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

GarlicMustard1

Blue Plate Special: Garlic Mustard

It’s spring, and garlic mustard is sprouting up all over the East. Time to get out the food processor and pesto the invader. 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, [...]

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. . . .

Purslane

George Washington ate weeds. That is, he ate what he thought of as garden vegetables: Martha’s Booke of Cookery and Book of Sweetmeats, includes a handwritten recipe for Pickled Purslane. The manuscript . . .

Japanese Knotweed

It’s the 1880s. Frederick Law Olmstead, who, in his thirties, co-designed a little patch of ground in New York called Central Park, in his forties sells Boston on the Emerald Necklace, a whole new…

Curly Dock

Stare out across the empty lots and fields on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, and you will see scattered clumps of dark green leaves towering above the grass. In spring the…

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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

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 ride: on their shoes, in fodder, on animals, on boat hulls, and stowed among ballast cobbles. Our tax dollars at work. Since the [...]

Malicious but Delicious

What should we eat to save local ecosystems and the future of civilization? Frank Bruni discusses a recent event in Austin, Texas, that served up feral hogs, tiger prawns, and Himalayan blackberries, in the New York Times.

New Requirements for Ballast Water

In a good move for our coastlines, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued new guidelines on ballast water. Incoming ships must continue dumping their ballast 200 miles from the U.S. shoreline, but they also must treat ballast water with ultraviolet light or chemicals to reduce the risk of transporting new invaders to the coast. Many [...]

Eat the Invaders in Cape Breton

Steve Sutherland interviews Joe Roman about eating Maritime invaders on CBC Radio.

Invasive Species Cook-off in Oregon

Earlier this year, the Institute for Applied Ecology held a cook-off for invaders in Corvalis. Dave Budeau won with his pulled smoked nutria. Read more about the event and the institute here.

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“I am half afraid to speak of using [dandelion] as food lest I should encourage laziness.

William Corbett, The American Gardener, 1821

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- 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 ...
- Blue Plate Special: Garlic Mustard
  It's spring, and garlic mustard is sprouting up all over the East. Time to get out the food processor and pesto the invader. Alliaria petiolata Native range: Europe, Asia, Northwest Africa Invasive ...
- Armchair Forager: Flora Americana
  A new poem from our Armchair Forager, Debora Greger, inspired by Eat the Invaders. Greger's latest book, By Herself, will be published this fall. Flora Americana I. Natives They rolled up his lawn, ...
- 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 ...
- Cheatgrass, identified in NY & PA in 1861, is now declared noxious or invasive in much arid rangeland out West.... http://t.co/u6pWGZMvXn 3 days ago
- More updates...