So you pick feral cats over, for example, cattle? Cattle that negatively impact
soil and water quality and increase erosion, which in turn negatively affect
insects and bird communities (to name just a few impacts). Cattle that
introduced brucellosis, which spread amongst countless wildlife? We
University of Texas at Austin, Section of Integrative Biology
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At some point we run up against another interesting question and divide
when discussing the issue of human assembled ecosystems and invasive vs
native species.
Until relatively recently much of the agriculture around the world was more
similar to the edible landscape/forest gardening model than
There is nothing new about ecologists thinking about integration of humans
into ecosystems. In the paper that defined ecosystems, Arthur Tansley
(1935) wrote:
“Ecology must be applied to to conditions brought about by human
activities. The ‘natural’ entities and their anthropogenic derivatives
Sure, humans are part of the earth's ecosystem, and at some point Homo
sapiens will reach a level of consumption that backlashes profoundly enough
that the level of degradation will be severe enough, or the crash in
population significant enough, that we will be reduced to, say, eating
nothing
Quite so!
Careful integration of suitable plants into ecosystems rather than replacing
them with human-assembled pseudo-systems that require management is one
way of retaining ecosystem integrity and increasing the usefulness of PART
of the ecosystem for one species, the most invasive of
It's not that it's not regulated, it's just that in our measure of time the
regulation is taking place slowly (it's a mere blink, however, in geologic
time). We will go the way of all species that have been profoundly
successful and literally (and virtually) screwing ourselves into
oblivion.
Related to this, an esteemed colleague sent an email (below) to another
Listserve that literally blew my mind.
It reads:
friends
Bill Gates has a blog, which I occasionally read.
he reviews Vaclav Smils book here:
http://mobile.thegatesnotes.com/Books/Energy/Harvesting-the-Biosphere
And in
Yes, and it doesn't end there. The fertilizer used to increase and narrow
the nutrient aspect of the site carrying capacity (to increase productive
potential) as well as any irrigation is a direct subsidy, but much of that
input is wasted through leaching (including, but not limited to
