These discussions about invasive species perplex me. If the basic assumption is that invasive species must be eliminated, then that has some unfortunate consequences. Let's do a reductio ad absurdum here: since the resources to eliminate all invasive species are not likely to exist (we won't bother to kill pythons in Alaska), let's agree to confine our elimination efforts to only the most invasive species and the ones which have had the greatest adverse effects on indigenous plants and animals. OK, so we look around and try to determine which species that is. Hmmm.let's see, would that be starlings? Pigeons? Kudzu? Oops, .it's pretty obvious that the species which has worked hardest to attain that distinction is Homo sapiens, a species not native to the Americas. And of the invasive tendencies of this species, among the most disruptive have been those which result from agricultural activity (billions of acres bereft of their biological patrimony and the substitution of several non-native plant and animal species), road building (which has produced a slaughterhouse for those native animals which survive the road building itself), and the recycling of stage one destructive activities like farming into stage two destructive activities such as housing developments..well, the list could go on and on. Obviously the ethical thing to do is to eliminate ourselves from the New World and allow North, Central and South America to return to the paradises they presumably were before "we" got here and wrecked it. But that's no fun, and since so many of our cultural myths promote us into the role of God's representatives here on earth, we'll exempt ourselves in deference to the wishes of the Deity and get on with trying to maintain a Disneyland-like similitude of the American Ur-landscape. Hmm.too bad about the megafauna, passenger pigeons, Carolina parakeet and those others. We'll have to do some virtual versions to fill the void. And what's more important, the ivory billed woodpecker's need for vast lowland forest tracts or our need for toilet paper and newsprint? Come on, it's a no brainer. And as for that old farm field you're going to restore as a "natural" landscape, old timers seem to be divided over whether it was originally a bog or an upland hardwood forest. Let's make it a prairie instead, and add a few patriotic buffalo to keep the crowds happy. And soon we'll be 9 billion strong. We must be right because there are so many of us. If Malthus could see what's happening now, I wonder if he would be glad that he lived and died in the world as he knew it. He predicted our date with destiny, and we seem to be doing everything in our power to test his hypothesis and bring it on. .