Welcoming the Invaders #
The idea that any “invasive,” which is to say non-native at the time that people started cataloging an ecosystem, species of plants or animals is clearly bad and dangerous always stuck me as a little silly. Surely there are clear-cut edge cases — Australia’s rabbits spring immediately to mind — but Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow explains how they’re clearly not all bad.
Tamarisk, a Eurasian shrub, is your classic invasive species—designated one of America’s “least wanted” plants by the National Parks Service. … A few years ago, the USDA let loose thousands of leaf-eating Asian beetles in order to sic them on tamarisks, which die from the defoliation.
But these efforts to oust the intruder have encountered a glitch. It turns out that a charismatic endangered bird—the southwestern willow flycatcher—is known to nest in the offending shrubs.