Robert Mann said:

> ...isn't nourishing a pest (such as the fire-ant) unjustified if
> there are reasonable alternatives as have recently been
> pointed out on this list?

Well, a "pest" is really only a "pest" in the eyes of the beholder.
The fire art as a species will neither prosper nor suffer simply
because a few beekeepers let them clean their supers.

Most "pests" are introduced species, since they exploit a
niche that local flora and fauna did not, and thrive due to
a lack of predation or competitors.  The 1993 report by the
US Office of Technology Assessment, "Harmful Non-Indigenous
Species in the US"  (OTA-F-566) said that  "exotic plants",
those not native to the area, made up 29% of the total flora
found in New England, 16% of California's flora, and a whopping
46% of the flora found in New Zealand.  And that's just plants.

Come to think of it, honeybees and apple trees were
"imported", and are non-native species in the US.
Are honeybees "pests"?  Don't ask unless you want
to know the personal view of the person you ask.

Face it, man has re-shaped the environment multiple times.
If you want "untouched natural ecosystems", go to Antarctica.
(Of course, the "ecosystems" down there are very limited...)

In the US, a myth persists about american indians (or native
americans, if you will) as somehow being "more environmentally
concerned", when their practice of regular burning was only
abandoned in areas where the Europeans moved in, and they
certainly hunted more than one animal to extinction long before
the Europeans showed up.  Even the Euopean view of the US
as an "untouched wilderness" was false - they were looking
at vast areas that had been overtly and deliberately managed by
humans for centuries before their arrival.

There are lots of generally-agreed-to-be "pests", some native,
most exotic.  The only pest that I know has been "irradicated"
with any success in the US is the cotton boll-weevil, but eternal
vigilance is the price of freedom from boll-weevils, even today.

        jim

        farmageddon (an ongoing experimental weed farm)