Ecosystems / Invasive Species the Essay

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Nevertheless, it is a conceptual change from government-sponsored conservation efforts of the past, which might have focused specifically in the same region on the manatee population, and thus played a pure game of numbers. To regard the Florida manatee instead as part of a larger ecosystem that must be monitored in numerous different ways requires a change in approach which is not always easy for a government agency to implement.

2. The chief conservation implication of introduced invasive species is that the invasive species is often very difficult to eradicate without serious disruption to the host ecosystem. An excellent example of an invasive species is presented by the zebra mussel, a small freshwater species of shellfish originally native to the freshwater lakes of southern Russia. The introduction of zebra mussels into the freshwater habitats of North America has allowed them to spread at astonishingly fast rates: the zebra mussel reproduces extremely quickly, and its sudden appearance in American lakes and waterways has been linked to significant lowering of the concentrations of both oxygen in water solution and in chlorophyll in those areas which it has colonized. As the zebra mussels spread throughout these waterways by attaching themselves to boats, it is extremely difficult to prevent their further colonization of adjacent areas, and their overpopulation frequently clogs waterways and interferes with water treatment due to their inhabiting of pipes and drains.

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As an example of the radical conservation approaches that the invasion of zebra mussels has occasioned, it is worth noting that in 2014 the discovery of zebra mussels in Lake Winnipeg in Canada -- where they had migrated from the Great Lakes on the Canadian-U.S. border -- has led to an experimental solution, in which the infested harbors of Lake Winnipeg will have their bottoms covered by a silk curtain, and then liquid potash will be injected to clog the gills of the mussels and kill them off (CBC 2014). The use of liquid potash is unlikely to affect any other native species in Lake Winnipeg apart from native species of mussels. Thus from the perspective of the biodiversity of the native ecosystem, conservationists will have to deal with the reintroduction of the native species only after the (hoped-for) successful eradication of the invasive one. However, there seems to be no other solution for the zebra mussel problem, although it is worth noting that this Canadian solution to be tried later in 2014 has only been tried experimentally in sealed tanks, and never used in a larger ecosystem like Lake Winnipeg, so the success of the effort is hardly guaranteed......

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