The Ultimate Invasive Species

By: James Wassell

Title

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The Ultimate Invasive SpeciesHuman Beings Homo sapiens

Invasive or Not?What is an Invasive Species?Any species that has been introduced to an environment where it is not

native, and that has since become a nuisance through rapid spread and increase in numbers, often to the detriment of native species (dictionary.reference.com/)

An alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health (http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/laws/execorder.shtml)

Are Humans Invasive Species? An invasive species is widespread An invasive species had adverse effects on its new habitat and/or on

human health A nuisance Not Native

Are we Native?

A species that has evolved locally over a long period of time

Are Humans that Bad?As humans we have an anthropocentric view on things. We basically believe the world evolves around us but in reality it is the other way around.Humans Effect the environment in a verity of ways:•Clear cutting for farming and development•Build city's on some of the most fertile land •Population explosion•Spreading other invasive species

Are Humans that Bad?

We destroy the environment• If current rates of human destruction of the biosphere continue, one-half

of all species of life on earth will be extinct in 100 years. More significantly the rate of species extinctions at present is estimated at 100 to 1000 times average extinction rates in the evolutionary time scale of planet Earth. American Museum of Natural History

• 94% temperate broadleaf forests• 98% old growth forests• 20% of deserts• 97% plans and grass lands• 50% of wetlands in us alone• 1/5th of coral reefs destroyed 1/5th degraded• 60,000 sq miles of forest alone are destroyed a yearUnited Nations Environment Program

How did they get here?We are the cause of our own problem. We are the reason for the majority of the invasive species in the USA•6500 Invaders in the USA (http://ecosystems.usgs.gov/invasive/)

•138 in pa (not including Lake Erie about 140) (http://www.nbii.gov/)

If you remember the definition of an invasive species they likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health •137 billion spent yearly in the US to combat invasive species

THAT WE PUT HERE!We are causing our own economic harm

Rapid Spread

The definition also states that invasive species spread rapidly. Sounds like humans to me!

• World population-6.8 billion• 83 million born each year• In 50 years the population more then doubled• 5 newborns every second

Compare two species:• Occupy every possible Habitat in the niche• Out compete everything else

So are we an invasive species?

We’re not an invasive species, though we’re certainly doing harm to the world around us. If you think about it, all of the harm done by invasive species is by definition our collective faults; some kind of human action led to that species being in a new place where it then causes some harm. And so I’m not at all astonished to find people arguing that we’re the worst invasive species of them all (http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com).

Why?

• An invasive species has to be a non native humans have colonized every continent but Antarctica by about 15,000 years ago We’re a native species.

• An invasive species is introduced to a new habitat humans move themselves there is no outside entity facilitating their spread

Questions?

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