Wild Boar Moving North

March 31, 2012

Wild boars caught on a camera trap in New York State.

Wily, Elusive Foragers Invade Upstate New York
By Lisa W. Foderaro
Feral pigs, known as eating machines in the South and West, are now troubling farms in New York’s Champlain Valley, devouring crops and prey.

“There’s a real sense of urgency. Once the pigs get established, they are very difficult to eradicate completely.”
– Ed Reed, wildlife biologist for New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

Read the full article in The New York Times here.

Read Eat the Invaders’ profile on wild boar here.

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Land

Blue Plate Special: Lamb’s Quarters

Lamb’s quarters was a popular spring tonic in the South—an early season edible green—but its leaves are good throughout the summer. Chenopodium album Native range: Described by Linnaeus in 1753, this European native has been transferred throughout much of the world. Because its spread was rarely recorded, C. album‘s native and invasive [...]

Wild Fennel

Foeniculum vulgare Native range: Mediterranean, from Turkey west to Spain and Morocco Invasive range: Much of North and South America, South Africa, and parts of Oceania and the British Isles. Check out the USDA Plants Database to see if it’s found near you. Habitat: Roadsides, pastures, along the edge of wild habitats. Rocky shores [...]

GarlicMustard1

Garlic Mustard

Alliaria petiolata Native range: Europe, Asia, Northwest Africa Invasive range: Much of the Lower 48, Alaska, and Canada. (See map.) Habitat: Moist, shaded soil of floodplains, forests, roadsides, edges of woods, and forest openings. Often dominant in disturbed areas. Description: Biennial herb. First-year plant has a rosette of green leaves close to the ground. [...]

Wild Boar

Did the domestic ancestors of today’s feral pigs streak off De Soto’s ship into the Florida scrub of their own accord in 1539? Or did they have to be urged to go find something to eat? All you need to…

Burdock

Native to the Old World, burdock’s introduction to North America was noted in 1672 by John Josselyn, a sharp-eyed English visitor, who used Gerard’s Herbal: The Historie of Plants of 1597 as a field guide. . . .

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Sea

Wakame

Undaria pinnatifida Native range: Japan Sea Invasive range: Southern California, San Francisco Bay, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Argentina Habitat: Opportunistic seaweed, can be found on hard substrates including rocky reefs, pylons, buoys, boat hulls, and abalone and bivalve shells. Description: Golden brown seaweed, growing up to nine feet. Forms thick canopy. Reproductive sporophyll in [...]

Asian Shore Crab

The first sighting of the Asian shore crab in the United States was at Townsend Inlet, Cape May County, New Jersey, in 1988. Though the source is unknown . . .

Periwinkle

The common periwinkle, which first appeared in New England in the 1860s, is now found along the coast wherever there’s hard substrate–rocks, riprap, broken concrete, or docks–from Labrador to . . .

Lionfish

Some say it started in 1992 in Miami when Hurricane Andrew smashed an aquarium tank. Don’t blame the weather, others say; in the mid-nineties, disappointed yet softhearted hobbyists…

Green Crab

Since the green crab was first recorded off southern Massachusetts in 1817, it has been hard to ignore. A few minutes of rock-flipping in Maine can turn up dozens of them, brandishing their claws as they retreat…

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Fresh

Bullfrog

“They live in a wide variety of habitats, colonize new ones readily, and eat everything that fits into their mouths,” says Dr. Peter Moyle of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC-Davis…

Northern Snakehead

His sister was ailing, and the man in Maryland remembered that, back home in Hong Kong, there was a fish that was considered a delicacy and a restorative. He would make a fish soup…

Common Carp

For a bottom-feeder, what is the good life? The common carp isn’t very demanding: any body of water that’s sluggish and murky will do. One catching sewage or…

Nutria

Nutria, also known as coypu and river rat, is native to temperate and subtropical South America. It has been introduced to Europe, Asia, and Africa, mainly for fur farming. These voracious. . .

Asian Carp

They can swim up the Mississippi River. They can fly over a fishing boat, ten feet in the air, hitting fishermen with the force of a bowling ball. They won’t take bait from hook, and they’re bony––what’s to like…

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Field Notes

Cows Eat Weeds, Too

It’s not only humans that can develop an appetite for invaders. Kathy Voth, founder of Livestock for Landscapes, has helped farmers control invasive weeds on their land by training cows to eat invasive multiflora rose. The cows are fed the roses, until they develop a taste for it. Says one farmer: “the cows ate all [...]

News from Sparkling Lake

In the early 2000s, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison began an eight-year battle against an invasive species found in northern Wisconsin’s Sparkling lake. Orconectes rusticus, known as the rusty crayfish, was mowing down native plants, to better spot approaching predators, and outcompeting native crayfish. It consumed the eggs of native fish, and left other [...]

El Puerco, Conquistador

A new poem by ETI’s armchair invasivore, Debora Greger.
The smallest party but for two women,
we thirteen pigs boarded in Cuba.
Six hundred men, their horse and war dogs
disembarked with us in La Florida—
and who then had the best of it?

Of Carp and Furloughs

DO NOT ship grass carp and black carp carcasses or eyes to federal facilities during the furlough. For grass carp captured from the Great Lakes or other portions of the United States where grass carp are very rare or not thought to be established, and for black carp captured from anywhere in North America, please [...]

We Came over on The Mayflower, Too! A Timeline of North American Invasive Species

1500s Water lettuce, Pistia stratiotes, introduced, perhaps in the ballast water of ships from Spain or South America. 1539 Feral pigs, Sus scrofa, begin with the introduction of Spanish domestic stock in Florida by Hernando de Soto; whether the release was accidental or intentional is unknown. 1600s Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris, native to Europe and [...]

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“Regionality also carries an emotional meaning, which is now growing all over the world. When you cook with ingredients from everywhere, you lose the specialness of the things you have locally.”

–self-taught Chef Daniel Patterson, owner of Coi, San Francisco, holder of two Michelin stars

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- El Puerco, Conquistador
  A new poem by ETI's armchair invasivore, Debora Greger. The smallest party but for two women, we thirteen pigs boarded in Cuba. Six hundred men, their horses and war dogs disembarked with us ...
- Blue Plate Special: Lamb's Quarters
  Lamb's quarters was a popular spring tonic in the South—an early season edible green—but its leaves are good throughout the summer. Chenopodium album Native range: Described by Linnaeus in 1753, this ...
- Pathways to Invasion
  How do invasive species enter North America? We bring them in. Our ancestors.The early colonists, brought pigs, which they let range free, and seeds to plant as crops. Others just hitched a ...
- Armchair Forager: The First Invasivores
  Were George and Martha the country's first invasivores? Did George Washington eat weeds? Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, a beautifully annotated volume of family recipes, suggests that the first First Lady ...
- We Came over on The Mayflower, Too! A Timeline of North American Invasive Species
  1500s Water lettuce, Pistia stratiotes, introduced, perhaps in the ballast water of ships from Spain or South America. 1539 Feral pigs, Sus scrofa, begin with the introduction of Spanish domestic stock ...
- Punkin' Chunkin' vs. invasive species!: At competitions, some pumpkins are banned as invasive species--difficult... http://t.co/y8vUkAsFTr 1 week ago
- More updates...