Alien Invasion; America's Battle with Non-Native Animals and Plants

Natural America Under Siege

Exotic species, those plants and animals not native to the environments in which they thrive, represent one of the greatest but least known threats to the environment, not just in the United States, but all over the world. Only a few, like the boll weevil, the zebra mussel, and the infamously invasive kudzu, have penetrated the public consciousness, but hundreds of other exotics are spreading like wildfire across the land. These aliens have already transformed our landscapes, depleted our biological diversity, and cost us billions of dollars. They need to be brought under control.

"We can't afford to keep ignoring or underestimating the invasion," writes Robert Devine as he takes the measure of this extraordinary ecological assault, explaining where alien species come from, how they establish their beachheads and expand, why they seem so much hardier than the indigenous species they displace, and what we can do to neutralize them. A fascinating and informative book that ranges from Hawaii to Florida, Alien Invasion combines state-of-the-art environmental science with vivid personal stories of the impact of exotics, from a firefighter's gripping tale of a fatal cheatgrass blaze to an eerie boat ride through an Everglades grove where all other life has been choked out by a foreign tree.

Beginning in the glossy Kennedy era, Thomas Y. Canby traveled the world, creating texts that could stand up to his magazine's famously arresting images. From Botswana to the Bering Sea: My Thirty Years with National Geographic is a memoir written with a journalist's flair, a trained eye for detail and a determination to get the story right, whether remembering the author's global trackings of rats or his probings of the causes and horrific human toll of African famine. Photos and maps, not seen by PW. (Island/Shearwater, $24.95 288p 1-55963-517-7) "It's the invasive ones we have to watch out for, the ones that proliferate out of control, degrade our ecosystems, make us ill, and devour our crops." Not all imported flora and fauna are dangerous, but in Alien Invasion: America's Battle with Non-Native Animals and Plants, veteran nature writer Robert S. Devine shows us how insidious they can be, from viruses that repeatedly destroy papaya crops to the sea lamprey, which "kills other fish by clamping on with its big, vampire mouth." Devine also explains what's being done to combat these alien menaces. (National Geographic, $24 288p ISBN
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