Tinkering with Eden: A natural history of exotics in America by Kim Todd, W.
W. Norton, $26.95, ISBN 0393048608
YOU won鈥檛 see herds of kangaroos hopping around in the American Great Plains,
destroying native plants and outcompeting the antelope鈥攂ut this is a rare
exception, as Kim Todd tells us in Tinkering with Eden. Here, in rich
detail, you鈥檒l find the stories of how people brought pigeons, pheasants and
purple loosestrife to the US, and sometimes lived to regret it.
Some of the species were introduced by accident, such as the lampreys and
zebra mussels that slipped in via the St Lawrence Seaway. But most of these
exotics were released deliberately. The flocks of starlings that plague farmers
and city dwellers alike, for example, are all descended from a small group that
was set loose in New York鈥檚 Central Park in 1890.
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In most cases, Todd shows, the people who breached biological barriers
thought they were adding to their world, bringing plants and animals they knew
from the Old World, putting meat on tables and flowers into gardens. But, alas,
they were more often subtracting.
Most of the exotics she describes鈥攅ven the lowly honeybee鈥攈ave
driven native American plants and animals into extinction. The cost of undoing
the damage is high. Ranchers and government agencies are now spending millions
to eradicate some of these pests. But not all. Todd points out that American
hunters love their (Chinese-born) pheasants. And nursery catalogues still bulge
with ads for new exotic plants.
Those kangaroos? In 1892, someone suggested they鈥檇 be a good addition to the
American fauna. Luckily for the antelope, this never happened.