by Rick Sinnott
On a country road through the rolling hills of western Kentucky, I pointed out a white-tailed deer to our two nieces and nephew in the back seat. The doe, unfazed by our moving vehicle, remained stock-still a few yards off the macadam.
As we zoomed past, 8-year-old Chirana mused, “It’s actually very natural … the countryside.”
Chirana was experiencing Kentucky from the opposite end of the spectrum from Alaska, where I call home. She lives in south Florida, arguably one of the least natural environments in the United States. In Florida, citrus groves, sugarcane fields and other agricultural monocultures increasingly dominate the interstices between sprawling urban areas. Its subtropical climate is burdened with the second highest conglomeration of invasive species of the 50 states, second only to Hawaii.
An invasive species is one that does not naturally occur in an area and whose release is likely to cause economic or environmental damage, including harm to human health. Exotic birds, mammals, reptiles, fish and plants have infested the unique North American panhandle like ticks on a farm dog. Over 515 exotic plants and 250 animals, mostly birds and reptiles, have been reported.
But I don’t want to talk about Florida.
My wife and I were visiting our families in three Midwest states. It’s rare for us to leave Alaska. The last time I visited America’s heartland was seven years ago. Each time I return to my boyhood haunts, the people are more or less the same, but the natural world has changed significantly.
On our previous visit, I saw stray cats and feral cats everywhere. Cats were not content just to patrol farms or rural homesteads, where a hard-working feline might find house mice or rats and benefit humankind by killing these age-old pests, among the first recorded invasive species. Instead the cats had elected to become an invasive species themselves. At night, their bright eyes winked and flashed from the shoulders of interstate highways far from the nearest house, and not a few were pummeled by passing vehicles and flattened on roads like the raccoons and opossums they were slowly replacing.
Cats are perhaps the least domesticated of domesticated animals, little changed from their common ancestor with African wildcats. Depending on how you feel about cats, it may or may not surprise you to know they are on the list of the 100 world’s worst invasive alien species. Experts estimate that there are more than 77 million pet cats and 60 to 100 million stray and feral cats in the United States. Cats in America kill hundreds of millions of wild birds and more than a billion small mammals every year. They may be the nation’s most abundant medium-sized predator. Unlike most wild predators, even well-fed cats kill.
But I don’t want to talk about cats, either.
Read more:
image credit:
On a country road through the rolling hills of western Kentucky, I pointed out a white-tailed deer to our two nieces and nephew in the back seat. The doe, unfazed by our moving vehicle, remained stock-still a few yards off the macadam.
As we zoomed past, 8-year-old Chirana mused, “It’s actually very natural … the countryside.” Chirana was experiencing Kentucky from the opposite end of the spectrum from Alaska, where I call home. She lives in south Florida, arguably one of the least natural environments in the United States. In Florida, citrus groves, sugarcane fields and other agricultural monocultures increasingly dominate the interstices between sprawling urban areas. Its subtropical climate is burdened with the second highest conglomeration of invasive species of the 50 states, second only to Hawaii.
An invasive species is one that does not naturally occur in an area and whose release is likely to cause economic or environmental damage, including harm to human health. Exotic birds, mammals, reptiles, fish and plants have infested the unique North American panhandle like ticks on a farm dog. Over 515 exotic plants and 250 animals, mostly birds and reptiles, have been reported.
But I don’t want to talk about Florida.
My wife and I were visiting our families in three Midwest states. It’s rare for us to leave Alaska. The last time I visited America’s heartland was seven years ago. Each time I return to my boyhood haunts, the people are more or less the same, but the natural world has changed significantly.
On our previous visit, I saw stray cats and feral cats everywhere. Cats were not content just to patrol farms or rural homesteads, where a hard-working feline might find house mice or rats and benefit humankind by killing these age-old pests, among the first recorded invasive species. Instead the cats had elected to become an invasive species themselves. At night, their bright eyes winked and flashed from the shoulders of interstate highways far from the nearest house, and not a few were pummeled by passing vehicles and flattened on roads like the raccoons and opossums they were slowly replacing.
Cats are perhaps the least domesticated of domesticated animals, little changed from their common ancestor with African wildcats. Depending on how you feel about cats, it may or may not surprise you to know they are on the list of the 100 world’s worst invasive alien species. Experts estimate that there are more than 77 million pet cats and 60 to 100 million stray and feral cats in the United States. Cats in America kill hundreds of millions of wild birds and more than a billion small mammals every year. They may be the nation’s most abundant medium-sized predator. Unlike most wild predators, even well-fed cats kill.
But I don’t want to talk about cats, either.
Read more:
image credit:
