A very quick list of non-native, introduced, invasive, or human created species in North America. Homo sapiens, beef cattle, field corn, wheat, soy beans, apples,honey bees, sugar beets, cotton, almonds, sweet clover, peaches, pheasants, chickens,varroa, eucalyptus, onion, garlic. I for one don't want to live without garlic, I could manage without varroa.

The notion of establishing a species value on whether or not it is "native" is misguided at best. Silly and faddish more like in mush of our current discourse. Maintaining and improving the environment both natural and managed is a noble cause but to think that if we could only rid ourselves of all introduced or invasive species we would automatically be better off is just not accurate. Quite often as the paper sites  we do more harm than good when we try to eradicate a non- native species. Here in SE WA in our effort to eradicate yellow starthistle (an introduced species) in order to improve conditions for cattle (an introduced species) we have done great harm to all manner of other species both native and introduced.

Paul Hosticka
Dayton WA

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