Maggie's Farm

It kind of reminds me of a video I saw recently about how while one group was trying to figure out what to do about silver carp in the Illinois River, another group was trying to replace the fished-out stocks of Alligator and other gar to the river. A few years later they noticed that the number of silver carp was at least leveling off in the areas where the gar had been reintroduced. It seems that a diet of silver carp is just the thing a young garfish needs to grow up big and strong. The double benefit is that gar preferentially prey on the juveniles, taking them out of the population before they reach reproductive age.

So, it looks to me as though the carp population boom was as much a matter of the river previously having its predator species removed than any it was about any special properties of the silver carp themselves. Mess with the balance and you're going to pay for it down the line.

Thus, I also wonder if outbreaks lie the Elm Bark Beetle, Emerald Ash Borer, and now spotted Lantern Fly are due to potential predator species having been removed from the ecosystems prior to their introductions.