If you’ve been near a boat landing in Minnesota this summer, you’ve probably seen dire warnings about zebra mussels. The Department of Natural Resources says about five percent of Minnesota’s more than 11,000 lakes are infested with the fingernail-sized mollusk, and they are always trying to limit spread.


That word — infested — hints at what the DNR thinks of invasive zebra mussel. It’s the language of contamination, infection and ruin. In her new book, “Undesirable: Invasive Species, Humans, and Where We All Belong,” science writer Amy Crawford examines how we came to see certain plants and animals as invading and marauding. She writes that, in his age of anxiety, “stories about invasive species tap into widely held feelings about environmental loss.”


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This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Kerri Miller talks with Crawford about invasion biology and the hard questions that surround it: What’s considered native to an ecosystem? What do we do when our own damage of a habitat gives way to new plants, insects and animals? And is it time to reconsider our attempts to control these environments?


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