Permaculture is an attempt to incorporate indigenous wisdom, local ecology, and an understanding that all living beings including humans are connected in the web of life from the tiniest bacteria to the largest whales. Permaculture is a design process, a way of observing, learning about, and caretaking land that is intended to provide sustainable abundant food and habitat for life at least seven generations from now.
Each person engaged in permaculture has their own unique perspectives, experiences, and culture, so I cannot speak for the beliefs and practices of other permaculture practitioners, but I can share my own experiences and insights from many years of practice, reading, and conversations with others.
Invasive Species Definitions
The idea of invasive species comes from invasion biology, which is a branch of academia that lacks consensus among experts and has been consistently criticized by other biologists and ecologists for lack of standardized terminology, lack of rigorous scientific methods, and subjectivity bias. There have been multiple calls for an end of invasion biology as a separate discipline from ecology.
In other words, invasion biology is not highly respected because many experts can’t agree on the terms being used, the research study methods are often flawed and not reproducible, and the researchers in that field are biased by the language they use like “invaders,” thus skewing the results they observe.
Although the definitions of an invasive species varies, most agree that an invasive species is one that destroys habitat or food sources of other “native” plants, animals, or other organisms, or that cause economic damage or harm human health. By any definition, humans are by far the most invasive/destructive species on the planet because humans, more than any other species, cause economic damage, harm human health, and destroy habitat and food sources of other “native” organisms.
Invasive species are often used as a scapegoat for the environmental problems humans caused through deforestation, destruction of topsoil, erosion, pollution, etc. There is a great book by environmentalist Clare Follman called Scapegoat: What the Invasive Species Story Gets Wrong where she goes in-depth into the issues with blaming “invasive” species for environmental damage caused by human activities driven by capitalism and greed.
Why “Invasive” Species Are Thriving Currently
The vast majority of plant species labeled as invasive are pioneer plants precisely because they are the plants that best thrive in highly degraded lands with little to no topsoil or soil life relative to old growth forests or other long-standing ecosystems. These plants are vilified because they “take over ecosystems” but what they actually do is rebuild topsoil that has been damaged or destroyed so that other species can thrive in that environment. Sometimes the process of ecological succession can take decades or even centuries. How long does it take to regrow an old-growth forest with 400-year-old oak trees? I do not know, but I would imagine it would take at least 500 years, if not many more, and I would not expect it to grow back in exactly the same way, nor would I expect that there would not be many hundreds of successional species living in that area at various times throughout the process of regrowth.
Another important factor that must be taken into account when talking about restoration of habitat and old-growth ecosystems is the fact that indigenous peoples have been caretaking and “cultivating” these ecosystems for many thousands of years. What most people think of as old-growth forests and untouched wilderness has been deeply impacted and changed by the activities of ancestral indigenous humans who actively engaged with the land through the use of fire management and many other nuanced and complex interactions.
Do Invasive Species Really Destroy Ecosystems and Habitats?
I grew up north of South Bend, Indiana, being able to play in an area of 25+ acres if mostly forest (4 of which my family owned with the rest owned by neighbors who let us play their freely when I was growing up). The 4 acres my family still owns has been largely neglected and unmanaged by humans, and many “invasive” species including winter creeper and Japanese honeysuckle have been left to their own devices for the last 40 years. After four decades, the 4 acres of land my family owns with honeysuckle and winter creeper still hosts hundreds of other plant species in a diverse ecosystem where red-tail hawks still nest. The other 20+ acres were sold to build mansions with manmade ponds and massive lawns and have become ecological deserts.
When people tell me that invasive species are a problem we need to eliminate, I am reminded of the land I grew up on and how the area left untouched with invasives has thrived while the humans that “developed” the land have exterminated hundreds of deer, hawks, groundhogs, toads, and hundreds of other species of plants and animals that would still be there if not for the humans that eradicated their habitat and food sources.
So what’s the worst invasive species on the planet? The answer is obvious: it’s humans. But not all human activities destroy ecosystems, food, and habitat of other beings. Indigenous cultures all over the world have learned to live in harmony with all our relatives—the plants, fungi, animals, and other beings. Not perfectly, but far better than most people do in America today.
Humans are not bad, just as species labeled as invasive are not bad, but we do have the power to do great harm or great good to our fellow beings on this amazing planet.
Permaculture is an attempt by people who were not raised in an indigenous culture to live in more harmony with our fellow beings. And to do that, one of the most important things we must do is observe before we act. Observe the plants and animals around you and pay attention to the land. How do the land and the beings living there change over time? As you observe species others label as invasive, see if you can notice the beings without the labels.
For example, a few years ago I removed 99% of the winter creeper in a heavily shaded area on my half-acre property in Indianapolis. A decision that I now regret because the soil that was once rich, moist, and loamy is now dry and eroding with each rain, very little biomass lives there relative to how it was before, and I had to admit the obvious fact that the winter creeper with its many deep roots was taking much better care of that soil than I or the many dozens of plants I have attempted to plant there have been able to do since then. I have wasted hundreds of dollars in plant starts, gasoline to drive to pick up the plants, and many hours of labor, and yet I still have not been able to improve upon the soil-tending mastery of winter creeper in that area after three years.
Furthermore, I have since learned that winter creeper is one of the best plants in this area for basket weaving and similar uses with its highly flexible vines that are so strong you can use them to lash wood to build ladders that can support 200-lb men climbing on them.
One of the most sacred teachings in all indigenous cultures I have been exposed to is that humans must use every part of the being they harvest. If we are to kill a deer, we should use all parts of the animal wisely so that nothing goes to waste. This is one way we show our gratitude. This is an important way we can live more in harmony with our fellow beings.
All of the methods commonly used and taught to slaughter “invasive” species require no such consideration. The language we use matters, and when we disrespect and dehumanize or de-being other beings, we lose sight of reality. The reality is that we all live on this planet together, and that as humans it is our responsibility to learn how to live well and sustainably so that future generations can live well too.
We are the caretakers of this Earth, and it is our responsibility to understand how to better do our jobs here. I applaud every being who has worked on research and implementation in ecology and invasion biology. I know their hearts and minds are in the right place. What I fear is that our eagerness to blame other species for the problems we have caused may blind us from seeing a better path.
As the quote goes, “the world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the level of thinking at which we created them.”
When we blame certain plants or animals for doing things on a small scale that we have done on a huge scale, we not only disrespect those beings but we also lose the ability to actually make the world a better place by curbing our own destructive habits.
If we continue using the level of thinking that causes us to destroy entire ecosystems to grow grass and build empty parking lots, we will continue to create more problems than we solve for ourselves and our fellow beings.
A Thought Experiment on Local Ecology
Let’s do a quick thought experiment: what would be better for life in our local area: eliminating all invasive species in a 100-acre area through collective effort and work, or converting 100 acres of unused parking lots or empty commercial real estate to a wildlife habitat?
Although it may certainly be simpler to kill a select number of species labeled as invasive on our own small properties, I believe life on this planet would benefit far more from converting “dead” land such as parking lots or lawns into wildlife habitat, even if those habitats happen to host some non-native species.
Do some introduced species cause large scale ecological damage? Certainly. The chestnut blight that wiped out 25% of the biomass across 200 million acres of North American forest that had been tended by indigenous peoples for tends of thousands of years. But humans are the ones who brought the blight here, and of all the 15,000+ introduced species in North America, none have had nearly the ecological impact of chestnut blight.
Blaming chestnut blight won’t bring back the chestnut forests. That is a fact no one can dispute.
And it is my personal belief that blaming invasive species and attempting to eradicate them will not protect our local ecosystems from the destruction of human “land development” and other activities that I believe pose far more of a threat to their wellbeing.
At least, that’s what I think. I’m sure many intelligent people including permaculture practitioners and ecologists may not agree with me, and that’s okay.
Should We Plant “Invasive” Species in Permaculture Designs?
This is a question I get asked all the time when I push back against the idea of invasive species. I wouldn’t plant amur honeysuckle on my property or in a landscape design, but that’s not because others have labeled it as invasive.
I would not plant it because I don’t believe it would meet the needs of my fellow beings in most situations.
Now, if I had a client who said, “I want to grow a tree on my property that I can harvest whenever I want that has very hard wood I can use for woodworking and firewood, that I can harvest as much as I want and it will grow back without any effort, and I want it to continue to spread on my property so that I can expand the amount of usable wood I can harvest each year for the next 50 years” then I might talk to them about the benefits of Lonicera japonica, explore where it may already be growing on or near their property, and see if there might be an alternative place to harvest it from without needing to plant it.
I highly favor native species in landscape designs for a few reasons: they tend to grow better in the climate and soil they have adapted to, they tend to provide more food for their fellow local beings, and they tend to require far less caretaking from humans.
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