James Stanescu (editor) - The Ethics and Rhetoric of Invasion Ecology

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stanescu, James, editor. | Cummings, Kevin, editor.

Title: The ethics and rhetoric of invasion ecology / edited by James Stanescu and Kevin Cummings.

Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016041483 (print) | LCCN 2016042376 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498538305 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781498538312 (Electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Biological invasions--Philosophy. | Introduced organisms--Ecology. | Introduced organisms--Control--Moral and ethical aspects.

Classification: LCC QH353 .E84 2016 (print) | LCC QH353 (ebook) | DDC 577/.18--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041483

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

James Stanescu and Kevin Cummings

One issue that seems to be settled in environmentalism is a belief in the harm and trouble of invasive species. Invasive species are plants and animals, non-native to the ecological systems they are introduced to, which overrun the natural balance of a system that did not evolve to limit their growth. To highlight this issue, there is an annual National Invasive Species Awareness Week, co-sponsored by such groups as the Environmental Law Institute and The Nature Conservancy. The National Wildlife Federation Magazine has run articles with headlines like, A Plague of Aliens. The need to kill invasive species in order to protect natural habitats for native animals has been a reoccurring attack against animal groups, and discussed by thinkers such as Michael Pollan and Donna Haraway, and even fictionalized in T.C. Boyles novel When the Killing is Done. Against this commonsense clich, our volume brings the tools of the environmental humanities in the fields of rhetoric and ethics to critically reexamine the orthodoxy against non-native species, and begin to chart a different course.

Within the growing literature on animal studies and animal ethics, scholars have critically examined factory farms, zoos, companion animals, and laboratory testing. What remains underexplored are the logics of extermination deployed against feral or non-native species, and the discourses delineating borders, species, belonging, and nativity. The existing vocabulary utilized to determine who counts as a non-native species relies on troubling definitions of closed ecosystems, neo-colonial borders, and anthropocentric taxonomies. Subsequent descriptions of non-native species often represents these animals as pests that wreak havoc on the ecosystem, promiscuously over-populate, and spread disease. This rhetorical framing of the non-native justifies a militarized relationship to particular species, in much the same way international border conflicts, refugees, and migratory populations heighten attention to proper belonging and defense against the other. Invasivity is a highly political and non-neutral calculation regulating both human and non-human bodies, often simultaneously. Furthermore, the debate over non-native species divides common ground between animal activists and environmentalists. If the world is moving very slowly toward less cruelty in the treatment of animals and a modest increase in awareness about the basic dignity that should be afforded to all creatures, there is a vast slippage in the case of feral and non-native species that merits attention. This volume is a critical exploration of invasion ecology. We seek to look at the ways that invasion ecology rhetorically frames itself and the thorny ethical issues around responding to non-native species. Invasion ecology forces us to confront issues of nativity and settler colonialism, the power of border-making and essentialized communities, the limits and needs of ecological restoration, the conflict of environmental and animal ethics, and the always tricky question of how we are to cohabit this earth.