Most people in Britain (the ‘Here’ in the book's title) are no doubt aware of the existence of invasive species in the country, if only through news items about threats to their person or property from giant hogweed or Japanese knotweed, for example. But how many realize, or would care even if they did, the sheer scale and cost of the problems posed by ‘the plants and animals from over there that are over here’—the subtitle of Dan Eatherley's book? I would challenge anyone to read this text and come away without caring, because of the emotions it may stir—perhaps astonishment, shock, helplessness and the occasional ray of hope. As Eatherley himself confides ‘It's hard to escape the conclusion that we're fighting a losing battle with most invasive species’, and indeed I suspect many readers will find this a depressing read, albeit an increasingly compulsive one. Just when you think you cannot take any more stories of ecosystem-wrecking plants, mammals, birds and amphibians that have been introduced by humans for all manner of mostly trivial reasons, it is hard not to want to find out what the beautiful harlequin ladybird has done to our beloved native ladybirds. Laid waste to them is the answer, incidentally.
This book has been thoroughly researched, and is dotted throughout with illuminating anecdotes about days spent in the field with scientists investigating alien species or volunteers doing their bit to control a damaging plant, invertebrate or mammal. I enjoyed the style of the text, and found it easy to read and digest, although sometimes I needed to put it down for respite, such is the onslaught of bad news after bad news. Increasingly I wanted to shout in frustration when Eatherley recounted yet another deliberate introduction that went horribly wrong. This was bad enough when the world was ignorant about the potentially calamitous impacts of alien species introductions, but even worse now that governments can have no excuses for allowing, or inadequately legislating against, yet more introductions.
Although alarm about invasive species is relatively recent, Eatherley demonstrates that introduced aliens have been liberally sprinkled by us around the world throughout human history, and even before that. But the number of invasives and the damage they cause increased dramatically with burgeoning international trade, with colonization, and with our increasing fascination with exotic flora and fauna. Colonists were particularly, if unwittingly, guilty of some of the most catastrophic introductions, both to the colonies (so they could feel at home with the familiar in far off New Zealand, for example) and from them. Stately homes, royal hunting forests and eventually quintessential English homes and gardens became adorned with the exotic, most of which stayed put and behaved, and some of which became greatly valued and integral to modern existence. A life without potatoes and tomatoes, anyone? But some of the new arrivals threw off the shackles and made a break for freedom, often at the cost of native wildlife and in some cases (e.g. rhododendron and grey squirrels in the UK) to the real financial cost of later human generations.
Today, the rate of arrival of new species is breathtaking, and the results often heartbreaking. Globally, whole species of native animals have been lost forever, and in the UK hundreds of millions of pounds are spent annually in an attempt to limit the damage caused by everything from imported diseases (potato blight, ash dieback) to insects (Asian hornet, oak processionary moth) to plants (New Zealand pygmyweed, Japanese knotweed) and mammals (grey squirrel, American mink). It would be easy to construe this expensive onslaught as a campaign against some disarmingly attractive plants and animals, but of course that would be to misunderstand the issue. The conservationist-led operation to remove grey squirrels is not anti them, it is pro the native red squirrel, which is being banished by its larger, disease-carrying cousin. Invasive alien species often bring with them moral dilemmas in addition to other problems.
Throughout, the author maintains a neutral stance, giving us the unvarnished facts and allowing us to draw our own conclusions. But I admit to wishing that he would let the mask slip and reveal whether he would either defend the ramparts and join a volunteer party, perhaps to uproot Himalayan balsam, or decide that resistance is futile. The author's mask remained resolutely in place to the end, but this reviewer hopes that Eatherley was inspired by those who hosted him and spends some of his spare time helping, say, to save water voles (Ratty of A.A. Milne's Wind in the Willows) in his patch by managing a mink raft. We cannot win every battle, but we are winning some important ones, and much of the credit for that is due to the can-do attitude of citizen conservationists with which the UK is richly endowed.
This is an excellent book, well crafted and accessible. It will fascinate anyone who is interested in the British countryside, history, economy or way of life. Perhaps it should be required reading for every citizen not in this group, if only so they can be aware of how to avoid contributing, however unwittingly, to a developing crisis on this island of ours and indeed wherever they may travel.
