When I was in university - back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth - there was a question we were trained to ask each other in critical theory. For instance, I might make an oh-so-insightful and incisive observation about a text. Inevitably, at some point someone would say some version of: “So what?” As in, okay, that’s very impressive and smart. So what does it really mean, or matter? Does it have any relevance to anything outside itself? Where does your insight lead, if anywhere?
This line of inquiry has been on my mind recently as I battle with acres of ridiculously dense invasive growth. Okay, it’s very impressive to clear a quarter acre of impenetrable honeysuckle, multiflora, and privet. Now the native trees, shrubs, and herbs can move in and flourish. To many, like myself, this is reason enough. But what about someone who might care somewhat less about restoring landscapes to native species? What’s wrong, really, with invasives? They’re plants, right? Okay, they crowd out natives. So what? Yes, they overtake landscapes and form monocultures. So? Yes, they reduce biodiversity. And? So? So what?
The answer I come to, the answer to “so what,” is this: Insects. Native insects do not eat invasives. They can’t. As Doug Tallamy has shown with reams of data, invasive plant species are insect food deserts. I have seen and investigated, up close and personal, thousands of non-native invasive plants in the past four years, and I have not once seen a single leaf with a single bite from an insect herbivore. This idea, this concept takes on an entirely new meaning if you imagine yourself an insect, flying or crawling through a landscape, looking for food. Look around you, at your neighborhood, your parks, your green spaces, your natural areas, your suburban yards. How much of the green stuff you see is non-native? What percentage of the biomass in your region is what you can reasonably assume to be non-native? (Don’t forget your perfectly mowed, non-native lawn.) Answer: a lot. A lot a lot. Estimated regionally at up to 30% in the late 1990’s, certainly much more today. Fifty percent? Sixty? A lot. Kind of overwhelming, a lot.
So, that’s my answer to “so what.” You like food? Good luck with that without insects. And what happens when you lose the foundation of the food chain? It’s not just apples and berries and avocados. It’s collapse, of everything. Can humans survive without insects? Define “survive.” Can the non-human world survive without insects? Think about that, and get back to me. Seriously - take a look around you, because this is not a joke, a trifle, or a detail. If insects go, everything goes. Just. Like. That. So yeah, that’s “so what.” Maybe there are some who don’t care, and never will. But maybe some do, and maybe thinking about how serious this is helps clarify things. Because it is serious. Very serious. A quiet killer, you might say, in the same way that urban food deserts break down the people who live in them, slowly but surely. Like a cancer even, spreading quietly, unseen and unnoticed, until it’s too late. Hyperbole? Maybe. Or maybe just a clear eyed observation.
Tom Wessels describes the epoch we have entered and are roaring full speed into as a “bottleneck,” that is, a period of hundreds, possibly thousands of years of species recalibration. An extinction event if you will, in which the processes of coevolution will - eventually - functionally integrate ‘invasives’ into their new habitats. But if we don’t want this process to be catastrophic - which it kind of looks like right now - we have to do whatever we can to mitigate the worst effects of our mistakes. And one mistake each of us can have a direct effect on is to keep as much of our flora and landscapes as we possibly can as natives, so insect populations aren’t wiped out and forced to start over. Which would be unfortunate, and which, as the Brits like to say, would not be ideal.
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