Wild Food The Sustainable Choice

Invasive species are taking over… But what if we could eat our way out of this ecological mess?

- Tiana Cline

Your Garden has been overtaken by weeds. The herbs you’ve planted are long gone and forgotten. But what if those weeds could be your first edible harvest? The activity of foraging is booming, and eating common weeds is only step one when it comes to rethinking what should go on to our plates. From chicken of the woods, aka wild mushrooms, to waterblommetjies, South Africa is home to plenty of indigenous delicacies worth exploring, but our landscape is also packed with invasive species.

EATING THE INVADERS

It’s pretty simple – an invasive species is a variety that is not native to a particular location. When something is not native (often labelled invasive or alien) it can threaten the ecosystem, the economy, and our health. Invasive species are not only plants; they can also be insects, fish, reptiles and mammals – feral pigs cause prodigious damage in the Malmesbury area of the Western Cape. But there are some ecologists who believe one way to get rid of the invasives – or at least alleviate some of their negative effects – is to eat them.

In Puerto Rico, people are eating the out-of-control green iguana population. In America, Japanese knotweed, Asian carp and even venomous lionfish are ending up on tables. Joe Roman is a conservation biologist and researcher at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. He’s well known for his ‘Eat the Invaders’ website.