From your point of view, which is better, multiplying native species in their homelands, or bringing an alien species that become naturalized with native and poor environments without harming the biodiversity of the ecosystem?!
PLEASE, please, please NEVER introduce any exotic species into wild lands areas, ANYWHERE on our beautiful planet.
In California the European people who arrived here, introduced over 1,000 exotic plants in only 10 generations, and now our whole State is covered 99.99% by these horrible flammable weeds that are causing our whole California ecosystem to become Endangered.
Seemed like a good idea to introduce the exotics, but it worked TOO well, and now instead of living in CALIFORNIA, we are living in a completely transplanted piece of Europe and Australia.
The exotics will ALWAYS harm the native ecosystems, because every square meter they grow on, means on that square meter the local ecosystem will be extinct for eternity. Will destroy your ecosystem better than a point blank atomic weapon, because at the Trinity Site in New Mexico, the natives have grown back at Ground Zero.
I have Native American heritage, and it is really painful to see the destruction of the ecosystems that we consider Sacred, that is why my work is to restore them, and get the exotics off of them, so they can thrive again. Do not make the mistake we did here in California, please.
Learn how to use your native plants, if you are in Egypt, you have 2,302 native flowering plants, and they could become your best friends, if you take the time and put together the annual budgets to get to know them.
Start in tiny test plots, only one by two meters for each treatment. Sow seeds at different sowing rates, do soil tests and add different amounts of organic fertilizers and organic matter in each treatment.
And once you can get 100% native cover in one year for each species with natural rainfall, then you can expand to a hectare, then several hectares, etc.
Picture of my project here at the Kite Hill Preserve in Woodside, across from 144 Alta Mesa.
Never introduce exotics or attempt to multiply natives. It is better to simply protect habitats and eliminate exotic species :)
Andrew Paul McKenzie Pegman ..Why not multiply local natives,as medicine to heal local native ecosystem damages? It is very similar to doctors doing a tissue transplant from one part of a patient to heal another injured part.
Also, "simply protecting habitats and eliminate exotic species" is not good enough because most Countries do the first part pretty well, in setting aside lands to protect habitats. But the second part of eliminating exotics--once the exotics are eliminated and you need to fill that vacancy with something that is genetically locally native. That usually needs to have huge quantities of bulk seeds of the local ecotypes of native seeds to be able to plant, to start the healing process.
That is how we fixed the 100-mile gas pipeline scar across the Great Basin desert in 1994, through the sagebrush and cheatgrass infested desert north of Reno at https://www.ecoseeds.com/greatbasin.html -- We sowed the native seeds, so the allelochemicals they produced as seedlings, kept the cheatgrass seeds from ever sprouting, and did both things at the same time--we got 100% native cover and at the same time zero cheatgrass. Picture attached of our Bluebunch wheatgrass sowing, without a single cheatgrass plant, to the horizon. I have been so proud of that quality, that is still 95% native cover 30 years later.
I cannot fathom the requirement for introducing an alien species at the expense of a true native. An alien may not have obvious impacts but things like soil chemistry and subsequently soil microbe communities may be harmed and gone unnoticed, as an example. Upsetting the native "equilibrium" will somewhere have an effect. I do not believe in a "...without harming biodiversity..." statement.
What about species that are transmitted naturally without human intervention, does nature harm itself?
Salma K. Shaltout ... There is no comparison between naturally transmitted species, like California tarplant seeds stuck on bird's feathers that got transported to Hawaii and then evolved over time into the Silversword, vs our Federal government dumping millions of kilos of exotic seeds on BLM land every year for the ranchers, who graze those 100 million hectares of public lands here in the arid West.
The use of exotic seeds is usually due to laziness, and people who not really care about the natural environment, they have some other goals in mind, like feeding cattle and sheep. These people who do not want to do the right thing ecologically, and after we wrote environmental laws like NEPA in 1970, it is technically illegal to still do that.
Our US environmental laws were created, so that when you have a project on public lands, you are supposed to NOT destroy the natural resources of that area by conducting your project, for example by using exotic seeds. There is NEVER any justification for using ANY exotic seeds when planting in a wild lands area, ANYWHERE on the planet.
Tom Trott Just by looking, there are species of environmental and economic importance. The Egyptian farmer planted different species to fix the edges of the canals, then they began to spread without his interference. Some of these species consume water greatly, and these must be limited to their introduction, such as bananas, while others are consumed naturally. Rion E. Lerm pointed to another dimension beyond diversity. The apparent vitality, which is what happens inside the soil, and what if this change is beneficial? I asked this question, perhaps because I am against the absolute prohibition of all species and against challenging nature and standing up to its changes
Craig Carlton Dremann Does this mean that we exclude alien species from studies due to natural factors such as wind, bird migration and water runoff?
Salma K. Shaltout ...Exotics are being planted worldwide in irrigated pastures and cultivated farm fields. What I am promoting, if you need to repair or restore a wild land area, NATIVE SEEDS only. And then, only LOCAL native seeds, also called local "Ecotypes" whose genetics are fixed to the area.
See my study on the ecotypes at https://www.ecoseeds.com/juicy.gossip.three.html
Andrew Paul McKenzie Pegman What about alien species due to nature? Should they be addressed or dealt with and respect the natural changes in the universe?
Salma K. Shaltout .. With working with any new exotic, even when grown in experimental research plots or in cultivated fields, you need to be extremely careful.
A researcher in California imported some Brassica tournifortii seeds, to use for breeding improvements for the Canola oil seed plants, and it escaped into our California and Southwest deserts, and within 10 years was growing along all of our roads and highways, picture attached from https://www.ecoseeds.com/mustards.html
Dear Salma,
I think that it could be better to avoid anthropic operations in every natural ecosystem, letting nature free to operate in the long term. This is particularly true for many exotic marine seaweeds living in the Mediterranean Sea.
Best regards
Nicola Cantasano