THE FIGHT AGAINST INVASIVE SPECIES. I posted here earlier this year about an article in the May 28, 2015 Economist which argued that invasive plant species are not a problem for other species, relying on a study which found that all 50 of the most wide-spread plant species had been in Britain since the last Ice Age. This week (December 5) the Economist published another article —entitled “Day of the triffids”—in defense of invasive plant species in connection with the European Union’s plans to approve a list of 37 plant or animal species that “member-states must eradicate if possible.”
The new article cites a study that determined that “of the country’s 677 most widespread plant species, 68 were introduced by humans before 1500 and another 56 after that date”. The other 453 species were “native”, which was defined, according to the May article as follows: “True natives were those present from time immemorial. In practice, most of these would have arrived after the end of the last ice age, since before that the small part of Britain not buried under glaciers would have been tundra.”