Understanding and defending the preference for native species

Abstract

The preference for native species, along with its concomitant antipathy toward non-natives, has been increasingly criticized as incoherent, obsolete, xenophobic, misanthropic, uncompassionate, and antithetical to conservation. This essay explores these criticisms. It articulates an ecological conception of nativeness that distinguishes non-native species both from human-introduced and from invasive species. It supports, for the most part, the criticisms that non-natives threaten biodiversity, homogenize ecological assemblages, and further humanize the planet. While prejudicial dislike of the foreign is a human failing that feeds the preference for natives, opposition to non-natives can be based on laudatory desires to protect natural dimensions of the biological world and to prevent biological impoverishment. Implications for our treatment of non-native, sentient animals are explored, as well as are questions about how to apply the native/non-native distinction to animals that share human habitats and to species affected by climate change.