Speaker 1: Hi everyone. We semi recently recorded an episode about cats
Speaker 1: being an invasive species. Oh boy, and we're gonna hear
Speaker 1: it for that one. But I thought we'd go back
Speaker 1: to the o G episode on invasive species from January?
Speaker 1: What is an invasive species? Listen? Now, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Child's
Speaker 1: of you, Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Do Do Do Do
Speaker 1: do do do do do this stuff you should Know
Speaker 1: Action Edition. I gotta laugh out of Jerry. At least
Speaker 1: Google I got a a derisive snort. How about that?
Speaker 1: That's what it was. How you doing? I'm great. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about the Earth. You're concerned about the Earth? Yes?
Speaker 1: More than usual? Yes? Because of this podcast? Yes? Okay? Yeah. Man.
Speaker 1: So before we get started, you've heard of the Anthropocene, right? Uh?
Speaker 1: I know you have? You definitely have. We've certainly mentioned
Speaker 1: it before on the episode or on the podcast. So
Speaker 1: there's this debate right now over whether we've entered a
Speaker 1: new geological age from uh, the one to the Anthropocene. Right. Um?
Speaker 1: I really wish I could remember what the current one is,
Speaker 1: because people are going to write it and be like,
Speaker 1: it's this a million times over, which thank you everybody
Speaker 1: for writing out I mean to sound ungrateful. Um. But
Speaker 1: the the idea is that we've entered this period. Some
Speaker 1: people place it starting at the Industrial Revolution. A lot
Speaker 1: of people place it more at when there was apparently
Speaker 1: a huge spike in the presence of humanity from radioactivity, plastics,
Speaker 1: all this stuff in the environment as a whole. So
Speaker 1: where our presence has so muddied the geological record that
Speaker 1: we've effectively come up with a new age, a new
Speaker 1: geological age, the anthroposyne, the age of of humans. Right.
Speaker 1: So one of the things, one of the factors that
Speaker 1: people point to that suggests that we're we're changing the
Speaker 1: natural geological record, Thank you, Charles so. Um. The the
Speaker 1: idea that we we are altering what the natural course
Speaker 1: of the Holocene, the of course it would have taken
Speaker 1: had humans never been around. One of the ways we're
Speaker 1: doing that is by shuffling species from one environment to another,
Speaker 1: from one ecosystem to another where they've never been before,
Speaker 1: probably never would have ended up, at least not in
Speaker 1: any of our lifetimes. Um, and that they are altering
Speaker 1: those ecosystems in radical new ways such that when those
Speaker 1: things fossilized, those ecosystems become fossilized and can be studied,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Hence,
Speaker 1: archaeologists would be pretty puzzled by what they were finding.
Speaker 1: And that's the basis of the idea that we should
Speaker 1: be calling this the anthroposy. Now I'm scared. That was
Speaker 1: my goal. Well done, thank you all right. So what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is invasive species UM. And I'm surprised
Speaker 1: we hadn't done this one. I was too. I went
Speaker 1: back and double checked and to think we did, I don't,
Speaker 1: And I remembered what episode. I remember it was the
Speaker 1: Beagle Brigade. Oh, we talked a lot about invasive species
Speaker 1: in the Beagle brigadim and we may have even said
Speaker 1: we should do one on that. So if so fulfilled.
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about is invasive species. This is um.
Speaker 1: This can be any type of It is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a plant or just an animal. It could be seeds,
Speaker 1: it could be eggs, it could be it can even
Speaker 1: be a disease, right or yeah, pathogen a past predator
Speaker 1: and a plant just it could be anything, Yeah, any
Speaker 1: kind of any kind of living organism that's not native
Speaker 1: to a singular or a particular ecosystem. Right. But and
Speaker 1: the House of Works article kind of leaves it at that.
Speaker 1: But the National Wildlife Federation article that you found, I
Speaker 1: think really kind of drives home that there's like an
Speaker 1: extra couple factors involved, right, Yeah, because you can have
Speaker 1: a non native species that we actually kind of like
Speaker 1: like European honey bees. There are non native species here
Speaker 1: in the United States, but we're crazy for the pollinating
Speaker 1: they do. It doesn't know its right, and the honey
Speaker 1: that they make. Rice is not a native um crop
Speaker 1: here in the United States, but people people love rice,
Speaker 1: So there are just being non native isn't enough. It
Speaker 1: has to actually harm the ecosystem that it's not native
Speaker 1: to and has been introduced to in some way, shape
Speaker 1: or form. So it's it's a non native species that's
Speaker 1: causing harm either directly or indirectly or both to this
Speaker 1: new ecosystem it's it's been introduced to. That's an invasive species, right,
Speaker 1: And it's not just do we grow rice in the
Speaker 1: United States? Sure? Okay? Uh? And it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be from another country. It can. Like we said, it's
Speaker 1: an ecosystem, so it could be something from one area
Speaker 1: of the United States to another area of the United States,
Speaker 1: or from Mexico to the United States. Right, Like trout
Speaker 1: from the Great Lakes, that's their natural habitats, so they're fine.
Speaker 1: But you take that same trout and put it in
Speaker 1: I think the example given was the Yellowstone River, and
Speaker 1: they're now competing for habitat and food with the local trout.
Speaker 1: That's an invasive species, right. They come in all shapes
Speaker 1: and sizes. As our very own article says, uh, they're
Speaker 1: different names for him. God loves them all. Like some
Speaker 1: people might say exotic pests or a non indigenous species,
Speaker 1: alien species, stuff like that, but invasive species is kind
Speaker 1: of I think that's the go to these days. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's the one you you here starting in the nineties. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's It's funny, like all of the eco stuff that
Speaker 1: we know about, from recycling to invasive species, that all
Speaker 1: was like born in the nineties, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, Uh, I think he don't think he invented
Speaker 1: that name, but he went h I think he gave it,
Speaker 1: gave him, he gave it the stamp. What did he say, though,
Speaker 1: I think he said nailed it. Yeah. He could have
Speaker 1: been talking about any number of things or people right there,
Speaker 1: but in that case he was talking specifically about Executive
Speaker 1: Order one three one one two, where the term invasive
Speaker 1: species was first defined by the United States government. And
Speaker 1: the reason that they did this, the reason that they
Speaker 1: were defining invasive species because around about that time, the
Speaker 1: world was really waking up to the fact that if
Speaker 1: you take a species of plant, animal, bacteria, pathogen, whatever,
Speaker 1: and you put it into a place, a new ecosystem
Speaker 1: where it has no predators, it's going to create havoc
Speaker 1: for the the the the ecosystem as it was before. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of one of the keys here
Speaker 1: is that, um, generally they will cause a lot of harm,
Speaker 1: maybe to the environment, maybe to the economy, maybe two people,
Speaker 1: maybe one, two or all three of those. Uh. And
Speaker 1: another key aspect of the invasive species is that it's
Speaker 1: pretty hard, if not impossible, sometimes to contain an eradicate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I get this impression from researching this Chuck
Speaker 1: that like the second wave of waking up to invasive
Speaker 1: species realizing like they're never going to go away. Now
Speaker 1: they're done. It's done. Like the first wave, you don't
Speaker 1: notice it's already happening, right, Yeah. By the time we
Speaker 1: do notice, it's too late. And then now we're realizing like, okay,
Speaker 1: well we can we can handle this. It might be tough,
Speaker 1: and now I think we're finding now we like it. Well,
Speaker 1: now you can handle it. You just can't eradicate them.
Speaker 1: One of the big problems is is like if you
Speaker 1: if you say, develop a poison that kills some you know,
Speaker 1: non some invasive fish that was introduced, right, say carp um,
Speaker 1: you're going to kill the other fish in the area too,
Speaker 1: or some of the other sea life or something like that.
Speaker 1: So there's just not really any way you can target
Speaker 1: these things short of shooting each one of them. And
Speaker 1: you're gonna shoot a plant. They'll think you're crazy, they'll
Speaker 1: lock you up for that. So don't even try it.
Speaker 1: And here's the deal is this. This is not a
Speaker 1: new phenomenon. This nature has been doing this for years
Speaker 1: on its own in various ways, whether it's uh leaping
Speaker 1: over the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand or
Speaker 1: over a a channel of water, like or over a
Speaker 1: mountain range, it happens. But generally bodies of water and
Speaker 1: mountain ranges and deserts and all these other geological features
Speaker 1: helped to stop this stuff. It's really humans that are
Speaker 1: doing most of this, uh, not necessarily on purpose, but
Speaker 1: sometimes on purpose um as we will see. But sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just like it's in the ballast water of a ship,
Speaker 1: or it's in uh there's an insect in the wood
Speaker 1: of uh, or it's in packing material, it's in the
Speaker 1: wood of the what are those things called the crates
Speaker 1: the pallets, Yeah, palettes, shipping pallet, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it leaps out on the other side of the
Speaker 1: world and you have an issue to the tune of
Speaker 1: fifty thousand estimated non native species in the United States alone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was looking that up. That's pretty That's one of
Speaker 1: those things we always like give um, you know, evidence
Speaker 1: or not evidence, um advice if you see something all
Speaker 1: over the place, like double check it. You know, no,
Speaker 1: I think it is a real number. Is from so
Speaker 1: there's no telling is we're probably at fifty thousand and
Speaker 1: like five hundred now. But it was from a guy
Speaker 1: named Pim Intell who is a world famous ecologist. No,
Speaker 1: pim Intell. He's from Cornell. I don't know if he's
Speaker 1: still at Cornell. But the thing that this leaves out
Speaker 1: though it's fifty thousand non native species, but that same
Speaker 1: study from ninety nine found that um, about forty three
Speaker 1: hundred of them could be considered invasive. Okay, that that's
Speaker 1: what I was. One of the other ones are like
Speaker 1: the honeybee, where we're like sweet sure or rice don't
Speaker 1: don't freak a rice? Uh? And like I said, sometimes
Speaker 1: in the water of a ship's hule. Sometimes uh in
Speaker 1: this would and sometimes on purpose like we said, like
Speaker 1: when the Burmese python found its way to Florida, Dude,
Speaker 1: that was no accident. Where you have you looked up
Speaker 1: Burmese python everglades recently? Dude? They get so big down there.
Speaker 1: And did you see the one that had burst itself
Speaker 1: to death eating an alligator? What? No, But I did
Speaker 1: see the alligator and the python fighting on a golf course.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. That is amazing. That makes me glad to
Speaker 1: be alive to see something like that. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the deal. While we're on that um earlier, that well,
Speaker 1: all right, more than two thousand of these pythons have
Speaker 1: been removed. Two thousand have been removed since two thousand
Speaker 1: two would it was just I guess recreational activity. But
Speaker 1: starting in March of last year, Florida started sanctioning python
Speaker 1: hunters and a thousand dudes applied. They accepted twenty five
Speaker 1: So we'll pay you minimum wage, will literally pay you
Speaker 1: eight bucks an hour or I think that was a
Speaker 1: minimum wage at the time to hunt pythons. And they're
Speaker 1: all like done right, and they started hunting pythons. They've
Speaker 1: caught seven hundred and forty three since March of two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, and uh earlier this year or I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: uh late last year in December, the dude Jason Leon,
Speaker 1: did you see that one that he caught No. Seven
Speaker 1: sevent ft long a hundred and thirty three pound Burmese pythons? Uh.
Speaker 1: And the reason why these are a big deal just,
Speaker 1: you know, aside from just sheer terror, uh, is there
Speaker 1: eating furry creatures, A lot of them. I saw that
Speaker 1: some populations down in the Everglades of types of deer, rabbits, um.
Speaker 1: A lot of creatures that you know and love have
Speaker 1: gone down by up to in some areas because of
Speaker 1: the python University of Florida. And I won't say what
Speaker 1: everyone wants me to say. Good for you, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like, how how can you be you know, possibly
Speaker 1: the national champs and and throw shade at anybody below you?
Speaker 1: You know. So the obviously Florida and Gainesville did a
Speaker 1: project they released this makes me so sad. They released
Speaker 1: ninety five rabbits uh into the Everglades and they these
Speaker 1: were all tracked. And it's not like when these rabbits
Speaker 1: didn't turn up a year later and there we can't
Speaker 1: find them. I guess snakes eate them. They know that
Speaker 1: snakes ate them, So snakes did. A year later, seventy
Speaker 1: seven percent these rabbits were eaten and dead from these pythons. Wow.
Speaker 1: So it's a problem. That is a sad study. It is.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine like opening that was crates and being like,
Speaker 1: all right, free go you live your new life. It's
Speaker 1: an adventure. Oh man, it's so sad. So that's just
Speaker 1: one example of the most horrific uh. And that's not
Speaker 1: one that's like costing two billion dollars in damage a year,
Speaker 1: but that is an estimate from professor at Cornell. That's
Speaker 1: the same one pimentel. Yeah, okay, um, that's the estimate
Speaker 1: from him that it's costing the United States between a
Speaker 1: hundred and two hundred billion dollars a year in damage
Speaker 1: from all these invasive species problems. Yeah, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of dough, it really is. And the Burmese python is
Speaker 1: is a good example also of people just releasing like
Speaker 1: a pet that you don't want anymore. That's probably how
Speaker 1: they re establish That's absolutely how it was established. There's
Speaker 1: other there's another there's a lizard called the tagu which
Speaker 1: is a big problem in all of Florida apparently as well.
Speaker 1: Um they're just a huge lizard that were originally pets
Speaker 1: and we're released and now they've established a feral population
Speaker 1: in Florida and they apparently will eat your cat. They've
Speaker 1: been known to do that. They'll um storm your house,
Speaker 1: they'll come into your house. It's just a bad jam right.
Speaker 1: There's also the Neutria swamp rats, which were originally grown
Speaker 1: for their fur in in the in Louisiana. So they
Speaker 1: use rat for apparently in Louisiana or to keep warm
Speaker 1: and um that when the rat for industry went under
Speaker 1: in the thirties. I think they released these things into
Speaker 1: the swamps. And then last most recently, feral hogs were
Speaker 1: imported so that they could hunt them. And there's a
Speaker 1: huge population that's wrecking their the ecosystems they've been introduced too.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times humans are lunkheads when it
Speaker 1: comes to shuffling animals into ecosystems where they're they're not native.
Speaker 1: That snakes too big, Put it behind the house, right loose.
Speaker 1: Then let a bunch of rabbits loose and see what happens.
Speaker 1: We see who wins? Snake wins, snake wins. Should we
Speaker 1: take a break? Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. Well,
Speaker 1: actually quickly, before we take a break, I talked about
Speaker 1: how much it was costing the U. S. Department of Interior,
Speaker 1: spending about a hundred million bucks or more a year
Speaker 1: trying to fight this in various ways, all to very
Speaker 1: little success. All right, So now with that stat we
Speaker 1: will we will take a break. So, Chuck, we talked
Speaker 1: about people releasing um animals purposefully, and you mentioned some
Speaker 1: other ways, but one of the things that gets me
Speaker 1: is ballast water, Like, how is this allowed to go
Speaker 1: on where a ship will take on water to balance
Speaker 1: out its cargo load because you know, different cargo is
Speaker 1: going away different, It's going to be laid out differently,
Speaker 1: so you need new ballasts every time to to balance
Speaker 1: it out, which makes sense, But surely there can be
Speaker 1: some other technology because you're you're like in Eastern Europe
Speaker 1: picking up a bunch of water to balance your your
Speaker 1: ship out, and that that cargo is bound for Detroit.
Speaker 1: So you enter the Great Lakes and you're like, oh, well, waters, water,
Speaker 1: I'll just release it here once I unload my cargo.
Speaker 1: And whatever animals you picked up in Eastern Europe now
Speaker 1: live in the Great Lakes. And this actually happened with
Speaker 1: the zebra muscle which is a huge, huge problem in
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes. Now, Yeah, the zebra muscle and the
Speaker 1: quagga muscle, Yeah, which apparently are almost the same thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: And how they act there from Eastern Europe and they're small,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly how they ended up in the Great Lakes,
Speaker 1: like you said, and they boy talk about spreading are there,
Speaker 1: Like how many are these? Like a trillion? A trillion
Speaker 1: at least the reason why it is like a quagga
Speaker 1: will live or quagga zebra muscle will live about five years,
Speaker 1: and the female in that time will produce five million eggs.
Speaker 1: There's ten trillion of them, A hundred that's so many muscles,
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand of those that of those eggs will
Speaker 1: reach adulthood. And so the offspring of one single muscle
Speaker 1: will produce about half a billion adult offspring. So yeah,
Speaker 1: ten trillion is a pretty reasonable number. And they just
Speaker 1: entered the Great Lakes in the I think the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: so just within what forty years? God, can you believe
Speaker 1: the eighties were like forty years ago were coming up
Speaker 1: on it? Um? It doesn't seem that long ago to me,
Speaker 1: but man, that's crazy. Well, and the problem with these
Speaker 1: is you're like, wait, wait, I'm reminiscing stiff. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm done. The problem with these is like, big deal.
Speaker 1: That are these tiny little muscles, but they are blanketing
Speaker 1: the bottom of the Great Lakes. Uh. And they're eating
Speaker 1: plankton because they love to eat plankton, which makes the
Speaker 1: water nice and clear. Everyone's like, look, how shimmery like
Speaker 1: Michigan is. Have you seen pictures of like Michigan recently?
Speaker 1: It looks like the Caribbean, really white sand, beautiful sea
Speaker 1: through like turquoise water. That's good people, gorgeous. No, it
Speaker 1: looks really amazing, But ultimately, no, it's not healthy because,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, they eat all the plankton that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be on top and on the bottom two
Speaker 1: and the the sunlight can penetrate all the way to
Speaker 1: the bottom, causing algae blooms, deadly algae blooms. I just
Speaker 1: just happened to run across an article yesterday, Chuck, and
Speaker 1: I understood why I was seeing what I was seeing.
Speaker 1: But the article was about how the like Michigan has
Speaker 1: become so clear that you can see shipwrecks on the
Speaker 1: bottom of the lake from the air. If you're flying
Speaker 1: over it, you can clearly see shipwrecks. And the reason
Speaker 1: why is because the zebra muscles have doubled the clarity
Speaker 1: of the water since the nineties. Well, and not only
Speaker 1: is it just the plankton, but they're eating the plankton.
Speaker 1: Is is causing salmon to go hungry whitefish. Um, So
Speaker 1: if you you know, it's just it's wrecking the ecosystem
Speaker 1: down there, right, Thank you, intern Europe. That's say yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you ship captain who took on that water as ballast.
Speaker 1: Another ballast story I ran across too, was, um, uh,
Speaker 1: fire ants the worst thing in humanity? Right, that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Fire Ants are native to South America, and they think
Speaker 1: that they stowed away on dirt that was scooped up
Speaker 1: as ship's ballast and released in New Orleans. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: and like the thirties or forties, but that's where the
Speaker 1: fire ants came from. They shouldn't be here. Didn't that
Speaker 1: make them even worse? Hate those things? So, um, here's
Speaker 1: another one. You wanna talk about the Asian carpet. Sure.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen seventies, and I think, like in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: there were some u some farmers, fish farmers that is,
Speaker 1: who said, uh, let's get some of these Asian carpon
Speaker 1: here to filter the water. And they did. That sounded
Speaker 1: identical what the researchers from the University of Florida sounded
Speaker 1: like in my head, right, And they all sounded like
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, who was from Arkansas. Right. So, Asian carp
Speaker 1: were introduced. I guess they did a pretty good job
Speaker 1: of filtering the pond water, but then they started spreading
Speaker 1: and that's the deal is is you know, like with
Speaker 1: the the zebra muscle. You know, they get in these
Speaker 1: waterways like in Chicago, these man made waterways that they
Speaker 1: said basically like expressways where they get in the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River and it just it's like all right here, here
Speaker 1: we go rest of the country. Yeah. And so Asian
Speaker 1: carp Uh, it's a it's sort of a catch all
Speaker 1: name for a bunch of species of carp from Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: But here's their problem is they're very dense. They consume
Speaker 1: about of their body weight each day in plankton. They
Speaker 1: can be as big as a hundred pounds, which is
Speaker 1: very large for a for a fish, if you haven't noticed.
Speaker 1: And uh, they're all over the place now. They went
Speaker 1: up the Illinois River. They are almost or maybe even
Speaker 1: are invading the Great Lakes now. Is that they didn't
Speaker 1: have enough problems. And there are another one. They lay
Speaker 1: about a half a million eggs each time they spawn, right,
Speaker 1: and they eat a lot of plankton. And there's this
Speaker 1: guy um that they're a good example because they're they're
Speaker 1: so thoroughly crowd out um the rest of the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: for the rest of the animals, in the ecosystem that
Speaker 1: it actually like kind of recks the whole ecosystem. They're
Speaker 1: they're an example of like a UM grade three or
Speaker 1: level three, I think you call it level level three
Speaker 1: invasive species. Right, there's this dude. He was he is
Speaker 1: a marine biologist. And I don't know if you could
Speaker 1: tell or not, but I'm stalling while I look for
Speaker 1: his name. Is it coming across everybody? Um? So I
Speaker 1: cannot find the dude's name. Anyway, you don't have it either. Well,
Speaker 1: he came up with Okay, doctor doctor Javago came up
Speaker 1: with these basically four levels of of impact that an
Speaker 1: invasive species can have on bio diversity in an ecosystem.
Speaker 1: And the first level is basically like they're just a
Speaker 1: new species. They're not doing anything. You could even make
Speaker 1: a case that it's it's a good thing that they're
Speaker 1: there now because they've improved or increased the bio diversity
Speaker 1: of the habitat, right. So level one is they're just there,
Speaker 1: nothing bad has happened yet. Level two is when they
Speaker 1: start to have a an effect on the on the
Speaker 1: ecosystem in some very specific way. And doctor Javago gives
Speaker 1: this really great example of the eastern North American gray squirrel,
Speaker 1: which was inexplicably introduced in eighteen seventy six to England
Speaker 1: and since then it is basically out competed the native
Speaker 1: red squirrel there um, But it's just the native red
Speaker 1: squirrel that's been affected. The rest of the ecosystem is
Speaker 1: basically the same as if the North American squirrel had
Speaker 1: never showed up. It's just the red squirrel who are
Speaker 1: trying to go around and tell everybody like, doesn't it suck?
Speaker 1: The North American squirrels are here and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's fine with me, I don't care, And the red
Speaker 1: squirrel just can't get any kind of ally on this.
Speaker 1: That's leveled two. Shall I continue? Please? Level three is
Speaker 1: where the species become so dominant, spreads so fast, so wide,
Speaker 1: reproduces so quickly and so massively that they begin to
Speaker 1: impact the entire ecosystem as a whole. Right, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in a second. And then the fourth level
Speaker 1: is where they have upset the ecosystem that they are
Speaker 1: not native to, but have established themselves in so thoroughly
Speaker 1: that it now impacts other ecosystems, either nearby or that
Speaker 1: are somehow connected to that ecosystem. And then level five
Speaker 1: is when you wake up covered in a thunderd squirrels, Right,
Speaker 1: I'll just quietly staring at you. Can you imagine? No,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen those black squirrels in Brooklyn? Yes,
Speaker 1: I've seen them in like Toronto usually DC. I love
Speaker 1: those things. Yeah, they're pretty cool guys too. They'll like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll like, they'll charge you. They don't take any
Speaker 1: guff No, but see you if you brought some to Georgia,
Speaker 1: it could be bad for the squirrels here because it's
Speaker 1: a non native species, even though it's in the same country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but man, we got so many squirrels in Atlanta. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't mind seeing a few of those guys. And I
Speaker 1: love all furry things. Well, you know how I feel
Speaker 1: about squirrels. Well, that's why it's gonna haunt your dreams,
Speaker 1: waking up being covered by a hundred squirrels. Yeah, it'd
Speaker 1: be more. It would be worse if I had a
Speaker 1: dream where a hundred squirrels covered my bird feeder. That's
Speaker 1: worse to me. I'd rather them cover me, cover me
Speaker 1: instead leave my bird feeder. Will They would be so
Speaker 1: happy to chow down on you, though the little tails
Speaker 1: would be all flitty. They would be so excited, they'd say,
Speaker 1: this is a long time coming, Josh. They'd store some
Speaker 1: of you for the winter and their haunches, but then
Speaker 1: they'd forget except for about a third of me where
Speaker 1: they put it exactly stupid squirrels. Uh So those are
Speaker 1: the four levels. We're kidding about the fifth. And I
Speaker 1: feel bad for Dr Chivago because what if that dude
Speaker 1: listens and he's like, oh, they're gonna say my name, yeah,
Speaker 1: doctor Chivago, or maybe he's gonna start going by that maybe,
Speaker 1: So we just changed that dude life. Alright. So, uh
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about how some of these
Speaker 1: can affect things like eating plankton um. What are some
Speaker 1: of the other uh deleterious effects deletrious So there's well,
Speaker 1: I mean you can basically categorize the effects that these
Speaker 1: things have in two categories. There's direct and indirect ones. Right,
Speaker 1: So direct would be like, if you like, let's say
Speaker 1: those Asian carp eat um, the eggs of the other
Speaker 1: fish that's competing with that would be a direct impact
Speaker 1: that would make the other fish very unhappy, right, um.
Speaker 1: They could also be a bug that carries a disease
Speaker 1: that kills trees like UM. I can't remember what bug
Speaker 1: carries like Dutch elm disease, but there's there's bugs that
Speaker 1: carry diseases that kill treats. That's directly impacting the trees
Speaker 1: in the ecosystem. Then there's like indirect ones too, right,
Speaker 1: So like let's say you have like a grass that
Speaker 1: grows really well and its new habitat and non native
Speaker 1: grass so much so that it outcompetes the other grasses. Well,
Speaker 1: this new grass is really good at growing in this ecosystem,
Speaker 1: but it's terrible as far as like nutrient density is concerned,
Speaker 1: and it's choked. The rest of the grass is out,
Speaker 1: which means that the sweet little deer and the rabbits
Speaker 1: that are about to be eaten by snakes don't have
Speaker 1: those grasses to eat anymore, and they can't eat the
Speaker 1: new grass. That's an indirect impact. So suddenly the populations
Speaker 1: of these higher animals are going to thin out, either
Speaker 1: because they're gonna die off, they don't reproduces fast, or
Speaker 1: they just move UM. So that's an indirect impact of
Speaker 1: of an ecosystem. Or like that cocoon grass, huh, which
Speaker 1: is the one here in the southeast. It's the Asian plant.
Speaker 1: Like that one does the one thing you're talking about,
Speaker 1: no food value for the wildlife. But it also burns
Speaker 1: really hot and fast, more so than native grasses. So
Speaker 1: it's like it has this dormant danger of being a
Speaker 1: wildfire hazard. Right. Yeah, it's just's so another one called
Speaker 1: cheatwheat has the same thing, and it's it's altered the
Speaker 1: wildfire cycle. I think in the Southwest where it's growing
Speaker 1: from like um, fifty to seventy years to something like
Speaker 1: three to five five years now, they have like massive wildfires.
Speaker 1: Is because it burns so fast and it's so dense.
Speaker 1: It's just such a great fuel that. Um. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a there's another way that they can indirectly affect an
Speaker 1: ecosystem too. Um. A lot of plants that are non
Speaker 1: native come in and alter the composition of the soil.
Speaker 1: They either change the amount of nutrients they are available,
Speaker 1: they change the pH they just alter the soil chemistry.
Speaker 1: And I mean like the soil that's like the building
Speaker 1: block of an ecosystem. You start altering that, everything from
Speaker 1: the soil up is affected and impacted in some way
Speaker 1: or another. Well, and then that soil can then be
Speaker 1: transported to another ecosystem you know, right, yeah, which stuff spreads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually one of the tips for something you can
Speaker 1: do is not move soil very long far distances that
Speaker 1: can cut down an invasive species transferred to All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's take another break and then we will talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the two ways to try I manage this, yes,
Speaker 1: and what you can do and the story of kad Zoo,
Speaker 1: which is probably not quite what you think. Oh all right,
Speaker 1: So as far as management UM, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of main ways that we're trying to control invasive species.
Speaker 1: Proactive management and reactive proactive. If you go to California
Speaker 1: and you have to stop at the California border and
Speaker 1: they say do you have any fruits or vegetables from
Speaker 1: outside the state, that would be an example of proactive management.
Speaker 1: UM is trying to keep it from happening to begin
Speaker 1: with by not allowing stuff and that shouldn't be in Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess apparently. In this how Stuff Works article, the
Speaker 1: author talks about how they quarantine firewood sail up in
Speaker 1: Connecticut Emerald ash boards from making their way through the
Speaker 1: state um or Guam. Guam has this huge brown tree
Speaker 1: snake problem. We must have talked about this in the
Speaker 1: in the Beagle Brigade, but they've like basically killed off
Speaker 1: the population of every other animal on the island. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit of an exaggeration, but it's not too
Speaker 1: far off. They've really had a huge impact on it.
Speaker 1: And they they they trained dogs to to sniff them off.
Speaker 1: The case from any cargo plane or ship that leaves
Speaker 1: Guam has to be inspected by these things, by these
Speaker 1: dogs to find the snakes, because they are taking it
Speaker 1: that seriously because they've had such a terrible impact on Guam.
Speaker 1: Proactive management another thing that they do, aside from like
Speaker 1: border inspections and stuff like that, is basically just trying
Speaker 1: to destroy it. And I guess in that first phase
Speaker 1: doctor Javago's first phase. By the way, doctor Javago's name is,
Speaker 1: I found it. Are you ready for this? I think
Speaker 1: we should get a drum roll. Jerry, Doctor Alexander Mean
Speaker 1: M E. I N E. S Z Marine biologists. But
Speaker 1: he says, you can call me al or just call
Speaker 1: me doctor Z like Paul Simon. Yeah sure, um, alright,
Speaker 1: So Yeah, eradicating them in the early stages. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this has happened before in California specifically they beat down
Speaker 1: an invasive weed brought in from the tropics, so it
Speaker 1: can work. But I get the feeling that in researching
Speaker 1: this stuff, like once you're passed that for stage, you
Speaker 1: maybe s o L Well, yeah, I have that same
Speaker 1: cross your fingers. That is not one that will wreck
Speaker 1: the ecosystem. So that's proactive. There's also reactive management to write.
Speaker 1: And there's the age old well, just get your hands
Speaker 1: on whatever it's natural predator is and then introduce that
Speaker 1: into the ecosystem or that. That's like from that classic
Speaker 1: Simpsons episode, you remember that where Bart has a tree
Speaker 1: lizard that eats birds. So they release some tree snakes
Speaker 1: and then they release some geility the tree snakes, and
Speaker 1: they say that a cold snap will cause all the
Speaker 1: grills to freeze to death, so that will be that.
Speaker 1: That's like, that's basically what they're what they're doing. Like,
Speaker 1: there's this this um bug called brown marmordd stink bugs,
Speaker 1: which are actually they they're stink bugs and they'll swarm
Speaker 1: in your house, so they're a pest. But they're also
Speaker 1: really bad for fruit crops and vegetable crops. Um. And
Speaker 1: they don't have a natural predator here. Over in Asia
Speaker 1: where they're from, Um, they are predated by a parasitic wasp.
Speaker 1: So they're thinking of bringing parasitic wasps over and it's like, oh, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: nothing could go wrong if you bring parasitic wasps into
Speaker 1: an ecosystem. Man, those stink bugs, they we'll scare the
Speaker 1: Bejesus side of you in the middle of the night, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they'll swarm well, I mean I've I've never seen
Speaker 1: more than one at a time, but I'm just talking
Speaker 1: about waking up because one of them is crawling over
Speaker 1: your cheek. Well, supposedly, the brown marmorated stink bugs are
Speaker 1: different from the Southern stink bugs that were used to
Speaker 1: yeah and just warm. Yeah, I can't tell the difference.
Speaker 1: I've never smelled the stink either. I haven't either. I
Speaker 1: saw somebody say that they smell like cilantro. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's fine, that's great. Put some of them on your tacos.
Speaker 1: It's weird. They're all over the place. So I see
Speaker 1: him in my bathroom, especially in the winter. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they come inside to stay warm. Yeah, but supposedly they
Speaker 1: swarm the brown marmaradd one swarm, so they come inside
Speaker 1: your house, hang out and then just cover your face
Speaker 1: and you fall down the stairs and then the squirrels
Speaker 1: get you. Yeah, that's invasive species in a nutshell? What
Speaker 1: else we got here? You want to talk about a
Speaker 1: couple of more of these? Yeah, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about my favorite of all time. Are you ready for this? Yes,
Speaker 1: The Startling, The European Starling. Yeah. And you know what,
Speaker 1: this is a great time to shout out one of
Speaker 1: our new brother podcasts here on the network, Omnibus with
Speaker 1: Ken Jennings of Jeopardies fame and John Roderick of the
Speaker 1: indie band Long Winters. Right, they have a new show
Speaker 1: called Omnibus that is about sort of obscure history and uh,
Speaker 1: they did an entire episode on The European Starling. Oh
Speaker 1: they did. Yeah, well then this ties into that. It does,
Speaker 1: so go listen to that show, subscribe and here that
Speaker 1: is in a nutshell? Ohh okay. So back in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety there's this guy. He was a German immigrant to
Speaker 1: the US. His name was Eugene Schifflin. Did I pronounce
Speaker 1: it right? Eugene Schifflin was a Shakespeare enthusiast, right to
Speaker 1: say the least, he had this idea that it would
Speaker 1: be really cool. And remember this is eighteen ninety. They
Speaker 1: had no idea about invasive species at the very least
Speaker 1: you wouldn't think a bird would be. But he decided
Speaker 1: that it would be really cool to release all of
Speaker 1: the birds mentioned by Shakespeare into North America and he
Speaker 1: would start with the European starling. So in winter of
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety and then again like a month or so
Speaker 1: later in he released a total of one hundred European
Speaker 1: starlings in Central Park. Make note of that number one
Speaker 1: were released in eighteen ninety. And now there are more
Speaker 1: than two hundred million European Starlings in the United States.
Speaker 1: And they are jerkbirds. Yeah. Yeah, they'll swarm like a
Speaker 1: brown marmoradd stink bug. They'll swarm, but they swarm on
Speaker 1: cattle to scare them away from their food so that
Speaker 1: the starlings can eat their food. So these birds are
Speaker 1: capable of scaring cattle off. Yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: They'll also crash your plane. They will, they will, they
Speaker 1: will swarm your airplane. Uh, it has happened before there
Speaker 1: was one that took off from Logan. Uh there in
Speaker 1: Boston the worst bath airport bathrooms in the world. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad. I think I talked about the bathroom
Speaker 1: stalls there. They're like three inch gaps in between the doors. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like literally you can just see each other pooping.
Speaker 1: You could fit like a whole and he's through there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna eat that bagel just man, slide it
Speaker 1: through there. Well she she makes pretzels, delicious pretzels. Okay, um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wasn't saying she she made bagels, I got I
Speaker 1: was just trying to think of something fatter than a pretzel.
Speaker 1: Could you fit a bagel through the stall? Is it
Speaker 1: really that bad? You could fit a bagel flat man,
Speaker 1: like a bigel half. No, it's not quite that bad,
Speaker 1: but it's bad. Like I remember pooping it Logan and
Speaker 1: making eye contact with the just stained very distressing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, birds crashed crashed a plane into Boston Harbor,
Speaker 1: killed sixty two people startling. Yeah, that's not good. And
Speaker 1: they are also very dense eaters apparently right like uh
Speaker 1: like the carpet. Yes, I believe so they're definitely a
Speaker 1: huge problem from what I understand, But they were the
Speaker 1: idea that they were released in appreciation of Shakespeare I
Speaker 1: just find fascinating. Thank you, Eugene Schifflin. Now they're a
Speaker 1: major problem. Um. There's one other one we got a
Speaker 1: shout out to, Chuck is the cane toad, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: which is another um invasive species that was introduced using
Speaker 1: the Simpsons technique because there were some cane beetles that
Speaker 1: were harming Australia's sugar crop back in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: and so they got the idea to import some cane toads,
Speaker 1: uh to eat these beetles, and the cane toads, from
Speaker 1: what I understand, worked pretty well, but then their population
Speaker 1: boom from I think a hundred and seven initial ones
Speaker 1: to again two hundred million just in in less than
Speaker 1: a hundred years. Yeah, there's that great classic documentary on
Speaker 1: the cane toad. And we talked about them before in
Speaker 1: an episode, didn't we. Yeah. One of the ways Australia
Speaker 1: is delightfully weird. M Yeah, we'll see you guys this fall.
Speaker 1: That's right, your spring. Oh yeah, that's true. They're all
Speaker 1: confused where are you right although it's their summer, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's their September will be their spring. But oh right now, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the deadest summer for them. Man, wait for you
Speaker 1: can wait to meet those people in person. So I
Speaker 1: know it's gonna be cool. Man. I'm gonna get me
Speaker 1: a hat that has alligator teeth around the brim is
Speaker 1: local custom. So Chuck, let's talk kuds. Do you want to? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll finish up with kudzoo. Um. This is a great
Speaker 1: story called The True Story of kad Zoo Comma The
Speaker 1: Vine that Never Truly Ate the South by Bill Finch
Speaker 1: and Uh, everyone has probably heard of kudzoo. It has
Speaker 1: a very steeped mythology. Um. And it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where people um, especially outside of the South, uh,
Speaker 1: talk about, oh yeah, you got your cut. You know,
Speaker 1: kud zoos is. It's just everywhere you look, there's kud
Speaker 1: zoo in the South. And and if you go to
Speaker 1: any southern town there will be a kud zoo cafe
Speaker 1: or a kud zoo antique. There's a Kudzoo Antiques right here, indicator.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those things. The South took it
Speaker 1: and ran with it um as far as just like
Speaker 1: a marketing thing. But here's the deal. Most people know.
Speaker 1: It was introduced at the eighteen seventy six World's Fair
Speaker 1: Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Was a vine from Asia and
Speaker 1: the story goes that it just took over the South,
Speaker 1: but that's not quite right. Um. In nive that was
Speaker 1: dust storms that damaged the prairies, and Congress said, you
Speaker 1: know what, erosion is a big problem, so let's use
Speaker 1: cud Zoo. And they brought in seventy million seedlings to
Speaker 1: grow in nurseries as soil conservation. Right remember our episode
Speaker 1: on desertification. I think we talked about that. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they like, we're planting it on purpose. They were paying
Speaker 1: people as much as eight dollars an acre, which was
Speaker 1: pretty good money back then the nineteen to plant cud zoo. Uh,
Speaker 1: flash forward a little bit. There was a radio host
Speaker 1: for the Atlantic Constitution, UM, one of our newspapers, well
Speaker 1: announced a j C. Back then there were two NewSpace
Speaker 1: person journal in the Constitution. His name was a columnist
Speaker 1: named Channing Cope that became an evangelist for this stuff.
Speaker 1: And basically, during these depression era radio broadcast would say,
Speaker 1: you know, plant kut zoo. Uh so the South can
Speaker 1: live again. Yeah, you know, to restore the soil back
Speaker 1: to its its original nature. And so these farmers were
Speaker 1: taken money from the government saying, Okay, sure I got
Speaker 1: some land that I'm not using or that could use
Speaker 1: some fixing, so I'll play it this stuff for eight
Speaker 1: bucks an acre. And they did. But the problem is
Speaker 1: that no one could ever figure out how to make
Speaker 1: money off of it. It wasn't a crop, it wasn't
Speaker 1: good for grazing because apparently when cattle and horses grazed
Speaker 1: on it, it died um and no one really wanted
Speaker 1: to buy it from a nursery, so there's no way
Speaker 1: to make money off of it. So when the soil
Speaker 1: conservation payment program ended, everybody just kind of tilled it
Speaker 1: into the soil and cut Zu went the way of
Speaker 1: the dying store, or it would have had it not
Speaker 1: been for the railroad industry and the highway construction industry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the original goal was to plan about eight million
Speaker 1: acres of the stuff around the South, but by that
Speaker 1: was just about a million acres planted. But because of
Speaker 1: the fact that cattle don't graze by the highway generally
Speaker 1: or on the railroad. That's where it really took hold
Speaker 1: uh and did envelop things like roadside signs and full
Speaker 1: trees and if you were and this is how it
Speaker 1: got their reputation, because people would be on the train
Speaker 1: or they'd be driving down the highway and they would
Speaker 1: that's where it was the worst, and they would see
Speaker 1: it and it got this reputation as this monster vine
Speaker 1: that was eating the South. Yeah, because it really is
Speaker 1: disconcerting to see kut zoo growing up like a fifty
Speaker 1: ft tree and totally covering it like it's consuming it.
Speaker 1: It's it's very much. It evoked that same feeling like
Speaker 1: seeing a snake eat like a whole whole rabbit. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it evokes the same feeling. And Um, the
Speaker 1: thing is is most Southerners from say like the fifties
Speaker 1: on when this was when this really started to take
Speaker 1: root on these roadsides, their connection to the land was
Speaker 1: no longer in the four the farms or the force.
Speaker 1: It was in the cities, and they traveled mostly in
Speaker 1: their car or on trains, which is where kad zoo
Speaker 1: was most visible. Remember, So there was this idea and
Speaker 1: it was a pretty understandable idea that kad Zoo had
Speaker 1: taken over South. There was in the process of taking
Speaker 1: over the South, and the whole thing was helped along,
Speaker 1: apparently by a garden club newsletter. Yeah, so the idea
Speaker 1: is that there were And this is a stat that
Speaker 1: you can an incorrect stat that you can still get
Speaker 1: that says, you know, up to nine million acres of
Speaker 1: the of the southern United States is covered in kad zoo.
Speaker 1: It all comes from these two books. A craft book
Speaker 1: and a Culinary and Healing Guide. Are these two books
Speaker 1: that are most frequently quoted as to that number. The U. S.
Speaker 1: Forest Service says, actually, it's about two and twenty seven
Speaker 1: thousand acres of forest land, about the size of a
Speaker 1: small county in Georgia. Nowhere near what they're saying. It is.
Speaker 1: Uh And while it's still when you drive along some
Speaker 1: of these southern highways, it looks like it's eating a
Speaker 1: water tower and it and it is um. Once you
Speaker 1: step ten feet into the forest, it stops. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's terror grows terribly in shade um. And Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you have a Kudzye problem, just get some horses or
Speaker 1: cows and there goes your kudzee problem. It's not a
Speaker 1: very hardy plant. It's just it has no no real
Speaker 1: predators or anything to hold it back on those roadsides
Speaker 1: or on those railroad embankments, which is why it grows
Speaker 1: so wild there. So those um, those that culinary book
Speaker 1: and the um Craft book they have to do with
Speaker 1: kud zoos, That seriously are the most widely cited sources
Speaker 1: by academic journals, by by scientists, by the government. Everybody
Speaker 1: cites these these sources um And apparently they just made
Speaker 1: it up, but they said that it was that it
Speaker 1: grows at a rate of a hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: acres a year, and that same Forest Service report estimated
Speaker 1: it really grows it about acres a year, which is
Speaker 1: entirely manageable. Manageable. So this the but what's basically the
Speaker 1: poster child for invasive species in the United States, kud
Speaker 1: zoo is actually not really much of a problem at all.
Speaker 1: So everybody, we we don't all drink cocola. Well that's
Speaker 1: actually not true. Yeah we all drink it. Actually I
Speaker 1: don't really drink it that much. But yeah, there is
Speaker 1: not a kud zoo problem. Um, stop it and stop
Speaker 1: saying Hotlanta. Yeah, nobody here says that. No, I remember
Speaker 1: that that again. In the nineties, there is a little
Speaker 1: push for that risk yicling invasive species in Hot Lanta.
Speaker 1: One of them didn't make it. That's right. Do you
Speaker 1: anything else? No? I thought this is a good one.
Speaker 1: I thought so too. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about invasive species, there's tons of them that we didn't
Speaker 1: even cover. Um, So go look him up, educate yourself,
Speaker 1: and then go save the planet and tell him Josh
Speaker 1: and Chuck sent you. Uh And in the meantime, it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this very
Speaker 1: sweet orchids story a big hello to Josh, Chuck and Jerry.
Speaker 1: I'm writing in to say how much I love your
Speaker 1: orchids episode and also share a bitter, sweet and pretty
Speaker 1: amazing thing that happened to my family. My grandmother was
Speaker 1: an avid gardener who had a knack for coaxing her
Speaker 1: collection of orchids into bloom again and again. I think
Speaker 1: some of her orchids might have been a decade or
Speaker 1: more old when she was diagnosed with cancer. She passed
Speaker 1: along her orchids to my stepmother, who has continued the tradition.
Speaker 1: One particularly beautiful orchid had refused to bloom after the move,
Speaker 1: until one day an August when it did bloom again.
Speaker 1: When my stepmother posted the picture to Facebook that morning,
Speaker 1: she didn't know that my grandmother was in the final
Speaker 1: process of passing away. Someone used their smartphone to show
Speaker 1: the photo to my grandmother at hospice, and it was
Speaker 1: one of the very last things she saw. Must have
Speaker 1: brought her a lot of joy to know that her
Speaker 1: orchids in fact lived on. She attached to photo, very
Speaker 1: beautiful orchid, she said, or kids will always have a
Speaker 1: special place in my heart. We're sensing my grandmother's last
Speaker 1: day with us and each of those plants. It's a
Speaker 1: treasured family heirloom. I hope I'll be the next to
Speaker 1: inherit the matri ne Neal, Matrilineal, Matrilineal. I think, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I hope I'll be the next to inherit
Speaker 1: the Matrilineal Green thumb all the best, Maggie. That is
Speaker 1: a great, great orchid story. Yep, great listener mail. That's
Speaker 1: how you get on listener mail, everybody. Yep, you just
Speaker 1: warm our hearts, okay, or insult this. Yeah, but we
Speaker 1: don't actually read those, We just make grumbly reference. That's right.
Speaker 1: If you want us to make a grumbly reference to
Speaker 1: something you wrote, well, then write us an insulting email.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to get read, then warm our hearts.
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s y s K
Speaker 1: podcast uh, and you can also hit up the official
Speaker 1: Facebook page at Stuff you Should Know and what Else
Speaker 1: Chuck Emails. You can send us all an email, including Jerry, Noel,
Speaker 1: Matt Everybody to stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot
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