Citation:

Druschke, C., M. Laura, AND K. Hychka. From restoration to adaptation: the changing discourse of invasive species management in coastal New England under global environmental change. Biological Invasions . Springer SBM, New York, NY, 18(9):2739–2747, (2016).

Impact/Purpose:

Militaristic metaphors of invasion have long been the subject of academic study. Researchers studied the language of a group of restoration practitioners in Rhode Island and found these metaphors were absent. Instead, practitioners framed the discussion of one invasive species, Phragmites australis, the common reed, through indicators of condition, ecosystem services, and resilience. Changes in coastal ecosystems impact the language choices that managers make. Likewise, these language choices have far-reaching impacts on decision-making in coastal systems.

Description:

Scholars have focused on militaristic metaphors of invasion for more than a decade, but few if any studies look to the on-the-ground language of restoration practitioners to determine how they talk about invasive species. Here we demonstrate the absence of militaristic metaphors in one subset of restoration managers in coastal Rhode Island who manage for introduced Phragmites australis, the highly invasive common reed. Instead, these managers frame their discussions of Phragmites in terms of indicators of condition, ecosystem services, and resilience, which might indicate a shift away from command-and-control models of invasive species management. We suggest that qualitative research, including interviews with restoration managers, can offer a useful, in depth view onto issues of management and decision making and that it is crucially important to attend to the language of invasion science and management in an era of global change. Ecological changes in coastal ecosystems seem to impact managers’ language choices, while these language choices, in turn, can have far-reaching impacts on decision making in coastal systems.

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