Crosby's overall argument--
1. Europeans succeeded in colonization because they brought their ecosystem with them
2. how were they able to do that?

• European plants were adapted to live in disturbed soil and Europeans and their animals disturbed the soil
• European animals thrived because they could fill empty niches in the ecosystem
  

Notice how the pieces of the ecosystem fit together
also that many farm animals could live in the wild without human care
the Europeans radically transformed the ecosystem into an ecosystem dominated by European plants and animals
the argument made for plants doesn't work for animals

Pigs

• feral hogs in South Carolina
  
• source of meat, and you don't need to feed them
• even in Europe often lived free in the woods
• so they were well-prepared to live without human care
  
• they root and disturb the soil (feral pig video)
  
• had a particular impact in forest areas and swamps
• why weren't there native animals that competed and predators that killed the pigs
  

Cattle

• Spanish cattle were already less dependent on human care, they released them in the southwest and south America to live in the wild
  
• could fend for themselves on an open range, climate was suitable
  
• not many predators--wolves (other predators had died out with the extinction of the megafauna)
  
• more successful than buffalo/bison
  

• how could cattle brought from somewhere else out-compete the buffalo?
  
• because of hunting--wiping out the buffalo made room for cattle (buffalo slaughter video)
  
• probably other reasons
• in South America there was an empty niche left by the extinction of the megafauna

Megafauna: a number of species of large animals that went extinct shortly after human beings arrived (both Americans and Australia and New Zealand)

• both grazing animals and predators
• nothing had yet appeared to take their place
• so European animals who took those ecological niches had little competition and few predators
  

Horses

• had gone extinct in North America about 10,000 years ago along with the megafauna
  
• brought back by the Europeans, particularly the Spanish
  
• multiplied and spread in the wild
• consider not just the ecological issues but the cultural role of horses
  
• there were wild horses in the southwest by the mid 1500s, but Indians did not use them much until a successful Pueblo Indian revolt in 1680 put horses in the hands of Indians who had worked for the Spanish and learned to use them, who then traded them with other Indians
  
• Indians changed their culture to use horses--the horse and the gun altered the balance between tribes and made the tribes of the great plains much more mobile
• horses made the Indians much more successful in hunting buffalo, making room for cattle
• the Indians of the Great Plains got the horse in the 1700s and weren't badly hit by European diseases until the early 1800s.
• present-day irony:  should we remove wild horses?  management, argument for native status
• the horse is an animal that is present only because the Europeans brought them
• they aren't exactly non-native because they were once there
• in Holland they are reintroducing wild horses and cattle to natural areas
• this is seen as a way to restore the ecosystem
  
• some people argue to restore the ecosystem we should remove the horses--
• why not--they were present so they have the right to be there
  
• are they really causing a problem? (some ranchers think so)
• similar story of the reintroduction of wolves in the Yellowstone area
  
• horses are an important part of our image of the wild west--that is the ecosystem that is historically meaningful to us
• should we invent a new ecosystem?
  

Why were these animals able to go wild and grow to populations of many millions?

• why were imported species more successful than local ones?--same question as weeds
• because of the extinction of the megafauna:
  
• lack of predators
• the ecosystem had empty niches they could fill--this is important, think about why
  
• they were adapted to live in situations modified by human beings
• in the midlands the ecosystem had widely spaced trees with grass, suitable for free range cattle, created by the Indians starting fires
• Crosby does not make diseases part of the story--the competing animals weren't there in the first place
  

The honey bee

• there were no honeybees (or other bees that were large-scale pollinators) in North America when the Europeans arrived
• produced sugar and wax, pollinate crops
  
• bringing in a new kind of pollinator changes the ecosystem for plants dramatically--if there hadn't been bees European plants would have been at a huge disadvantage
  
• honeybees are currently declining and that causes major problems
• 90% of apple tree pollination is by honeybees
  
• Europeans reshaped the whole ecosystem to the one they were used to.  They were able to do this because their plants and animals had an advantage
  

rats

• native birds that nest on the ground can be wiped out by rats, some reptiles too
• a particularly dramatic example in a more isolated setting: 3/4 of Hawaii's native bird species are extinct
• in Hawaii mongooses were brought in to control the rats and instead nearly wiped out a native goose
  
• native species went on the decline because of imported animals