Japanese bindweed biocontrol insect to be released in UK

[jim_lewis1]

Stay tuned for unintended consequences!

Researchers have decided that it is safe to release a Japanese insect in the UK to control Japanese bindweed which is an invasive species with no natural control in the UK

After tests they concluded that it was safe as the insect appears to affect only the Japanese bindweed.

Is that really the only effect they think a new species would have in an eco-system?

Is it not also quite likely that predators on insects will suddenly have a new source of food available which will interfere with existing population balances?

EG A predator of many insect species becomes more successful as a result of the new food source and these more numerous individuals also predate more on other insect species. Who knows which will lose out, endangered insect species? Will the insect predator still be a source of food for other animals higher in the food chain? Will species higher in the food chain also become more successful in the short term, reach a point of collapse as the new insect is predated on and threaten the longer term viability of the species?

I can't believe that this is being allowed to go ahead, certainly a systemic perspective would alert them to wider implications of such actions beyond simply whether the new insect might eat other than the intended target plant.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8555378.stm

There was an old woman who swallowed a fly...

[Teiana]

lol @ old woman and fly.

But how else to deal with the bindweed, which is destroying native plants and roaming free all over the place, being invasive and indestructible?

[jim_lewis1]

Public awareness campaign? Get everyone to help out, pulling it up and destroying it.

I just think that on the evidence of every single other situation that species are introduced being a disastrous failure, that optimistically hoping this time it will be different is naive bordering on insane!

[Teiana]

well, i follow your logic, but i am sitting here with a strong suspicion that I was an introduced species...
i don't think i'd like to support an argument that argues that i oughtn't to be here, in case i vanished..

[Teiana]

there's no level playing field. There's no point zero. There's no place in time and space where we can go, where all the 'native things' will be back in their box.

[Teiana]

like we shouldn't introduce X in case it eats Y which might destroy Z.. where it turns out, None of the above are, actually, indigenous...

[jim_lewis1]

You don't make a bad situation better by adding yet more stressors to the environmental web.

Man's impact on the natural order has been and continues to be detrimental, habitat loss, interference that favours some species over others etc.

But much effort has been directed at reducing these impacts. Reduction in pesticide use, field edges left with more diversity of species, control of introduced species, (through removal, eg Signal Crayfish), habitat rehabilitation, (reflooding lost wetlands).

I accept that bindweed is a problem, I just feel that introducing another variable complicates a situation that is already out of control.


This isn't motivated by some nostalgic desire to return to a bygone halcyon era. Species diversity is what supports the resilience of ecosystems. We erode that at our peril. When we have only crows, pigeons, seagulls, rats and foxes who knows what apsects of the biosphere will not be controlled?

Having said that, the beautiful and surprising diversity in nature is what makes the world somewhere worth living in, I think we should protect species for their own sake, but you don't need to feel that same way about that to see the necessity of protecting species diversity as part of protecting ourselves from environmental degradation.

[jim_lewis1]

Some examples of non-native insect species in the UK, and the damage they are doing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7574102.stm

[Andrea]

I used to work at Royal Holloway's now defunct Institute for Environmental Research right next door to CABI and know the people there quite well -- indeed, a few of my colleagues ended up working in CABI. One thing that characterises CABI's staff is that they are brilliant specialists in their narrow fields of expertise. I have every confidence in them having identified the most appropriate species for the specific purpose of controlling Japanese knotweed. However, very few of them are tasked with exploring the 'big picture'. Jim has every right to be concerned.
One thing that I would be looking out for in their field experiments is the potential for reversibility. It looks like their strategy involves having ready access to tons of pesticides and herbicides -- which basically means that they will 'nuke' the field site if things start going wrong...... we've already seen how well prepared this country is for containing biological epidemics such as foot and mouth. I really hope that their field site is nowhere near where we live!
A more 'reversible' strategy may have been to release millions of sterile males to see which plants in the wild they actually feed on (and which other species feed on them).

[jim_lewis1]

That's really the impression I got from watching interviews with them about their research over the last few months.

They are doubtless hard working and able, but seem absolutely focussed on the answer to the problem, and scarily blase about the infinite capacity for nature to behave in totally unpredictable ways, (for much the same reasons I think GM is an awful idea, literally a disaster waiting to happen).