Attack of the alien invaders
Pest plants and animals leave a frightening $1.7 trillion bill.
Credit: Jason Jones Travel Photography / Getty Images
They’re one of the most damaging environmental forces on Earth. They’ve colonised pretty much every place humans have set foot on the planet. Yet you might not even know they exist.
We’re talking about alien species. Not little green extraterrestrials, but invasive plants and animals not native to an ecosystem and which become pests. They might be plants from South America, starfish from Africa, insects from Europe or birds from Asia.
Yellow crazy ants, such as these attacking a gecko, are among thousands of invasive species causing ecological and economic havoc. Credit: Dinakarr, CC0, Wikimedia Commons
Environmental News For The Week Ending 03 April 2019
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at
GEI (but can be posted at other times).
Please share this article - Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.
Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
There hasn t been much change in the trajectory of either US Covid metric: new cases continue to increase at a modest pace, while US Covid deaths continue to fall. New cases of Covid confirmed over the week ending April 3rd were 5.9% higher that those confirmed over the week ending March 27th, and 15.9% higher than those of the week ending March 20th, while US Covid deaths during the week ending April 3rd were 12.2% lower than the prior week, and down 74.7% from the peak week in late January.
These 5 invasive species cause billions of dollars in damage sciencenews.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sciencenews.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.