Native species as goods

Abstract

We thank Tassin and Kull (2015) for their response to our article on human use of non-native species (Speziale et al. 2014), which we hoped would generate discussion. We are disappointed, however, that their comment does not contribute new ideas and focuses on the following topics already discussed in the literature: that non-native species may be more productive than natives, that there is a need to produce certain products all over the world, and that humans depend on non-native species. We are not saying these contentions are false; rather, our proposal goes beyond them. New strategies are needed to reduce the negative consequences of the use of non-native species (Driscoll et al. 2014). In particular, Tassin and Kull “refute [our] idea of nativism,” but nativism (a term they do not define) is not the focus of our proposal. They also contend there are “unaddressed consequence of the proposal.” In fact, we addressed each of those consequences in our article. They also believe we confound non-native and invasive species, when we clearly differentiate them and their impacts. In answering their concerns, we followed the structure of their Comment.