Stop all the Asian Crap...I mean Carp!

This may be a little-known issue here in Tennessee, but it's gotten $78.5 million in  tax-payer funding, and the attention of the White House to boot:


Asian Carp are invading the Great Lakes!

Rather than get into the specifics of this singular situation, I'll leave you the above link to check it out for yourself, and I'll address the more global issue of the spread of invasive species:

I grew up in Memphis, where Kudzu has become a dominant force in the ecosystem.  While Kudzu is not native to the Americas, it has found a thriving environment with little natural competition here in the southern US.  It swallows telephone poles, trees, fences, and sometimes houses, and while it may be cool to look at, this sort of invasive plant is clearly harmful to the natural ecosystem that it invades, and of course, this is just one example.

Since people began traveling, they have spread countless non-native plants and animals.  It's impossible to tell how many natural ecosystems have been altered or destroyed by humans in the course of history, but it is now becoming something that we can do more quickly and unintentionally than ever before.

We have the ability to cross any continent, any ocean, and even go beyond our terraform in very reasonable lengths of time, and as we are beings in need of other supporting life-forms, we tend to bring some of our favorite animals and plants along whenever we travel or migrate.  Global trade has only increased our ability to inadvertently ruin a foreign ecosystem by bringing in invasive species, and now that we have recognized this problem, action needs to be taken.

We are realizing more and more as humans that we are coming to the point in history where our actions could physically end the world.  I'm not just talking about a nuclear holocaust, although that is a valid possibility, but also our continued disregard for maintaining stable ecosystems on the earth.  Species variation is a key aspect of balance in the world as we know it, and while understanding the way the world works could lead us to the ability to recreate or restore ecosystems, we are destroying life on this planet faster than we are learning about it.  The focus of science and engineering since the industrial revolution has been relatively micro in scale, and by that I mean that we try to invent new ways to improve our individual lives at that very moment.  We tend to shrug off researching and understanding the long-term effects of what we may think are revolutionary, beneficial inventions.

I hold out hope for humanity though, and I think the more we can learn about this world, the more we can do to ensure its continued ecological health.  In the mean time, we need to continue to move our public policies in a direction that is in favor of environmental improvement, including, the prevention of the spread of non-native invasive species.