"Herbicides and insecticides are key tools in managing invasive species — but managers are working to find more environmentally friendly substitutes".
"The fight continues at the site of the World War II Battle of Midway in the North Pacific. But rather than an attack by foreign forces on the U.S. Navy, this assault is by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service against the invasive plant Verbesina encelioides. Introduced in the 1930s, this insidious yellow aster has choked the three islands comprising the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge with mats of growth that inhibit albatross nesting. For two years, staff regularly sprayed the invasive plants with herbicides. They receded, crews reintroduced native plants conducive to albatross nesting, and the endangered birds’ survival rates are increasing.
This particular battle of Midway is far from unique. Synthetic chemical poisons have been employed in conservation management around the world for decades. Conservation biologists use them to kill invasive plants, animals, insects or other invading life forms on land or in aquatic ecosystems. Such chemicals have been used for everything from eliminating invasive plants from grazed pasture as a first step in restoring Australia’s mallee shrublands to killing Guam’s invasive brown treesnake by parachute-dropping dead mice stuffed with acetaminophen to using rotenone, a pesticide listed as highly toxic to bees by the Xerces Society, to kill invasive fish from Maine to California."
Julie M. Johnson reports for Ensia September 28, 2015.
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