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New York drops ballast standards shippers fought The Associated Press Traverse City — New York state officials have backed away from tough regulations for ridding ballast water of invasive species that the maritime industry says would bring international shipping in the Great Lakes to a halt. The rules, which had been scheduled to take effect in August 2013, would order cargo vessels to cleanse ballast water to a level at least 100 times stricter than international standards before releasing it. The shipping industry contends no technology exists to meet the New York requirement, although environmentalists disagree. Shippers say the policy would prohibit any cargo ship without the required technology from traveling through New York territory on the St. Lawrence River, the gateway to the Great Lakes — effectively shutting down commercial traffic between the lakes and the Atlantic. ... New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation said this week it was postponing the effective date...

New Video on Cat's Claw Vine From Karen Brown, University of Florida - IFAS - Center for Aquatic & Invasive Plants... There’s a new video ID segment on cat’s claw vine, Macfadyena unguis-cati , at link (approx. 3 minutes long). To see all video ID segments produced by the UF-IFAS Center for Aquatic & Invasive Plants, visit http://plants.ifas.ufl.edu/node/677 ---------------------------------------------------------

Fighting Crimes Against Biodiversity: How to Catch a Killer Weed ScienceDaily (Feb. 10, 2012) — Invasive species which have the potential to destroy biodiversity and influence global change could be tracked and controlled in the same way as wanted criminals, according to new research from Queen Mary, University of London. Geographic profiling (GP) was originally developed as a statistical tool in criminology, where it uses the locations of linked crimes (for example murder, rape or arson) to identify the predicted location of the offender's residence. The technique is widely used by police forces and investigative agencies around the world. Now, a team led by Dr Steven Le Comber from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences has shown that this technique can also be used to identify the source of populations of invasive animals and plants such as Giant hogweed and Japanese knotweed. ... Writing in the journal Ecography, the team describe how they used computer sim...

UF-led study: Invasive amphibians, reptiles in Florida outnumber world GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida has the world’s worst invasive amphibian and reptile problem, and a new 20-year study led by a University of Florida researcher verifies the pet trade as the No. 1 cause of the species’ introductions. From 1863 through 2010, 137 non-native amphibian and reptile species were introduced to Florida, with about 25 percent of those traced to one animal importer. The findings appear online today in Zootaxa. “Most people in Florida don’t realize when they see an animal if it’s native or non-native and unfortunately, quite a few of them don’t belong here and can cause harm,” said lead author Kenneth Krysko, herpetology collection manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. “No other area in the world has a problem like we do, and today’s laws simply cannot be enforced to stop current trends.” Florida law prohibits the release of non-native species without a state permit, bu...

Report proposes dividing Great Lakes, Mississippi River By John Flesher, AP Environmental Writer The Associated Press Traverse City, Mich. — Groups representing states and cities in the Great Lakes region on Tuesday proposed spending up to $9.5 billion on a massive engineering project to separate the lakes from the Mississippi River watershed in the Chicago area, describing it as the only sure way to protect both aquatic systems from invasions by destructive species such as Asian carp. The organizations issued a report suggesting three alternatives for severing an artificial link between the two drainage basins that was constructed more than a century ago. Scientists say it has already provided a pathway for exotic species and is the likeliest route through which menacing carp could reach the lakes, where they could destabilize food webs and threaten a valuable fishing industry. Read the full story at link . -------------------------------------------------------- Vermont Law School al...