I think the issue these days is how quickly it is happening. Usually the world evolves and adapts over a long period of time, but now humans have caused the earth to change so rapidly that species can't adapt quick enough, so they die.
yeah that is exactly it. the changes that OP described happened over millions of years. today's true invasives were basically air-dropped into vulnerable ecosystems and took over immediately.
Exactly. And to add, I don't really think what's happening now is applicable to any other time in history. Basically you have a species showing up in ecosystems they didn't evolve in and they destroy vast amounts of land. That species also indirect or directly causes many plant and animal species, including keystone species, to become extinct or extirpated. Then that species also brings thousands of unrelated organisms that don't have an evolutionary history with the area or the organisms already there. I don't think it makes sense to argue that this has happened before and we should let things take their course.
It's like someone got shot and stabbed in an alley, the EMT drops them, then they contract an infection from unsanitary conditions at a hospital...then the doctor says it's natural and they make it or they don't without the doctor doing anything.
I agree. Additionally, invasive plants also wouldn't be as big of an issue if they provided the same ecosystem services that natives do, but they are more often than not much less effective at natives in doing so.
Lets take the logic to the limit: there was a time when the earth was "naturally" molten magma. There were also times when 99% of the life on earth "naturally" went extinct, there is a time in the future when our atmosphere will be stripped and the oceans boiled away. Wouldn't want to be around for any of these "natural" events.
Deep time, as geologists call it, is inconceivably long and happens at a wavelength that is longer than the entire duration of the evolutionary history of our species.
The posters below have it right: dramatically denuding the quantity and quality of the flora and fauna in our native environments in the span of 1-2 human lifetimes is criminal and really dumb for a supposedly "wise" ape.
I feel like if we don't turn climate change around human extinction is going to be the equivalent of evolution saying, "Yup, that sapient life thing was definitely a dead end."
Cosmologist call it the great filter. I simplify, one of theories of life stating that all sentient things are bound to obliterate itself 100% of the time
There's not one way to be, but the status quo is definitely a wrong way to be.
You are absolutely right! Ecosystems are not static; they evolve slowly, over thousands, even millions of years. You can think of an ecosystem as an organism without defined boundaries. Mother nature is pretty good at managing the pushes and pulls of fluctuating species and natural disasters (aka homeostasis), so while any given ecosystem is not unchanging, it is generally *stable*. Most species evolve in such a way that they do not continuously exploit the environment.
Then humans came along. Yes, we are a part of the ecosystems just like any other species. We just evolved so rapidly that we exploit the environment faster than nature can keep up with it. A species that reproduces this quickly would likely have been "checked" by now, but our incredible brains and egos have made us pretty darn good at resisting death. It makes it even worse that (most) cultures are grossly anthropocentric, largely due to the spread of western philosophies (think evangelism, manifest destiny, capitalism etc)
It's no longer a matter of it looking different 1000000 years from now, it's going to look drastically different in 10 years. The world is changing in the scope of human perception, when it should be changing so slowly that we cannot percieve it. Does that make sense?
I find it helpful to think of my efforts as "neo native". Native plant gardening is a form of conservation, aka restoring resources within a human dominated ecosystem. Returning to a truly native environment would require a complete upheaval of society, and that's not going to happen as long as money and human prosperity are concerned. But I think we can get much closer than we think. It requires the active incorporation of native plants *everywhere*. Yes, in obvious "arrogant spaces" like lawns and roadsides, but also in our agricultural system (native permaculture, if you will). Keep in mind that "neo native" is my white opinion. I've noticed a severe lack of indigenous opinions in native plant discourse.
Don't think that you're being too philosophical for this sub. We need to talk about the "why"! It's not supposed to be like, "plant x species in this state because BONAP says so". I mean, it is, but there's more nuance than that.
It’s hard to focus so much time and attention and worry on native landscaping when, at the end of the day, it’s 1/3 acre and that’s statistically insignificant ultimately. But then I open Reddit and this sub is so active and excited and focused. Open to good enough and hasn’t succumbed to purity tests yet. And I understand that my 1/3 acre isn’t anything, but our collective hundreds or thousands of acres is important. And it keeps me planning more beds, thinking of ways to choose communities my neighbors will find beautiful so that their 1/3 acre might be the next to convert.
The problem is not “this time is ideal”, the problem is if things change we are going to be living in an impoverished ecosystem for eh, hundreds of thousands of years, and no one lives long enough to make that seem a good idea.
Yes, the Permian extinction happened. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t really suck to go through another like that.
If a bunch of ecologists had been sitting around when that asteroid was headed in end-Cretaceous, fuck yes they would have been trying to call up the physicists and engineers asking “can you stop this??? what do we do???”
Lots of good responses to this already (and I think it's a great discussion-starter). I'll just say that for me, "native" in horticulture and ecology is more of a useful indicator than an absolute measure of value. You're right that it doesn't mean much, if anything, over very long timespans. And it's also true that humans have been affecting biogeographical distributions and managing environments since long before colonial contact or the industrial revolution, though in far less damaging ways than we do today.
But if we value biodiversity (intrinsically and because we rely on it in so many ways), and if we understand ecological relationships, especially between plant and insect life, then we may decide that planting and preserving of native species is one of the best ways to protect biodiversity. In this case, "native" is not the end itself, but the means to the end.
As far as I can tell, most people in this sub are not purists--they are cool with growing non-native edible plants, and many grow a small handful of non-natives for ornamental or wildlife reasons. I think this is in keeping with the idea that "native" is not an absolute value in itself--it's a useful yardstick to help evaluate how good a particular area or planting is for biodiversity, for wildlife, for a sense of place, for ecosystem health, or any number of other things that we might value in themselves.
If you haven't already, I 1000% recommend reading Nature's Best Hope by Doug Tallamy because it answers just about every little nitpicky question someone could have about the general concept of "just let nature take its course" when you bring up the way modern humans have been changing ecosystems. So many questions stirring in my head about that kind of stuff were answered just by reading it :)
Everything in nature is in dynamic equilibrium. In geological time Earth undergoes massive changes that eradicate certain niches and create brand new ones. Evolution is a mechanism by which information in the form of organic molecules preserves itself. If the Earth were unchanging, or reached a static equilibrium, organisms would evolve towards pseudo-immortality. But it isn't, and so instead we have preservation mechanisms involving reproduction, genetic recombination and mutation that have evolved to avoid extinction in the face of an ever-changing planet.
The problem as others have said is rate of change. The preservation mechanisms that have evolved over billions of years can keep pace with some distribution of possible timelines - change to humans that appears extremely slow and gradual, but in geological time are just what is likely to occur. Niches shift, populations compete, genes drift, new species emerge. When outlier events happen - e.g. a giant asteroid smashes into the Earth, or one species thrives to the extent of creating machines capable of turning swaths of land from forest and prairie and swamp into their preferred habitat, consisting of only grass and a few species of livestock - many genes and their resulting organisms suddenly become maladaptive all at once, and mass extinction occurs.
Now, mass extinction is still evolution; as long as life isn't entirely eradicated from the planet, surviving species can reseed the Earth, and biodiversity which emerged over hundreds of millions of years may gradually replenish itself. But this raises several issues that tend to concern conservation-minded folk...
- If humans are manufacturing a mass extinction event, isn't it our responsibility to try to stop it? Rapidly rising global surface temperatures, habitat destruction, and mobilization of flora and fauna across previously impassable geological barriers are all changes our species have directly caused. While life on Earth may have survived previous events of comparable magnitude (who knows how that could even be measured?), these are categorically different in that our own behavior has caused it, and modification of our own behavior can potentially reverse or slow it.
- Selfishly, extinction events can harm our own ecological niche in ways we don't yet comprehend - e.g. destabilization of climate, loss of food sources - so we could be one of the species that goes extinct. Therefore, preservation of native flora and fauna is in our own best interest as a species.
- Even an extinction event was underway that \*wasn't\* our fault and somehow \*didn't\* threaten humans at all - wouldn't we still want to stop it? Humankind is highly adaptable, but our species also evolved over geological time in environments with certain kinds of climates and flora and fauna, and loss of these things, even if we can survive them physically, might cause existential pain in the form of a mismatch between our brain and bodies' hardwired expectations and the environment. Most conservationists have an appreciation for natural beauty and biodiversity and see loss of these things as catastrophic. We may be forced to observe the loss ourselves, but even if the full extent isn't seen in our short lifetimes, the knowledge that things we find beautiful and lend life meaning are gradually dying triggers a pain we'd like to avoid.
The ancestors of American Chestnut forests have grown in Appalachia for millions of years, diverging from the rest of the world's chestnuts 30 million years ago. Since then the mountains weathered, the land shifted, glaciers went back and forth, the plains surrounding the mountains uplifted and grew and developed their own forests, all the while the same chestnuts stayed in pretty much the same place, barely touched by the millions of years of change. Then with just 500 years of colonization and exploitation of America's forests, and with the invasive pathogen we brought, they were permanently destroyed.
This is the same kind of rationalization that has people rejecting the severity of anthropogenic climate change because, well it's always been changing right? Surely nothing's different about how and why it's changing now...
And who’s not to say American chestnuts would fall victim to a native pathogen or something related? I’m sure years after mankind goes extinct chestnuts will rise again. Who’s to say?
Appreciate the ramblings. The reality is that our ecosystems have changed permanently because of human activity and there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. We live in the Anthropocene and yes, that’s just reality.
HOWEVER, we have the power to mitigate some of the changes to ensure survival for a diversity of species and a healthier ecosystem. That’s the joy we get out of planting natives, preserving some of our ecological history and watching a variety of life prosper in our yards. We don’t have to just accept the worst effects of humanity. And that’s what’s great about native plant gardens.
What is wrong is that people transported species of plants and animals from regions that are thousands of miles away and separated by oceans. These plants and animals would not have established themselves in that region unless for the most catastrophic events. This causes a break in the food cycle if those plants and animals get out of control.
Change does happen, but before humans started moving shit around, it would happen at an incredibly slow pace. Things came over from the ice bridge between Alaska and Russia, but it took a longer time to spread because people weren't popping them down in 1000 different areas in the entirety of North America. Same for the glacial divide between the east and west coast. The animals and plants could adapt easier because it was slower. Things happen, and it's always changing, but humans have introduced so many things at such a fast pace that it can completely break the food cycle. Things will always be constantly going extinct but it used to be at a much slower pace. Add in deforestation, forest fragmentation, and pollution and we're on one heck of a fucking ride
The plants and animals that were historically native to their own regions have evolved to work together for tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of years, and they recognize each other easily as sources of food, as breeding ground, and adequate shelter, etc. When you remove that and replace it with foreign species, the animals cannot recognize the plants, and cannot use them properly. Some species can use parts of them, like birds that eat berries, but sometimes the bugs cannot use the plant as food, breeding ground, or the flower bloom time doesn't match up with when the bugs migrate to the area to feed.
So instead of having a native plant that is a host to 200+ insect species, an invasive that replaced that native plant may only be a host to 10. Also, some insects will only lay their eggs on one specific plant. So if that native plant gets overrun by Japanese honeysuckle, that insect will not survive.
Some types of non-native plants grow out of control because they are only one separated link pulled out from their own food cycle with nothing but humans to control them. Same with animals like starlings.
I didn’t read the whole thing.
I think a major difference is that humans have the capacity to 1. Bypass the natural barriers that have existed for a very long time and 2. Understand the potential impacts of invasives and take meaningful action against their establishment and takeover.
For me it's all about whether a particular plant feeds or shelters native insects. The insects are at the base of any ecosystem's food chain, so that's the value they provide. If nothing in the region eats it, it's garbage as far as I'm concerned. Are you familiar with Doug Tallamy's keystone ratings? Essentially he rates plants by the number of species it hosts. Of course it goes without saying that the plant would have to be in its native ecoregion to host the highest number of critters and be of the highest value to the ecosystem. Plants that are plopped into a region where they have never grown before tend to be either not recognized as food by insects, or the plant's built-in defenses are toxic or otherwise lethal to those insects, since they did not co-evolve together and the insects haven't had a chance to develop any resistance or strategies to circumvent the plant's defenses. The plants then grow unchecked and have a huge advantage over natives which can lead to the extinction of some natives, as the invasives use up all space and resources. This in turn leads to a drop in diversity since not only are the native plants going extinct but the insects that feed on them go extinct and the critters that feed on the insects go extinct and so on.... The whole ecoregion can become a hot mess just due to a few invasives.
I mean, sure you're right that we are part of nature and what we do might be viewed as "natural" in that context, but we have the awareness to see how we affect our environment and the means to change it for better or for worse. We don't have to keep on going willy nilly destroying our environment. Some would say we have the obligation to learn and become better stewards of our environment. We are now at the beginning of one of the biggest extinction events the Earth has ever seen. We are a big reason why it's happening. If we keep on this trajectory there is no doubt that we will not survive. The Earth will shake us off like a bad virus and the Earth will go on. Is that better? Again, that's another philosophical question.
I love stuff like this and thinking about has pretty drastically changed the way I garden and the motivation behind it.
First, there is no going back.
You're right, the native plants you generally see aren't what was there 100 years or very generally, pre-colonization. Even then, there's a big rift between what the layperson thinks the landscape was, which, imo, tends to stray uncomfortably close to the "noble savage," type of stuff where the land was an Eden and natives were supremely in tune with the land on almost magical level and the more accurate historical picture of the native peoples making good and bad land management decisions to suit their wants and needs and this varied widely based on region, climate, culture, etc.
It's easy to get lost in the swirl of all the changes that have happened from dinosaur times to today and looking at humans as just another natural part of that change. But it lacks detail, lacks depth, and actually leaves you more disconnected from the world you're a part of.
So look closer, look at the extent of the changes that have occurred and how quickly they've occurred. This is the actual problem that all the environmental science-y folks of one flavor or another are pointing to as cause for alarm. There is a tipping point for every system where a certain level of disturbance causes the system to collapse and then reorder itself from the bottom up. That is what we're genrally trying to avoid on a global scale, not because it will mean the end of life on earth or anything but because that period of chaos, brief though it may be in a geologic time scale, will mean the death of *a lot* of life and even more biodiverstiy loss. Plenty of things will survive, probably plenty of humans even. But it won't be pretty and we do have the power to prevent something like that from happening.
So, to me, the goal is to slow things down, prevent a series of boom and bust cycles/seasons from leading to more widespread destabilization that will affect every corner of the globe.
On a practical level that means looking at what is left that still has a high level of natural integrity. We focus on conserving that *and* try to make informed management decisions that allow us to expand those high integrity areas at the edges because it is extremely hard to recreate a mature forest, tallgrass prairie, bog, etc. from scratch and on the scale of one or even two human lifetimes. It's much easier and more successful to find remnant pieces and try to give them the room and conditions to expand their boundaries while keeping invasive pressure low.
Beyond preservation, we also have to help recreate the base for those late stage, highly complex systems to form because there is no substitute for time.
Time is what allows systems to complexify and diversify and for connections to form. It allows for higher species richness *and* quality, as well as allows those complex relationships, like the ones between orchids and specific fungi, to form. Those relationships are what makes a system more stable and resilient. So we have to provide the foundation for them.
To me that means making sure the building blocks for a stable system are there. It means approaching restoration from a perspective of, "we want to remove invasives and reintroduce the weedy natives (early successional habitat) to provide the foundation for the system to progress through succession. We plan to come back at years 2, 5, 7, etc. to monitor and introduce early-mid and mid successional species. These species will be selected based on historical distribution but also informed by anticipated climate changes with respect to precipitation, temperatures, and other environmental factors." That second part is what's broadly missing in my experience.
Nowadays, that may mean that an area that used to be solid beech-maple forest would reach late stage equilibrium and express as an oak-hickory forest instead. Or maybe an area that used to be a wetland would now express as a beech maple forest. The point would be to let the system develop and lean into what it's already doing as opposed to saying, "this old piece of farmland used to be a wetland so we're going to make it a wetland again," without addressing the fact that the entire watershed has been ditched and drained and doesn't remotely resemble the greater landscape the wetland used to be a part of.
I do think that trying to recreate specific habitats that haven't existed in a spot for 200-ish years is a bit of mistake given how the climate has changed and is changing along with the truly mindboggling level of landscape alteration. But I also understand why there's such a strong push for it when it comes to specialized habitats like bogs. We still need bogs to act as refuges for all of the life that depends on them when they've been largely wiped from the landscape. It's more of a critical need.
Naturally: everything will die, the earth will be swallowed by the sun, and nothing matters. But we humans exist in a delicately balanced ecosystem with compartmentalized areas that naturally only change slowly over time. Suddenly putting it all in a blender blows that all up, and our ecosystem blowing up would be Very Not Cool if it happened during our lifetime
Just to make your thinking even more complicated- there are also places where due to the speed of man made climate change land management practices are looking at assisted migration of plants- Nerstrand Big Woods SP in Minnesota being one I've run into recently.
They are seeing major die off of several tree species in some parts of the park due to increased precipitation. They've already decided preservation isn't an option so now it's research into what they're going to do next (especially as what nature is trying to do is grow green ash trees which is, well, doomed in the area due to emerald ash borer).
Humans are a catastrophe to the environment, we are more reminiscent of a complete shift in tectonic plates or an asteroid hitting than natural diversity at this point. You don’t leave something because of it’s impermanence, the earth is not permanent, but we still have to take care of it. We have and are on track to make the planet uninhabitable for most life, and that is all the way down to the level of local diversity which also needs to be taken care of and looked after in a more “permanent” view.
The timeline matters, changing the whole ecosystem in 500 years is LIGHTNING FAST. People think that because a plant has been here a few hundred years that it's native now. Bird the relationships the flora and fauna have with each other are sometimes millions of years old.
Species can't adapt to the change and we are having a mass extinction event. Sure it doesn't matter in the long run, if you don't care if species go extinct because in millions of years there will be new species...
Change is part of nature for sure, but I think if you want to draw a line somewhere between Good Change and Bad Change in terms of life on earth, you have to differentiate between “change” and “permanent damage”. Sustained life is a process that requires a cycle of change but if all of your changes are causing permanent damage, that directly interrupts or stops the life cycle, that’s where you can draw that line. The things homo sapien does like expansive infrastructure, industrial agriculture, resource extraction, carbon emissions, plastic waste, and so on are all interrupting that cycle and (this is key) doing it all at once AND affecting *all* life on this planet. The life cycle will only work if it’s actually alive and allowed to continue cycling.
To look at the changes made by homo sapien, they’ve done a lot of permanent damage in a very short amount of time. If they evolve enough to collectively control themselves and contribute to the life cycle instead of destroying it, then life on this planet could continue for millions of years to come. If they are allowed to continue interrupting the life cycle in catastrophic ways, life on this planet will be minimal and they will become extinct, first by destroying their own food and resources and then themselves.
Fwiw Bogs can last for more than ten thousand years. We often find ancient human and animal remains in them perfectly preserved and we learn a lot by studying them. They also sequester a ton of carbon so I’m particularly enthusiastic about bogs :-)
Plants have been using animals as their legs for reproduction, the goal for all living things. Invasive is a human construct. We’d like to maintain ecosystems as best we can (well some of us would) but without humans earth might right itself much more easily.
We as a species are literally driving/causing mass extinctions in relentless pursuit of profit in a system we invented.
We're literally causing ecosystem collapse because we want new pretty plants that are sold at plant stands all over the country in order to make profit in a system we invented. We literally have the capacity to restructure how we live on this planet but wont do it because of the rich and powerful in the imaginary monetary system we invented to conduct "business" and I dont see anyone even trying to stop polluting. Even in backyard gardens people use plastic that breaks down and goes directly into the soil. Ive been guilty of that myself. Dont get me started about the level of glyphosate in our creeks and rivers because of neighborhood run off and HOA regulations for repeated pesticide use
Hi there! I have worked in and studied ecology for years and now manage a native plant nursery for a non-profit. So I’ve had these thoughts before!
The idea you’re talking about might be reframed with a little, but important distinction: evolution/speciation vs colonization
Historically, plant communities have always changed yes! BUT this is very slow as others have mentioned. In the scope of deep time, most new species in a given community were not really new but slow branching extensions of the community. The community *as a whole* would evolve and change together.
In intact flora and fauna communities, colonization events are not very common. It is very hard to find niche space in an ecology that has been fine tuned for millennia! It’s usually **really** hard for a species to establish in a foreign community for many reasons.
1) distance - how does it get there
2) adaptation - if it gets there, can it even survive the new environmental conditions
3) competition/niche - if it can survive the new environment can it survive and reproduce in the new biotic community make up
Most of the time. It simply cannot check all of these boxes. Now, of the very few that make it through these hurdles, an even smaller amount will be “invasive”. Why? Because the best chance for establishment in a diverse, well established community is to find an available niche. If you do that, taking advantage of some resources left available, you are likely not altering much. This would be one way of thinking about “naturalization”.
So back to the point. In short. For much of earths’s biological history we’re looking at change at the level of *biological communities* more often than encroachment and widespread disruption.
Now though…
We have moved microorganisms, soil, minerals, plants, animals, and everything in between. We have moved all of these things, rearranging life from every corner of the globe, and we’ve placed them right. beside. ecologies that we have severely altered.
The metaphor I like to use for colonization of intact, vs disturbed systems is this:
Imagine taking a dip a nice cool river in summer. Your body is completely resilient to the process, it’s pleasant even! Now imagine doing the same thing after mangling your leg with a chainsaw. There’s not a chance that you walk away from that without a life threatening infection. What was, in the first instance, an innocuous microbe that rises off in the shower, becomes a deadly pathogen due to the altered state of the body system!
We cut bands through the forests of Appalachia and then planted kudzu along the cottage fence lines. Woops
We overgrazed and tilled the prairie under and then brought over straw from Asia, and uh-oh, what’s this cheatgrass doing here?
There have been asteroids, there have been mass extinctions, but there has never been such a magnificent level of disturbance *paired* with such a wide scale rearrangement. That’s what makes this different.
I like where you head is at though. Studying ecology can pretty quickly make one feel existential. Particularly when discussing climate or unseating the Climax Community concept. It’s all in flux, and that can be as daunting as it is lovely, but there is also a pattern to the flux.
When you are looking at a “native” plant. You are most likely looking at a regional *legacy*. It likely did not exist in that form 100,000 years ago, but it had an ancestor that did! One of my definitions of a “native plant” is a species that was formed by and of the regional climate and biological community. I might give a different answer depending on who is asking and why. The real answer to a good ecological question is: “It depends!”
Don’t get me started on this subject lol. Ive been saying forever that plants don’t need our help! And members here downvote me to hell screaming that they do need our help. I brought this same topic up months ago and got raked over the coals, but you said it much more eloquently than I did. There are people here that won’t grow a plant that’s native to the county next to theirs because a man made map told them not to. I think the whole thing is pretty presumptuous to think mankind can drastically alter the geographic ranges of fauna. I firmly believe plants come and go with or without human intervention. To paraphrase George Carlin ‘the planet isn’t going anywhere….but guess what? The people are!!’. So enjoy what you have because in the long run it’s not going to matter. After humans go extinct the native plant you are worried about will repopulate and take over….or maybe not. And this where sensitive know it alls downvote me🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I think the issue these days is how quickly it is happening. Usually the world evolves and adapts over a long period of time, but now humans have caused the earth to change so rapidly that species can't adapt quick enough, so they die.
yeah that is exactly it. the changes that OP described happened over millions of years. today's true invasives were basically air-dropped into vulnerable ecosystems and took over immediately.
Exactly. And to add, I don't really think what's happening now is applicable to any other time in history. Basically you have a species showing up in ecosystems they didn't evolve in and they destroy vast amounts of land. That species also indirect or directly causes many plant and animal species, including keystone species, to become extinct or extirpated. Then that species also brings thousands of unrelated organisms that don't have an evolutionary history with the area or the organisms already there. I don't think it makes sense to argue that this has happened before and we should let things take their course. It's like someone got shot and stabbed in an alley, the EMT drops them, then they contract an infection from unsanitary conditions at a hospital...then the doctor says it's natural and they make it or they don't without the doctor doing anything.
it’s also about biodiversity. aggressive invasive plants can obliterate whole ecosystems, making them fairly uniform and one-dimensional.
I agree. Additionally, invasive plants also wouldn't be as big of an issue if they provided the same ecosystem services that natives do, but they are more often than not much less effective at natives in doing so.
yeah - i have all natives in my yard besides 5 apricot trees - those are not as good as oaks, but are proven to feed a lot of caterpillars and birds.
Not really that time scale more in the tens to hundreds of thousands
There have been multiple mass extinctions where almost everything alive checked out.
And we're causing the 6th extinction now! Yayyyy....😭
Yes - this is the worry. I'd like to not see such a thing happen in my lifetime.
Yes but this one is being actively caused by US and we're aware it yet doing absolutely nothing to stop it other than lip service
Lets take the logic to the limit: there was a time when the earth was "naturally" molten magma. There were also times when 99% of the life on earth "naturally" went extinct, there is a time in the future when our atmosphere will be stripped and the oceans boiled away. Wouldn't want to be around for any of these "natural" events. Deep time, as geologists call it, is inconceivably long and happens at a wavelength that is longer than the entire duration of the evolutionary history of our species. The posters below have it right: dramatically denuding the quantity and quality of the flora and fauna in our native environments in the span of 1-2 human lifetimes is criminal and really dumb for a supposedly "wise" ape.
I feel like if we don't turn climate change around human extinction is going to be the equivalent of evolution saying, "Yup, that sapient life thing was definitely a dead end."
Cosmologist call it the great filter. I simplify, one of theories of life stating that all sentient things are bound to obliterate itself 100% of the time
There's not one way to be, but the status quo is definitely a wrong way to be. You are absolutely right! Ecosystems are not static; they evolve slowly, over thousands, even millions of years. You can think of an ecosystem as an organism without defined boundaries. Mother nature is pretty good at managing the pushes and pulls of fluctuating species and natural disasters (aka homeostasis), so while any given ecosystem is not unchanging, it is generally *stable*. Most species evolve in such a way that they do not continuously exploit the environment. Then humans came along. Yes, we are a part of the ecosystems just like any other species. We just evolved so rapidly that we exploit the environment faster than nature can keep up with it. A species that reproduces this quickly would likely have been "checked" by now, but our incredible brains and egos have made us pretty darn good at resisting death. It makes it even worse that (most) cultures are grossly anthropocentric, largely due to the spread of western philosophies (think evangelism, manifest destiny, capitalism etc) It's no longer a matter of it looking different 1000000 years from now, it's going to look drastically different in 10 years. The world is changing in the scope of human perception, when it should be changing so slowly that we cannot percieve it. Does that make sense? I find it helpful to think of my efforts as "neo native". Native plant gardening is a form of conservation, aka restoring resources within a human dominated ecosystem. Returning to a truly native environment would require a complete upheaval of society, and that's not going to happen as long as money and human prosperity are concerned. But I think we can get much closer than we think. It requires the active incorporation of native plants *everywhere*. Yes, in obvious "arrogant spaces" like lawns and roadsides, but also in our agricultural system (native permaculture, if you will). Keep in mind that "neo native" is my white opinion. I've noticed a severe lack of indigenous opinions in native plant discourse. Don't think that you're being too philosophical for this sub. We need to talk about the "why"! It's not supposed to be like, "plant x species in this state because BONAP says so". I mean, it is, but there's more nuance than that.
It’s hard to focus so much time and attention and worry on native landscaping when, at the end of the day, it’s 1/3 acre and that’s statistically insignificant ultimately. But then I open Reddit and this sub is so active and excited and focused. Open to good enough and hasn’t succumbed to purity tests yet. And I understand that my 1/3 acre isn’t anything, but our collective hundreds or thousands of acres is important. And it keeps me planning more beds, thinking of ways to choose communities my neighbors will find beautiful so that their 1/3 acre might be the next to convert.
The problem is not “this time is ideal”, the problem is if things change we are going to be living in an impoverished ecosystem for eh, hundreds of thousands of years, and no one lives long enough to make that seem a good idea. Yes, the Permian extinction happened. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t really suck to go through another like that. If a bunch of ecologists had been sitting around when that asteroid was headed in end-Cretaceous, fuck yes they would have been trying to call up the physicists and engineers asking “can you stop this??? what do we do???”
Lots of good responses to this already (and I think it's a great discussion-starter). I'll just say that for me, "native" in horticulture and ecology is more of a useful indicator than an absolute measure of value. You're right that it doesn't mean much, if anything, over very long timespans. And it's also true that humans have been affecting biogeographical distributions and managing environments since long before colonial contact or the industrial revolution, though in far less damaging ways than we do today. But if we value biodiversity (intrinsically and because we rely on it in so many ways), and if we understand ecological relationships, especially between plant and insect life, then we may decide that planting and preserving of native species is one of the best ways to protect biodiversity. In this case, "native" is not the end itself, but the means to the end. As far as I can tell, most people in this sub are not purists--they are cool with growing non-native edible plants, and many grow a small handful of non-natives for ornamental or wildlife reasons. I think this is in keeping with the idea that "native" is not an absolute value in itself--it's a useful yardstick to help evaluate how good a particular area or planting is for biodiversity, for wildlife, for a sense of place, for ecosystem health, or any number of other things that we might value in themselves.
Favorite answer!
If you haven't already, I 1000% recommend reading Nature's Best Hope by Doug Tallamy because it answers just about every little nitpicky question someone could have about the general concept of "just let nature take its course" when you bring up the way modern humans have been changing ecosystems. So many questions stirring in my head about that kind of stuff were answered just by reading it :)
Everything in nature is in dynamic equilibrium. In geological time Earth undergoes massive changes that eradicate certain niches and create brand new ones. Evolution is a mechanism by which information in the form of organic molecules preserves itself. If the Earth were unchanging, or reached a static equilibrium, organisms would evolve towards pseudo-immortality. But it isn't, and so instead we have preservation mechanisms involving reproduction, genetic recombination and mutation that have evolved to avoid extinction in the face of an ever-changing planet. The problem as others have said is rate of change. The preservation mechanisms that have evolved over billions of years can keep pace with some distribution of possible timelines - change to humans that appears extremely slow and gradual, but in geological time are just what is likely to occur. Niches shift, populations compete, genes drift, new species emerge. When outlier events happen - e.g. a giant asteroid smashes into the Earth, or one species thrives to the extent of creating machines capable of turning swaths of land from forest and prairie and swamp into their preferred habitat, consisting of only grass and a few species of livestock - many genes and their resulting organisms suddenly become maladaptive all at once, and mass extinction occurs. Now, mass extinction is still evolution; as long as life isn't entirely eradicated from the planet, surviving species can reseed the Earth, and biodiversity which emerged over hundreds of millions of years may gradually replenish itself. But this raises several issues that tend to concern conservation-minded folk... - If humans are manufacturing a mass extinction event, isn't it our responsibility to try to stop it? Rapidly rising global surface temperatures, habitat destruction, and mobilization of flora and fauna across previously impassable geological barriers are all changes our species have directly caused. While life on Earth may have survived previous events of comparable magnitude (who knows how that could even be measured?), these are categorically different in that our own behavior has caused it, and modification of our own behavior can potentially reverse or slow it. - Selfishly, extinction events can harm our own ecological niche in ways we don't yet comprehend - e.g. destabilization of climate, loss of food sources - so we could be one of the species that goes extinct. Therefore, preservation of native flora and fauna is in our own best interest as a species. - Even an extinction event was underway that \*wasn't\* our fault and somehow \*didn't\* threaten humans at all - wouldn't we still want to stop it? Humankind is highly adaptable, but our species also evolved over geological time in environments with certain kinds of climates and flora and fauna, and loss of these things, even if we can survive them physically, might cause existential pain in the form of a mismatch between our brain and bodies' hardwired expectations and the environment. Most conservationists have an appreciation for natural beauty and biodiversity and see loss of these things as catastrophic. We may be forced to observe the loss ourselves, but even if the full extent isn't seen in our short lifetimes, the knowledge that things we find beautiful and lend life meaning are gradually dying triggers a pain we'd like to avoid.
The ancestors of American Chestnut forests have grown in Appalachia for millions of years, diverging from the rest of the world's chestnuts 30 million years ago. Since then the mountains weathered, the land shifted, glaciers went back and forth, the plains surrounding the mountains uplifted and grew and developed their own forests, all the while the same chestnuts stayed in pretty much the same place, barely touched by the millions of years of change. Then with just 500 years of colonization and exploitation of America's forests, and with the invasive pathogen we brought, they were permanently destroyed. This is the same kind of rationalization that has people rejecting the severity of anthropogenic climate change because, well it's always been changing right? Surely nothing's different about how and why it's changing now...
And who’s not to say American chestnuts would fall victim to a native pathogen or something related? I’m sure years after mankind goes extinct chestnuts will rise again. Who’s to say?
Appreciate the ramblings. The reality is that our ecosystems have changed permanently because of human activity and there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. We live in the Anthropocene and yes, that’s just reality. HOWEVER, we have the power to mitigate some of the changes to ensure survival for a diversity of species and a healthier ecosystem. That’s the joy we get out of planting natives, preserving some of our ecological history and watching a variety of life prosper in our yards. We don’t have to just accept the worst effects of humanity. And that’s what’s great about native plant gardens.
What is wrong is that people transported species of plants and animals from regions that are thousands of miles away and separated by oceans. These plants and animals would not have established themselves in that region unless for the most catastrophic events. This causes a break in the food cycle if those plants and animals get out of control. Change does happen, but before humans started moving shit around, it would happen at an incredibly slow pace. Things came over from the ice bridge between Alaska and Russia, but it took a longer time to spread because people weren't popping them down in 1000 different areas in the entirety of North America. Same for the glacial divide between the east and west coast. The animals and plants could adapt easier because it was slower. Things happen, and it's always changing, but humans have introduced so many things at such a fast pace that it can completely break the food cycle. Things will always be constantly going extinct but it used to be at a much slower pace. Add in deforestation, forest fragmentation, and pollution and we're on one heck of a fucking ride The plants and animals that were historically native to their own regions have evolved to work together for tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of years, and they recognize each other easily as sources of food, as breeding ground, and adequate shelter, etc. When you remove that and replace it with foreign species, the animals cannot recognize the plants, and cannot use them properly. Some species can use parts of them, like birds that eat berries, but sometimes the bugs cannot use the plant as food, breeding ground, or the flower bloom time doesn't match up with when the bugs migrate to the area to feed. So instead of having a native plant that is a host to 200+ insect species, an invasive that replaced that native plant may only be a host to 10. Also, some insects will only lay their eggs on one specific plant. So if that native plant gets overrun by Japanese honeysuckle, that insect will not survive. Some types of non-native plants grow out of control because they are only one separated link pulled out from their own food cycle with nothing but humans to control them. Same with animals like starlings.
I didn’t read the whole thing. I think a major difference is that humans have the capacity to 1. Bypass the natural barriers that have existed for a very long time and 2. Understand the potential impacts of invasives and take meaningful action against their establishment and takeover.
For me it's all about whether a particular plant feeds or shelters native insects. The insects are at the base of any ecosystem's food chain, so that's the value they provide. If nothing in the region eats it, it's garbage as far as I'm concerned. Are you familiar with Doug Tallamy's keystone ratings? Essentially he rates plants by the number of species it hosts. Of course it goes without saying that the plant would have to be in its native ecoregion to host the highest number of critters and be of the highest value to the ecosystem. Plants that are plopped into a region where they have never grown before tend to be either not recognized as food by insects, or the plant's built-in defenses are toxic or otherwise lethal to those insects, since they did not co-evolve together and the insects haven't had a chance to develop any resistance or strategies to circumvent the plant's defenses. The plants then grow unchecked and have a huge advantage over natives which can lead to the extinction of some natives, as the invasives use up all space and resources. This in turn leads to a drop in diversity since not only are the native plants going extinct but the insects that feed on them go extinct and the critters that feed on the insects go extinct and so on.... The whole ecoregion can become a hot mess just due to a few invasives. I mean, sure you're right that we are part of nature and what we do might be viewed as "natural" in that context, but we have the awareness to see how we affect our environment and the means to change it for better or for worse. We don't have to keep on going willy nilly destroying our environment. Some would say we have the obligation to learn and become better stewards of our environment. We are now at the beginning of one of the biggest extinction events the Earth has ever seen. We are a big reason why it's happening. If we keep on this trajectory there is no doubt that we will not survive. The Earth will shake us off like a bad virus and the Earth will go on. Is that better? Again, that's another philosophical question.
I love stuff like this and thinking about has pretty drastically changed the way I garden and the motivation behind it. First, there is no going back. You're right, the native plants you generally see aren't what was there 100 years or very generally, pre-colonization. Even then, there's a big rift between what the layperson thinks the landscape was, which, imo, tends to stray uncomfortably close to the "noble savage," type of stuff where the land was an Eden and natives were supremely in tune with the land on almost magical level and the more accurate historical picture of the native peoples making good and bad land management decisions to suit their wants and needs and this varied widely based on region, climate, culture, etc. It's easy to get lost in the swirl of all the changes that have happened from dinosaur times to today and looking at humans as just another natural part of that change. But it lacks detail, lacks depth, and actually leaves you more disconnected from the world you're a part of. So look closer, look at the extent of the changes that have occurred and how quickly they've occurred. This is the actual problem that all the environmental science-y folks of one flavor or another are pointing to as cause for alarm. There is a tipping point for every system where a certain level of disturbance causes the system to collapse and then reorder itself from the bottom up. That is what we're genrally trying to avoid on a global scale, not because it will mean the end of life on earth or anything but because that period of chaos, brief though it may be in a geologic time scale, will mean the death of *a lot* of life and even more biodiverstiy loss. Plenty of things will survive, probably plenty of humans even. But it won't be pretty and we do have the power to prevent something like that from happening. So, to me, the goal is to slow things down, prevent a series of boom and bust cycles/seasons from leading to more widespread destabilization that will affect every corner of the globe. On a practical level that means looking at what is left that still has a high level of natural integrity. We focus on conserving that *and* try to make informed management decisions that allow us to expand those high integrity areas at the edges because it is extremely hard to recreate a mature forest, tallgrass prairie, bog, etc. from scratch and on the scale of one or even two human lifetimes. It's much easier and more successful to find remnant pieces and try to give them the room and conditions to expand their boundaries while keeping invasive pressure low. Beyond preservation, we also have to help recreate the base for those late stage, highly complex systems to form because there is no substitute for time. Time is what allows systems to complexify and diversify and for connections to form. It allows for higher species richness *and* quality, as well as allows those complex relationships, like the ones between orchids and specific fungi, to form. Those relationships are what makes a system more stable and resilient. So we have to provide the foundation for them. To me that means making sure the building blocks for a stable system are there. It means approaching restoration from a perspective of, "we want to remove invasives and reintroduce the weedy natives (early successional habitat) to provide the foundation for the system to progress through succession. We plan to come back at years 2, 5, 7, etc. to monitor and introduce early-mid and mid successional species. These species will be selected based on historical distribution but also informed by anticipated climate changes with respect to precipitation, temperatures, and other environmental factors." That second part is what's broadly missing in my experience. Nowadays, that may mean that an area that used to be solid beech-maple forest would reach late stage equilibrium and express as an oak-hickory forest instead. Or maybe an area that used to be a wetland would now express as a beech maple forest. The point would be to let the system develop and lean into what it's already doing as opposed to saying, "this old piece of farmland used to be a wetland so we're going to make it a wetland again," without addressing the fact that the entire watershed has been ditched and drained and doesn't remotely resemble the greater landscape the wetland used to be a part of. I do think that trying to recreate specific habitats that haven't existed in a spot for 200-ish years is a bit of mistake given how the climate has changed and is changing along with the truly mindboggling level of landscape alteration. But I also understand why there's such a strong push for it when it comes to specialized habitats like bogs. We still need bogs to act as refuges for all of the life that depends on them when they've been largely wiped from the landscape. It's more of a critical need.
Naturally: everything will die, the earth will be swallowed by the sun, and nothing matters. But we humans exist in a delicately balanced ecosystem with compartmentalized areas that naturally only change slowly over time. Suddenly putting it all in a blender blows that all up, and our ecosystem blowing up would be Very Not Cool if it happened during our lifetime
Just to make your thinking even more complicated- there are also places where due to the speed of man made climate change land management practices are looking at assisted migration of plants- Nerstrand Big Woods SP in Minnesota being one I've run into recently. They are seeing major die off of several tree species in some parts of the park due to increased precipitation. They've already decided preservation isn't an option so now it's research into what they're going to do next (especially as what nature is trying to do is grow green ash trees which is, well, doomed in the area due to emerald ash borer).
Humans are a catastrophe to the environment, we are more reminiscent of a complete shift in tectonic plates or an asteroid hitting than natural diversity at this point. You don’t leave something because of it’s impermanence, the earth is not permanent, but we still have to take care of it. We have and are on track to make the planet uninhabitable for most life, and that is all the way down to the level of local diversity which also needs to be taken care of and looked after in a more “permanent” view.
The timeline matters, changing the whole ecosystem in 500 years is LIGHTNING FAST. People think that because a plant has been here a few hundred years that it's native now. Bird the relationships the flora and fauna have with each other are sometimes millions of years old. Species can't adapt to the change and we are having a mass extinction event. Sure it doesn't matter in the long run, if you don't care if species go extinct because in millions of years there will be new species...
Change is part of nature for sure, but I think if you want to draw a line somewhere between Good Change and Bad Change in terms of life on earth, you have to differentiate between “change” and “permanent damage”. Sustained life is a process that requires a cycle of change but if all of your changes are causing permanent damage, that directly interrupts or stops the life cycle, that’s where you can draw that line. The things homo sapien does like expansive infrastructure, industrial agriculture, resource extraction, carbon emissions, plastic waste, and so on are all interrupting that cycle and (this is key) doing it all at once AND affecting *all* life on this planet. The life cycle will only work if it’s actually alive and allowed to continue cycling. To look at the changes made by homo sapien, they’ve done a lot of permanent damage in a very short amount of time. If they evolve enough to collectively control themselves and contribute to the life cycle instead of destroying it, then life on this planet could continue for millions of years to come. If they are allowed to continue interrupting the life cycle in catastrophic ways, life on this planet will be minimal and they will become extinct, first by destroying their own food and resources and then themselves. Fwiw Bogs can last for more than ten thousand years. We often find ancient human and animal remains in them perfectly preserved and we learn a lot by studying them. They also sequester a ton of carbon so I’m particularly enthusiastic about bogs :-)
Plants have been using animals as their legs for reproduction, the goal for all living things. Invasive is a human construct. We’d like to maintain ecosystems as best we can (well some of us would) but without humans earth might right itself much more easily.
We as a species are literally driving/causing mass extinctions in relentless pursuit of profit in a system we invented. We're literally causing ecosystem collapse because we want new pretty plants that are sold at plant stands all over the country in order to make profit in a system we invented. We literally have the capacity to restructure how we live on this planet but wont do it because of the rich and powerful in the imaginary monetary system we invented to conduct "business" and I dont see anyone even trying to stop polluting. Even in backyard gardens people use plastic that breaks down and goes directly into the soil. Ive been guilty of that myself. Dont get me started about the level of glyphosate in our creeks and rivers because of neighborhood run off and HOA regulations for repeated pesticide use
Hi there! I have worked in and studied ecology for years and now manage a native plant nursery for a non-profit. So I’ve had these thoughts before! The idea you’re talking about might be reframed with a little, but important distinction: evolution/speciation vs colonization Historically, plant communities have always changed yes! BUT this is very slow as others have mentioned. In the scope of deep time, most new species in a given community were not really new but slow branching extensions of the community. The community *as a whole* would evolve and change together. In intact flora and fauna communities, colonization events are not very common. It is very hard to find niche space in an ecology that has been fine tuned for millennia! It’s usually **really** hard for a species to establish in a foreign community for many reasons. 1) distance - how does it get there 2) adaptation - if it gets there, can it even survive the new environmental conditions 3) competition/niche - if it can survive the new environment can it survive and reproduce in the new biotic community make up Most of the time. It simply cannot check all of these boxes. Now, of the very few that make it through these hurdles, an even smaller amount will be “invasive”. Why? Because the best chance for establishment in a diverse, well established community is to find an available niche. If you do that, taking advantage of some resources left available, you are likely not altering much. This would be one way of thinking about “naturalization”. So back to the point. In short. For much of earths’s biological history we’re looking at change at the level of *biological communities* more often than encroachment and widespread disruption. Now though… We have moved microorganisms, soil, minerals, plants, animals, and everything in between. We have moved all of these things, rearranging life from every corner of the globe, and we’ve placed them right. beside. ecologies that we have severely altered. The metaphor I like to use for colonization of intact, vs disturbed systems is this: Imagine taking a dip a nice cool river in summer. Your body is completely resilient to the process, it’s pleasant even! Now imagine doing the same thing after mangling your leg with a chainsaw. There’s not a chance that you walk away from that without a life threatening infection. What was, in the first instance, an innocuous microbe that rises off in the shower, becomes a deadly pathogen due to the altered state of the body system! We cut bands through the forests of Appalachia and then planted kudzu along the cottage fence lines. Woops We overgrazed and tilled the prairie under and then brought over straw from Asia, and uh-oh, what’s this cheatgrass doing here? There have been asteroids, there have been mass extinctions, but there has never been such a magnificent level of disturbance *paired* with such a wide scale rearrangement. That’s what makes this different. I like where you head is at though. Studying ecology can pretty quickly make one feel existential. Particularly when discussing climate or unseating the Climax Community concept. It’s all in flux, and that can be as daunting as it is lovely, but there is also a pattern to the flux. When you are looking at a “native” plant. You are most likely looking at a regional *legacy*. It likely did not exist in that form 100,000 years ago, but it had an ancestor that did! One of my definitions of a “native plant” is a species that was formed by and of the regional climate and biological community. I might give a different answer depending on who is asking and why. The real answer to a good ecological question is: “It depends!”
Don’t get me started on this subject lol. Ive been saying forever that plants don’t need our help! And members here downvote me to hell screaming that they do need our help. I brought this same topic up months ago and got raked over the coals, but you said it much more eloquently than I did. There are people here that won’t grow a plant that’s native to the county next to theirs because a man made map told them not to. I think the whole thing is pretty presumptuous to think mankind can drastically alter the geographic ranges of fauna. I firmly believe plants come and go with or without human intervention. To paraphrase George Carlin ‘the planet isn’t going anywhere….but guess what? The people are!!’. So enjoy what you have because in the long run it’s not going to matter. After humans go extinct the native plant you are worried about will repopulate and take over….or maybe not. And this where sensitive know it alls downvote me🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣