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Originally Posted by Dan Salter  Blah blah...trust you Gill to fight the sycamore cause!...those aphids also caused hundreds of pounds worth of damage to my shiny new car =( but yes......the sycamores along the woods by our drive are full of tits that is true....i still hate them tho |
well I think its important to differentiate between non-natives that are all bad and those that actually have some good. If you just rip out all the sycamores in an area where there are no other mature trees it could take decades for the area to catch up again in terms of its ability to support such a large volume of invertebrates which then has a knock on effect on the whole ecosystem and for what? So humans can be pleased at the lack of sycamores? No doubt there are non-native species that do a lot of harm but I think blanket non native bad / native good judgements can be quite dangerous.
There was a really good article I read abut trees and their value to invertebrates - I can't remember whether it was a British Wildlife article or an English Nature research report - wish I could track it down though, it was very good.