midday magazine for this March 28th, 2024.
You have your host, James J. Mailoff here,
and we're welcoming in the studio,
our good friend Anna Mitchell.
Anna, good to have you with us.
I'm good to have you, too.
Or good to have you, too.
Good to be here, James.
Did it sound a little weird here in your name like that?
I mean, it threw me off a little.
We should let the audience know that name sounds a little
familiar, it's because Anna's been with us many times
as Anna James, but congratulations,
Moseltoff to you and yours, very happy for you,
and very happy to have you in studio, Anna.
One of the things we love about joining you,
joining us is not only do we learn,
but we get a chance to really dive into topics
we don't always get a chance to.
And today we're going to be getting into invasive species.
So what is an invasive species just to begin with?
Yeah, so Wisconsin DNR defines invasive species
as non-indigenous species whose introduction causes
or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm
or harm to human health.
But basically, an invasive species is any species
that's brought to an area that it doesn't originally come from.
So where it's non-native to.
Now, just, and I don't know, nearly what you do,
but knowing a little bit about nature
and learning more and more all the time,
especially from people like yourself,
these things can happen in nature quite often,
but it's a difference of it happening
and then they're happening and causing problems.
Yes, yes.
So invasive species, I mean, in their native environment,
invasive species have natural predators and competitors
that keep their populations in check.
It's like a system of checks and balances, right?
But when you take a species out of their native habitat
and put them into a different habitat
where they have no natural predators or competitors,
they just thrive.
Like, they just multiply really, really rapidly.
And it becomes an issue for the species
that are native to those areas.
They just, the invasives can tend to just take over
and really, really rapidly.
There's nothing keeping their populations in check, so.
Which is such an integral part of nature.
Just to keep things in check.
It's such an interesting thing,
but when you take a step back and look at nature,
so much of it is balanced on that.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's just checks and balances
the whole system, yeah.
Now, they can, this can also impact economic value as well.
Yeah, which is pretty wild.
We'll talk about that kind of some specifics,
especially to Wisconsin in a little bit.
But invasive species not only alter
the ecological relationships
and disturb the natural ecosystems,
but in fact, 42% of species that are
on the threatened or endangered species list,
they are there because of some threat
that an invasive species has caused.
Which, I mean, that's almost half of the species
on your threatened or endangered species list.
This is why I love talking with you.
This is why it's so vital we talk to you.
I cannot be the only one that's learning that.
Just for the audience to look behind the curtain a little bit,
on a sense these notes to us,
and I have a chance to kind of go over them
so I know a little bit of what we're talking about,
and I can help with the conversation.
I read that five times when I saw that,
I couldn't get over that.
I know that many, many, if not almost everybody out there
cares about endangered animals
and doesn't want to see any of these animals,
on our watch, go out.
Right.
You know, when you hear a stat like that,
it brings everything really full circle.
Yeah.
And it just really, that took me like 42%.
That's amazing.
Right, and it's a good stat to know
because a majority of invasive species become invasive
because of human interaction too.
So, I mean, us humans have created just conditions
where plants and animals kind of aggressively invade
and dominate natural areas and water bodies too.
And there's three major ways
that invasive species can be introduced.
So, the first way is just introducing
exotic species from other regions.
So for example, we have a lot of ornamental gardens
and those plants are generally not from our region.
I mean, they're flashy, they're showy,
and so we tend to gravitate towards those
for like our lawns and our flower beds.
But when we introduce those species
to an ecosystem that they're not native to
that they then become an invasive species,
especially if they're not managed and looked after.
When I was spending time in California,
one of the ways I learned about their ecosystem out there
and a lot of their culture out there
is from this, is from invasive species.
They'll have a seed from Europe float over and land there.
And this kind of thing happens all,
it's happened for thousands of years.
It's crazy.
Yeah, it is, it's really crazy.
And the same thing happens in Wisconsin.
The same thing happens all over.
And then there's another way that us humans
are really good at spreading invasive species
is just disrupting the delicate balance
of native ecosystems by changing the environmental conditions.
So for example, fire is really important
to a lot of landscapes.
So we think about forests, mainly prairies.
Well, we suppress fires as humans, right?
A fire is bad in our eyes when we see
a burn across a landscape, but there's benefits to fire.
So before settlement for us, right?
They're fire burned across a landscape
and there's actually native plants
that need fire in order to germinate.
And so when we suppress that fire,
we're not allowing specific plants to germinate
and then the fire isn't suppressing other plants either.
So you see an overpopulation of maybe an invasive
or maybe even overpopulation of a native,
which I mean, it wouldn't technically be an invasive
if it's taking over a prairie,
but because it's so dominant, it's hindering
the germination of others.
That's got to be a tricky one to be able to deal with
because we certainly we can't have out of control fires,
but it's also so important for fire.
So that's a tough one to balance just as a world
as a society.
Yeah, yeah.
And the spreading of these activities
of these invasive species continues too
with recreational activity.
Yeah, yeah.
So I mean, a lot of what we love to do in Wisconsin
is outdoors.
I mean, that's what our state is sold on.
Yeah, our outdoor recreational opportunities.
Well, if we don't do those with care and with intention,
we can be spreading invasive species.
So just for example, if you're boating
as huge in Wisconsin, right?
Any water activity.
If you have a boat and you're moving it
from water body to water body
and you're not taking the vegetation off of the trailer
when you're moving it,
and that is a really good way of spreading invasives
or even draining out the water that's in your boat,
taking the plug out before you leave.
Yeah.
And then when we mow along the road sides,
a lot of the times, if those mowers aren't cleaned off
or just blown off, you're moving seedlings
from one spot to another.
We're going to thought about that one.
Yeah, yeah.
The boat thing I remember doing that, especially as a kid,
we do a hose down the boat before we moved it
from a camel out or something like that.
I hadn't thought about the mowing thing.
Wow, that is a difference maker.
It is, and well, there's some other scenarios we'll talk about.
But if you like to camp and you see signs that say,
please don't bring in firewood,
I wonder, I know some people are like,
that sounds really odd, is that just a gimmick
to make us spy their firewood?
No, it's not.
It's actually a way to decrease the spread
of invasive species.
If you're bringing in firewood from home,
say a different region of the state,
that firewood could have invasive species,
and you could be introducing it to a somewhat delicate
and well-managed system in, say, a county park or a state park.
So that's why they tell you to only use the firewood
that they have or the firewood
within a 10 mile radius of the campsite.
Yeah, it seems like so many of these things
are fixable, are doable,
some of it is self-inflicted,
but also stuff that isn't common knowledge.
So I mentioned that a lot of people are doing these things
and not realizing it and would like to fix them
for lack of a better way to do it.
Yeah, you just don't know what you don't know.
When it comes to dealing with these
and why we should care about them, Ana,
can we get into the details of why we should care
about a invasive species?
Yeah, so there's three large areas,
where three reasons really why we should care
about invasive species and the one that I think
is going to hit home the most is just the economics behind it.
So in the United States, expenses associated
with invasive species, damage and control
were estimated at $137 billion in 2001.
That's 2001.
Whoa.
It's just since increased, I mean $137 billion
because of invasive species.
With, I mean, inflation is a factor every year in history.
So there's that to consider.
And then the 2001 aspect of that.
I wasn't sure if it was a typo or not.
No, no, no, no, that really speaks to a lot.
That number has only gotten bigger over the last decades.
Yeah, and then if we bring it to a Wisconsin perspective,
we have industries like commercial fishing, forestry,
agriculture, industrial water users,
our industrial water treatment plants,
you know, municipal water users.
Those are also negatively impacted by invasive species.
And just one to bring into perspective,
our commercial sport and commercial fishing industries
are huge in Wisconsin.
In the Great Lakes, they're valued at $4.5 billion
and support over 81,000 jobs in Wisconsin.
And these industries, we see them at risk
due to increasing numbers of invasive species
that are present in our water.
So a great example of an invasive species in our waters,
especially our Great Lakes, our round gobies.
These fish, these round gobies,
they eat the eggs of sport fish like smallmouth bass
or trout and even sturgeon.
So because they have no natural predator, right?
They can go through and just make food for one.
Yeah, make food out of anything they find.
So they're dealing with this a lot in Florida right now,
especially in the southern tip of the state
and everything with sharks or animals
that they've never seen come close to land
before are now starting to.
And that's not necessarily an invasive species thing,
but it's becoming an invasive species thing
because of these animals traveling from different spots.
There's a lot of different places around the country,
around the world that are dealing with some things like this.
Well, the Florida Everglades, just thinking about Florida
and they have huge invasive species issues with pythons.
I mean, it's become a whole...
Oh, I guess so.
Yeah, I forgot about this.
You're right.
Yep, pythons in some iguanas just from,
I can't remember which hurricane it was.
Yep, I can't remember which hurricane it was,
but it wiped out a reptile.
I don't know, breeding facility.
And so all of these pythons got introduced to the Everglades.
People are actually making careers out of taking people out
to hunt these invasives.
Yeah, yeah, it's actually really cool.
It's cool, so.
It's interesting.
And it's one of those things that I bring up in part
just to, you know, it's not just a Wisconsin thing.
Other states are certainly dealing with things like this.
And also, let you know that you're not alone
and that these things can be fixable.
Again, for lack of a better word.
I feel weird saying when it comes to nature saying fixing.
Nature's doing its thing.
I don't want to, but it is sort of a lack of a better way
to put it kind of getting things back in balance.
If it was human-caused, I think it can be human-fixed.
Well said, very well said.
And just another example of how this affects our state.
In 2001, the electric company had,
Wisconsin electric company had some details on this.
Yeah, so in 2001, they had actually,
the Wisconsin electric and power company
reported that they spent $1.2 million per year
trying to control zebra mussels,
which are an aquatic invasive.
On their Lake Michigan power plants
because the small zebra mussels,
they congregate and on and clog their intake
and distribution pipes, so.
That's insane.
And not the kind of things that we,
I think, would hear about or know about very often.
It also speaks to these kind of stories
being covered a little bit more, I think.
I think that they should be brought up a lot more
and covered a lot more.
This affects our health as well,
because we talked about the economic impact.
Now the health impact it has on us.
Yeah, so some invasive species can cause,
can be caused for major health concerns in humans.
So for example, in Wisconsin,
we have a plant called wild parsnip
and it's grown in,
it grows a lot in disturbed areas,
like our ditches, along trails,
and it's got this really big yellow umbil head on it.
So it looks like an umbrella.
That's why they call it an umbil.
Well, actually, if you get the sap of this plant on you
and on your skin and it's exposed to the sunlight,
it's photoreactive.
So if it's exposed to the sunlight, you blister
and you blister bad.
Like there's been cases where people have been sent
to the hospital because they blister so bad.
So yeah, I mean, that's just,
and I guess another example in Wisconsin
is we see the Lone Star tick more often
and that's generally found in our southern states.
But when we see it up here,
if you get a tick bite from a Lone Star tick,
sometimes you can get alphagal syndrome,
which is a food allergy to red meat.
It causes a food allergy to red meat.
Yeah.
Now that's not, that ain't right.
That ain't fair ticks.
Like you've gone too far.
You've gone too far ticks.
But that is really, that's not,
I mean, for one, just to hear that an allergy
like that exists is quite interesting, I think.
But also that this is something in our state again,
not sure that it's common knowledge
and not enough people know about that.
We know there's ticks out there,
but different breeds let alone that some of them
were kind of introduced to our state.
That's very interesting.
Right, right.
We're speaking with Anna Mitchell,
UW-Madison Division of Extension's
Natural Resource Educator.
Anna, as we're touching on the ways
that this invasive species affect us,
the natural ecosystem is of course another big one.
Mm-hmm.
So like we had said before,
invasive species tend to disrupt our natural communities
and the ecological processes within our natural community.
So we discussed how the round goby's disrupt the food web
in some of the Great Lakes.
And invasive species can also displace native species
due to how they tend to just decrease diversity.
So when we have, so not to mention the forestry industry,
it is huge within Wisconsin.
I think it was almost 100,000 jobs
that were generated by the forestry industry.
But we are seeing plants like honeysuckle and buckthorn,
which are invasives take over in some of our forests.
And those plants on the understory,
so like the shorter part of the forest floor,
they will just grow so, so thick,
which makes it really hard for our native saplings
and the young trees to grow and to flourish.
So those, I mean, even plants like that
are disrupting, disrupting the ecosystem
or the web of our natural forests.
Which is very interesting.
So the net result of this.
Yeah, so the net result of invasive species
is just a loss of diversity of our natural plants
and animals because invasive species rapidly multiply.
And they dominate areas like our forests,
grasslands, wetlands, and water bodies.
So just a net result is a loss of our native species.
With a topic like this on,
I think with a lot of topics nowadays,
people hear all this information,
they're good people, they're taking it in, and they care.
But they have no idea what to do after that
because it's such a big topic.
It could be so hard to handle.
I remember growing up, I hated cleaning my room.
I'm a neat freak, but I hated cleaning my room.
I didn't mind cleaning the rest of the house.
And especially because I was a typical boy,
I had a crazy room messed up all over the place,
cereal bowls, that kind of thing.
When it was time to clean, I would break it down.
And the guy, I'm gonna get the dishes out first.
So I'm gonna get the animals out of here first
because a lot of wild animals in there,
I'm joking, but this is how we take on big issues.
We break them down a little bit.
So when it comes to what we can do, what can we do?
Yeah, we'll break it down.
We'll break it down into three parts.
First of all, just learn, take the time
to research what invasive species are in Wisconsin.
Get to know how to identify them
so that if they're on your property,
you can properly manage them.
The DNR website with Wisconsin DNR website
has really great resources for invasive species.
Just a plug for UW Extension.
We have really wonderful resources as well.
You can actually look at all of our invasive species
in Wisconsin and there's a fact sheet on those species
on how to control them, how they're introduced,
how to identify them.
If there's any harm to our health from them.
So there's some really great resources out there
and all you have to do is Google Wisconsin
in invasive species.
And then the other one is just take action.
If you're taking the time to learn,
then be intentional about what you're learning
and take action.
So we talked about if you are using a watercraft,
make sure to pull the plug on it
before right after you load the boat, pull the plug.
I've got a boat.
That's like the first thing that I make sure is done.
We pull the plug and we make sure that all of our trailer
is clean from any aquatic plants
because we don't know if they're invasive or not.
We don't want to spread them.
I mean, if you're camping, take care to buy firewood
within 10 mile radius of your campsite.
There's a, if you're a landowner or a gardener,
try to use native plants as much as possible.
We have beautiful native plants.
Educate yourself on what the native plants are
and the benefits that they have to our ecosystems
and plant those and then just be an advocate.
If you're learning about it and you're taking action,
don't just keep that to yourself.
Advocate for those to your neighbors,
your friends, your family, share what you learn,
share what you're doing.
Just be passionate about it so that other people
can become passionate or even curious about it.
Especially with the way that Anna has broke this down,
this whole topic for us down,
that when it comes to reaching out to people
and being an advocate, you've got your notes.
You've got your, okay, well, this person cares
about the economy so I can bring up this
and how it invasive species affect the economy.
This person cares about our health,
so talking about that part of it.
You've given us all the tools to be able to be advocates
and be able to really promote and talk about this more.
And the more, again, it's one of those topics
that can seem so big and you can't fight nature
but we can work with nature.
We can work with nature and that's what we need to be doing.
Not fighting it, working with nature.
Cause one, we'll never win if we did try to fight it.
It just doesn't happen.
But it also, it makes for a better world,
a more the symmetry, the way that we work together,
nature, human beings, it only works if we all work together.
And it's on us to be able to do this.
Nature's doing their thing, it's doing its job.
We gotta do ours.
Are we gonna be part of the ecosystem?
Are we gonna be an integral part,
a beneficial part, a positive part?
What role are you gonna play?
Well said, as always, Anna.
And we always appreciate the time,
always learn from you.
Thank you so much for being in with us today.
If people have follow up questions,
they wanna know some more about some of the things
we dove into, how can they reach you?
You can stop in at the Wood County Extension Office
so you can email me at anna.m.james at whisk.
W-I-S-C dot edu.
Again, congrats to you and yours.
Thank you so much.
Really happy for you and really appreciate the time.
Thanks so much.
Looking forward to hanging out again real soon.
Yep, as am I.
Have a good day.
You too.
And we'll have more Midday Magazine for you tomorrow,
right here on 97-5 FM 13-20 AM WFHR.
We are locally grown radio.
