Invasive species

And Irene was another one where, you know, we took what we learned and we tried some new things and tried to optimize resources and We learned some things and the lessons learned from Isabel, you know, they applied again in Irene, but there were other things like on the Cape Fear, we did attempt stocking largemouth bass, tracking them.

We also, with invasive species like flathead catfish and blue catfish, they succumbed to that.

So maybe that was an opportunity to get some native white catfish in there.

So we did try to stock back natives when the other populations were kind of down and try to bring some of those natives back.

And then if some of this habitat that we're talking about, pH, dissolved oxygen, salinity, those types of things, Are they going to limit that expansion because certainly they're swimming downstream and are they going to compete with our largemouth bass here? And so we're really keeping a strong eye on that right now as far as our bass populations are concerned.

Of course, that's a statewide watching and just please don't move fish.

If you have any questions, if you think you caught one, we have an aquatic invasive species reporting tool that you can at least say, hey, I think I caught one.

If you put your hand in the mouth or thumb in the mouth of one of those bass and you feel a rough patch, that's likely an Alabama bass because largemouth bass have a smooth tongue.

Birds that are dropping the seeds through their feces and gophers are pushing seeds around.

And sometimes they're pushing non-native invasive species.

They're pushing Bermuda grass around, you know, and this is all in movement.

And we have to see what is true restoration.

We can create conditions for biodiversity so that it can respond and adjust to whatever happens.

And so moving forwards in restoration, we have to look at the species that are here now.

If we were to remove a whole stand of invasive species, well, what are we putting in their place? Now we've just removed habitat for how many birds and ground species.

We've also just completely exposed the land and soil.

Yeah.

Invasive species laws may make sense if it hasn't invaded yet.

Once it has

pretty sure you guys put the carp out there to

Now you guys are

invasive species.

It was one of the weirdest things that I've ever seen to see my high school on ESPN.

Like fuck.

is hard.

This is hard.

I'm going to have to go with invasive species.

Yeah.

Entering.

Episode 24, Invasive Species.

Alright, I'm out of the house again.

It took me a few online searches, but I was able to find this silver platter place.

And then, the creature hopped from out of the bush, and my excitement immediately soured.

It was a cane toad.

Cane toads are an invasive species over in Australia, partially because they're hardy little buggers.

Everyone has a story about a toad that survived something ludicrous like a fire or a dog attack.

At least that was the last time I was there and that's been a couple of years.

But the invasive species that they got in the salt cedars and how much that has taken up in through there, do you see things like invasive species, and it's not just salt cedars, we've got junipers that eat up a lot of it as well, or cedars and eat up quite a bit of it too.

Do you see that as playing a role as well into it, or is it?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think we're, you know, we're in a lot of areas where we're out of balance, right? Where invasive species like salt cedar or tamarisk or Russian olive have, you know, invaded the river corridor.

They're using more water.

It's not the habitat that the native species had depended on.

I was on a research ship looking at the Kermadec arc of underwater volcanoes, and we ended up doing about two weeks in New Zealand, and I ended up going through a good part of the country.

I'm fascinated by how you guys are tackling a lot of these environmental issues from invasive species to conservation.

And I'm curious how you see your approach there and what it takes to be successful compared to what is clearly sort of a diminished ability to tackle these issues here in the United States.

That's an interesting question here because I don't see it that way.

We are well known globally for our conservation and invasive species control and we're very strict on biosecurity and successful at eradicating invasive species off off islands and things like that.

And there is this program, Predator Free 2050, that's currently a very contentious topic where they're trying to get the whole country predator free, including cats.

So you can make what you will of that.

But JPL is right there, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is, you know, they would protect that like they would protect the Pentagon, so it didn't get to us.

Um, as I was coming at this story through this lens, I was thinking of my wife, uh, who, Colleen Conway, who's a, a leading New Testament scholar, but in her other time she is also an avid gardener.

And, uh, we have a place in the Lower Hudson Valley that, uh, has two acres of land in the forest, and she's constantly working on domesticating certain parts of it [laughs] and especially dealing with, uh, silk grass and mugwort and various other kinds of plant species that really just take over any open, disturbed plot of ground, and it's, they're really intense, and we call them invasive species.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so I- I'm seeing that, and on the other hand, I'm seeing God take these troublesome humans that have, you know, doing all kinds of stuff, and spreads them over the entire world, almost as if God's turned us into an invasive species.

And that kinda made me start to think about, like, if we're not thinking through a human frame but we're looking at it from another frame, what, h- how does our takeover of all, almost all of Earth's arable habitats look? It looks to me a lot like an invasive species.

And in this story in the Bible, way before humans had taken over that much habitat, it was written in a time when humans only inhabited or domesticated about 2% of the Earth's surface, and we've now taken over well over 80% of it.

Um, but it, and it, that part of the Bible eerily anticipates the way we humans have really become kind of an invasive species in, uh, in applying our domestication logic to the entire world.

And it, and if, um, you know, the plans of certain people for star travel end up working out, we might send seed pods out to do the same thing to a bunch of other, uh, you know, livable habitats.