Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Item of the day is the book The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation by Fred Pearce.  I learned of this book in a video by Geoff Lawton.  I was so impressed with Geoff’s video that I included in an expert council podcast.  (episode 2914).

When I read this book I was flatly blown away.  Many online attack Fred Pearce and this book and acting as if Pearce’s view is that you can just import anything anywhere with zero concerns and there are no real negative consequences to “invasive species” or what Pearce calls “aliens”.  I will just say any zealots shrieking such things, could not have read this book.  I mean COULD NOT HAVE read it, period.

On the contrary this is not some utopian view that “aliens” only have positive impacts on their new homes.  Rather it is only a pragmatic and logical look at how it has all happened, how many times it has actually been positive on impact and how even the negatives are largely exaggerated, often for political purposes.

Here are few such examples you will learn about in this book…

• How an “alien tree” was blamed for drying out rivers in the US, though it was growing down stream of the dry out
• How a plant in the UK is claimed to “break though home walls” to the point where if it is on a property you can’t get a mortgage to buy it, yet it has never happed even once.
• How a water plant considered a pestilence actually helped clean one of Africa’s largest lakes
• How an island that was 95% bare rock was turned into cloud forest with mass species plantings
• Why the concept of stopping these plant an animal migrations is flatly ridiculous at this point
• How thousands of species are moved around annually just from ballast water in ships or trade winds
• How a piece of a jetty traveled with dozens of species in the current from Japan to Washington state

Honestly this book fits very well with a video that was part of my Miyagi Mornings series Why I Don’t Trust the Authority of Science – Miyagi Mornings Epi-133.

There seems to be a total emotional and political disconnect across the globe about the actual impact of what we have been taught to see as “invasive species” to there point where natives are called invasive simply because they do things humans object to.  And even how invasives are accepted erroneously as natives because people simply like them.   All of this builds to situations where people have tried to wipe out natives calling them invasives to protect invasives that they called natives.  Yes really!

In any event I and Geoff Lawton both highly recommend reading this book which will forever change your perspective.  This won’t be done though rose colored utopian glasses, rather simply a pragmatic and fact based look at the reality of this issue.  You know the way science is supposed to examine an issue.  So check out The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation by Fred Pearce and I think you will really enjoy it.  And yep you can get it in Kindle or Print formats.

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com