ForestBoard

Search

Search

[+] Advanced...

Author:

Region:

Sort:

«12. . .1,8621,8631,8641,8651,8661,8671,868. . .2,6342,635»
LodgedFromMessages
The Electric Mayhem of Dr Teeth

A bit late, but in my nation for some reason we pronounce Ruinenlust Rune-a-list and Middle Barael Middle Barrel

The Incorporated States of Terrabod

I think there's some confusion here about what an "invasive species" is, so here's a short explanation.

An invasive species is any non-native species (not necessarily an animal) that, when introduced, significantly modifies or disrupts the ecosystem it has been introduced to. To clarify, a non-native species is any species living outside of its natural geographical distribution that has arrived there by deliberate or accidental human activity. Thus, humans are not an invasive species, and neither are species which change their geographical distribution without human influence.

The brown marmorated stink bug, which was accidentally introduced to Pennsylvania as a stowaway on a cargo ship from Japan, is a good example. In the 20 years since the introduction of this species it has spread across the East coast and other areas of the US and has established itself as a prominent agricultural pest. The grey squirrel is an example of a species introduced deliberately to the UK from the US in the 1870s as at the time they were seen as fashionable additions to country estates. Grey squirrels are able to outcompete the red squirrels native to the UK and also are carriers of the squirrelpox virus which has led to native red squirrels being wiped out from most of mainland Britain. Cane toads are native to Central and South America but have been introduced to the Caribbean and much of Oceania. They were initially introduced to Australia in an attempt to control the native cane beetle population (an agricultural pest). Not only were the released cane toads unable to control the cane beetle population, they themselves have caused considerable disruption to ecosystems across Northern Australia. The poison produced by cane toads has led to the severe decline of many native predator species, especially reptiles such as freshwater turtles and crocodiles, the loss of cane toad prey species (e.g. small rodents and birds), and the poisoning of humans and pets.

via The Rejected Realms

The Angelic Avant-Garde Asylum of Minskiev

Who’s ready to destroy? Tomorrow vegetables are gonna kill people!



The Easter VrijStaat of Ownzone

Minskiev wrote:Who’s ready to destroy? Tomorrow vegetables are gonna kill people!

hmmm.......now where did I hear that before.....ah yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aIXhmygh3A

if this ain't "cult" I don't know what is!

Absovenia

Dr Teeth wrote:A bit late, but in my nation for some reason we pronounce Ruinenlust Rune-a-list and Middle Barael Middle Barrel

Barael told me it's pronounced Berahel or something like that

The Matriarchy of Anequina-Pellitine

NOT participating in N-Day!

Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Julunaphra, and Dr Teeth



The Valiant Vessal of McClandia Doge 2

Julunaphra wrote:Same, and I have a question; What happens if you DON’T participate in N-Day?

Based on what i've read of the N-Day article the only way to not participate in N-Day is to just not join a faction or leave the one you are already in, but not being online while N-Day is active wont effect your nation at all.

I cannot wait to destroy people with our potato missiles.

via The Rejected Realms

The Angelic Avant-Garde Asylum of Minskiev

The united nikland wrote:One thing I am struggling with are what type of political parties should I have? Normal ones or environmentalist parties. What do you guys think?

Perhaps normal political parties that are also concerned about the environment? I think I’ve got a relatively even batch of parties. Although I’m not sure if the Russian Absolutist Order would fit.

The Federative Republic of Atsvea

The united nikland wrote:One thing I am struggling with are what type of political parties should I have? Normal ones or environmentalist parties. What do you guys think?

I would make a sarcastic comment about why you don’t find US politics inspiring enough for a Christian Republic but you did specify the differences...

I don’t know about Orthodox Christianity or Christianity but equality + environmentalism + faith sounds like the Quakers? You could make a party on that. If you want to do something realistic (normal, extreme and boring) you could use the Christian Democratic Union CDU of Germany. That’s themed equality, environment and pretty much one of the only such named parties that aren’t extremely conservative.

Might have to just think of very special circumstances on your own since your Orthodoxy seems very unorthodox, so to speak 🤔

McClandia Doge 2 wrote:Based on what i've read of the N-Day article the only way to not participate in N-Day is to just not join a faction or leave the one you are already in, but not being online while N-Day is active wont effect your nation at all.

I cannot wait to destroy people with our potato missiles.

I’m certain you would never start the event already in a faction. So there’s nothing to fear about being put in it without consent and having to leave your faction, or being forced to stay offline—none of that.

You think they’d just assign last years faction and let people skip a million captchas ticks and three hours of lagged out servers before Nday? Max Barry and violet aren’t that generous 😔

The Most Serene Eco-Republic of Middle Barael

Absovenia wrote:Barael told me it's pronounced Berahel or something like that

Bah-rah-el, or more precisely /bara:el/

It’s an Anglicization of the fictional Hebrew name בראל (what I man by fictional is that the name Barael doesn’t exist in Hebrew, yet it is a grammatically-ok combination of two other word, ברא meaning “create” and אל meaning “God”.

The Intensive Care Unit of Candlewhisper Archive

Terrabod wrote:I think there's some confusion here about what an "invasive species" is, so here's a short explanation.

An invasive species is any non-native species (not necessarily an animal) that, when introduced, significantly modifies or disrupts the ecosystem it has been introduced to. To clarify, a non-native species is any species living outside of its natural geographical distribution that has arrived there by deliberate or accidental human activity. Thus, humans are not an invasive species, and neither are species which change their geographical distribution without human influence.

The brown marmorated stink bug, which was accidentally introduced to Pennsylvania as a stowaway on a cargo ship from Japan, is a good example. In the 20 years since the introduction of this species it has spread across the East coast and other areas of the US and has established itself as a prominent agricultural pest. The grey squirrel is an example of a species introduced deliberately to the UK from the US in the 1870s as at the time they were seen as fashionable additions to country estates. Grey squirrels are able to outcompete the red squirrels native to the UK and also are carriers of the squirrelpox virus which has led to native red squirrels being wiped out from most of mainland Britain. Cane toads are native to Central and South America but have been introduced to the Caribbean and much of Oceania. They were initially introduced to Australia in an attempt to control the native cane beetle population (an agricultural pest). Not only were the released cane toads unable to control the cane beetle population, they themselves have caused considerable disruption to ecosystems across Northern Australia. The poison produced by cane toads has led to the severe decline of many native predator species, especially reptiles such as freshwater turtles and crocodiles, the loss of cane toad prey species (e.g. small rodents and birds), and the poisoning of humans and pets.

Yes, but humans aren't from Earth, we're descended from aliens, and have radically changed Earth's ecosystem.

L Ron Hubbard wrote about it in a science fiction book, so that seems like a good basis to build my belief system around.

Julunaphra

Middle Barael wrote:Whatever, my point is since the animals that Julunaphra was referring to exist, they are part of everything, thus “invasive species” are a thing. Plus, they can still exist on their own as a concept, thus they are a thing

THANK YOU!! Finally!



The Rewilding of Ruinenlust

Terrabod wrote:An invasive species is any non-native species (not necessarily an animal) that, when introduced, significantly modifies or disrupts the ecosystem it has been introduced to. To clarify, a non-native species is any species living outside of its natural geographical distribution that has arrived there by deliberate or accidental human activity. Thus, humans are not an invasive species, and neither are species which change their geographical distribution without human influence.

I don't know if I'm just not understanding your thinking here, but it seems to me that humans are sort of THE invasive species that has enabled all of the other ones. If we haven't significantly modified and disrupted the ecosystems of the planet as we have introduced ourselves and our infrastructure to them, then what has? Or is your definition ruling out humanity because we have mostly introduced ourselves actively, rather than having been passively brought to our current range by another means, and therefore that being the active agents of our own spread exempts us from invasive species status?

via The Rejected Realms

Kayden nation

Why does everyone like my comment?

Candlewhisper Archive, Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, and 8 othersHoochlandia, Outer Bele Levy Epies, Terrabod, Nattily dressed anarchists on bicycles, Dokansia, Middle Barael, The young ur, and Julunaphra

The Incorporated States of Terrabod

Ruinenlust wrote:I don't know if I'm just not understanding your thinking here, but it seems to me that humans are sort of THE invasive species that has enabled all of the other ones. If we haven't significantly modified and disrupted the ecosystems of the planet as we have introduced ourselves and our infrastructure to them, then what has? Or is your definition ruling out humanity because we have mostly introduced ourselves actively, rather than having been passively brought to our current range by another means, and therefore that being the active agents of our own spread exempts us from invasive species status?

The term "invasive species" is a purely biological one, not a philosophical one. I think it's undeniable that humans have modified and disrupted ecosystems across the planet, but while colloquially we are referred to as an invasive species it isn't true in the scientific sense. Aside from the confusing technicalities about humans introducing themselves, there are a few reasons humans aren't an invasive species.

Consider the Native Americans - when they first arrived in what would later be called the Americas, were they an invasive species? No, because they were not a non-native species (they moved by way of natural migration) and they did not cause significant disruption or modification to the ecosystem they migrated to. The same can be said for the first peoples in Europe, the Indian subcontinent, the Pacific Islands... H. sapiens spread across the globe from around 60,000-15,000 years ago in what should be considered a natural migratory process, and in none of the cases did they cause ecosystem disruption when they arrived. The main source of confusion for you, I think, is that while humans cannot be classified as non-native or inherently disruptive in a new ecosystem, humans demonstrate plasticity (the ability to change behaviour in response to changing environmental conditions) and learning capacity that other species do not, so we cannot apply the same rules about ecosystem modification to humans as we do to other species. In essence, modern human disruption of ecosystems is a choice made by humans, whereas the non-native cane toad, a true invasive species, is just doing what it normally does but it does it too well in a new ecosystem.

So, to summarise, humans have caused extreme habitat destruction and ecosystem modification throughout the world, yes, but that doesn't make them an invasive species. I hope this helps to clear up at least some of your confusion!

The Rewilding of Ruinenlust

Terrabod wrote:Consider the Native Americans - when they first arrived in what would later be called the Americas, were they an invasive species? No, because they were not a non-native species (they moved by way of natural migration) and they did not cause significant disruption or modification to the ecosystem they migrated to. The same can be said for the first peoples in Europe, the Indian subcontinent, the Pacific Islands... H. sapiens spread across the globe from around 60,000-15,000 years ago in what should be considered a natural migratory process, and in none of the cases did they cause ecosystem disruption when they arrived. The main source of confusion for you, I think, is that while humans cannot be classified as non-native or inherently disruptive in a new ecosystem, humans demonstrate plasticity (the ability to change behaviour in response to changing environmental conditions) and learning capacity that other species do not, so we cannot apply the same rules about ecosystem modification to humans as we do to other species. In essence, modern human disruption of ecosystems is a choice made by humans, whereas the non-native cane toad, a true invasive species, is just doing what it normally does but it does it too well in a new ecosystem.

I would say that all humans outside of Africa are non-native. And certainly hominids in the Americas, islands on the oceans, etc. are non-native, in the sense that they didn't originate there but came in from somewhere else. Or are they native in the sense that they arrived prior to civilization? Or because they were there prior to the Europeans? At what point in history or prehistory does the movement of humans go from a "natural migratory process" to something other than that?

Also, it seems rather conclusive that we have in fact caused major disruptions and changes to the ecosystems as we arrived in them, as our early presence coincides everywhere with the disappearance of much of the larger animal species, except for Africa, which alone had suffered from a much lower overall rate of extinction by the time that the earliest civilizations began to emerge. While some of the blame is to rest with climate change, natural background extinction, and some other factors, perhaps one of the greatest drivers was the sudden appearance of unknown, foreign humans coming on foot (or by boat) to new lands. Of course now we have bulldozers and satellites instead of spears and fire, but it's our own natural abilities and adaptations to have spread and become what we are now.

Why should those first movements be considered a collective "natural migratory process," when it was done with the benefit of primitive hunting tools, the use of fire, etc.? At point does our movement become unnatural?

Also, why is plasticity and ability to learn at our levels mean that the "same rules" don't apply? If anything, our plasticity and learning abilities are the most extreme and extraordinary examples of what happens when an organism evolves to a certain level of mental capabilities. Just because we are first on Earth to have done so, and because we have so outmatched and outperformed everything else, doesn't mean that we somehow exist outside of the system. We are part of the whole, and if anything, the fact that we produce all of these byproducts like waste, landscape alteration, resource extraction, manufactured products, etc. just makes us all the more invasive on the rest of the biosphere.

And if the cane toads are invasive because they are "doing what they normally do" and in fact doing it "too well," how is that different from what we've done? After all, we didn't become behaviorally modern through some kind of magic spark (scientifically speaking, if you've got religious convictions that's fine, and a separate argument for another time), but through the process of evolution. Our intelligence, plasticity, ability to make choices, the conscious pursuit of knowledge, etc. is precisely part of (and perhaps the most consequential trait of) our species. We are doing what we naturally do, because this is us. Just because it took us thousands of years to suddenly advance relative to prehistory doesn't mean that we suddenly became an "unnatural" thing as separated from what came before. Obviously what we've done is not natural for the rest of the world, but it is natural for us; we innately possess the abilities as organisms to radically augment and change our environment, our understanding, and our worldly abilities through our lovely, massive brains. So we're also just doing what we're doing, and doing it too well, to the detriment of the planet and ultimately ourselves.

I'm just not seeing how humans could rightly be classified as anything other than an invasive species in most of the locations in the world in which we are found. When I look out of the window at what used to be a rich, bottomland forest filled with species that we have driven to extinction, and what I see is a small city of lights, pavement, buildings, vehicles, and the like, it seems that a definition of "invasive species" that doesn't include humanity could only have been made by that same species that wishes not to be classified as such. But there's no doubt. People don't belong in North America anymore than purple loosestrife does.

Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Outer Bele Levy Epies, and 4 othersTerrabod, Middle Barael, Julunaphra, and United provinces of isn

The Incorporated States of Terrabod

Ruinenlust wrote:~snip~

Your argument hinges on the fact that humans don't belong in North America, but "belonging" has nothing to do with it. Firstly, I have already defined "non-native" for you - "any species living outside of its natural geographical distribution that has arrived there by deliberate or accidental human activity". Therefore natural migration to a "new" ecosystem (remember that in nature, ecosystems aren't drawn up like counties - they do not have fixed boundaries and are themselves constantly moving and changing) does not make a species non-native to that area, as natural migration to a new area makes it part of that species' natural geographical distribution. Humans moved out of Africa by way of such a migratory process, so natural human migration to new ecosystems does not make them non-native species. And to say humans don't belong outside of Africa is to say that, for example, a species of butterfly cannot cross the state line from North Carolina to South Carolina if South Carolina has similar temperatures, food availability etc as North Carolina, even if the flora and fauna vary. That's just not how nature works.

To your point about the impact of early humans - this is a widely-observed natural phenomenon. Competition between species is constant and changes as species move around and adapt. The history of life on Earth is full of species that were unable to compete with other species and changing environments (or were themselves unable to migrate) so were wiped out. It doesn't mean that the ecosystem has been disrupted; it's just Darwinian evolution. The same thing can be said for early humans. Also note that the changes to the areas ancient humans moved to were driven by a need for food, shelter and to protect their young - all things we see when other species migrate to a new area. In nature, this process of competition and ecosystem change does not need to coincide with the sort of ecosystem destruction you refer to as perpetrated by modern humans - in fact, our ancestors did it without any ecosystem destruction. Humans aren't inherently disruptive to new ecosystems. The fact that we disrupt ecosystems nowadays because we can doesn't mean ecosystem destruction is inevitable when humans move to a new ecosystem, it's a choice. Evolution didn't make us disrupt these ecosystems, evolution gave us the ability to choose to disrupt them. And this choice to disrupt means humans can't be grouped with other invasive species that cause ecosystem disruption because other species don't make any such conscious choice. This is what I mean by the same rules not applying, although that probably wasn't the best turn of phrase to use in my earlier argument.

I understand that when you look outside at the widespread destruction of the environment caused by humans, you want to label them as an "invasive species", but aside from as an insult that's not a useful description. As I said before, you cannot deny that humans have caused considerable ecosystem disruption by choice, and you are right to be distressed by that, but this doesn't automatically define them as an invasive species. I don't exclude humans from being classified as an invasive species because they are humans (that's speciesism) but because they do not fit the definition of an invasive species. They are not non-native species and they are not inherently disruptive to new ecosystems.

The Rewilding of Ruinenlust

How are we not a non-native species to areas outside of Africa? And how, requiring energy from plants and animals that would otherwise have gone to other things, are we not disruptive to new ecosystems? Adding any creature would be a disruption of the ecosystem as it had existed. The competition and evolutionary process is constant disruption and change. It seems odd to separate disruption and evolution as though they were unrelated; disruptions impact the trajectory of evolution.

It seems very narrow to define non-nativity as contingent on having been brought by humans, either deliberately or inadvertently. If a human brings rats to a new island, they are non-native, but if they float there on a mat of plant matter, they are not non-native? Surely the presence of thing, rather than the means by which it got there, is what constitutes the incongruity of where the species is with the balance that had existed there prior to when it arrived?

And again, what actually constitutes "natural human migration" as opposed to non-natural migration? Walking somewhere is natural? What about walking with purpose over the course of years thousands of miles? Does using an animal suddenly make it "unnatural migration," or using a primitive type of boat? If use of technology is what demarcates natural from unnatural migration, then is the ability to develop technology not a natural part of what makes us human? And how does the basic drive for food, shelter, etc. exonerate humans' activity, whereas the same basic principles of action on the part of cane toads suddenly make them invasive?

And whether or not the ecosystem destruction is inevitable or a choice, the motivations don't really matter in the end, it's the actual facticity of what has happens and what goes on that matters. Unless I'm mistaken, you seem to be arguing that because our destruction is "chosen" it is therefore somehow not to be counted or considered. But isn't it the effects that matter? It seems strange to argue that a species that passively overwhelms its new ecosystem like cane toads or purple loosestrife IS invasive, but consciously and deliberately destroying an ecosystem is NOT invasive. If anything, it's the other way around: we, the invasive species, have thrown hundreds of different species into new places, and have thus enabled their unwitting "invasions" as collateral damage and sometimes as idle fancy from our own worldwide invasion.

I would argue that saying that "evolution didn't make us disrupt these ecosystems, evolution gave us the ability to choose to disrupt them" is kind of a meaningless distinction, in the end. It's like saying that the nuclear bomb didn't make us destroy the city, it merely gave us the ability to do so. Okay, fine, but if we didn't have the bomb in the first place, the decision would be moot. In the same way, the fact that evolution has empowered us to do all of this is in fact what our history has been substantiated upon. And it's not exactly like some grand choice: did you choose to ruin things fractionally by typing from a computer that uses rare Earth metals? Kind of, but that hardly drives you. The average person is trying to survive, and to act in such a way that works to their self preservation. Humans didn't set out to do any of this, in the aggregate; our "choices" are simply the human version of what every other creature does.

We're all playing with the deck of cards that we were given, and humans got a deck of aces. It seems rather odd to say that because we choose to play the aces, that somehow exempts us from being an invasive species, when in fact we are doing what every other creature does, just in our way. This is us. This was not inevitable, but neither is any particular action on the part of an individual beaver or bear. Yet, the actions that they take have gotten hem to where they are, and the collective action that we have taken have gotten us to where we are. The bear and the beaver use their skill set and play their evolutionary deck of cards, and we are doing the same thing. We have turbo-charged, god-like abilities, but we're also just playing the game, so to speak.

To say that "choices matter," in effect, is to put an overlay of psychology and human philosophical perspective onto something that I mean in the most basic, physical of senses. It hardly matters why we've done what we've done, it matters that we have done it and that we are doing it. Choices don't matter insofar as one can diagnose the balance or unbalance of any ecosystem.

I honestly can't really following your thinking, because it seems that the definitions and examples used are self-contradictory at times. To say that being a non-native species is contingent on deliberate or accidental human activity, but then that the human migration itself does not constitute being non-native, when in fact we have brought our own selves across the planet by both deliberate and accidental human means, and we are also the humans themselves, simply collapses on itself. So the humans that used human methods to deliberately and accidentally bring themselves, the humans, across the planet, does not make us a non-native species in say, the Americas or in Australia or whatever, because to be non-native, one must be brought somewhere accidentally or deliberately by humans, which we are, and whose methods we employed to get ourselves around the planet...?



Nattily dressed anarchists on bicycles

<_<

[popcorn chewing sounds]

>_>

Ruinenlust wrote:Just because we are first on Earth to have done so...

I think I heard a podcast (like a real one; BBC or something) on the topic of SETI or extraterrestrial life in general once, and it was posited that one of the difficulties in locating intelligent life on other planets is that (as far as we know) geological processes occur over such long time spans that it is entirely possible for all evidence of a homo sapiens-level species to be completely erased by the time another one happens along. If I hear correctly, it's even been estimated that most extant species on Earth that aren't buried in rock have yet to be described, so the difficulty in finding and cataloging those already gone is just that much harder/rarer.

Earth is, what, four and a half billion years old, so modern humans have been around for 0.0056% of that time? Are we really the first, and would we even know? Without direct evidence, it's impossible to say**, but that's still a fun one to chew on.

--
** Well, I mean, not really for life originating on Earth. The well documented evolutionary "tree of life" suggests rather strongly against a native-to-Earth pre-human human-level intelligence. The point brought up in the podcast was the possibility of an extraterrestrial human-level intelligence arriving on Earth, subsequently leaving or going extinct, and billions of years of Earth geology erasing all evidence before the the first native Hominoidea learned (or were taught? o_0) to shake a stick. How's that for an invasive species?

Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Outer Bele Levy Epies, and 4 othersTerrabod, Middle Barael, Julunaphra, and United provinces of isn



The Incorporated States of Terrabod

Ruinenlust wrote:How, requiring energy from plants and animals that would otherwise have gone to other things, are we not disruptive to new ecosystems? Adding any creature would be a disruption of the ecosystem as it had existed.

Not really, because ecosystems and the plant/animal/fungi/prokaryotic species within change constantly and this is in a sense "accounted for" by nature - it's all part of a carefully-controlled balance. The natural process of migration may make the scales wobble at first but things settle back into equilibrium, whereas the introduction of invasive species leads to ecosystem disruption (i.e. the scales tip severely) and eventual collapse. There is a clear difference between normal ecosystem change and ecosystem disruption. The wobbling of the scales and subsequent equilibrium even applies to humans, as my examples have shown. I think perhaps your definition of native presumes that a species can only be native where it first "appeared" through evolution. In reality, a native species is "any species that normally lives and thrives in a particular ecosystem" - so where a species is native to can and does change over time, and native species are considered to be native only if they originated in their location naturally (which includes moving there via migration).

Regarding your point about rats, you are correct. If humans bring a species, it is non-native. If a species migrates by itself, and is able to establish a population in the new environment, then it becomes native there. These are just factual definitions. It might be hard to spot the difference using the simplistic rat example. To use a real-life example, cane toads do not float from South America to Australia, so the native species of Australia are unfamiliar with the invasive species and are not built to survive exposure to the poison produced by cane toads or to avoid being preyed upon by cane toads. Conversely, if a cane toad crossed a river for the first time in South America it would likely not cause ecosystem disruption as 1) the gradual introduction would give native species the time to adapt to some extent and 2) animals that eat cane toads will undoubtedly exist on the other side of the river (even if they haven't eaten a cane toad before, they will have eaten related toad species) and the same can be said for cane toad prey species knowing what to expect when they first see a cane toad as they will have encountered related species. If the cane toad is able to survive and establish a population there it won't cause ecosystem disruption and will probably become native to that area.

Also, you missed a point I made with regards to the food/shelter/etc issue; humans and other non-invasive species are driven by these factors to migrate, whereas cane toads didn't "follow the trail of food" to Australia, they were introduced there by humans and of course then found food and shelter later.

I don't understand why you're making a distinction between "natural" and "non-natural" migration in humans. This is not a distinction I have made, based on technology or otherwise. When I refer to "natural" migration I mean the ecological process whereby members of a species move to a different environment. This applies to humans, animals, plants... The introduction of cane toads to Australia, for example, is not the ecological process of migration - cane toads aren't be able to naturally reach Australia, are they? They can't jump that far! The term I would use would be "artificial introduction" or something similar instead of "non-natural migration" because it's easier to separate from the ecological process of migration that occurs naturally over time.

Your last point is just confusing and over-complicating the issue. I understand that the definition of non-native includes that they are introduced to a new ecosystem by deliberate or accidental human activity (which means that they are not introduced through ecological processes). However, all movement of species between ecosystems was through ecological processes before humans started moving them around artificially, so the definition stands - human activity is required for a species to be non-native. I have also shown that the spread of humans across the world was through the ecological process of migration, so humans are essentially a native species wherever they are and as such cannot be defined as non-native, so in turn cannot be defined as invasive.

You're making a lot of philosophical arguments about what being human "means" which is sort of irrelevant to this discussion. You say what matters is that we destroyed lots of ecosystems; OK, sure, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about whether humans fit the definition of an invasive species, and they do not. I can see you want them to be an invasive species on the basis that you're upset about pollution etc but they are not in the scientific sense an invasive species.

EDIT: Added NS quote instead of “inverted commas” quote.

The White Flag of There will be no white flag above my doo

Kayden nation wrote:Why does everyone like my comment?

Been there done that got the T-Shirt



The Rewilding of Ruinenlust

Terrabod wrote:snip

I have to say, your definitions and logic simply escape me on several fronts, lol.

I would say that humans are certainly invasive, meet and exceed the criteria for disruption, have done so for thousands of years in a manner commensurate with our abilities to change and modify the ecosystem, and moreover that species can be situationally described as non-native even if humans aren't a factor. To bring up rats on a mat of plant matter one more time, I don't see how they could be described as native, say, a week or a year after they have landed in a new place. They might become part of the ecosystem and more or less just slip into the balance of things (and usually they don't), but that doesn't make them native there, simply because the agent of their transportation was debris from a hurricane as opposed to a human sailing vessel. In either case, Land X had no rats, and then one day, here come rats! But the operative thing is the methods of their movement, not that they have moved, for some reason. The movement is secondary to the manner of the movement. I don't buy that.

I also find it hard to accept that wherever humans are found, we are native there. So when the British arrived on Bermuda, they were suddenly deemed native because they got there "through the ecological process of migration?" I mean, by that logic, it's impossible definitionally for humans to be anything other than native, which is clearly not the case. Humans aren't native to most of the planet, regardless of whether or not we can in principle successfully live on most of the planet. And it's fine to have such a definition, if one wants, but a system that does not allow for humans to be anything other than native is very limited in its usefulness in describing what our species has done. I guess my point is that acting as though humans somehow don't fit into the terminology on account of our ability to freely choose things as opposed to being driven by deterministic instincts sort of rings hollow, at least to me. And by the same token, the lack of ability to freely choose things on the part of other creatures doesn't mean that any and all non-human induced movements constitute a native presence, even in situations where forces other than the creatures themselves do the moving.

I also just reject the notion that non-nativeness must include human actions. That seems like a very bizarre and arbitrary way to define things, considering that nature itself provides means for occasionally moving species in a way that goes beyond an individual creature's or species' abilities. Of course cane toads can't jump from Timor to the Northern Territory, but it would be odd to say that should their passage have been by floating log, then presto! they are native, whereas if those dastardly humans bring them in a box or on a ship, then nope, they're non-native. It again seems to be trying to build a system of definitions from a priori theory, rather than simply from the effects of what happens. It hardly matters to the rest of the fauna and flora in Australia whether the toads came by log, by humans, by alien teleportation, etc.; rather, it seems that what matters is whether they arrive somewhere or not. To pin non-nativeness down to human agency might be useful for various academic or scientific purposes, but for the new ecosystem in question, it's largely irrelevant. And in any case, to reduce all of the movement of species to either their own means as individual organisms or else by human means entirely overlooks all of the other forces at work: weather events, non-human animals acting as agents of movement for other species (such as bird eating and pooping seeds, or having insect eggs stuck in their feathers), tectonic movement, forces of a changing climate in temperature or precipitation, drying up and formation of new bodies of water, such as in the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, etc. If the binary is between "native status due to movement of a species' own biological means" and "non-native status due exclusively to human actions", then where do all of the other forces of nature fit in?

The distinction between ecosystem change/wobble and ecosystem disruption doesn't seem to fit, either. Granted there is (of course) a massive difference in scale and scope between the first humans in the Americas hunting the mammoths to extinction versus humans in 2020 bulldozing a forest for a strip mall or department warehouse, but for the mammoths, that sure was pretty disruptive, in fact terminally so. What would be the quantitative or qualitative borders of "change" and "disruption"? What about when, say, rats appear on an island (through whatever means, in this case), and they cause the extinction of several species of endemic flightless birds? Does that count as "change" if the birds all go extinct, but the forest remains and there are still a number of species that create a new balance of, say, 100 remaining species after some decades or centuries, whereas if the rats also managed to take down the forest by eating the seeds, and the soil washed away, and within a few centuries the island became a largely barren landscape, that is "disruption"? What exactly constitutes the delineation between those two?

I guess my overall point, going back to one of your earlier posts, is that a set of definitions that would classify humans as both native to wherever they are currently found, and also as not being invasive species despite what we've done everywhere we've gone for ten of thousands of years and right on to the present day is just not that useful of a set of terms in a practical sense. It can have academic value or scientific value in terms of categorization or of narrowing a field of study, but it's devised in such a way to ignore the elephant in the room.

I don't actually "want" or not want humans to be classified as invasive. I'm just saying that based on what we've done in the places that we've gone to, saying that we are somehow both native and not invasive to most of the places on the planet is absurd on the face of it, since we are clearly both. It's not a question being emotionally upset by the impacts of contemporary humans; it's just a realization that wherever we go, we have always greatly modified and changed (or 'disrupted,' once some enigmatic Rubicon has been crossed) the places that we have come to. If a school of thought wishes for that to not be considered as a non-native species arriving in and 'invading' the pre-existing ecosystem, then okay, fine, but then there's a humanity-sized gap in the accounting of the world, and so that set of definitions is ultimately rather weak and blinkered.

Edit: Terrabod, I want to clarify that I don't think that you are misrepresenting or misusing the terms. I simply disagree with them at the outset. I have been reading up on this, which I hadn't done specifically until the original part of this post, and it turns out that the terms themselves suck, to use a highly technical term, lol. The way that the discipline has defined and then construed the terms of the field, they're essentially saying the ecological equivalent of "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal." It's like:

Ecosystem A, before: *dozens of native frogs*
Ecosystem A, later: *cane toad appears*
Ecosystem A, even later on: *native frogs go extinct*
Humans' Verdict: "non-native, invasive species!"

Ecosystem B, before: *forestland with hundreds of species*
Ecosystem B, later: *humans appear*
Ecosystem B, even later on: *forestland has become city, driving nearly al; previous species out of existence*
Humans' Verdict: "we are a native, non-invasive species. We just made bad choices, guys!"

I can imagine that if the Earth had a newspaper, the title would read, "Human-appointed panel of experts: Humans are 'native, non-invasive' species" with the same skepticism that a human newspaper title might read, "PRC-appointed panel of experts: PRC is 'honest, transparent' with international observers."

But in any case, thank you for your words and posts! It's awesome to have discussions about things with people whom you can into the nitty-gritty of aspects of things. It's what I love about this region. There have been many times over the years where something that someone says on here leads to me discover something that I didn't know up to that point, and this is one of those times. So thank you for engaging with me, in other words. :-)

I hadn't realized until today that I have been using the terms "native," "non-native," and "invasive" to describe species in a non-standard, 'wrong' way. That's okay; now I know, and I choose to reject those official definitions of the terms. To the best of my ability, I would still say that humans are not native to most of the range that they currently occupy, and even within that range, we have evolutionarily gotten to the point of being invasive, in the sense that we are have been steadily converting ever-increasing amounts of the natural world into ourselves and our artifacts, and that that makes us the invasive, mostly non-native species par excellence, but also that all of the other invasive, non-native species in a given location that have been brought by humans are also in reality an extension of our own non-nativeness and invasiveness. It's much more internally consistent, at least my mind, to say that just as Asian carp "have no place" in Lake Erie based on the reality of their effects of everything else, so too do humans "have no place" in many parts of the world based on the reality of our effects on everything else. Whether that is accomplished by free choice and by elaborate design or by unthinking responses to natural urges for self-preservation is ultimately immaterial, because the end result of destruction or displacement or species loss is bad in itself. And the reality that "it didn't have to be this way, because we could have made better choices" is certainly true, that doesn't actually change the facts on the ground, such as with the extinction of a given species. So we don't lose anything by saying that just as other species have become invasive because they are in the wrong places and/or doing things that are incongruous with a given pre-existing ecosystem, so too are we in the wrong places and/or doing things that are incongruous with a given pre-existing ecosystem.

Wild stuff...

The Incorporated States of Terrabod

I think I have made my point and don't want to repeat myself any further, so this will probably be the last post about this - I have work to do today that isn't ecology-related haha. Humans are not classified as an invasive species, but defining species as invasive is still useful as it allows us to categorise species like cane toads or purple loosestrife which require human intervention in the areas these species are introduced to in order to prevent ecosystem collapse.

Ruinenlust wrote:To bring up rats on a mat of plant matter one more time, I don't see how they could be described as native, say, a week or a year after they have landed in a new place. They might become part of the ecosystem and more or less just slip into the balance of things (and usually they don't), but that doesn't make them native there, simply because the agent of their transportation was debris from a hurricane as opposed to a human sailing vessel. In either case, Land X had no rats, and then one day, here come rats! But the operative thing is the methods of their movement, not that they have moved, for some reason. The movement is secondary to the manner of the movement. I don't buy that.

Like I have said already regarding cane toads, the natural movement of species to new areas gives local species the time to adjust, so the effect isn't really significant. The artificial introduction by humans means that local species are unprepared and die out in huge numbers, causing their predators to die out etc... until you have major biodiversity decline and collapse.

Ruinenlust wrote:I also find it hard to accept that wherever humans are found, we are native there. So when the British arrived on Bermuda, they were suddenly deemed native because they got there "through the ecological process of migration?" I mean, by that logic, it's impossible definitionally for humans to be anything other than native, which is clearly not the case. Humans aren't native to most of the planet, regardless of whether or not we can in principle successfully live on most of the planet.

But we are, as I have said. By definition we are native to most areas of the planet as we moved their via migration 60,000-15,000 years ago. Humans have an increased ability to migrate compared to other species because of our plasticity - when another species couldn't migrate through a colder area because it would freeze to death, humans just put on clothes. It's still the ecological process of migration, we're just very good at it. Just because humans are more global than other species doesn't mean it's somehow "unnatural".

Ruinenlust wrote:And it's fine to have such a definition, if one wants, but a system that does not allow for humans to be anything other than native is very limited in its usefulness in describing what our species has done.

Just because humans aren't defined as invasive doesn't make the term "invasive species" invalid. If you want to describe "what our species has done", then say they pollute and destroy their environment; this is correct. Don't say they are invasive; this is incorrect. The definition of "invasive species" does not ignore humans - humans just do not fit the definition. "Invasive species" is a very useful term as it allows us to categorise species like cane toads or purple loosestrife which require human intervention to prevent ecosystem disruption; a key aspect of invasive species is that they always require human activity to control the population. Examples of this includes setting traps for invasive species, poisoning invasive species, introducing another invasive species (this is a big risk!) and so on.

Ruinenlust wrote:I also just reject the notion that non-nativeness must include human actions. That seems like a very bizarre and arbitrary way to define things, considering that nature itself provides means for occasionally moving species in a way that goes beyond an individual creature's or species' abilities. Of course cane toads can't jump from Timor to the Northern Territory, but it would be odd to say that should their passage have been by floating log, then presto! they are native, whereas if those dastardly humans bring them in a box or on a ship, then nope, they're non-native. It again seems to be trying to build a system of definitions from a priori theory, rather than simply from the effects of what happens. It hardly matters to the rest of the fauna and flora in Australia whether the toads came by log, by humans, by alien teleportation, etc.; rather, it seems that what matters is whether they arrive somewhere or not. To pin non-nativeness down to human agency might be useful for various academic or scientific purposes, but for the new ecosystem in question, it's largely irrelevant.

You forget that, as I have shown, when a species moves to a new area by migration or other ecological processes the species native to the new area adapt and survive and the population of the new species is effectively controlled. With artificial introduction caused by humans the native species cannot control the population of the invasive species and biodiversity of the ecosystem declines severely - as demonstrated by examples of invasive species. And, as I point out above, without human intervention this will inevitably lead to ecosystem collapse. Thus human intervention is an important distinction to make.

Cane toads do not sail on floating logs to Australia, so this is not a good example of cane toads making it to Australia naturally. A good example would be them moving up through South America and North America, then across the Bering Strait, then down through China and Southeast Asia (which would probably involve the cane toads evolving to swim for lengthy periods between the islands in Southeast Asia), and only then finally making it to Australia. Note that this process would take millions (if not billions) of years to occur naturally, giving the species in Australia plenty of time to get used to seeing cane toads gradually appearing in Australia and to slowly evolve to tolerate the cane toad poison.

"It seems that what matters is whether they arrive somewhere or not." This isn't true. What is important is that if a species moves to a new area naturally the ecosystem will cope, whereas if introduced artificially by humans the ecosystem will not cope. Therefore how a species moves to a new ecosystem is absolutely important, as it is the deciding factor as to whether the new species will integrate with the ecosystem or cause ecosystem collapse.

Ruinenlust wrote:To reduce all of the movement of species to either their own means as individual organisms or else by human means entirely overlooks all of the other forces at work: weather events, non-human animals acting as agents of movement for other species (such as bird eating and pooping seeds, or having insect eggs stuck in their feathers), tectonic movement, forces of a changing climate in temperature or precipitation, drying up and formation of new bodies of water, such as in the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, etc. If the binary is between "native status due to movement of a species' own biological means" and "non-native status due exclusively to human actions", then where do all of the other forces of nature fit in?

I've already covered this; these external factors constitute the natural ecological processes by which species move to new areas. I never limited this to migration, but I did discuss migration in depth compared to the other factors.

Ruinenlust wrote:The distinction between ecosystem change/wobble and ecosystem disruption doesn't seem to fit, either. Granted there is (of course) a massive difference in scale and scope between the first humans in the Americas hunting the mammoths to extinction versus humans in 2020 bulldozing a forest for a strip mall or department warehouse, but for the mammoths, that sure was pretty disruptive, in fact terminally so. What would be the quantitative or qualitative borders of "change" and "disruption"? What about when, say, rats appear on an island (through whatever means, in this case), and they cause the extinction of several species of endemic flightless birds? Does that count as "change" if the birds all go extinct, but the forest remains and there are still a number of species that create a new balance of, say, 100 remaining species after some decades or centuries, whereas if the rats also managed to take down the forest by eating the seeds, and the soil washed away, and within a few centuries the island became a largely barren landscape, that is "disruption"? What exactly constitutes the delineation between those two?

You can't believe that rats would actually do this, so your example is faulty. As I have said multiple times, there is a clear distinction between competition between two native species leading to the decline of one species (which is as much an ecological process as migration or changes in precipitation in an ecosystem etc) and the introduction of an invasive species where there are essentially no native species that can cope with the invader (there is absolutely nothing to keep the population of the invasive species under control and the ecosystem collapses without human intervention). There is obviously a difference between the ecosystem change when a species migrates to a new area through natural processes and when its introduction by humans to a geographically unfamiliar area as a non-native species causes severe ecosystem disruption and collapse - the proof of this is in the examples of invasive species. In terms of natural ecosystem changes, species come and go, including those who cannot survive competition, but the ecosystems always adjust; conversely, ecosystems invaded by non-native species that are brought by humans cannot adjust without human intervention and this leads to eventual ecosystem collapse. You can say that the line between the two is vague, but it is not.

Ruinenlust wrote:I guess my overall point, going back to one of your earlier posts, is that a set of definitions that would classify humans as both native to wherever they are currently found, and also as not being invasive species despite what we've done everywhere we've gone for ten of thousands of years and right on to the present day is just not that useful of a set of terms in a practical sense. It can have academic value or scientific value in terms of categorization or of narrowing a field of study, but it's devised in such a way to ignore the elephant in the room.

Again, you're going back to the idea that humans pollute their environment, so they must be defined as an invasive species. Just because humans aren't classified as an invasive species doesn't make the term "invasive species" invalid or useless. As I have pointed out earlier in this post, it is a very useful term.

Ruinenlust wrote:I don't actually "want" or not want humans to be classified as invasive. I'm just saying that based on what we've done in the places that we've gone to, saying that we are somehow both native and not invasive to most of the places on the planet is absurd on the face of it, since we are clearly both. It's not a question being emotionally upset by the impacts of contemporary humans; it's just a realization that wherever we go, we have always greatly modified and changed (or 'disrupted,' once some enigmatic Rubicon has been crossed) the places that we have come to. If a school of thought wishes for that to not be considered as a non-native species arriving in and 'invading' the pre-existing ecosystem, then okay, fine, but then there's a humanity-sized gap in the accounting of the world, and so that set of definitions is ultimately rather weak and blinkered.

There is no "humanity-sized gap" as you suggest; humans just don't fit the definition of invasive species. Yes, modern humans disrupt the ecosystems they are native to, but they are not invasive species. It's also clear that when humans first migrated to a new area they did not cause disruption beyond what would naturally be expected of a new species; they did not cause the decline or collapse of the ecosystem, an equilibrium was reached. To say that Native Americans disrupted or damaged the ecosystem they arrived in is to deny the fact that they lived there in equilibrium with other species for 12,000-16,000 years without causing the collapse of the ecosystem.

The Rewilding of Ruinenlust

Terrabod wrote:massive snip

Indeed, we can stop here! I don't mean to suck up your time or dominate the RMB any longer with this. I edited my above post as you were posting this, if you don't mind looking at sometime. But in the end, thank you for all of you engagement and everything. In the end, my gripe is with the terms and definitions themselves. Defining things the way that they are, you certainly arrive at these conclusions and observations. I just don't accept the premises, I am finding. And I can only say that my understanding is lacking in one or several ways, which prevents me from seeing things in the same manner.

But thank you again! It's all good. :-)

The Populgoverne of Alcantaria

Who would tell me there could be such interesting discussions at a NationStates region before I joined Forest :0

Shalotte, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 5 othersOuter Bele Levy Epies, Terrabod, New ladavia, Middle Barael, and Julunaphra

«12. . .1,8621,8631,8641,8651,8661,8671,868. . .2,6342,635»