Biodiversity is great in theory, but there are reasons to fend off invasive alien species and the knock-on effect of their presence<\/p>\n
Britain would be a wasteland if it weren\u2019t for immigration. Fifteen thousand years ago, most of the country was buried a kilometre deep in ice \u2013 not ideal conditions for life. That all changed as we moved out of the last ice age<\/a> into the current, milder climate phase. The ice sheets retreated, leaving an empty landscape for anything with the wherewithal to seize the opportunity and move in. Tens of thousands of species did, mainly heading north from the European continent to which Britain was then joined. The result was a native biota where almost every species is an immigrant. Our ancestors were among them.<\/p>\n Immigration is a natural process, but it\u2019s one that has been fundamentally changed thanks to humanity\u2019s wanderlust. As we\u2019ve moved around the world we have taken many other species along with us \u2013 some deliberately, some accidentally \u2013 to areas they couldn\u2019t have reached without our assistance. These include many of the most familiar denizens of the British countryside. Grey squirrel, ring-necked parakeet, horse chestnut, rhododendron <\/strong>\u2013 none of these would be in Britain if they hadn\u2019t been brought by people. They are what ecologists call aliens. Anywhere people live you\u2019ll also find aliens.<\/p>\n Tim Blackburn is professor of invasion biology at University College London and author of The Jewel Box: How Moths Illuminate Nature\u2019s Hidden Rules<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Biodiversity is great in theory, but there are reasons to fend off invasive alien species and the knock-on effect of their presence Britain would be a wasteland if it weren\u2019t for immigration. Fifteen thousand years ago, most of the country was buried a kilometre deep in ice \u2013 not ideal conditions for life. That all … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}