort of like be like in favor of I think that it's capturing and utilizing energy George is a weird thing but it's not because that's everything yeah well then like the world life yeah planet by the way is gonna be fine we're not saving the rock that is earth I for me and this is a personal philosophy thing like it is the saving and caring for the things very much so alive and capable of be distressed and can kill yeah yeah yeah the the beautiful things yeah all of the beautiful things and I count us among them like I think that we are a supercool species very very weird very unique really you know in terms of the history of the earth very unprecedented at least some huge fan of humans I do think that like ultimately responsibility does rest on us a little bit to decrease the harm that we have on natural ecosystems I think that it's extremely important that we continue to do the research unlike what actually is the things doing the harm because ultimately probably what we find is that like habitat destruction is far more of an impact than I'm doing this vegetation and I looked at the numbers like two weeks ago and yet they does definitely have it I don't know doing this like it's a secret the number one cause of biodiversity loss in terms of actual extinctions things need somewhere to live it is very straightforward right yeah and like mice can live in a wheat field but not much else like and you know if you fly over America like look down it's not a bunch of forests it's not a bunch of libraries its circle pivots like that's it yeah you know and we got to eat we're very good at like keeping our children alive because I thought that's our primary driver right that's what we want to not die and have babies and have our babies not die like that's kind of a thing like in some ways right now and I think that would be better if we recognized this more we have a surplus with which to plan for the future to like help a world exist that will continue being able to sustain us and other life forms really about still saying so long thinking though being beautiful and weird and amazing and having things to learn about but also like you know having that surplus to take care of people who aren't our kids too so both environments and humans yeah environments in humans and all of the non the nonhumans as well just things yeah alive and not alive but maybe use an energy even not a lot of things like that like Grand Canyon is very beautiful it's a super dead like stupid super made out of rocks but like super rocks very good and very good though official official stance green candy rocks very good thank you for thinking about these things out loud again I usually do this alone and just get very stressed out having someone else do it and getting stressed out with me is so much easier you're not as stressed as I am I feel like you know I'm worried like I'm very worried about the future of humans on the planet but I've also seen us solve a lot of big problems before yeah I think so and as long as we're keeping all the other players in mind and like again keeping a little bit of that responsibility in mind especially if it's like we moved that species from here to here it's now causing trouble like this cause and effect and hey we'll just keep following the research and and I think we're gonna keep learning that um it's so complex and it's this icky terrible wonderful gray area and I guess we'll just like keep exploring it together I'm sorry you had to kill a bunch of pythons even though they're not gonna leave the Everglades they're absolutely not gonna leave Cornelius fudge is the worst even with setting aside time to explicitly talk about invasive species Hank and I still didn't get to all the nuances involved or the overarching themes of humans and nature however we did suss out some basics like how scientific evidence doesn't necessarily support widespread ecological ideas like pristineness balance or nativeness what remains to be figured out is human responsibility and how our values play a role in the way we think and feel about invasive species so what do you think let us know in the comments below and let's continue the conversation there and to keep going on life on Earth adventures with us each week go to youtube.com slash nature league 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Channel: Nature League

Views: 11,161

Rating: 4.9237189 out of 5

Keywords: nature league, nature, wildlife, brit garner, vlogbrothers, john green, hank green, biodiversity, evolutionary adaptation, environment, photosynthesis, homeostasis, science, science communication, science education, science edutainment, wildlife biology, invasive species, Anthropocene, knapweed, zebra mussel, phragmites, Australian pine, Burmese python, African rock python, python, Florida, Grand Canyon, entropy, conservation, humans and nature, environmental philosophy, ecosystem, ecology

Id: fJXRUcvUhg4

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2019