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Should We Eat Invasive Species?
The Washington Post's Energy & Environment section raises today the question of whether the best way to control certain invasive species is to eat them. The biggest success story on this front in the U.S. has been the lionfish; it destroys the habitat of some other fish in the areas where it's been introduced, but it turns out to be a palatable food fish, too. Its population has gone down since the start of a concerted effort to encourage it as a food, rather than just a nuisance. The article touches on invasive species of fish and crustaceans, but also land animals and plants. I know that garlic mustard (widespread in eastern U.S. forests) is tasty, and so are the blackberries all over Seattle.
Let's hope the rest of the earth's species don't adopt this plan to control the invasive naked apes.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
every year seattlites eat all the blackberries they can pick. The only thing that cut that down was when people began spraying them. But you cold not possibly get more people eating them, and that didn't dent the population in 50 years. On the otherhand no thinks of them as invasive in the sense they were not natural to live there. the pacifc northwest is berry country. Just a thorny nuisance you have to keep cut back when it encroaches walkways not unlike choking vines on trees.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Make their parts 'magical', like rhino horn and tiger penis.
Not in the wild but cultivated.
The cow, the chicken, the pig... these animals have no natural habitat anymore really... yet are in no danger of dying of. Neither for that matter is the domesticated dog or the house cat or the gold fish.
All small endangered animals can be bred as pets or food. By all means, protect their habitat in the wild but that is no guarantee that they will survive as a species. Maintain them as pets or food in our society though and they'll live as long as we continue to do that.
As for large animals... encourage farmers to take care of a couple. Seriously, a cattle rancher could take in a few rhinos. Have a special pen for them. Make the whole thing tax deductible until there's some way to recoup the cost. These people breed BILLIONS of animals in captivity. We could do the same with rhinos, elephants, etc.
Right now one of the things hurting these species is that its very hard to legally own them.
An animal that belongs to no one will not be protected. We've seen this in Africa where the wild animals are prey for poachers. However, if you give the animals to the local villages and make the animal's survival the villager's responsibility they suddenly stop getting eaten or killed for their ivory.
This is the solution.
Anything else will likely harm these species more, waste time, waste money, and accomplish very little.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
we aren't using up any resource even in the short term. Helium? most of it just vented from natural gas wells, never collected. just a nat gas engineering problem. Potassium and phosphorous? 2.5% and 0.1% of lithosphere, just an chemical engineeing problem.
There is a solution to this problem: goats. Turn all that thorny nuisance into yummy meat and cheese.
They tried this a couple of decades ago in South Louisiana with the nutria. It turns out people weren't waiting in line to eat real life ROUSes. (Rodents Of Unusual Size)
Now the state offers a $5 bounty per nutria tail turned in.
load "linux",8,1
Given that 'being eaten' is the plan for plants that go to considerable metabolic expense to produce attractive fruits or berries, those probably aren't good candidates for this strategy. (Admittedly, humans probably excrete more of the seeds into the water treatment plant than birds do, so they probably aren't the ideal customer; but fruits are still the deliberately expendable seed carriers, not life-critical components.)
Blackberries can be controlled, you just have to invest a little time. Basically? When you pick, tie a small ribbon on the branch you got it from. At the end of the growing season, cut out anything with a ribbon on it, because that vine will never produce fruit again, it will only become a "stringer", which spreads to produce more vines.
This way, the plant can be controlled and kept to one area. But again, you have to invest time, which not many people have a lot of these days.
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It's a Cantonese saying "Anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies, with its back to heaven is edible.", used in South China. It backdates to the 1800s. It's been referenced in some cookbooks (e.g. "The Chinese Kitchen" by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo), and is known/used by some Chinese, and not others.
Cue supposition based on some searching: the area traded heavily with the West during that time. Take the exotic delicacies and dishes concocted by chefs, add in a language/culture barrier,good old prejudice, and the loss of context in repetition...I can easily imagine it's a Western generalisation/mild slur that got repeated and adopted and over time became adopted as a regional motto of sorts (i.e. isn't 'known' in the Mandarin areas, just the Cantonese south).
Could be waaay off though.
I loathe the Himalayan Blackberry. The berries, while large and numerous, are bland. They store a lot of energy in their roots quickly, so once they get a foothold, they send out shoots everywhere- especially after you cut them back.
Goats are the best remedy. I had a single goat clear an acre of 8-10' tall bramble in a span of a few months. For good. They eat new shoots as soon as they appear until the blackberry roots have expended all their stored energy.
If you don't have a goat, then you must remain vigilant. I have a zero tolerance policy towards blackberries. If I see one on my property, it dies.
Can we eat evangelical Christians? They're pretty invasive.
Honey bees are an invasive species. They were brought to the Americas in the 1600's. Now people are panicking about colony collapse and trying to save this invasive species. I thought that is how nature works, life seeks out new and better environments to grow in. Does it matter if a bee is blown across the ocean by a hurricane or carried over by a Spaniard? Or if a mussel makes to the great lakes on the bottom of a tanker or on a piece of drift wood?
Florida has a lovely python population and they can be eaten or made into boots. We have tilapia in abundance. We have the the snake head fish from the orient as well as peacock and rainbow bass and also some species of piranha. I welcome all of these invaders. We also have armadillos and iguanas both of which also are good eating. All in all i want more. I wish the jumping silver carp as well as the big head carp would invade Florida big time. Poison toads are killing a few pets but other that and one nasty, African snail that can actually eat the plaster off your exterior walls i tend to love the exotics. They are fun to catch and some get really large. And we don't even want to get into the good things that Kudzu vine can do if properly used. We have invasive bamboos which are also wonderful. Some items seen to be a curse tend to become valued. The dreaded zebra mussel in the Great Lakes has become a great food source for sturgeon and the water is cleaner for having them. Lampreys were cursed and considered an emergency and now people cook and eat lampreys. Frankly i think the fight against most invasive species simply creates jobs for public employees.
That sounds pretty complicated. I would just install a Blackberry Enterprise Server, and that would easily control all my blackberries.
Blackberries can be controlled
Indeed! In our back yard, they are losing the battle against the ivy and bamboo! :)