How To Address A Letter To Queensland Australia

earth's ecosystems have always been changing,with species mixing and mingling thanks to migrations, freak events, and slow creepingexpansions. but since we humans arrived on the scene, we've put things into fast-forward,moving plants, animals, and otherâ organisms around the globe -- whether intentionallyor not. once in a while, one of these transplantsmight have an evolutionary quirk -- like deadly

How To Address A Letter To Queensland Australia, poison, a lack of predators, or a voraciousappetite -- that unexpectedly helps it dominate its new territory. earthworms, for example,were introduced into north america by europeanâ settlers and have been inching across the continentever since - tilling soil and improving crop yields as they go.

but if a newcomer starts to harm us or a partof the environment we care about, we'll call it an "invasive species." technically-speaking,humans aren't "invasive," because we don't usually consider ourselves an ecological threatto... ourselves. but other species certainly are. one way theyget our attention is by costing us money. a lot of money. the us spends billions ofdollars fighting invasive weeds like the pretty but pesky yellow rocket flower that chokesfields and creeps onto golf coursesâ and lawns. other invaders wreak so much havoc on fragileecosystems that we can't help but notice even if billions aren't at stake. for example,the yellow crazy ant - a likely native of southeast asia - has been eating many belovedand endangered australian creatures since

its arrival several decades ago. these littleants feast on nearly anything and everything in their path - insects, amphibians, birds,small mammals, even the famous red crabs on australia's christmas island, which used tokeep the island's undergrowth in check; without them, the ecosystem has veered into chaos. but noticing invasive species is easy - dealingwith them is the real challenge. when we brought rabbits to new zealand forfood and fur, they escaped and bred like...well...rabbits, overrunning the country. so we introducedferrets to control the rabbits; but they too spread like wildfire, generally ignoring therabbits while gobblingâ up rare species like the now nearly-extinct kakapo. new zealandis still overrun by both furry fiends, and

this is just one ofâ many well-meaning attemptsat biological control that have ended in disaster. the best way to fight an invasion is to firstarm ourselves with knowledge: instead of trying to kill australia's yellow crazy ants by justspraying insecticide everywhere, we've learned that the best approach is a year-long multi-stepassault that specifically targets ant-riddled areas at the times when the egg-laying queensare mature and susceptible to our treatments. then we spread two kinds of bait for the workersto bring back to the nest - one kills, and the other sterilizes the queens. neither poisonis perfect, but executed together, they can knock out a whopping 99 percent of the population. but with many invasives, even 99% isn't enough,because it doesn't remove whatever advantage

gave the invaders an edge inâ the first place.so unless we honest-to-goodness get rid of every reproductively active individual, eventuallythey'll return as vigorously as before, keeping us constantly on our toes. we really just need to stop moving potentialtroublemakers around in the first place, leaving bunnies where they belong and making sureants and earthworms don't stow away in ships, cars, or excavators. but in a modern, globalizedworld, this is easier saidâ than done. for those species that we do accidentally (orintentionally) let loose only to see them spread wildly out of control, our best hopeis to learn as much as we can about their habits and their biology - only then do wehave a chance of keeping their harmful "ant"-ics

at bay.