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Editor’s Note: Using very rough numbers, during 2003, human civilization consumed roughly 400 quadrillion BTU’s of energy (affectionately known as “quads” among economists and the like) and they consumed roughly 3,500 cubic kilometers of water. If you define the nations of the “Global North” as all nations where the average GNP per capita is over $15,000 US, you would have found, in the late nineties, 26 countries numbering 781 million persons. These wealthier nations comprised 14% of the world’s population and they consumed over half of the world’s total energy production and about one-quarter of the world’s water withdrawals.

WHAT IF THE CHINESE HAD AN AMERICAN LIFESTYLE?

In the late ’90′s Americans used, on average, 12 times as much energy and 4 times as much water per person, compared to the Chinese during the same period.

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What if China, which alone numbers 1.2 billion citizens, were to join the 781 million people in the Global North? It is certainly plausible that soon another 1.2 billion people in the nations of the “Global South” will attain the lifestyle of the wealthier more economically developed nations, whether or not they live in China.

Using China, however, as an example of the results of projecting her imminent energy and water needs this way are sobering. For each of China’s 1.2 billion inhabitants to consume as much energy and water as someone in America or Western Europe and a few other places, her energy production and water usage would have to increase by 800 percent and 250 percent, respectively. Eight times as many power plants and 2.5 times as many reservoirs and canals. Taking comparisons one step further, if in the late-nineties each Chinese person were to consume as much energy and water as Americans, they would have consumed 12 times as much energy per person, and four times as much water. China will have to build as many power plants and water diversion projects as they possibly can if they wish to develop their economy to the level of the major industrialized nations, and that is exactly what they are doing.

Hopefully China will take the chance to leapfrog the nations that have already attained high per capita wealth, insofar as she can build today’s high-tech cars that don’t pollute, and develop today’s clean sources of energy generation, and harmonious water withdrawals. Hopefully China’s quality of life and standard of living, by leveraging today’s advanced technology as she goes to the next stage of industrialization, will be just as high as can be, but using far less resources and creating far less pollution.

- Ed “Redwood” Ring

China now ranks second globally to

the United States in installed electricity capacity (338 gigawatts in 2000) but its use of electricity is just 38 percent of the world’s average. If by 2050 its population peaks at 1.6 billion and per capita energy use reaches the world average, it will be adding the generating capacity of Canada every four years.

China currently burns more than a
billion tonnes of coal a year to produce 75 percent of its energy. Even the most optimistic assumptions foresee coal consumption growing by about 5 percent a year. The country has unveiled ambitious plans to cut its reliance on coal to about 55 percent of its energy needs. By 2030 coal is expected to provide 62 percent, oil 18 percent, natural gas 8 percent, hydropower 9 percent, and nuclear power 3 percent of China’s energy consumption. By 2050, Chinese planners believe coal consumption should be down to 35 percent of consumption, with oil and natural gas accounting for 40-50 percent and primary energy sources such as nuclear, hydro, solar and wind power accounting for 15-20 percent.

The Mighty Yangtzee River An Ancient Highway Into China’s Heartland

To attain that hydropower goal, and to deliver water to parts of China that are now suffering badly from the effects of centuries of mismanagement of the environment…

China has embarked on its biggest water-diversion plan ever.

On August 14, Premier Wen Jiabao announced that work on the eastern and central canals of a south-north water-diversion project are to start this year.

These canals would carry water from the Three Gorges Dam hundreds of kilometers away.
One of the most important parts of the project is reducing water pollution in northern China, bringing water from the south to what is now a virtual desert. If the project fails, China might well have to move its capital from Beijing, which sits in the middle of a desert. Wen was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying that plans are being made to protect the water from pollution along the diversion.

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The River Dragon Has Come! The Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China’s Yangtze River and Its People

Eight projects are soon to be initiated, including a canal from Shijiazhuang in Hebei province to Tuancheng Lake in Beijing, the reinforcement of the dam of Danjiangkou Reservoir, a tunnel under the Yellow River, which is now dry 1,000km from its mouth, and construction of sewage-treatment plants in cities along the eastern canal. Wen said that by 2008, 295 water-pollution control projects will have been built along the east canal, one of three south-to-north water-diversion canals running about 1,300km across the eastern, middle and western parts of the country.

State Environmental Protection Administration

The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) acknowledged that water pollution along the east canal is still worrisome. All seven spots that are monitored by SEPA were reported to be polluted in varying degrees. New rules to charge enterprises and residents for disposing of wastewater will also be adopted. On the east canal alone, 24 billion yuan (US$2.9 billion) will be invested in reducing pollution and protecting the environment, one-third of the budget for the canal.

The south-to-north water-diversion project formally started last December and aims to divert 44.8 billion cubic meters of water from the Yangtze to the north, Wen said. Emergency water supply to Beijing, Tianjin and north Hebei province will be a priority of the project, he said.

China is thus choosing between environmental hazard in its waters and environmental hazard in its air. The Worldwatch Institute, an international environmental watchdog, estimates that China is poised to overtake the United States as the world’s largest source of air pollution within 10 years. Less than 20 percent of the 1.4 billion tonnes of coal that China mined in 1996 (when coal output peaked) was washed, so that 23.7 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide was discharged into the air that year.

China’s Energy Consumption Is Just Beginning

In 1999, only a third of China’s 338 monitored cities were in compliance with the nation’s ambient-air-quality criteria – which are far lower than international standards. Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, where a quarter of the country’s coal is mined, has the worst air-pollution record of any city in the world, with particulate concentrations often seven times World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

World Health Organization

A World Bank report estimates that air pollution costs the Chinese economy $25 billion a year in health expenditure and lost labor productivity alone. As many as 700,000 premature deaths per year are attributed just to indoor air pollution from burning coal for heating and cooking. Throughout China, respiratory diseases are blamed for a quarter of all early deaths, a figure that has increased by nearly 25 percent over the past decade. Then there are the 10,000 miners who lose their lives each year, largely from coal-face accidents. Moreover, acid rain affects 40 percent of China. In Chongqing, which burns 15 million tonnes of coal each year, acid rain is so severe that bus signs have to be changed every few years. The municipal government says acid rain costs 1.6 billion yuan a year.

Given this story, anything that China does to cut its reliance on coal is to be welcomed. Beijing plans to ban production of coal containing more than 3 percent sulfur by the end of 2005. Moreover, two transcontinental gas pipelines and half a dozen smaller ones are being built that would supply the big cities with clean energy for heating and cooking. In many cities such as Beijing and Taiyuan, people are already installing new gas-fired boilers to replace coal-fired ones. China is also promising to clean up its smokestacks and halve sulfur-dioxide emissions by 2010.

Flag of China

The continuing reliance on old and inefficient industrial technology means that China must burn 50 million tonnes of coal more than a developed country for the same amount of energy. Much of the bill of $46 billion is being footed by Japan, which suffers from Shanxi air pollution. Hitachi is even providing smokestack scrubbers to Shanxi plants. But despite these attempts to clean it up and reduce dependence on it, coal will remain central to fulifilling China’s energy.

By 2030 oil is scheduled to supply 18 percent of China’s needs – making it as important a consumer of Middle Eastern oil as Japan or the United States – yet coal consumption will remain the most pressing issue.

By 2020, China’s coal-fired generating plants will alone be emitting each 10.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, 152,000 tonnes of sulfur dioxide and nearly 500,000 tonnes of dust and fly ash. So, on the face of it, the Three Gorges Dam and all the other hydropower schemes offer big benefits, which contribute 20 percent of China’s electricity consumption from non-polluting energy that is vastly preferable to coal. Even so, the giant dams and reservoirs China is building at such a furious rate remain a poor investment and should be discouraged, because their construction entails big hidden human and environmental costs.

THE YANGTZEE RIVER & TRIBUTARIES

China intends to build dams and canals to divert hundreds of cubic kilometers of water per year from the Yangtzee basin to the arid north of their country.

The past 50 years of water conservancy has been achieved at a gigantic cost in human suffering, which is little known even within China. By 1982 China had forcibly evicted 10.2 million people to make way for 70,000 dams and 80,000 reservoirs; even this may be an underestimate. In the past 20 years, an additional 3 million people have moved, bringing the total to 13 million.

Resettlement for dam building is, of course, only one part of a bigger story of forced movement. In the Mao Zedong era, 170 million people were shifted around the country. Soldiers, prisoners, Red Guards or miners were sent into hitherto remote areas such as the forests of Yunnan or the mountains and valleys of former Manchuria. More than 20 million “educated youth” were sent from the cities into the countryside. Another 16 million were sent into the interior to build Mao’s “Third Line”, a military-industrial complex scattered in remote locations to enable his regime to survive a Soviet nuclear attack and invasion.

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China: The RaceTo Market

Since 1949, 45 million people have been moved to make way for all kinds of infrastructure projects. One consequence of these population movements is a form of colonization. Areas that were once the domain of hunters and herdsmen have been transformed into densely occupied settlements. The Sanjiang Plain in Heilongjiang province, for instance, in the far north was drained to create farmland that now supports 8 million people.

About the Author:
Gordon Feller is the CEO of Urban Age Institute (www.UrbanAge.org). During the past twenty years he has authored more than 500 magazine articles, journal articles or newspaper articles on the profound changes underway in politics, economics, and ecology – with a special emphasis on sustainable development. Gordon is the editor of Urban Age Magazine, a unique quarterly which serves as a global resource and which was founded in 1990. He can be reached at GordonFeller@UrbanAge.org and he is available for speaking to your organization about the issues raised in this and his other numerous articles published in EcoWorld.

Vandana Shiva curriculum vitae

Q: Time Magazine has called you a hero who is fighting to preserve agricultural diversity. Michael Fumento, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute for Biotechnology wrote in the National Review: “If developing world farmers took her one-tenth as seriously as do Western activists, her proclamations would lead inexorably to massive famine. She was born into wealth and her soft palms have never worked a plow. Hunger to her is something she reads about in the newspapers.” Who is Vandana Shiva really?

It’s interesting how people whom I have never met…

…and who know nothing about me can create images that totally fly off the face of reality. I grew up on a farm with my mother. She was highly educated, but she chose to be a farmer, because she believed that the highest state of human evolution is to be a peasant.

I don’t say this as a prescription to someone else. I actually spend most of my time on a farm I started. I find no work as meaningful as working with the soil. I defend the farmers’ dignity and their right to survival, because for me peasants are the most creative and productive individuals on this planet not the people who gamble on Wall Street and make billions overnight. I think the real wealth is created on the land by people who soil their hands, by people who work in cooperation with nature and give us the nourishment we need as humans.

Some of these corporate spokesmen would like humanity to believe that genetic engineering, nano-technologies and chemicals can replace human creativity and human labor. But most people are fed up of the bad food they are being forced to eat.

Poor people are fed up of being made scapegoats for corporate schemes to make super profits by squeezing money out of peasants for seed royalties and water. People can see the game. Ultimately, the issue is corporate control over the means of life versus the celebration of a partnership between people and the Earth.

Soil is my teacher, seeds are my teacher, nature is my teacher. So I don’t have to worry about these accusations. I spend a tiny part of my life and my work in solidarity. But if I were always in the West, I would have never done the work which makes the guy you mentioned so panicky.

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Water Wars Privatization, Pollution & Profit by Vandana Shiva

Q: In your book Water Wars you argue that wars are already being fought over water. Where is this happening and why?

When water wars are referred to, people usually imagine militaristic attacks between countries, but the water wars that are spreading around the world are, at one level, paradigm wars. They are about two ways of looking at the world.

In one view, water is nature’s gift, and we need to maintain its flow as a gift. Even now, if you come to India on a hot day, you will see people put out water in street corners. It’s called the gift of water or the temple of water. Anyone who’s thirsty can go there and drink. Instead of accumulating wealth, these people are accumulating the good act of giving and meeting other people’s needs for basic survival.

The other view has it that water can be appropriated and sold to make huge profits or wasted.

In the summer of 2002, 1,300 people died of the heat in India. But heat alone does not kill. Heat transformed into dehydration is what becomes a killer. Water is becoming more and more scarce because there are swimming pools and golf courses, wasteful crops, such as sugar cane, green revolution paddies, hybrid and GM cotton, where there is not enough water to support all these non-sustainable systems. And that scarcity is leading to conflicts within families, between men and women, within communities.

During the summer of 2002 people were killed in water fights in the country. Water riots happened every second week in the capital of India. So the water wars are very real, they are actually annihilating life. Some of these fights transform into regional conflicts, which take on the color of chauvinism, but they are really about water, as was the conflict in Punjab, where thirty people were killed over a canal being taken away from Punjab to another state.

Hundreds of people lost their lives in fights over the Kaveri water, fights created by the promotion of non-sustainable industrial agriculture rather than the sustainable, prudent agriculture that Kaveri used to have. Nature has given enough water for each ecosystem to support itself, if water is conserved. When we start to go against that, water wars are unleashed. Right now, the most important water war has been declared by a handful of corporations against the entire planet, on all the people.

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Stolen Harvest The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply by Vandana Shiva

Q: According to your book Stolen Harvest, “a hijacking of the global food supply” is taking place at the same time. Who is stealing the harvest from whom? And how?

Food is produced by farmers, most of whom in the Third World happen to be women. In India, about 60% of the farming work is done by women. They are the producers of the harvest. Their harvest is being stolen through a trade mechanism. This allows corporations which don’t grow food and don’t work the land, to make super profits at the cost of farmers and to capture markets around the world.

The corporations are enabled to do this through trade rules, through the agriculture agreement of the World Trade Organization, through so-called free trade, which is actually forced trade.

And another means for stealing the harvest from the people and from nature is this amazing invention of calling life itself an invention, the patenting of life. Suddenly, a harvest that originates from nature and from those who have evolved seeds, bred seeds and grown the crop, becomes property of a corporation. And the small farmers are treated as thieves when they save part of the harvest of their own crop for growing the next year’s crop.

Corporations like Monsanto declare people like Percy Smitheson, the Canadian farmer, a thief, after they polluted his field through genetically modified crops. So, the stolen harvest is really the grandest of thefts ever designed, and it’s a theft of the very basis of life. It’s a theft of the food chain, from nature and from those who are the actual producers of food, by those who trade in food and monopolize seed.

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Protect or Plunder Understanding Intellectual Property Rights by Vandana Shiva

Q: According to many of these corporations, by developing patented GM crops, they are helping reduce hunger in the world. What do you think about this?

That is the rhetoric. That’s also Mr. Bush’s argument for the new case he started against Europe in the WTO. He argued that, by not eating GM foods, Europeans are somehow creating hunger in the South. Unfortunately, no lie is bigger than the fact that genetic engineering will be a solution to hunger.

In fact, it’s becoming a cause for hunger, it’s becoming the cause for poverty. In India, since globalization introduced new rules for the seed sector, farmers are having to pay so much for totally unreliable seed, which needs huge amounts of chemicals.

They’re getting into debt, they’re spending a hundred thousand rupees per acre for production and earning ten thousand rupees at the end of the year. They get into ninety thousand rupees of debt every year. Twenty thousand farmers have committed suicide as a result of this. The genetic engineered crops themselves are actually not performing because they have been engineered to use more chemicals, not to produce more yields. They have what is called a yield drag.

When they brought their BT cotton to India, Monsanto announced that this genetically engineered cotton would double the yield, and bring a doubling of incomes. Well, the first year of cultivation showed that this was totally false. There was a 90% decline of yields and increase of farm losses of rupees 6 to 7,000 per acre. Monsanto has just been banned from expanding its cultivation in India for the extremely bad performance of its seed.

In the third world Monsanto is causing hunger, suicides and poverty. In fact, genetic engineering is not affordable in India. Our peasants are poor, and we can’t afford to play the profit-making games of corporations at the cost of polluting nature and biodiversity and impoverishing already marginalized farmers.

Q: Do you think that this kind of development has a negative impact on the so-called Third World countries only? Does it affect people in Europe and the United States, also?

Most Member Countries of the “Global South” are in the Tropics

If globalization was only affecting the South, we would not have had the huge turnout of people at the WTO meeting in Seattle. We would not have seen Genoa happen and the sacrifices made by innocent citizens in those protests, we would not have seen Evian. People in the North, in the more affluent parts of the world are also getting affected. They’re getting affected in two ways. First of all, the young are beginning to see that in this world they don’t have the kind of future they want. They probably don’t have a future at all. Look at America, the so-called richest country. It cannot place its graduates. They can’t find jobs.
University enrolment in the information technology sector, which was supposed to be the miracle sector, dropped to one third, because there are no jobs.

People can see that in this system corporations can control the economy, but really generate jobs for only 2% of the world’s population. And 98% will lose their livelihoods. This will definitely happen first in the South, creating more misery there. But it is happening in the North, also.

The GATS is leading to the privatization of education, health, water and energy. This denies the access to fundamental rights and basic needs. People can see this. The wonderful thing is that the movements against globalization are movements of solidarity. For the first time, we have gone beyond selfish movements. It is no longer my cause, my need today and I can let the rest go to hell.

There is a clear recognition that this is an issue of everyone’s interest. Water privatization has to be fought for all people on the Earth. GMO’s are being resisted, both in the North and the South. Corporations in agriculture are being fought in the North and the South. In fact, globalization has created an objective situation in which, for the first time, citizens in the North and South have one common agenda for creating alternative systems.

Earthworms: The Key to Healthy Soil

Q: In your book Stolen Harvest you also mention that earthworms are stolen their food. Why is that a problem for us?

Darwin has been quoted so much for talking about the competition between species and the struggle for survival, but Darwin’s more important contribution was a book on the earthworm. In that book, he wrote that the most significant species on the planet is the earthworm, because it is the most efficient converter of waste into fertility.

All systems of modern industrial farming, whether they be the Green Revolution, chemical agriculture or genetic engineering, assume that the millions of living beings which live in the soil and make it fertile can be killed. They assume that fertility will come out of explosive factories which make nitrogen fertilizers and a handful of other synthetic chemicals. But those synthetic chemicals rob the earthworms of their food, and in fact they create warfare in the soil, though we can’t see it.

The killing of the earthworms is the reason why our soils are getting desertified, production is dropping, our farming systems become vulnerable to disease, pests and environmental stress increase. We need the earthworm for food security, our food security.

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BioPiracy The Plunder of Nature & Knowledge by Vandana Shiva

Q: So it’s basically about respect for the soil and the Earth. In your book Staying alive, you introduced the term maldevelopment, referring to a “masculine mode of knowing”, or a patriarchal mode of development, which harms both women and the Earth. Why do you make a connection between women and ecological issues?

First of all I’d like to clarify that patriarchy is a system of male domination, but it dehumanizes the men as much as the women, and it robs from most men as much power as it robs from the Earth and from women.

The masculine mode of thinking, of doing science, of defining the economy is a mode that gains power for those who control wealth and property through controlling capital.

The reason women and nature are linked is because they are the original sources of creativity. Maldevelopment defines them into passivity. In fact the very word matter comes from mother, but matter today is the inert object around us, it’s that which provides raw material. Matter has lost its creative activity. Soil is mere matter, it’s mere container. Water is purely matter, it doesn’t have any life-nourishing force, therefore it can be commoditized.

The blindness to the creativity of nature and women is the source of power in patriarchal structure and patriarchal organization. It’s a very convenient source of power, because it allows destruction to be defined as the creation of wealth. In fact, after the war against Iraq, the general who was put in charge of reconstruction used a phrase: we are giving birth to a new Iraq. Now, after you’ve devastated a country, you’ve bombed it out, you see that phenomenon as a birthing process. And in my mind I said, generals don’t give birth and life is not born through bombs. But this illusion allows destruction to be interpreted as creation. And that is the ultimate partnership.

The partnership of ecology and feminism is a partnership of liberation. It’s not a partnership of essentially biological determinism, very far from it. It is a political association. It’s a political association that sees that systems that treat nature as merely raw material also treat women as purely suppliers of labor. And all our indicators of measurements of growth and prosperity are gained at the cost of women and nature. In India it translates into the most horrendous and the most violent systems.

Women are walking longer miles for water. Women are having to go into more and more hazardous work. But the worst form of violence we have seen emerge in the last decade is female feticide. This annihilating phenomenon is linked very intimately to globalization. It began to happen in the regions with the highest growth rates, the highest integration into commerce, the highest commoditization of culture.

Q: Isn’t that part of an Indian tradition?

Traditional patriarchy has a male bias and sons are preferred. But until a decade ago, baby girls weren’t killed. The female fetus wasn’t annihilated. The preference for the male child has been transformed into an annihilation of the female fetus by a combination and convergence of traditional patriarchy with its biases and the global capitalist patriarchy with its culture of commoditazion, which translates into a further devaluation of the female life.

Diverse Women for Diversity

Q: You have created a movement called Diverse Women for Diversity with several other women. What kind of world do these women want?

Very clearly a very diverse world. Our movement, Diverse Women for Diversity, is really a triple response. It grew out of defending biological diversity. It grew out of a group of women who were fighting genetic engineering, the biotech giants and the seed monopolies. We were a bunch of scientists, primarily, but we also recognized that we were all from different cultures. While we all wanted to fight monopoly, each of us wanted to defend our way of speaking, our way of eating, our way of dressing, everything that makes us what we are. But it was also a response to the dominant mode.

When India and Pakistan were competing with nuclear tests, and India called its nuclear bomb the Hindu bomb, while Pakistan called its bomb the Islamic bomb, I said: this is the perfect example of diverse men for monoculture. They’re fighting each other around religion and fundamentalism, but they both want the same bomb, the same destruction. For us, diversity is liberation. For us, diversity is precisely the solution and not the problem.

Navdanya

Q: You have also started a movement called Navdanaya, the 9 seeds. In one of your books you mentioned that seeds are sacred for Indian farmers. Is Navdanya connected to this in any way? Do you think that the industrialized world lacks a spiritual approach?

Industrialization is desacralization. Industrialization is a project of hubris which basically assumes that there is nothing like life processes, nature doesn’t have its self-organizing capacities, people don’t have their self-organizing capacities, women have no potential, they are merely the second sex, Third World peasants have no brains, therefore intellectual properties are in the industrialized North. All of these arrogant assumptions come out of a denial of reverence for life and the lack of recognition of that which makes life possible.

All societies throughout history have organized themselves around the maintenance of life and the renewal of life. And systems that are centered on that define spirituality in different ways. However, spirituality is a link. It is about connection. Spirituality is merely the recognition that everything is related. It is what the indigenous Americans call being part of the web of life.

Now, the denial of being part of the web of life is the desacralization that is at the heart of the project of industrialization. It is at the heart of trying to genetically engineer life on Earth, including humans through the new nano-technologies.

Bija Vidyapeeth

Q: You have even started your own college, it’s called Bija Vidyapeeth. What kind of education does it provide?

Bija Vidyapeeth translates into the school of the seed. And it’s basically about living on Earth. We call it education for Earth citizenship. I started it after September 11, because I could see that now the formal education is going to be about hatred, animosity and annihilation, and we need education for love, for compassion, for sustainability and for justice. In the School of the Seed we do short courses, to learn from the seed how to renew ourselves.

Paolo Scopacasa conducted this interview in the summer of 2003 in Milan, Italy. The interview was originally aired on Italian radio.

The Brown Tree Snake Conquerer of Guam photo: USGS

In the early 1940′s,

a U.S cargo ship carried a stowaway
that would later wreak havoc on the island of Guam. This stowaway came in the form of a Brown Tree Snake (Boiga irregularis) that sought shelter in the ample nooks and crannies available in a passing ship’s cargo area. After a few days at sea, the cargo doors were opened and the Brown Tree Snake was the first of its species to slide onto Guam’s beaches and into its forests. There may have been more than one snake on the ship, or it may have been a pregnant female seeking shelter, in any case, the Brown Tree Snake population exploded almost immediately. NASA’s Invasive Species Forecasting System has calculated that Guam currently boasts 13,000 Snakes per square mile.

Guam’s native birds had never encountered such a predator before. They showed little fear of the Brown Snakes and their stubby wings were almost useless. There had never been a predator to fly away from in the past and so they had lost this ability. The Snake made an easy meal of these clueless birds and has eliminated almost all of Guam’s native bird species since its arrival. The Brown Tree Snake is responsible for exterminating “10 of 13 native bird species, 6 of 12 native lizard species, and 2 of 3 bat species on the island of Guam (www.invasivespecies.gov).”

As seen by the Brown Tree Snake, invasive species pose a huge threat to biodiversity. According to Rosie Woodroffe, conservation biologist and Professor at the University of California at Davis, “globally, invasive species are generally the third most threatening thing to native animals. When it comes to island species and fish it could be the worst threat out there.”

When introduced plants or animals establish themselves in a new environment, they prey on native species, compete with them for food, and take over the new habitat. In short, these uninvited guests take over native species’ homes by eating them up or kicking them out.

But not every species that gets introduced into a new environment will survive there. “A lot of species that are introduced don’t often make it. Invasive species are the ones that manage to take off. THAT is what makes an invasive species what it is,” explains Woodroffe.

“Invasive species are a huge problem,” says Allen Fish, Raptor Biologist at the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory in San Francisco. “Habitats and ecosystems have evolved to be complex and intertwined. They have an intelligence that is far beyond any machinery. So at the start, we know damned little about native ecosystems, and then we disrupt these systems by tossing in non-native plants or animals. It’s not only irresponsible, but it also undermines the way the habitats work.”

Allen has studied various California ecosystems and its native inhabitants for over 20 years. Yet there is still much to learn. “The real catastrophe now is that we are phenomenally naive about native ecosystems,” he says with genuine regret, “they’ve evolved over the past millions of years; we have barely begun understanding them.”

The Brown Tree Snake was introduced by accident, but humans often intentionally translocate animals or plants from one side of the world to the other for a variety of reasons. Non-native species are sometimes introduced to an area as biological controls on other ‘pests’. Even though these projects seem harmless enough, they can have disastrous consequences if the introduced population gets out of hand.

The Cane Toad – A Most Unwelcome Guest in Queensland, Australia photo: Florida Integrated Science Center, Gainesville, Florida

The Cane Toad (Bufo marinus or Marine Toad) is a prime example of this kind of endeavor gone horribly wrong. This Toad is the most introduced amphibian in the world and established populations are almost impossible to eliminate.

Cane Toads are known to have a voracious appetite. They consume everything they can fit into their gaping mouths; from plants and insects to frogs and even other Cane Toads! So it was obvious to think that they would rid Australian farmers of the annoying sugarcane beetles that plagued their crops.

In 1930′s, around 3000 Cane Toads were released near Queensland farms to make a quick meal of the beetles there. However, the humungous Toads, not being able to jump or climb very high, could not reach the insects lurking in the canes and quickly spread out to find other food sources. Needless to say, this project was a dismal failure.

Cane Toads not only consume everything in sight, but they also poison the larger predators that attempts to eat the Toads. In fact, the Cane Toad is so poisonous that snakes have been found dead with the Cane Toad halfway in their mouths, dying before they could get some satisfaction from swallowing the amphibian. These Toads are so toxic that a Cane Toad can kill an animal as large as a crocodile!

Fast and prolific reproduction is another trademark of a truly invasive species and Cane Toads breed like flies. A single pair can lay thirty-thousand eggs during the wet season. Even the seemingly harmless eggs devastate native animal populations; Cane Toad eggs are poisonous and often fatal when ingested.

It hardly seems fair to the animals that have to share their habitats with the Toad. How can they compete with, much less survive, an animal like that? There are hundreds of thousands of Cane Toads in Australia now, and they are rapidly becoming the most numerous animal on the continent.

European Starling University Michigan Museum of Zoology

Another creature that has made itself very comfortable outside its historical range is the European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris). Starlings were released in the U.S in the late 1800′s. Rosie Woodroffe knows the story behind the introductions only too well: “An eccentric fan of Shakespeare decided he wanted to hear every species mentioned in Shakespeare’s work sing in Central Park every day. There are a lot of birds mentioned [by Shakespeare] but most of the birds did not make it. The only two that did are the European Starling and European House Sparrow.”

There are millions of European Starlings in the States now. Many raptors and other birds have a hard time competing with the introduced Starlings for nest sites. As a raptor biologist, Allen Fish knows how Starlings can reduce falcon and owl populations. “They are aggressive and will grab nesting-cavities formerly used by woodpeckers, small owls or even kestrels,” he says, “Starlings are very good at taking nests and kicking out the native birds in there. They are everywhere now. I have seen flocks of hundreds of thousands of them passing overhead. It’s quite a display.” With flocks this size, starlings are also a major agricultural pest. It is not just the native bird community that suffers, but farmers also lose millions of dollars annually to invasive birds.

Some of today’s invasive species are feral pets. Humans have the animal’s best interest at heart, but they don’t fully realize the consequences of releasing non-natives into a new environment. Feral cats, for example, have been linked to declines in species numbers and extinctions, especially on islands. This is not surprising when the average cat can kill at least one bird a day.

There are many complicated issues associated with non-native species introductions. Some invasive species may take over populations by hybridizing with them. This might seem like a strange behavior, but it is not a rare occurrence. Different species of birds have been known to reproduce and the aggressive African bee is famous for hybridizing with honey bees.

Dr. Brad Shaffer, evolutionary biologist and ecologist at the University of California Davis, has devoted many hours of research to the endangered California Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma californiense). After 5 million years of independent evolution, Barred Tiger Salamanders (Ambystoma mavortium) were introduced into California Tiger Salamanders habitats. Dr. Shaffer explains that “introduced, non-native tiger salamanders hybridize with native, endangered California Tiger Salamanders. The problem is listed as one of the major threats to California Tiger Salamanders, and is a really serious issue. If we have a hybrid population, what is it? Is it the native species? Is it the invasive exotic? Should we eradicate those populations and consider it good conservation, or should we recognize that it has some native genes, and therefore protect it? These are deep, complex issues that have never been adequately addressed.”

Many invasive plants and animals have done so well in their new homes that we have forgotten that they really are not native to the area. We imagine most of the trees and animals we see to have always been there. However, an amazing amount of wildlife has spread with human help. Many people automatically assume that large grey pigeons have always been found in U.S. cities. This is not the case. “Pigeons are formally called ‘Rock Doves’ and they nested on cliff sides in Europe and Great Brittan,” says Allen Fish, “but between captive-breeding and racing pigeons, they are found everywhere now”

The world has never been smaller: Dozens of ships cross oceans daily, cars and trucks roll from one end of the country to the other and hundreds of planes fly off to unload passengers in every corner of the world. Any of these vehicles could also carry unwelcome guests.

In the past few years, mosquitoes laden with the West Nile virus have hitched a ride on planes, pipe clogging zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) have stuck in ships crossing the Atlantic, fast growing seeds have found their way into traveling tourists’ pockets and voracious Cane Toads have hidden in cars driving through Australia.

“There are multiple reasons for non-native species introductions,” says Rosie Woodroffe, “Many are accidental introductions like rats; some are deliberately introduced as bio-controls [like the Cane Toad]; and some are introduced for food. Islands were stocked with livestock like pigs and goats and passing ships,so passing ships could stop there to stock up on food in the past. There are also some perverse reasons: Bison were placed on Catalina Island for the filming of the movie ‘The Vanishing American’ in the 1920s. Many of these introduced animals are harming the habitats they share with native wildlife.”

However, not all invasive species should have a bad reputation. Thousands of invasive species-from diseases to plants to insects and vertebrates-enter the U.S annually. But not all of these effect the environment negatively. Some introduced species are even helpful.

The Giant Salvinia Invaders of Mid-Atlantic U.S. photo: Fish & Wildlife Service

Some non-native species are used to combat other invasives. Non-native weevils (Cyrtobagous salviniae) for example, have been used to combat the highly aggressive Giant Salvinia plant (Salvinia molesta). The Giant Salvinia plant is invasive to many regions of the world and rapidly grows over lakes or ponds causing havoc for the organisms that make these waterbodies their home. Giant Salvinia forms thick mats over the water’s surface which cuts off light for any other aquatic plants, drastically reduces oxygen circulation and basically causes the water to stagnate.

Australia Dept. of Environment & Heritage

Anne Ferguson, of Australia’s Department of the Environment and Heritage, says that “Salvinia treatment [in Australia's Kakadu National Park] constitutes using the biological control weevil. This is very effective on some billabongs. Staff will move weevils between infested areas and if populations need to be reestablished.” Amazingly, the tiny weevil is capable of consuming the Salvinia plant and is more effective that any human machinery could ever be.

Invasives can also be another food source for native species. “Would I want to remove pigeons from San Francisco?” Allen Fish asks rhetorically. “Pigeons are abundant and an easy meal for many bird eating raptors like the Peregrine Falcon. Removing pigeons would remove a major food source.” Invasive species do occasionally have a positive impact on native populations.

Another point to consider is that animal invasions and extinctions are natural process-when humans don’t lend a hand. “All species would have been invasive at some point,” explains Rosie Woodroffe, “In evolutionary history, plants and animals found their way onto islands and evolved into new species. During the ‘Great American Interchange’, [which occurred when the South and North American continents reconnected] numerous animals traveled from one end of the Americas to the other. Translocation can be a natural process.” In fact, many of the mammals in South America are of northern origin.

Some ecologists believe that invasives promote adaptive behaviors in native species which, in the end, will result in a stronger native population. Perhaps, kestrels and spotted owls will eventually learn to avoid starling attacks. Certain crows have learned to eat only the least poisonous parts of the Cane Toad. Maybe Australian species may learn to do the same. Invasive diseases might also strengthen a population in the long run after the animals’ tolerance for the illness increases. Rosie Woodroffe, however, does not believe that invasive species play a large role in adaptive behaviors. “Invasives species are not a fuel for evolution,” she says, “many species are facing so much environmental changes already, it’s not like they aren’t being challenged as it is. It is difficult to see any benefits associated with [invasives like] the Cane Toad or European Starling.” It is also important to note that many species are killed off by invasives before they have a chance to even learn any behaviors that might benefit them later on.

Overall, it seems that non-native species do more harm than good. With human population at an all time high, and with native habitats shrinking rapidly, native species already have enough to deal with. It is obvious that invasive species are a major concern for ecologists. “Are we going to end up in a world where all we have are species with general habitat requirements while other animals like the Spotted Owl [which have specific environmental requirements] disappear?” Allen Fish asks.

“Whether we like it or not, invasives are here now,” says Fish. Most invasives are here to stay. There is no way of eradicating them without harming the natives as well. However, efforts must be made to avoid non-native species introductions in the future. Many of the world’s ecosystems are still at risk of being overrun with non-native species.

It is a depressing thought, but nearly all environmental catastrophes involving invasive species can be linked to people. It is impossible to completely eliminate invasives from expanding and it would be delusional to assume that all extinctions can be stopped, but attempts must be made to reduce these incidences. This is especially true when the release of an invasive species is easily preventable. Australia would have a much easier time protecting its biodiversity if the Cane Toad had never been released and the introduction of Bison to Catalina Island as movie props is simply irresponsible. Both of these introductions could have been prevented.

There are many incentives for reducing invasive species numbers. They pose huge economic and health concerns for humans. Introduced diseases such as malaria and the West Nile virus can take hundreds of lives and invasive agriculture pests cause huge damages to crops. NASA claims that “The cost to the U.S. economy to monitor, contain, and control these [introduced] species is estimated at $100-200 billion per year–an annual cost greater than that for all natural disasters combined.”

Many species are still being discovered. It would be a great loss to lose species we know little nothing about. Guam has lost much of its wildlife to the Brown Tree Snake and the forests which were once full of life are now silent. Who knows whether an undiscovered bird or mammal species has been lost to the snake as well? It is important to protect the species we have left, especially when there is still so much to learn about them. The quality of our lives is dependant on the quality of our environment.

It is impossible to describe all invasive species in a short article. There are thousands of invasives out there, all with interesting histories and environmental effects. Websites like www.InvasiveSpecies.gov have a huge list of invasive species profiles and provide a greater insight to the enormous numbers of invasive species found in various regions of the world.

For further reading:

Invasive species overview:

http://www.invasivespecies.gov/

Invasive Species Figures and Facts:

http://www.earth.nasa.gov/eseapps/theme10.htm

Cane Toads:

http://www.amonline.net.au/factsheets/canetoad.htm

Waterbodies:

http://www.noaa.gov/

Environmentalists have been around a long time in America.

The Audubon Society, John Muir, even Teddy Roosevelt, but the environmental movement really didn’t take off until 1962 when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. At that time, U.S. farmers were dumping around 80,000 tons of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (mercifully known as DDT) a year on every poor insect existing, good or bad. It was the “miracle” insecticide, just as the relatively new antibiotic, penicillin, was called a miracle drug (which we now know was also WAY overused).
The main problem with DDT is that it takes years for it to chemically break down, so that much of the runoff from the sites that were sprayed with those 80,000 tons of DDT found its way into streams, rivers, and ultimately the oceans and persisted there. It builds up in fatty tissues of all animals, including humans.

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Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Ms. Carson alleged that DDT was killing off all kinds of birds, especially seabirds, by causing eggshell thinning (thus the title of the book), and that it was a potent carcinogen in humans. She went on to predict that a cancer epidemic would hit practically 100% of the human population (probably based on a 1961 epidemic of liver cancer in trout that was later found to be caused by aflatoxin, a VERY potent NATURAL fungal toxin and carcinogen).

In fact, DDT is not now and never was a carcinogen in humans, or even a cancer prone lab rat carcinogen. In contrast to its effect on bugs, it is remarkably non-toxic in humans, at least acutely. You can even drink the stuff and suffer no ill effects (no thanks anyway). Its indiscriminate spraying also, as a side effect, eliminated malaria in the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency

So what happened? After considering 7 months of court testimony in 1971, then EPA administer William Ruckelshaus banned the use of DDT in the U.S. This in spite of the fact that the presiding judge in the hearings, after hearing all the arguments, concluded that DDT was not a hazard to humans, and probably wasn’t responsible for egg shell thinning in birds either. Not coincidently, Mr. Ruckelshaus was an activist member of the Environmental Defense Fund.

I personally believe that the use of DDT should have been severely restricted, given the fact that long term effects on the environment were not known, and it was being used so indiscriminately. Ms. Carson’s book, although totally alarmist and unscientific, at least made us pause and consider the possible ill effects of overuse of any chemical that builds up in the environment. It also provoked chemical companies to develop more environmentally friendly pesticides that do not persist in the environment.

World Wildlife Fund

So why is DDT still the poster child (along with dioxin) for “all chemicals of any kind are bad” environmental groups? For example, the World Wildlife Fund wants to ban its use altogether, anywhere.

My own feeling is that environmentalism is a religion for many zealous members of various radical groups. They don’t want to be confused with scientific evidence that may contradict their beliefs. But in the case of DDT, there is a compelling reason to resume or continue its use (it is still used in about 24 countries) in parts of the world where malaria is endemic, regardless of one’s faith.

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 25 million lives were saved between 1940 and 1973 by its use (overuse, to be sure). They now advocate its LIMITED use for malaria control in poor countries when adequate treatments are not available, such as sub Saharan Africa.

It is about 75% less expensive than pyrethroids, and persists much longer and kills the mosquitoes far more efficiently. How to use it? Spray the mosquito netting for beds and the inside walls of houses every six months. It will kill the bugs if they land on the wall, but even better, it is a very efficient repellant. Mosquitoes fly in, then fly out without biting. Even the venerable and liberal New York Times calls for its use, estimating that malaria now kills about 1 in 20 African children each year.

Let’s consider a great example of my point. For 50 years, South Africa used DDT to control its malaria problem, but in 1996 it stopped using it because it was found in the breast milk of mothers and there was great international pressure to ban its use. In no time at all, the rate of malaria infection went from a few thousand per year to over 50 thousand per year.
Last year, ignoring howls of protest from various environmental groups, South Africa began indoor spraying of DDT at only a few grams per square meter. Guess what? The malaria epidemic ended as quickly as it began. The same story is true in Belize.

And just in case you need more convincing, has anybody here ever heard of the West Nile virus? What blood sucking little insect (40 different species of them) do you think spreads that microbe? The virus has been found in 42 states in the U.S., and infected more than 1400 people in 2002 and killed at least 66, and it’s SPREADING. It is time to rethink some of the general chemophobia that exists in the developed world.

Edward Wheeler, Ph.D in chemistry from U.C. Berkeley (long ago during hippie times), is a noted biochemist who has had extensive experience in food chemistry, cancer research, and toxicology. He has authored numerous articles in refereed scientific journals on those subjects, and holds 12 U.S. patents in the areas of reduced calorie foods and lower calorie “natural fats”.