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Date: 26 September, 2001
In October of 1998 a little-noticed but provocative article appeared in Harper's Magazine. Written by David Quammen, "Planet of the Weeds" carried sobering soundings for the state of Earth over the next century. The article carried a prediction that given our present course of ecological destruction, coupled with exploding human population, "gone will be one-half to two-thirds of Earth's species." Those species favored to endure would be the fittest which Quammen referred to as the åweedy' species, both plants and animals.
Any gardener will tell you what are the fittest plants in the garden, and any exterminator will tell you what are the strongest and fittest mammals and insects. Weedy species are those that thrive in many different habitats, consume a variety of different resources and can have reasonably sustained populations under a variety of conditions. Catherine Badgley, a mammalian paleontologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is reported to suggest that long-term mammalian survivors will consist of "lots of different kinds of rodents, bats, shrews, and other insectivores," suggesting as well that "any of those groups of organisms could evolve a very different form." (Science News, Vol 160, 9/15/01, p. 169).
Badgley, along with other scientists, view people as longer-term survivors since they, too, meet the general criteria of a weedy species, i.e., they flourish in many settings, consume many types of resources, and can sustain populations. Weedy species are damaging ecosystems planet-wide. David Pimental, an ecologist at Cornell University, has compiled costs associated with various weedy species: alien weeds like purple loosetrife - $29 billion in crop-yield losses and controls; insects like fire ants - $20 billion in destruction; and $19 billion in rat damage. The total bill, according to Pimentel's 1999 analysis, is $122 billion per year for damage from and controls for non-native species. Humans, of course, accelerate the course of other weedy species and wreak additional costly havoc themselves with a host of uniquely human activities ranging from urban sprawl...to war.
Putting economic matters aside, the more critical consequence of åweedy' species will come from an examination of their role in evolution and extinction. Most scientists concur that we are in the midst of a "biodiversity crisis." If, as David Quammen predicts - large numbers of species are lost in the twenty-first century - the world will witness an enormous loss of biodiversity. We will confront the bleak prospect of living amidst those species that multiply in the face of environmental adversity - mostly organisms that we consider pests. The grasses, weeds and other pests will endure.Ý
Conserving biodiversity involves saving a wide array of life forms, preserving wild places, and... working in our backyards, our communities, our country... reducing the toll on Earth.
Act today on this EcoAlert and thank you for your environmental responsibility.
American P.I.E.
Public Information on the Environment
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