Invasive Species Speech
Do you want a gruesome story? Ok, picture this, you plant a black locust, and it grew some, and grew some.
When I was younger, I grew up surrounded by trees, and as I would visit friends and family, I noticed all of the trees they had. I didn't understand how one yard could have so many different kinds of trees. At the same time, my yard had four kinds: Black locust, boxelder, black walnut, and one oak tree. It wasn't until I grew older that I understood why.
When we think of invasive species, we generally think of exotic-looking fish or animals, but the truth of three invasive species is that they look like they belong in the habitat they are taking over. Now you can understand, as a little girl; I wouldn't understand that our oak tree wasn't the tree that was "out of place." I had just become used to the sight of the many black locusts on out property.
Now looking at my property as an ecosystem at the point of our black locust being introduced by either the environment, an animal, or humans like in our gruesome story. After many years of blending in, our black locust grew and began to take over the ecosystem, at which point this invasive species had gotten out of hand, and we began to notice.
After all of those years of blending in, our property is near a monoculture. Because of this combating these trees becomes difficult as they are the only source of shade on our property. The black locust has managed to impact our land to the point it will take at least a decade to get rid of them. As Doug Larson quote he says, "A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning to grow in a row." An invasive species is like a weed in the aspect of growing somewhere it is not wanted or a row. But as...
