non-native species

Donald Hughes on biodiversity. This is an entry in the KTH EHL VideoDictionary.

Sophie Chao delves into an unexplored dimension of the agribusiness nexus—the affective attachments of corporate actors to oil palm seeds. Drawing from fieldwork in an oil palm concession in Riau, Sumatra, she highlights the conflicting nature of caring for palm oil seeds.

The authors analyze the portrayal in popular conservation discourse of the flowering plant Rhododendron ponticum as an invasive species in the British countryside, especially Scotland. They explore how its invasiveness is materially produced via the cultural and socioeconomic as well as vegetal relations within which it is entangled.

The author examines the advent of native forest conservation in New Zealand’s Colony and the role of Thomas Potts in advocating exotic tree-planting as a response to timber shortage.

The authors use ecological theory to understand the spread, establishment, and dominance of three introduced organisms in New Zealand after episodes of natural and artificial environmental disturbance create opportunities for them to thrive.

The author attempts to reframe the classical distinction in conservation biology between native and invasive species by referring to migration and settlement of nonhuman beings as diasporas. She uses the introduction of Canadian beavers in Chilean Tierra del Fuego in 1947 as a case study.

Harriet Ritvo’s article for the Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities section views the proliferation of introduced species as a symptom rather than a cause, and urges the identification of the real causes through a reconsideration of the morally loaded rhetoric within which biological migration and transplantation are often couched.