Great efforts have been made to curtail the introduction of exotic species into the wild. One reason is because some become too successful, threatening the well-being of native species.
Many plants and animals introduced into the country from other lands have become problems. Dutch elm disease, Burmese pythons and Japanese beetles are some of the better-known examples.
Sometimes, waging ecological war against an alien species that has or might become a problem can be worthwhile. Other times the best approach is to learn to live with the invader.
The starling, considered an avian pest by many, serves as a prime example of an invasive species that has become a naturalized citizen.
How did this illegal alien become established as such a dominant form of bird life in America? Urban legend credits a New York pharmacist named Eugene Schieffelin for introducing starlings to the U.S. because of his love of Shakespeare. In this case, urban legend is half right, half wrong.
Schieffelin did introduce starlings in the 1890s, but it wasn't because he loved the Bard. He was a member of the American Acclimatization Society, an organization committed to the global exchange of plant and animal species as a way to enrich biodiversity. U.S. bird enthusiasts, including Schieffelin, felt starlings would be an economic boon because they ate insects.
Schieffelin's efforts in New York City resulted in the successful establishment of starlings in North America. Within a decade of their release in Central Park, starlings had spread throughout New York State and were moving west and south.
One was found in Savannah in 1917. By the 1920s they were in the Midwestern states; they were in California by 1942.
Their North American range now includes most of the continental United States, southern Canada, and northern Mexico. But even as early as 1895, people began to spend time and money trying to eradicate the descendants of Schieffelin 's birds. Those efforts continue today.
Starlings have what many people view as bad habits. They can eat one to two times their weight in food each day. Much of their diet is fruit or grain intended for human consumption. They have cost ranchers millions of dollars a year in beef feeding lots by eating the grain or by contaminating it with their wastes.
Starlings often travel in enormous flocks that annoy some people. They are considered an air safety problem when they congregate near airstrips because of their potential for causing airplane crashes.
All efforts to control or eradicate the starling by biological means have been thwarted by the amazing reproductive capacity of the species. Some reports estimate that more than 200 million starlings are in the United States.
Ours was not the first country to regret the introduction of the starling. Brought to New Zealand in 1867, starlings were becoming a problem before 1880.
Starlings are native to Europe, breeding from the Scandinavian region and Siberia, as far south as India, Africa and Spain. They are rapid reproducers and voracious eaters, and they make a lot of noise. Starlings, a problem for which we can only blame ourselves, seem to do nothing in moderation.
One appealing feature of starlings is that they are superb mimics of bird songs as well as other animal sounds and mechanical noises. Some of the more intriguing sounds reportedly imitated by starlings are the ringing of a telephone, barking of a dog and quacking of a duck.
The reference to the starling in Shakespeare's "Henry IV" refers to the potential speaking ability of the bird. Hotspur says, "I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but 'Mortimer.' "
The reasons for intentionally introducing nonnative species are varied and often controversial. Whatever the justifications given, the seemingly endless list of invasive species should serve as an indication that we need more thoughtful consideration of the potential ecological consequences any time we release a nonnative species into the wild.