Contents
Overviews / Scientific / Skeptics / Proponents / In the Middle / OpponentsOverviews for a General Audience
Triumph of the Weed (text) /
(PDF version - 2MB)
The best introduction I've found.
by John H. Tibbetts
in Coastal Heritage (Vol 16, No. 3, Winter 01) ,
a publication of the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium
Bio-invasions: Breaching Natural Barriers (PDF)
Introduction for a general audience (college level). General concepts. Attractive figures.
A Washington Sea Grant Program Publication.
U. of Wash., Seattle.
Biotic Invasions paper (HTML) / PDF version
Biotic Invasions factsheet (PDF)
Overviews from the Ecological Society of America (ESA)
End of the Wild
by Stephen M. Meyer
Gloomy assessment by MIT professor: "The extinction crisis is over. We lost."
Also posted on Znet.
Exotic Introductions
Chapter 9 from an online text Biodiversity and Conservation by Peter J. Bryant of Univ of Calif at Irvine. The text is used for an undergraduate course.
Gardening with a Wild Heart: Restoring California's Native Landscapes at Home by Judith Larner Lowry. University of California Press. 1999. http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8243.html
Invasion of Exotic Species by Dr. Harold Mooney (Stanford U.)
Nature Out of Place: Biological Invasions in a Global Age
by Jason and Roy Van Driesche. Island Press. 2000.
(Amazon entry). /
Book review in Ecology
The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature by William Jordan III . 1999. http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9650.html University of California Press. 2003.
Weeding out bad seeds "Ex-landscape architect labors to protect ecosystem". (SJ Mercury News)
Win-Win Ecology: How The Earth's Species Can Survive In The Midst of Human Enterprise by Michael L. Rosenzweig. Oxford University Press, NY April, 2003 http://www.evolutionary-ecology.com/winwin/winwin.html
TopScientific
The Ecology of Invasions by Plants and Animals by Charles Elton. 1958. new paperback 2000. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/14047.ctl
Much as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was a call to action against the pesticides that were devastating bird populations, Charles S. Elton's classic The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants sounded an early warning about an environmental catastrophe that has become all too familiar today--the invasion of nonnative species.
Invasion Biology Lectures Dr. James Danoff-Burg Dept. Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology Columbia University http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff-burg/invasion_bio/invbio_lectures.htm Very good!
Institute for Biological Invasions
(Director Daniel Simberloff, University of Tennessee)
http://invasions.bio.utk.edu/bio_invasions/index.html
Mark A. Davis
Professor of Biology
Macalester College
St. Paul, MN
http://www.macalester.edu/~davis/
Look on Publications and Research.
"Predicting the Spread of Non-indigeneous Invasive Species: Can it be Done? (Part 2)", a paper on the Defense Environmental Network & Information eXchange (DENIX). https://www.denix.osd.mil/denix/Public/News/OSD/NIWAW/Invasive-Thesis/weeds2.html
TopThis paper will examine a host of relevant questions and the issues surrounding non-native invasive species (NIS), and attempt to develop a predictive model that can be used as a tool in helping determine what species are likely to become invasive. In this way, land managers and policymakers alike can better determine how to spend limited resources in ways that will maximize on-the-ground benefit to our environment, and help preserve our nation’s natural heritage.
Skeptics
"What’s Wrong with Exotic Species?"
by Mark Sagoff (U. of Maryland)
http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/fall1999/exotic_species.htm
The most outspoken and critical of the ‘war on weeds’ is Dr. Mark Sagoff, a professor at the University of Maryland. According to Dr. Sagoff, “no one has shown that exotics are more likely than natives to be harmful” (Sagoff, 2000). He further believes that the balance of nature so many scientists say is now out of whack, is a myth… That no such balance exists. [ from previous paper ]
Nature's Keepers: The New Science of Nature Management
by Sephen Budiansky. The Free Press. 1995.
Available in Acterra library, QH75 B823 1995.
(Amazon entry)
A fellow traveler of Gregg Easterbrook. Two general goals. First is to trash environmentalists as
anti-human, fuzzy-minded and sentimental. Second, to present some interesting developments in
conservation biology.
Proponents
aliens-l mail list
(International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources)
http://indaba.iucn.org/archives/aliens-l/index.htm
Green Nazis? (restoration ecology and invasive species) Whole Earth, Spring, 2001, by Peter Warshall.
Invasive Plants of California Wildlands (available online here)
TopIn the Middle
Craig Dremann Redwood City Seed Company
Six New Concepts for Exotic Plant Management
New Ecological Restoration Concepts
(Craig's Ten Tools for the Future Successes of
Weed Management and Ecological Restoration in California)
Ecological Restoration Checklist, Performance Standards and Budgets
(Craig Dremann's "Blue Book of Ecosystem Values"™ for Non-riparian Ecological Restoration)
WEEDS & PERSISTENT EXOTICS on Public Lands
WAR ON WEEDS DECLARED?
David Holmgren (co-originator of permaculture, Australia)
Weeds or Wild Nature
The Role of Native Vegetation in Back Yard Permaculture (article 18) PDF
Review of Invasion Biology: Critique of a Pseudoscience PDF
Opponents
David I. Theodoropoulos (apparently, a pen name for J.L. Hudson; see next entry).
Invasion Biology: Critique of a Pseudoscience
http://www.dtheo.com/
"Another Kind of Genocide" (review by permaculturalist Toby Hemenway)
"[T]he core of the book is an attack on prevailing paradigma of invasion biology.... [T]he book contains many new points of view, and stimulating ideas, and I recommend it for reading not only to specialists but also to general biologists." --J. Krekule, 2003. Book Review. Photosynthetica, 41 (3):348.
J. L. Hudson, Seedsman
http://www.jlhudsonseeds.com/
Natives vs Exotics: The Myth of the
Menace
Stop the White List (website)
http://www.geocities.com/nowhitelist/
Q: Who is behind the White List?
A: Monsanto, DowElanco, American Cyanamid, Zeneca, Dow AgroSciences, SePro, Helena and other herbicide manufactures and "life patent" corporations have funded tremendous propaganda in recent years hyping a spurious "invasive species" threat to natural ecosystems in order to sell more herbicides. The USDA, when faced with large budget cuts in the mid 1990s, and needing new justification for its regulatory bureaucracy (protecting the nation from "foreign invaders"), joined in this propaganda effort. ....