Can We Eliminate Invasive Species By Eating Them? Hannah Newman - Quartz
go to original June 18, 2014

Lionfish the Ultimate Invasive Species (Lorenzo Mittiga)

As the second lionfish taco quickly disappeared from my plate, I couldn’t help but wonder: Can we really take down invasives with knives and forks? If more of us eat lionfish, wild boar tenderloin, Asian carp fritters, or garlic mustard pesto, will it make a difference?

Experts are skeptical, pointing out that once a foreign species has entrenched itself in a new place - such as the Indo-Pacific lionfish that has now virtually taken over the waters of the Western Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico - eradication is almost impossible. Critics argue that encouraging consumption might have the unintended effect of spreading harmful species even more widely.

But the invasivores are undeterred, noting that their campaign is not only selling books and changing restaurant menus; it’s also spreading awareness of a crippling environmental problem that is rapidly homogenizing the world’s ecosystems and costing over $130 billion a year in the United States alone.

“This is one fun outreach way of letting people know about invasives and allowing them to actually have a good meal out of it,” says Joe Roman, a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics who has written about the idea for years and started the website Eat the Invaders in 2012. But, he adds, “If people think we’re in good shape now - we don’t have to worry about invaders, we’ll just eat them all - that’s not the right answer. It’s not as straightforward as that.”

Read the rest at Quartz

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