Are there aliens worth saving?

Behold the Japanese white-eye, considered an invasive species in its new home in Hawaii. Yet the bird does something that conservation biologists might considered useful for sustaining ecosystems: it spreads the seeds of native Hawaiian plants. Get rid of the Japanese white-eye, and you get rid of its service. In Yale Environment 360 this morning, I take a look at a controversial proposal that's making its way into the peer-reviewed biology literature: some introduced species are actually beneficial. I wrote about the complicated relationship between non-native species and biodiversity a couple years ago in the New York Times. In my new article, I focus on two new papers (here and here) in which scientists are advancing these ideas further. Reconsidering exotic species is just one part of a bigger vision they're offering: in a human-dominated world, we will often have to give up the idea of restoring ecosystems to a ...