Interesting story about the daughterless carp. Sounds like a good plan.
Up here, one of the species that will probably cause serious trouble soon are the Double-crested Cormorants. They used to be fairly rare in the western end of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and were never seen north of it into the Rideau Canal system. Now there are several islands where there are hundreds of pairs nesting. The problem is that they are very good fishing birds, so they kill off the young fish, especially in the marshes where the water is shallow. They also tend to be aggressive and muscle out other shore and waterbirds. Last summer, I found several pairs in a marsh where I've never seen them before. Bad news!
And yes, re: the false bamboo, I don't know why people persist in moving species from one area to another. Sometimes the species don't do well and are not a problem, but other times, they find conditions that allow them to proliferate at an abnormal rate. Just to show you how quickly something can "take off", last summer, I found a bunch of "islands" of water lettuce floating in a back channel of the Rideau River. This plant can only be grown as an ornamental annual here as it can't take our winters. Apparently, in the southern U.S., it is a real damned nuisance and grows in masses so thick that it chokes waterways. Now, the only way it got into the Rideau is either -- a.) a plant or two somehow was tossed in the river by someone cleaning out a backyard lily pond, or b.) it came up from the south in the bilge of a boat and then up the Rideau Canal, which happens to be a very popular route for summer vacationers who are into boating. The "islands" that I found were about 20 feet in diameter and each composed of hundreds of water lettuce. I knew the plants shouldn't be able to survive in our cold, but I reported their occurrence to some people that I know in the gov't department that watches this stuff. I returned to the channel twice this year to make sure that the water lettuce weren't back and they aren't. But what is amazing is how quickly these must have multiplied. I found them in July, and they can't grow in cold water, so whatever they started as, they turned into several hundred plants in less than 2 months. Obviously, the water conditions were extremely favourable to the plants. Just a very good thing that it's so cold here in winter, or these things would probably be choking the canal in a couple of years. But as you have mentioned, with the climate changes, we're going to see many more incidences in species moving into new territories.
BTW, there's been some talk up this way, about starting a sort of "invasive species workgroup" composed of volunteer naturalists who are very familiar with both native and invasive species to watch for the appearance of new species. I think it's a good plan as there are a lot of naturalists who see unusual plants, insects, or animals, but don't know what to do about it. This might be the solution. |
