Burmese pythons are eating machines. An adult snake can grow to nearly 20 ft., and it can eat everything from raccoons to …
Invasive Species
The Benefits of Stopping Invasive Species Before They Invade
Dedicated followers of this blog—thanks both of you—know that one of my areas of obsession is invasive species. That’s partially because they’re so often funny—example number one being the flying Asian carp, which I’ll get to in a moment. But invasives are a biological and visible consequence of our ultra-connected world, a …
Mississippi Floods Could Spread the Invasive Asian Carp
Like all great supervillains, the Asian carp have their origin story. The fish were imported from Asia—where they’ve been raised in aquaculture for thousands of years—to the Midwest in the 1970s, where they were used in fish farms. When the waters around the Mississippi flooded in the spring, however, so would those farms—and at …
Australia: Killing Camels for Carbon Credits?
Feral camels have never gotten much love in the Australian bush. Considered to be an invasive species, they graze native plants to the point of local extinction. They walk across roads in the middle of the night. They trample fences. Now one Australian company has a plan to get rid of the camel scourge once and for all. The proposition? …
Can Sharks Tame the Invasive Lionfish?
Another interesting story over on Time.com’s science page: Christy Choi writes about how the lionfish, an aquarium-pet-turned-ocean-invader with a voracious appetite and bad manners, “has residents and scientists throughout the Caribbean and Northern Atlantic worried about the threat it poses to coastal ecosystems and economies by wiping …
Happy National Invasive Species Week!
More frequent readers of this blog know that I’m obsessed with two things: Philadelphia sports and Asian carp. I even see some similarities between the two—Phillies fans, like Asian carp, are seen by some as an invading horde infiltrating territory that doesn’t belong to them. (Like the Asian carp, the fans are generally peaceful …
Invasive Fire Ants Have Established Themselves in the U.S.—And They’re Not Stopping Here
I’ve written a few times in the past about invasive Asian carp, the Chinese natives who were imported for fish farms in the Midwest, only to escape and make their way up the Mississippi River. They’re now knocking on the door of the Great Lakes, and a few of them may have even slipped past defenses and made it into Lake Michigan. The …
Washington Will at Last Regulate Fish Farms
Chances are pretty good that the last fish you ate never saw a river or the open ocean. That’s because the U.S. imports 84% of the 5 billion lbs. of seafood we consume each year and more than half of that is raised on fish farms and other aquaculture operations. The U.S., however, has not gotten invested in the aquaculture game as …
Guam: An Early Casualty of U.S.-China Tensions?
Sometime after World War II, the Boiga irregularis, or the brown tree snake, is believed to have hitched a ride on a cargo ship and landed on the Pacifc island of Guam. For the snake, Guam was paradise, home to a large number of prey and no natural predators. By 1970, the snake had colonized the entire island, pushing several bird
…
Invasive Species: Asian Carp Get Their Day In Court
The dreaded Asian carp are back in the news today. The five Great Lakes states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Ohio—suing to beef up anti-carp defenses scored a legal victory yesterday:
On Monday, a federal judge held an initial hearing and scheduled more hearings for expert testimony in early September. The
…
