Invasive Species

[sailorsam]

out-of-place animals continue, and usually to the detriment of the animal's new environment.
Everglades is turning into a horror story as Burmese Pythons are eating all the little animal natives.
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-have-invas...ecosystems

Severe declines in mammal populations throughout Everglades National Park have been linked to Burmese pythons, with the most severe declines in native species having occurred in the remote southernmost regions of the Park where pythons have been established the longest. A 2012 study found that populations of raccoons had declined 99.3 percent, opossums 98.9 percent, and bobcats 87.5 percent since 1997 (Mammal Decline). Marsh rabbits, cottontail rabbits, and foxes effectively disappeared over that time (Marsh Rabbits Mortality).

poor little animals.  very sad. 



on the plus side, Indiana now hosts armadillos
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/armadi...NewsBrowse
According to a recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), armadillos have colonized much of southeastern Indiana and are spreading north and west, including sightings in and around Marion County. 

had no idea they could live that far north.
any invaders in your areas?

[Kenzo1]

Damn ...   i hate snakes .


Only snake apocalypse is worse than zombie apocalypse


Nightmares are made from snakes

[F2d5thCav]

My guess would be that the snakes are mostly getting the smaller animals and the larger animals are declining because their food sources are no longer there.

But yes.  Introducing pythons there was stupid-plus.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

They seem to give a break to other animals that have migrated into new areas, like camels and horses that began in the New World and ended up in the Old World. That migration is how animals have covered the world. They start in one spot as a native species, then move around where they can live and breed. No one today will make the claim that camels don't belong in the Old World, where they are now found.

I'm sure if they had a full and accurate fossil record, they would have endless examples of extinctions or forced evolution caused by animal and plant migrations.

We need to adapt ourselves and find profitable uses for invasive species as a control mechanism; otherwise, the balance of nature will favor survival of the fittest, and things like pythons in Florida will become the apex predators, feeding on macaque monkeys and Norway rats.

Besides, they throw diversity right out the window when they rag about invasive species. The illegal immigrants aren't just people, sneaking across the border, they are invasive too. You'd never get these liberal tree huggers to agree with that notion.

[Ninurta]

So far as I know, the only invasive species here are some insects and rodents, like Norway Rats. With that said, some native species are making a comeback here as the area reverts back to the wild. Wolves are returning in the form of cross-bred coyote-wolf hybrids, bears are making a huge comeback - the entire time I was growing up here, I saw exactly 3 bears, only two of those alive, and one of that two in captivity. Now they're all over the place wreaking havoc. There is a momma bear here that raised 1 to 3 cubs, every year. I smelled a bear near by about a month ago when I was out working in my garden.

I take that back - I saw 4 bears here back then over all those years. One was in a blackberry patch just the other side of the yard fence where I live now, when my grandparents lived here, one was about 1000 yards away on the slop[e of River Mountain in Russell County, and then there was the captive bear at a tiny roadside zoo in Horse Pen, and a bear skeleton I found on the slope of Clinch Mountain when I and a friend were climbing up to what they call "The Channels" now.,

Now you can hardly throw a rock without pissing one off.

Elk have been re-introduced and are also making a big comeback. There is a big herd of them in Buchanan County, the next county over from me, in the Vansant area. I used to see them a lot when I was working over there.

Of the insects, the one of most concern to me is the black locust borer beetle. They are decimating our black locust trees, and that's a problem for me because that's my preferred wood to make bows out of. Not only do the borers kill the trees, they eat tunnels through the wood, which weakens it for any serious uses.

This area used to be widely and well known for the huge chestnut trees that grew here, but then about 120 years ago a blight invaded and killed almost all of them. There are a few still around, but they are mere shadows of their former glory, and most of the ones left are just suckers off of old dead stumps. I had one of those in my upper yard when I lived in Grundy. It was right next to my pawpaw grove, and was fairly sizeable, with two "suckers" roughly a foot or foot and a half across sprouting from an old stump. It produced, but I believe it had the blight and was fighting it - when it threw nuts, if you bagged them up and let them sit a while, some kind of white, hairy fuzz a couple inches long would eventually appear on the shells, which I think was evidence of the blight. Some of them are resistant to the blight, and mine might have been one of those, since it was still living.


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[EndtheMadnessNow]

Damn ...   i hate snakes .


Only snake apocalypse is worse than zombie apocalypse


Nightmares are made from snakes

100% agree! Time to take control of that Everglades Jurassic swamp.

When I was 9 or 10 my dad took me to a zoo where they had giant pythons and anacondas. I had nightmares about pythons for years. I became psychologically scared for life. I mean I've read stories about them devouring a deer, goat, even a small child. I see a snake, I kill it!

On a separate note, when I seen the thread title "Invasive Species" my mind jumped to illegals sneaking across our border for some odd reason.

[Ninurta]

Nightmares are made from snakes

100% agree! Time to take control of that Everglades Jurassic swamp.

When I was 9 or 10 my dad took me to a zoo where they had giant pythons and anacondas. I had nightmares about pythons for years. I became psychologically scared for life. I mean I've read stories about them devouring a deer, goat, even a small child. I see a snake, I kill it!

On a separate note, when I seen the thread title "Invasive Species" my mind jumped to illegals sneaking across our border for some odd reason.

Is that you, D? I ask because my son has the same story - I took him to a Nature and Science center where they had big ol' snakes - including a 16' anaconda - and I'm not sure he's over it yet!

What really got him was that they had an open display with a stuffed 6' rattle snake in it, and the rattle snake was "animated" - it would rattle when anyone walked past the display. Worked on an electric eye that started it rattling when anyone broke the beam. That freaked him out pretty bad. I think he still kills every snake he sees - but my Dear Old Dad was the same way... would not suffer a snake of any kind to live if he saw it.

I did try to show him the rattlesnake wasn't alive, and was just working on an electric eye, but he wasn't having any of that buillshit - the damned thing had RATTLED at him!

That center didn't have just snakes - it had other stuff outside, like bison and jaguars, so he got his revenge. We were walking along the trail that wound through the place. I didn't know they had jaguars there, but suddenly I heard one of them yelp out that coughing grunt they do, where it sounds like they have their head stuck in an oil drum with the echo it makes in their chest. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was over the walkway rail and into the bushes, hiding, looking around trying to spot the jaguar. Had to climb back over the rail and look sheepish while he laughed his ass off at me.

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[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Snakes are cool. I love the snakes around here. Garter, brown, ring-necked (so little and cute), hog nose, and the mighty blue racer, along with a few others. You have water snakes down by the river. I don't like those; they are aggressive and bite. Nothing poisonous like rattlers, those are scarce here, near extinct.

The blue racers are aggressive and will bite, but I love teasing them until they give in and become tame enough to hold. There was one racer that I wouldn't catch. I was over by the junk pile where I had covered some things with a 10' x 10' tarp, and this racer came over the top and was as long or longer than the tarp. I was about to snatch it by the head when I thought, "No, this one is too big".

Many of the snakes here can be held, but most of them poop on you when they get scared and try to flee.