Eating Invasives is a Solution -- Not the Problem

A load of silver carp that I helped remove from the Missouri
river. We ate them and then there were twenty-odd fewer carp
in the river. Photo copyright 2012 by Jackson Landers.

My colleague, Matt Miller, wrote a good blog entry over at the Nature Conservancy about hunting and eating invasive species. In this piece he brought up the criticism by Martin Nunez that this practice could be counter-productive.

Miller writes: "...encouraging people to eat invasives may have unintended consequences. There’s a real risk, [Nunez] argues, that people will start actually liking said invasives. Entrepreneurs could develop markets for them; hunters could enjoy pursuing them. Invasives could become a part of the local culture."

I've heard this idea brought up before. But I don't think that its something we really need to worry about. The species that we're talking about eating are things that are already a huge problem and for which existing approaches to eradication have failed. Silver carp have already dominated huge stretches of the Missouri River and its tributaries. Wild pigs already outnumber humans in Texas and are conquering ecosystems all across the American south. Lionfish are already dominating the east coast as far north as North Carolina, with the Gulf Stream expected to gradually spread them up past the Chesapeake Bay.

"Stop wasting time and money examining just how screwed everything is and start dealing with the damn problem"

There are already as many silver carp, pigs and lionfish in most of these places as there can possibly be. Right now we are doing basically nothing about most of these invasions. Huge budgets are allocated to study the problems with next to nothing being done toward actual eradication. The status quo is to do nothing. Its hard to imagine what some theoretical local fans of silver carp or lionfish could possibly do to make the problem any worse. The animals are already there, unchecked.

If the concern is that commercial success of new invasive fisheries will encourage illegal releases in other areas, consider that by definition the solution would accompany the arrival of the problem.

The examples given of invasive species becoming cherished prey that are managed for sustainability don't have much bearing on our current situation. The pheasants, turkeys and valley quail that Miller mentions were all introduced long before we had any idea about invasive species being a threat. These species were introduced back in the days when acclimatization societies were still common. People had no idea what they were doing -- including the state governments that stocked and protected them. The culture of managing them as game animals emerged without an understanding of the dangers of invasive species.

We know better now. The invasive species at issue now all have open seasons year-round without bag limits. They are being regulated for removal, if hunters will step up to the plate.

If anything, recent evidence suggests that hunters and regulatory agencies are inclined to go the opposite direction that the critics have suggested. After many years of regulating wild pigs as a game species (meaning that they were being managed in such a way as to keep the species plentiful), the state of North Carolina completely did away with 'game' designations for pigs as of this year. Even though hunters like to hunt them and even though there is a long tradition of hunting them, they are now being treated as the invasive species that they are and the rules have set the stage for eradication. Most American hunters are conservationists and will support regulations that remove the most destructive invasives.

The example of wild pigs in Hawaii that Conservation Magazine brought up in support of Nunez was really not a very good one. Pigs are not an especially recent arrival there. Pigs were first brought to Hawaii by Polynesians in the 4th century AD. Hawaiians have had a culture and a cuisine that incorporated hunting and eating wild pigs going back over a thousand years. The addition of larger European stock resulted in pigs that are much more harmful to the native ecology than the pure Polynesian pigs were, but my point is that this isn't some sudden social change that happened as a result of a recent invasion. It took around 1,600 years. The example absolutely does not support Nunez's thesis.

If it is fair for researchers to question how the motives of hunters and fishermen might evolve in response to hunting and eating invasive species, then it is fair for this hunter to question the motives of some researchers.

We have all watched invasive species become larger and larger problems while government grants pay researchers to study the problem. They've been 'studying the problem' of invasive pigs in Back Bay federal wildlife refuge for decades now. We've got people studying silver carp and studying lionfish and studying everything else. Millions and millions of dollars spent on these studies and essentially zero on eradication. Because just about every time a report goes out, the researchers are going to say 'this needs to be studied some more.' Otherwise the money stops coming in. Eradication is, economically, not in the best interests of people who study invasive species. As soon as the problem is solved, the money is gone.

Years of hand-wringing over silver carp and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on all sorts of nonsense when we already know how to catch and a kill a lot of fish. Two guys with a boat and a few nets could empty out the carp from ten miles of river if someone would only pay them a living wage and cover their gas. Its not rocket science. Stop wasting time and money examining just how screwed everything is and start dealing with the damn problem.

Removing invasive species ALWAYS comes down to this: find them and kill them. I'm sorry if that isn't very politically correct. But that's what it is. Removing invasives requires that people go out and kill them. This isn't done by people in lab coats or suits. All of the dithering and studying and board meetings and budgets will do absolutely nothing about the problem. The job requires a whole lot of killing. The sensible thing to do is attach an economic value to the death of the invasive creature and let the hunters and fishermen who are already very good at killing go out and do what we do best.

I do not claim that eating invasive species is the solution in every case. I set out to hunt and eat invasive species around the US for 'Eating Aliens' in order to find out where and how the approach is viable. While everything tasted pretty good, this won't work everywhere. No more than a handful of people will actually eat armadillos, for examples. Even I felt kind of weird about it.There will never be enough of a market for garlic mustard or wild dandelions to get rid of even 1% of the stuff. But there are species that this will absolutely work for.