Learning to love aliens in the Irish countryside

THERE is a strange and extremely unscientific prejudice embedded in the heart of the environmental movement. It is the prejudice against what are usually described, in distinctly emotive terms, as ‘alien invasive species’, writes Dick Warner

The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the foreign species of plants and animals that settle in Ireland eventually integrate quite well and end up making a positive contribution to the naturally impoverished bio-diversity of an isolated island.

The xenophobic prejudices against them are based on an outdated and incorrect view of ecology. It used to be thought that every habitat eventually reaches a perfect state of ecological climax and that this state is stable and therefore any changes to it are detrimental. Nowadays we know that ecological reality is much more complex and dynamic. The natural order of things is that new species arrive and old ones depart. The prejudice is enshrined in a new EU regulation that came into force last January which gives officials the power to draw up a list of invader species which will not be allowed to be imported into any member state. The species list has yet to be finalised but the whole thing looks like a disaster about to happen.