Tag Archives: racism

A recent edition of Yale Environment 360 got me thinking about something I’ve written about in the past, and which informed my Ph.D. In an entry entitled Alien species reconsidered: Finding a value in non-natives Carl Zimmer notes that: “one of the tenets of conservation management holds that alien species are ecologically harmful. But a new study is pointing to research that demonstrates that some non-native plants and animals can have beneficial impacts”. He continues by quoting the authors of a new study in the influential journal Conservation Biology who, based on their research, note that ”we predict the proportion of non-native species that are viewed as benign or even desirable will slowly increase over time.“More recently Mark Davis and 18 other leading ecologists published a Comment in the journal Nature Don’t judge species on their origins arguing that: “increasingly, the practical value of the native-versus-alien species dichotomy in conservation is declining, and even becoming counterproductive. Yet many conservationists still consider the distinction a core guiding principle.”