Mind, Brain and Planet

5. Alien Species - the climate change invaders in your garden

• Paul Howard-Jones • Season 1 • Episode 5

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As our planet warms, species are migrating to new regions where they can cause damage to the local ecology. How we respond to the arrival of these non-native species may shape our future ecology, with implications for food supplies and human health. In this episode, Paul meets Dr Tanja Straka who has been studying differences in how people react to these new arrivals and revealed some intriguing biases with implications for our future. He also goes "balsam bashing" with local volunteers who are taking matters into their own hands.

More info on mindbrainplanet.com

Alien species – the climate change invaders in your garden - SCRIPT

It’s not yet dawn – but something has made you restless – you sense a presence – out there, somewhere in your garden, a strange sound is beginning to fill the air a kind of disjointed but melodious series of phrases – scolding, chattering. You slowly open the garden door and step out pensively ……and then you see it….with its bright red beak and green head ….something that doesn’t belong here …. ….a visitor from another world ……..(music phrase) …..it’s an alien species – from the other side of this planet ….it’s a red-billed leiothrix….it used to live just in regions of Asia….but like many animals and plants, climate change has made it easier for it to spread across Europe and now it’s here in your garden. How would you react? Something special to be celebrated -  an unusual sighting of something exotic? Would you accept it as a new part of the local wildlife? Would you see it as a threat – do you want to raise the alarm? Do you think it’s something that – together – we need to defend ourselves against? Would you even notice it?

The human response to alien species may be critical to shaping the future of our warming world. As climate change progresses, more non-native species will be visiting our shores, our woodlands and fields - our rivers and trees. And how the public will react to these new arrivals will help determine how and even if we succeed in managing them - and so what impact these alien species will have on our local flora and fauna, on our food supplies and our on our health and wellbeing.  

That’s why this episode is focusing on how and why we respond to non-native or alien species – to understand more about this critical connection between mind, brain and planet. 

[2mins]

When I first started looking at the research for this episode, I thought things were going to be reasonably straightforward. Psychologists are familiar after all with how we may be attracted to or threatened by what’s new. 

And we’re good at spotting new things. When something in the landscape looks  different, our attention is automatically drawn to it. The brain processes novelty as if it is a reward in itself. It’s thought we and other animals, have evolved this response partly to encourage us to explore and learn about the world. We often love the different, the exotic. After all, it was the Victorians’ fascination with the plants they found around the world that resulted in so many non-native species ending up in our gardens, and occasionally in our countryside. So…if a beautiful long-tailed blue butterfly flutters in from the Mediterranean, we might expect this to feel like a positive…...

PHJ: This is a butterfly that you might find in your, in your garden in England. Uhhuh <affirmative>. How would you feel about coming across that, that butterfly?

Person: I'd feel happy. It looks nice.

Person: I would feel quite happy that it was in my garden. Oh,

Person:  I'd be happy. I've got a 2-year-old and so I'd be going to her and say, look at this beautiful butterfly. Yeah. I'm, I'm not scared of butterflies. I think they're pretty,

Person: The only butterflies I ever seen are white cabbage ones. The white ones. Okay. So if I saw that, I'd be chuffed. I'd be thinking, this is great.

Person: I think it would make me feel that sort of spring and summertime are coming along because of the colours.

PHJ: Would it, would it make any difference if I told you that, that this butterfly, it doesn't actually come from this country and it’s coming here from America? 

Person: Yeah,That worries me a lot. I know that we're like sort of supposed to try and deal with invasive species. I don't really think I have it in me, but it does upset me and I think it would make me a lot less happy to see it.

Person: I don't think it would change how I felt. I just feel that, you know, sort of getting a bit more culture in the UK as well, so it made me more interested. Definitely. 

Person: So it would depend how much damage it was doing on our natural environment. Yeah. Yeah, I'd agree. If it was like ruining something else or pushing out the local butterflies, <laugh>, yeah, maybe I'd be less inclined to like it, but largely I probably wouldn't have a clue either way. 

Person: I don't know because, you know, it's, it's sort of natural….. well they call it natural selection, don't you in nature. It's just what, what I don't, you know, I don't know.

Person: No, I would still feel happy

But if when we’ve learnt about the new thing, we feel threatened by it, then we become motivated to take action to avoid it rather than approach it. Sometimes our past experience with similar things tells us to beware. Take the Asian Hornet for example….

<hornet>

PHJ: If you found this hornet in your garden.

Person: I would feel a bit scared. I think.

Person: As long as it doesn't sting me and I keep my distance, I would feel happy about seeing it.

Person: Yeah. I tend to run a mile <laugh> and I tend to then call my husband <laugh>.

Person: I'd be worried. I have rabbits and like a specifically some types of hornets that are invasive and from some places in America and East Asia that can like, do like a lot of damage to a rabbit.

Person: Terrified <laugh>. Yeah. Wouldn't be very happy about that. Absolutely. Terrified <laugh>. Yeah. He's quite a big chap, isn't he? He does, he does have a bit of a sting.

And, in the case of the Asian Hornet,  being concerned enough to report the sighting is an appropriate course of action. The blog associated with this podcast has a link to help you do this if you spot one in the UK. The government wants to know so they can destroy any nests, because they will feed on our native honey bees and  cause a lot of damage. Sightings in the UK are rising, with 71 Asian Hornets reported last year. When an alien species has the potential to harm our local fauna and flora, we like to call it an invasive species….something that’s arriving that really isn’t welcome. 

So yes we can have an initial reaction – based on past associations – but having knowledge and understanding might be key – because first impressions can be deceptive. That beautiful long-tailed blue butterfly, for example, is currently not a threat to the UK because, so far, although it’s started arriving – it hasn’t yet been able to survive our frosty UK winters. But we are experiencing fewer and fewer frosts here, and in other countries it’s labelled as an invasive species that attacks pea and bean crops. 

When we’re alerted to the danger – our dominant emotion can become something other than curiosity and wonder. We feel more negative emotions – not just avoidance, we even may want to act against the threat in order to reduce it. 

So maybe it’s all about knowledge – making sure people know which species are non-native threats and what they look like. One place to get that knowledge is your local conservation group………

PHJ: Fighting back against and invading alien species can require a community coming together to take action. And today I'm joining a group of local people who are doing just that. I'm spending the morning with friends of Brislington Brook, a small waterway within the city of Bristol that flows into the river Avon. We're going to be doing what they've started to call Balsam bashing because the target of today's action is impatience glandular or Himalayan Balsam. Hello. I'm here for a bit of Balsam bashing. Am I in the right place? Yes.

Leah: My name's Leah. I'm the lead volunteer. So this is Himalayan Balsam. You can tell because it has three leaves. The leaves come in, sets of three. The stem is quite juicy a bit like celery and it's got a very, very shallow root system. So it'll come up very easily.

PHJ: Andy you’re a long standing member of this group. I’m just wondering when you first saw Himalayan Balsam did recognise it as a threat? 

Andy: Well, no, I, to me it was just a, a, a novel little plan. And it was only once to join this group that you start to find out that it, that the menace that it actually is, nothing eats it, nothing predates on it. There's no diseases. And so until we find some balance, then it is just gonna increase and increase and increase. So the only, the only thing that's controlling it is groups like ours that pull the thing up.

PHJ: Right. We better get on with some Balsam pulling then.

Andy: Good plan. Good plan.

PHJ: I'm just making my way through. Hello? Hi.

PHJ: So this is all Balsam

Leah: Most of it. Yeah. Yeah. You can see how it, it has completely shaded out any significant plant life in this little glade here. So, you know, we're just giving the things that live underneath it a fighting chance. Yeah. Because if they can grow bigger than the Balsam, then they'll help us do our job.

PHJ: I mean, this is a massive task, isn't it? I mean, yeah. Is it, it's never gonna be completed, is it?

Leah: No, but it's a war of attrition. I think <laugh>, and we we're giving it a concerted effort at this time of year when it is kind of knee high before the seeds form. And, you know, this both sides of the river would look like this. If, if groups like us didn't pull this up. 

PHJ: How do you I mean, if it's not a silly question, how do you feel about Himalayan Balsam having put so much effort into trying to destroy it - when you see it?

Leah: Well, I mean, I was, you know, it's a pretty plant and I'm a gardener and I like pretty plants and I love nature. And at first, you know, I thought it was a bit of nativism. It would be like,‘oh, you know, rrr rrrr rrr …those, those invaders coming to our island.’ But once you read about what the damage that it can do very, very quickly it all of a sudden becomes extremely satisfying to pull out. Right.

PHJ: Yeah. 'cause You are not a, you are not a native species.

Leah: I'm a non-native. Yeah. 

PHJ: Where are you, where Are you from here?

Leah: I'm from Michigan. Right. And we have a similar plant there called Jewelweed. I was speaking to this one woman who, you know, Sort of thought that we were doing this in order to just eradicate any, any plant immigrants into the <laugh> into the country. And it, it sort of has sort of nationalistic overtones that we're trying to do this, but it's not that at all. There's plenty of plants and species and animals that have come to the UK that live more or less in balance with the ecosystem. But the problem is this plant is not one of them. This will completely take over and therefore change the character of our woodlands so that there's nothing left besides this plant.

So is Leah onto something here? Is our response to non-native species just about possessing the facts - or do emotional even cultural biases get involved – like how nationalist or xenophobic we are? To find out more, I spoke to an expert…

Tanja: Ok so Hello, I am Dr. Tanya Straka. I am currently a guest professor in Urban Ecology at the Pyo University in Berlin.

PHJ: So I understand that your particular research arose from a concern that people might be responding too positively to non-native species, a bit like the response to the blue butterfly at the start of this episode – even when they know they’re non-native?

Tanja: So I'm mostly interested in responses of people towards urban wildlife in, in urban areas. And the topic on of non-native species was something that I found very intriguing that me and my colleagues we found very intriguing because non-native species also have the assumption that they're kind of sometimes more colourful or sometimes are perceived to be cute. And that's kind of something where experts are a bit worried about. Because on the one hand, we know that there are certain impacts of non-native species or invasive species on the environment or economy on people. And here the experts are very worried, like if people respond in a favour to these species without knowing kind of the consequences, then, then it's kind of difficult to implement kind of management decisions. 

PHJ: Yes biases about something being cute and fluffy are almost sort of predictable – but I can also see how our perception of these traits might get exaggerated for a non-native species – simply because they’re the new kids on the block – almost irrespective of their actual qualities. 

TanjaL So, so we were interested in kind of certain species like the, the raccoons for example, are the foxes like two mammals that are more or less fluffy. Like they, they look more or less similar in the appearance, but when it's really, but both are kind of mammals, they're fluffy. And then we were also looking at the ducks, like the, the native and the non-native ducks. Like the mandarin duck are kind of the, the mallard duck like the native one. And with the mallard duck for example, we also know they are more colourful. So that's kind of a nice example also that invasion biologists are also a bit worried that kind of, if something is a bit more fascinating or colourful, that people react differently to it. So that's why we, that's why we did the study - to get an understanding how do people respond to native or non-native species - and especially if they also know that they are native and non-native. 

PHJ: OK – so people got asked how we should deal with species they were reminded were non-native (like racoons and manadarin duck), compared with ones they were reminded were native (like foxes and mallard ducks). And who exactly did you actually ask about these animals?

We asked the broad public in Berlin. We wrote to over 900 institutions and gather response over 600 respondents. So first of all, we asked people how acceptable are not acceptable are different management strategies. So how should we manage native or non-native animals and native plants? Based on the nimby concept, like not in my backyard concept, we played to people to different scenarios. So imagine that, for example, this non-native tree is in your backyard, or imagine that this native tree is in your backyard. What do you think is acceptable or not acceptable? And we did the same for animals. So we also wanted to see if distance to your location where your live makes a difference. And then we also ask people about their values, like general values in life - what's important to them. We ask people about their emotions. And we also ask people about their knowledge about non-native species. So with all of this, we try to get a bit of a picture, a better picture. Like how do, what's actually driving kind of these responses and how do people react to, to native and non-native species? 

PHJ: Great – so I get the impression from your results that people generally are not that keen on lethally controlling these things, especially if they’re native ones.

Tanja: Yeah, exactly, exactly. <Laugh>. Exactly. Yeah. So, so in general, as you also mentioned before, people were generally against lethal control of animals. They were also against eradication of plants. But once they learned that it's a non-native species, they were more open to, as you correctly mentioned, also, they were more open kind of to lethal control or to eradication.

PHJ:  Ok so generally not that keen on killing things but they're a little bit more warmed up to that idea if they're non-native species. And gardeners seemed particularly to have a laissez-fair “whatever” approach – even with non-native species - I mean that’s certainly my style of gardening – but how can that be explained? I would have thought that gardeners would have been a bit more controlling?

Tanja: Yeah, yeah. So we also discussed this a lot in our author team. And, and so we also have a lot of non-native plants in our gardens, as you also mentioned, like it's very ornamental plants. 

PHJ: Is it perhaps because many gardens already have no many non-native or ornamental plants. So people with a garden may be more open/used to non-native plants anyway – so having a few more non-native species at their front door or over the road is not such a major issue? 

Tanja: Yeah, that could be, that could be actually a very nice explanation. Yeah.

PHJ: And when it came to people’s values and beliefs – it doesn’t seem to make any difference how xenophobic you are – this isn’t about a fear of foreigners – but you did see an effect of traditional, more conservative (with a little “c”) values? 

Tanja: So if people really valued kind of that things have to stay as they are, like these strong traditional values, they were like we have to do something. But it wasn't specific what to do. And if people had really high kind of these values for other life, like they were very much in favor of doing nothing - we can just kind of leave non-native species irrespective of animals or plants.

PHJ:  and although It seems emotions do play a part when we respond to a new species – so whether we just personally like the species or not, a lot of our response does seem to be about values 

Tanja: Exactly. Exactly. And, and we found it quite interesting because values, I mean, I mean you are a psychologist, you surely know kind of how important values are. But we were also kind of curious it’s maybe something that's maybe more like something like emotions or anthropocentrism has a stronger impact but still values really mattered in this context. And this is also, of course, interesting to urban planners or managers to understand. So if they want to, for example, communicate certain management strategies or if they want to get support also from the public, it's of course important also to know and to understand the different values that people have, if they want to get the support of the people to address these values also.

PHJ: And I understand you did see a “not in my back yard” or NIMBY effect? 

Tanja: Ah yeah so interestingly with the NIMBY effect, we thought that we would find a much stronger effect, especially if we would tell people that a raccoon is in their backyard or that there are other non-native species in their backyards, but we only find a tendency for the NIMBY effect when it came to plants. So when we tell people, imagine that this non-native plant is in your backyard, which management strategy would you favour? And with plant it was clear that it was a control. Like it was not eradication, we don't have to exclude it, but it was a kind of a control, like it was like at least a feeling I need to have control about this non-native plant if it's in my backyard.

PHJ: But not, if it's a raccoon, not if it's an animal.

Tanja: Exactly. Exactly. Not if it's an animal and not if the plant would be somewhere else in Berlin.

 

PHJ: I have to admit there’s a lot more going on in the brain when we see spot a new species  than I’d originally anticipated – this all makes it quite challenging doesn’t it for those trying manage this influxive of invasive species?

Tanja: People are very different and very, have very different views and emotions and understanding and ideas how we should live and manage native and non-native species in an urban environment. But of course, if you are an urban planner or a manager and you really wanna have the support of, for example, a certain district or a certain park where people live close by or a certain pond where people close by then, then we also need to understand what do people value in this environment or how do they feel about certain wildlife or certain species. And then also include this or consider this also in management strategies because otherwise we need to support also of course of people in the urban environment, especially in the urban environment where we live so close together with plants and animals. 

PHJ: So I have to ask have you had any personal encounters with non-native species and how have you responded to those? 

Tanja: Yeah, yeah. So, so there are amazing cemeteries in Berlin and one of the most amazing cemeteries is the Jewish Cemetery in Weißensee in Berlin. And like, it's super wild. Like, it's very nice. And when I was walking there, like I just saw kind of a racoon just walking during the daylight kind of very peacefully around. He saw me, I saw him, and he just passed by and I thought ‘hey, what a nice encounter’ also. So that was kind of my first encounter with raccoon.

PHJ: And did, did you find yourself wondering well why am I responding like that? Is it my lack of traditional values? 

Tanja: I think myself, I was just more kind of like, why isn't it amazing that we can just see these animals just kind of in a very calm way, just passing like walking around and they're not kind of scared or nothing. I think it was more kind of this.

PHJ: That was Dr Tanja Straka. If you come across a species in the UK that might be an unwanted new arrival – you can check it out and find out how to report it - on the website of the Great Britain Non-native Species Secretariat  - you’ll find a link on the blog that accompanies this podcast. Well – I’m about set off to do some more balsam bashing…..I think one of the things I’ve learned is our basic response to non-native flora and fauna, including invasive ones – is complex. As our climate shifts and more invasive species arrive, simply making scientific information available to the public may not be enough to prompt appropriate action – because so many factors influence how our brains respond– including things I would never have thought of. But the next time you have a close encounter with a lifeform that looks out of place – check it out and find out where it’s come from – it may have arrived from somewhere far away …..