Invasive species multiply in U.S. waterways

By Matthew Berger

WASHINGTON, Jan 4 (IPS) – As 2010, the U.N.’s International Year of Biodiversity, gets underway, a fight against some of the most damaging invasive species in U.S. waterways is heating up. The U.N. says some experts put the rate at which species are disappearing at 1,000 times the natural rate, and invasive species – which consume the food or habitat of native species, or the native species themselves – are one factor contributing to this acceleration. Climate change is another major factor. “Often it will be the combination of climate change and [invasive] pests operating together that will wipe species out,” says Tim Low of the Australia-based Invasive Species Council. The International Union for Conservation of Nature says that 38 percent of the 44,838 species catalogued on its Red List are “threatened with extinction” – and at least 40 percent of all animal extinctions for which the cause is known are the result of invasive species. But just as invasives are not the only threat to biodiversity, the threat to biodiversity is not the only problem caused by the havoc – ecological as well as economic – wreaked by species that are transported to a foreign habitat, get a foothold there and spread, often voraciously. The U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity says the spread of invasives costs 1.4 trillion dollars a year globally in damages and control measures. The U.S. alone loses 138 billion dollars a year in the fight. …

BIODIVERSITY: Invasive Species Multiply in U.S. Waterways via Apocadocs