INVASIVE SPECIES

Some of the most damaging invasive plants in the eastern United States are listed below:

• Lonicera japonica -- Japanese honeysuckle
• Lonicera maackii -- Amur honeysuckle
• Rosa multiflora -- multiflora rose
• Lythrum salicaria -- purple loosestrife
• Pueraria montana -- kudzu (aka Pueraria lobata)
• Celastrus orbiculatus -- oriental bittersweet
• Elaeagnus umbellata -- autumn-olive
• Alliaria petiolata -- garlic-mustard

A number of invasive exotics in Australia are listed below:

• rabbit
• Brown hare
• European red fox
• common starling
• nutmeg mannikin
• cane toad
• brown trout
• mosquitofish
• honeybee

Invasive exotic disease introductions in the past century or so include the chestnut blight which has virtually extinguished the American chestnut, and Dutch elm disease, which has severely damaged the American elm

There are several classic accounts of species that have been invaders for many decades. The sea lamprey began to make its way up into the Great Lakes Region when the St. Lawrence Seaway was completed in 1959, devastating the lake trout fishing industry. It continues to be a largely-controlled problem today, but costs millions in lamprecides, traps, physical barriers, and other control methods.

Rabbits were introduced into Australia with colonists in the 1800 and their devastation is ongoing in spite of the famous rabbit fences that were built along thousands of miles of territory with the futile intention of keeping them out.

The often unsuccessful use of biological control provides another historical perspecitive of the invasive species problem. When rats overwhelmed seaports and became crop pests during the 1800's in some islands in the Pacific, mongoose were introduced to control them. The mongoose preferred to eat native species that were easier to catch than the invasive rats, and became invaders themselves. As a result, modern day biological control is used only if extensive studies find that the biocontrol species will not have a negative effect on native populations.

The term "invasive exotic" is generally not used for economically valuable crops and livestock, although they can have larger effects on ecosystems than even the most successful of unintentionally introduces species.

See also

• Rabbit invasion in Australia
• Biodiversity