America's Top Twelve Most Destructive Invasives - Emerald Ash Borer, Tegu, Python And MUCH More!
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These long, lean eating machines are terrorizing the Florida Everglades. Humans don’t have much to fear, but native animals had better watch their backs. Alligators are being knocked off their perch as the swamp’s top predator. People ask why these snakes are such a problem. Why can’t experienced hunters walk into the Everglades and kill them? Burmese pythons from Southeast Asia are so stealthy that even experts with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have a tough time spotting them, let alone killing them. Since they were determined to be established and put the squeeze on the swamp in 2002, deer, raccoon, marsh rabbits, bobcats and possum have declined by as much as 99 percent in some cases, according to researchers for the U.S. Geological Survey.
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This bug’s march across the Midwest is not the kind of green movement that conserves nature. It ruins ash trees that provide durable wood used for flooring, bowling alleys, church pews, baseball bats and electric guitars. The bugs sparkle like a jewel with their glittery hide, but the nickel-sized holes they bore into trees are ugly, and the squiggly trails their larvae etch on the bark can make your skin crawl. They arrived in southeastern Michigan in 2002 from their native habitats in Russia, China and Japan. Since then, tens of millions of ash trees have been killed, and their numbers continue to grow.
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The official name comes off like some kind of vitamin drink, so Louisianans came up with another that sounds more fitting: swamp rats. Nutria don’t just look like rats with long tails and orange buck teeth, they breed like them. Female nutria give birth to litters of up to 14 then go back into heat in two days. Federal wildlife officials say there’s no hope of eradicating them from Louisiana, where they were imported from South America for their fur in the 1930s and grew out of control after being released when the industry died. A Chesapeake Nutria Eradication Program is working furiously to push them off the Del Marva Peninsula and wipe them out in Maryland and Delaware. Their endless digging on the banks of rivers rips up plants by the root, causing soil to erode, destroying native habitat for everything from muskrats to crabs to juvenile fish.
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Tegus look like little brown anolis lizards — on steroids. They’re muscular, fast and love eggs. They’re known to harass pets — some reports claim they have killed cats — and they invade homes. Tegus were brought to the United States as pets, and are still available for sale in some stores. They were released into the wild and have spread from the Florida Keys to the Florida Panhandle and are threatening to reach into southern Georgia. Like pythons, Florida officials have launched offensives designed to kill them. And also like pythons, those efforts have failed. There are now so many that Florida game officials have given up on the idea of eradicating them, and now only hope to manage the population.
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