Nature Out of Place: Biological Invasions in the Global Age

Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Topic Written in an Interesting Style.
Review: Global ecology books are generally interesting because they gather diffuse and disparate data about the dynamics of terrestrial life into a syncretic whole which allows us a glimpse of events occuring on a global scale. This book, released last year, is probably a fairly current snapshot of certain pressing global happenings regarding native and invasive species, and provides sufficient corroborating resources for the hard scientist (no troublesome endnote numbers in the text, but the supporting references do appear in the endnotes at the back of the book). The popular science reader is well attended to as well in this book by the lack of distracting endnote numbers in the text and the moderate but sufficient statistical data intercalated into the text.

The other interesting aspect of this book is the style in which it is written. The authors are a father and son team who write alternating chapters in two distinct styles that nonetheless blend well with one another and are rather self-enhancing rather than distracting. The father portion of this duo, Roy Van Driesche, teaches biological control at UMass, Amherst, and tackles the essay-style chapters on more general subject matter. The son, Jason Van Driesche, a graduate student of environmental studies at UWis, Madison, writes the 1st-person particular accounts of specific, ongoing invasive species problems. The alternating styles tend to break up what could have become a dessicated excercise in patience into a more palatable and enjoyable romp through the ecology of noxious invasive species and the current human responses to them.

The thesis of the book is, of course, how hundreds of years of unchecked waves of invasions by people and their concomitant pests, whether by invitation or as stowaways, is leading to a species homogenization, whereby the unscrupulous and hardy experts of survival: humans, rats, feral cats, weeds, fungi, etc. have and continue to decimate the more delicate and isolated species that simply cannot compete against the obviously hardier and more adaptable species. It's ecological whining at its finest, but the facts, as always, carry the day.

I particularly enjoyed son Jason's chapters, which are largely based on interviews with the locals who must deal with such problems. For example, leafy spurge on the great plains of the United States has been claiming untold acres of land generally used for grazing lands for ranchers (whose wards traditionally munch on, as it were, some invasive grass species of yore, you just can't win). Cattle shun leafy spurge, so the sustainable number of cattle per acre has diminished, distressing local cattle men and forcing them to take action or suffer the consequences (these are not your typical tree-huggers, but macho cowboys who probably smoke Camel non-filters). This setting is then revealed as a success case of biological control, father Roy's bailiwick, wherein asian beetles were imported to counterattack the otherwise indescriminately spreading green plague. The two styles really compliment one another in this regard. The discussions of island ecology regarding Hawai'i, Guam, New Zealand, and Santa Cruz island are also timely, interesting, and well covered. It's edifying to read in this book how public and private groups are beginning to take heed of these serious problems and actually legislate in favor of resistance to invasive species once and a while, but it's also frightening to realize such political action is occuring in mostly developed nations, and that vast, uncharted ecological and political events in undeveloped nations are generally not even under consideration. Apparently it's a jungle out there and the jungle is being remodeled at a blistering pace. All in all, a good read any bonified naturalist will admire.