Struggles with an Invader

Back to Nature & What a Mess - from today's New York Times

An excellent example human's unexpected consequences on the landscape. Here, Anne Raver's struggles to contain the invasive tree - black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) on the family farm. Anne, I feel your pain. However, I wish she had discussed & compare the ecological roles of native early successional trees & exotic invasives - they are quite different. When the latter dominates an area, it is not succession, nor is it competition or evolution - it is an invasion. All our open space, even so called "pristine" landscapes, need to be nudged along. We are now in the sad position of having to manage lands just to enable processes that should occur normally on their own.

More about black locusts