“Since 1492, humans have introduced approximately 30,000 new plant species to North America.”
So, how did we get here?
This got
my attention. Or, a little context goes a long way...
Kevin Heffernan, Stewardship Biologist, speaking to the Virginia Invasive Species Working Group:
“There are approximately 400,000 +/- plant species on the planet...
…Approximately 18,000 +/- of those were native to North America (i.e., here pre-European contact).
In the last 400 years, humans have introduced approximately 30,000 +/- new plant species to North America (that's about 75 new species a year, if you were to average it out).
Of those 30,000, approximately 5,000 +/- have escaped cultivation.
Of those 5,000 escapees, approximately 900 +/- have been found to be invasive.
Read that again.
Since the Jamestown settlement, we dumped THIRTY THOUSAND plant species into a continent that previously only had 18,000...and those 18,000 had millennia to co-evolve with wildlife in their respective ecosystems.
The magnitude of this is a lot like the climate crisis...it's an unprecedented impact in such a short span of time.
Hence, why we are where we are.
— from info presented by Kevin Heffernan, Stewardship Biologist at the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, to the Virginia Invasive Species Working Group, June 2021
