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Don’t Shoot the Messenger! Invasive species and halting biodiversity loss

“[T]he war on invasive species is a distraction from genuine ecological change, through spending our time and money on ‘carrying on like before’ whilst shooting the messengers of change; invasive species.”

From Avi (Dr KBH)

#InvasiveSpecies

Halting biodiversity loss is demanded by XR alongside other climate movements. But who decides what halts biodiversity loss? Most of these movements directly address established governance actors. At best XR proposes legally binding citizen assemblies informed by expert knowledge. So who is going to hear these demands in these organisations or enact the decisions of these assemblies? What is the status quo amongst these organisations and their experts for halting biodiversity loss? The same questions can be asked for all of the demands of contemporary climate mobilizations. Hence, the status quo on how climate demands are enacted is critical. What is the status quo?

Critical yet generative attention has already been drawn to green growth and clean energy as dominant ideas to act on climate change. Here I want to critically address one of the established pillars for halting biodiversity loss: invasive species. Classified as one of the biggest threats to biodiversity, if you are actively concerned with halting biodiversity loss, it is critical to consider invasive species and whether current efforts to address them are worth it. The dominant way of dealing with invasive species is to eradicate them. Vast numbers of them are killed every year and huge sums of time and money are earmarked for doing so. Proponents of this method position themselves as practical people doing the necessary work of saving other species through waging war on harmful and unwanted species.

Where criticisms of this approach are raised, it is mostly taken as an issue of framing and language i.e. talking of war is a bit too blunt. In lieu of this language has started to move from talking of eradicating invasive and alien species to controlling and managing non-native and non-indigenous species. However, I do not have a problem with militaristic language when it avoids double-speak. The war to eradicate invasive species is part of a military-industrial complex, so let’s not waste time on tone policing and recognize it for the war that it is.

What I and a growing number of researchers and practitioners really take issue with, is that this fight is a technical failure, ecologically destructive, economically unsustainable, empirically unsubstantiated and it rejects evolutionary theory. A few reasons include: it almost always fails to actually eradicate targeted species; it involves pouring massive quantities of industrial pollutants into habitats; it requires an exponential explosion in an already bloated budget just to keep up with a losing battle; it does not integrate an addressal of industrial agriculture and factory farming; it ignores the understanding of evolution as being based on the development of novel symbiotic relations.

Amongst others, Tao Orion qualifies these points in her aptly titled ‘Beyond the War on Invasive Species’. As a practitioner in environmental restoration, her research brings together a rich catalog of case studies that present the futility of the war on invasive species. She admits there have been a small handful of successes, if we ignore outsourced effects. Unsurprisingly these ‘successes’ have been on small islands, rather than continental land masses. It is in such places, with natural hard borders, that it is easier to eradicate unwanted species and take back control.

But, it is not the overwhelming failure of this paternalistic war framed as care that really bothers me. The real failure is its role in the disruption of ecological regeneration. This war ignores the fact that some species are moving and reorganising in order to survive environmental and climatic changes. It also ignores the fact that invasive species bring new life to some contexts, precisely because autochthonous species cannot deal with the pollution and degradation that has taken place. And finally, the fact is some invasive species just cannot be removed so it is pointless to keep fighting them, instead of working with the reality of their presence.

In other words, eradicating invasive species can end up being the hard boot that stamps on novel shoots sprouting in polluted deserts. It can cut off new ecological generations from emerging in light of shifting continuities and radical breaks in our social and ecological systems. It is a fight that disrupts ecological succession, adaptation, mobility and mutual aid. It is crushing one of life’s key ways of adapting to climate change and habitat loss. So why, in spite of all this, is the practice of fighting invasive species so high on the agenda for halting biodiversity loss?

The practice of eradicating invasive species is entangled with historical trends in environmental management. These involve fighting species that do not conform to an ideal of what a given landscape should look like. Hence, autochthonous species that flourish beyond what is considered ‘to be Nature’ are also caught up in this killing as culling. In short, it is the process of enforcing species according to nationally and colonially imposed heritages (not even necessarily native). This has also come to include species that are seen to impinge on certain forms of human development, whether through property damage or impeding the development of new profitable property. Take the global flourishing of wild boar. The over-arching reaction has been to see them as a danger to property, primarily a danger to their industrially bred relatives. I have yet to see expert forums consider this flourishing as a potential gift.

What is common to all this culling of ‘overabundant’ native or invasive species is the focus on the individual species as dangerous to the status quo. By contrast, focusing on the dynamic nature of ecosystems and the health of the relations between different species is side-lined. Where it is seemingly considered, through ideas such as ecological functionality and ecosystem services, it is still stuck in a nativist perspective on functionality or imposes anthropocentric and ethnocentric ideals on to species. This involves mistaking non-human lives for biologically functional machines or trying to capture ecological relations in orthodox economic terms taken ipso facto.

Broadly speaking then, this war does more to pollute than regenerate and is rooted in a paternalistic ideology rather than ecological concerns. This is part of the answer as to why this war has gained traction, but is also part of the broader consideration needed of XR when appealing to established authority with regards to environmental action. As recognized in the words of climate striker Greta Thunberg in her address to the UK parliament in 2019: ‘You are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before’; eradicating invasive species is precisely such a solution.

It is understandable that from the personal to the political, people and organisations tend to be wedded to a source of meaning, a story, a cosmology they want to carry on with. This is human. However, appealing to authority means appealing to the vehicle that delivers the message, whether a field of research, political party or nation-state and all the strings and ethnocentricities attached. When any such established authorities are signed up to an infrastructure of progressive change over time, they almost always ‘carry on like before’. Doing otherwise would be too great an impediment to the power, prestige and meaning that a person or their organisation is socially and materially dedicated to.

In the case of halting biodiversity, when the vehicle of the status quo encounters biodiversity, this vehicle dialectically divides life into species that oppose the status quo (invasive, pest, feral etc.) and those that fit the status quo (wildlife, crops, pets etc.), aesthetically, economically or otherwise. There is little consideration given to the fact that species that appear to oppose the status quo are scapegoats punished for not belonging in an abstract ideal of how ‘the environment’ should be. In other words, the war on invasive species is a distraction from genuine ecological change, through spending our time and money on ‘carrying on like before’ whilst shooting the messengers of change; invasive species. So what am I suggesting should be done with these unwanted species and how can such a proposal be brought about?

I do not see adaptations to climate change or habitat destruction as being about system change from the inside or system change from the outside. I propose building, joining or supporting people who form associations, communities and organisations that do not attempt to isolate themselves from their local status quos or nation-states, but also do not go along with them. Instead, they negotiate with nation-state actors, but organize in spite of their existence, for the benefit of the wider social and ecological community. Inspirations for this can come from democratic confederalism and its direct-democracy in Northern Syria all the way to transformative communities of practice emerging from the decentralization of private and public institutions.

In other words, whether as laborer or scholar, if you are involved in facing the effects of climate change or invasive species, I propose that you build/join a community of practice that negotiates with nation-state actors but maintains autonomy. The aim of such a community being to build a common framework for informing how people relate to invasive species unencumbered by collective assumptions (ethnocentricity) and not managed through abstract and static models (dogma). A common framework means that as a framework it must tangibly work for the local as well as the wider social and ecological community. It means being able to evaluate culled species from a perspective of the whole context, not just an ethnocentric or dogmatic position.

For example, I have been looking at how culling can make matters worse when the social life of a culled species is not considered. If the anthropocentric position that led to this ineffective culling were shifted, this would free up extensive resources currently spent on culling, improving the situation for local inhabitants and benefiting the broader ecological community. More broadly speaking, it can allow us to critically reconsider the XR demand to ‘halt biodiversity loss’ through interconnecting related communities of practice. Why not be inspired by indigenous practices that focus on enriching biodiversity? Rather than continuing with the idea of sustainably managing degraded populations and then failing.

In sum, as the residents of the ZAD in France have learned, it is critical “to be prepared to win”. I suggest that XR, climate strikers and other mobilizations also prepare for what they mean by halting the loss of biodiversity, otherwise success might simply mean more money for the same-old failing (and unjust) environmental practices and institutions. I hear there is an XR ‘brain-trust’ focusing on heterodox perspectives. Sounds like a start! My opening contribution to this, in terms of building a common framework on halting biodiversity loss, is to raise the idea of halting the war against invasive species (and its failures) and, instead, start preparing to build the future with unexpected arrivals. This will enable biodiversity to better survive with social and ecological change, as well as better understanding the role novel species are playing in regenerating degraded landscapes and adding new beauty.

This is not about giving up and stepping back, but precisely the opposite. It is about being open to developing a deeper understanding of life so we are able to foster it. Perhaps even lead an explosion of earthly life beyond our planetary boundaries. Not react to our mistakes by shooting the messenger in the form of invasive species, who by their presence are simply telling us that the way ‘modernist' societies have managed environments has ended in what we have now. New climates require new civilization. Now is not the time to double-down, but to transform and accept the help that novel life gifts us.


Avi (Dr KBH)

I am trained in Social Anthropology and Social Science Research Methods. I work with practitioners and academics from multiple fields. If you want to step into the messy spaghetti of reality and enjoy the feast, I invite you to dine with me.

I focus on how human-environmental and human-human relations shape each other over time. I have conducted interdisciplinary research on fisheries, historical ecology, hunting and environmental management.

To visit Avi’s blog click here.