Reframing the Invasive Species Challenge

Abstract

This article presents the Hudson Valley of New York State as a broadly relevant case study to explore how the introduction of non-native species has historically served as a crucial facet of US (and pre-US) settler colonialism, undermining the more-than-human worlds tended by Native peoples and replacing them with assemblages of species conducive to European settlement. In it, I draw from long-term fieldwork with (non-Native) anti-invasive species practitioners who are increasingly doubtful about their ability to protect already stressed habitats from the ever-accelerating tide of new invasive organisms, despite their dogged efforts. In these desperate circumstances, what would it mean to shift from the prevailing approach that treats each new species in isolation and instead address the factors that enable invasiveness in the first place?