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almost everyone is their childhood. And a return to that aboriginal 

 State is often couched in terms of, *Tou should have seen it when 

 I was a child." 



That means that if you grew up with certain species around you, 

 you may simply not even know that the environment was remark- 

 ably and radically different in the absence of some of these inva- 

 sions. 



Other invasions can come in, and my colleagues on the panel 

 here can comment on them, which are remarkably abundant and 

 people just do not notice because of a lack of awareness of what is 

 going on in the environment around them, again. 



Also, there is a confusion between species that are native and 

 species that are so-called naturalized, and a certain number of peo- 

 ple might believe that if a species has been in the environment for 

 some length of time, although it originated elsewhere, that it has 

 somehow become an integral part of the community, that it has be- 

 come naturalized. In fact, a species, if it originates somewhere else, 

 can never be native to that environment, and naturalization is an 

 extremely difficult concept in terms of ecological and biological is- 

 sues. 



How long it takes a species to become completely integrated with 

 a new environment is simply unknown. And to assume that a spe- 

 cies that has been present for 100 or 200 years or 300 years has 

 become naturalized when other species have been present for hun- 

 dreds of thousands or millions of years probably would reveal some 

 ignorance of how species fit into the ecosystems. 



Senator Akaka. Mr. Singletary? 



Mr. Singletary. Senator, this is an extreme difficult issue to 

 deal with, and in my experience in dealing with this — I have talked 

 with you briefly about purple loosestrife in response to one of your 

 questions a while ago. When there is a specific target in terms of 

 a pest and a specific community to deal with, you can make 

 progress in terms of educational efforts because there is a targeted 

 audience and that kind of thing. 



I will give you another example relative to that. This Asian 

 gypsy moth introduction that we are dealing with, we have had in 

 excess of 50 public meetings in New Hanover and Brunswick coun- 

 ties in North Carolina where this eradication project will be under- 

 taken. And I think we have a high level of public understanding 

 through the media and that kind of thing in that area as it relates 

 to the specific introduction problem and what ultimately may need 

 to be done. 



Again, that is a targeted audience, a targeted environment, and 

 that kind of thing. But when you look at this thing holistically and 

 you realize that, let's say, in suburbia where we have — and I do not 

 want to pick on a city, but let's use New York City as an example. 

 People living in an inner-city neighborhood and so forth, how many 

 of those people re£Jly have an exposure that they have a real con- 

 cept of what a natural environment is? 



So it is a massive situation to deal with, and I think you can 

 make progress in specific situations where there are specific things 

 that you need to deal with. But attacking this thing holistically, I 

 do not have a good answer. It is a part of basic education, and I 



