Maybe I should have begun more directly to ward off over-specified meanders that have arisen from me and from others. The things I meant to center on were two in number.

The first is the future public spin on foreign “problem” reptile species becoming established (if fewer than 100 Florida trappings in the past three years is “established” for Nile monitors) because of irresponsible general trade and the potential legal ramifications that may come of that spin. Although this corner of the equation didn’t get any hang time, there are people on this board who live in Florida, or who sell monitors into Florida, and thus have pursuits at stake.

The other delimma, which became severed from the thread, is the discussion of invasive foreign species as they relate to our future wildlife communities. Many native species will respond well to disturbed habitat. Some native species will respond well to intensively disturbed habitat. Our humanized landscape is a grade of fine lines when it comes to the extent of habitat disruption. Some of those gradations might benefit native species over foreign species, whereas other gradations will benefit foreign species over natives. When an introduced foreign species can DISplace a native one, that is often the genesis of species REplacement. In their race to meet the demands of ever-changing human environments, native and foreign species will come to compete across more and more gradations of habitat disruption.

My intended focus was, can we conserve a better chance for native species to adapt to the greatest number of human environments by keeping foreign competitors out, or do we continue to bring in foreign species that might be preadapted to do a better job more quickly than the natives? Can we validly assume which process will lead to greatest biodiversity? Should greatest biodiversity be the ultimate goal of conservation, or should greatest number of native species?

Some may claim that disturbed habitat tends to favor foreign species and undisturbed habitat tends to favor native species, thus, the goals of conservation should be different depending on whether we’re speaking of disturbed habitat or native habitat. That makes for the question, how can we validly differentiate the two in our present world? If we cannot differentiate the two, do preadapted foreign competitors win by default? That answer seems oversimplified. Ben

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