uh, not getting it?

[acroyear]

New Species Discovered on Environmentally Damaged Easter Island | Insect, Indigenous Ecosystem & Extinction | LiveScience:

Almost all of the organisms currently living on Easter Island are invasive species that have been introduced, Wynne said.

Mr. Wynne:

All "native" species to any local ecosystem were once invasive.  Whether something is invasive or native all depends on what date you pick.  To 1600s America, the British were "invasive"; to 1900s America, British-derived peoples are "native".  To 1600AD, humans were "native"; to 20,000 BC, ALL humans were "invasive".

So if you want to make a statement like that, please date your context, like, say, the arrival of the first humans...so that eventually we can uncover evidence that even THOSE humans weren't the first. ;-)

I love science.

Comments

[kmusser]

When talking about Pacific Islands there's sort of an implied "since European contact" that should be tacked on to everything, Easter Island's drastic ecological change from jungle to barren is the subject of quite a bit of literature in biogeography.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

in the case of Easter Island, there's a bit of "since human contact" in general - the europeans didn't really find it 'til the 19th century, but the talk in the article (and linked ones) cover transitions they want to date to the 1200s (the arrival of rats).