Nature is not there to do our bidding. While alien species may sometimes be a pain in the neck for human society, they are exactly the shot in the arm that real nature needs. Conservationists who want to cosset nature like a delicate flower to protect it from the threat of alien species, are the ethnic cleansers of nature, neutralising the forces of nature that they should be promoting. It is foolish to fear nature at its most dynamic -red in tooth and claw, rhizome and spore, root and branch. As true environmentalists, we should rejoice when species burst through the paving stones of our cities, or wash up on foreign shores. We should celebrate nature’s powers of recovery. We should let it run wild. How else are species to thrive and respond to the disruption of our activities, including climate change, if not by invading new territories, by becoming aliens?
Fred Pearce, The New Wild
