Wait, So Humans Aren't Perfect??

We humans love to travel, but we always find the need to bring back souvenirs! No, Not necessarily "I ❤ NY" t-shirts; more like... Snakes, Bugs, Fish and other related animals.These animals are called Non-Native Invasive Species and they are a species living outside its native distributional range, which has arrived deliberately or accidentally by human activity. 

Now, do not let the term invasive fool you, negative consequences don't always follow the foreign additions made to these indigenous homes. Sometimes they are very much needed! Such as alien trees helping restore abandoned pastures and butterflies and their main food sources of foreign flowers. Some additions start off with good intentions and carry these plans out, but then proceed to start eliminate smaller native species and move on to young offspring soon after. This process, is when the new species becomes invasive.

Once a species is introduced to a new area, naturally it will spread by rivers, hitchhiking, and travelling on their own and other ways of dispersal. When a foreign organism enters a water system and starts to reproduce, it is next to impossible to get them out of the area, they can then dominate water ways, they out-compete, displace, or mate with the organisms that are preexisting in the area. Mating can permanently change the DNA makeup and is irreversible, this is called genetic polluting. This process can put some of the most abundant organisms on the endangered list, or in extreme cases, extinct. Some of the most popular negative invaders are; Snakehead Fish, Canadian Geese, Pythons, Asian Carp, African Honey Bees and Zebra Mussels.

But What Can Be Done???

•  pesticides- mainly used on plants and insects. But proven to be very effective when species is especially caught early.
• mechanical control- consists of manual work (pulling, catching, killing) ridding the species from the area. This can be a very lengthy project.
• ecosystem management- basically the whole land is set on fire and the naturally occurring species return to the area. This is a very new system though, so it is still being researched on how to control the flames as not to eradicate the species in that area completely.

VISUAL REPRESENTATION:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAY_UsGjyZk

Sources:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/good-invasives/
http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=1532
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/slideshow/2012/04/05/americas-most-dangerous-and-costly-invasive-species/#slide=1
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/simberloff.html