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Since I came to Australia I have become quite aware of an aspect of ecological destruction that was not on my awareness radar while still living in Europe: the effects of exotic pests. The damage species from dogs and cats to rabbits and cane toads have done to this continent’s environment over the last 200 years (and still do) is quite staggering. The New Scientist this week drew my attention to another part in the world where this destruction is going on more or less unchecked: the US.

The article starts with pet owners, disenchanted with caring for the monster Burmese Pythons (it can grow to 8 metres long), releasing it into the wild. These snakes are now breeding quite prolifically in the Florida Everglades where, according to some estimates, 5000 of them may now be slithering through the fragile ecosystem, not even sparing the top local predator, the American alligator. [The image below shows the results of a four-metre Burmese python attempting to swallow a live two-metre alligator, which this particular time literally busted its gut. Neither animal survived.]

The Burmese python though is just one of hundreds of potentially harmful species of wild animals brought into the US legally every year. When it comes to illegal wildlife trade, the focus rightly is often on the threat to animal populations in the developing world, but this narrow perspective leads to overlooking the effects on fauna and flora in the importing countries plus it doesn’t acknowledge at all the threats caused by legal shipments. This is particularly true in the US (the world’s largest importer of wildlife), as highlighted in a new report by Defenders of Wildlife.

The effects of this trade are quite dramatic - for people and the natural environment. In 2003, for example, residents of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana started falling ill with an unpleasant, pustulating rash. Those affected turned out to have had contact with prairie dogs sold by a Milwaukee animal dealer, who had housed the animals with an imported Gambian giant pouch rat infected with the potentially deadly monkeypox. In this case the federal government of course reacted immediately by banning imports of the raccoon-sized rodents, but in most cases, especially where human health is not at risk, very little action is taken. Imports of the civet cat for example, which preys on other small mammals, birds, snakes, frogs, fish, etc. were only stopped in 2004, after they were found to harbour the SARS virus.

According to the above mentioned report, more than a billion wild animals (including fish) entered the US legally over the 2000-2004 period; even without fish, the figure exceeded 180 million. And even though importers by and large did not fulfill the legal requirements of identifying the animal species they bring in, Defenders of Wildlife found that at least 2241 non-native species were imported over the five-year study period. Further analysis revealed that at least 302 of the imported species were potential ecosystem invaders and posed a clear risk to human or animal health (all of those figures are most likely very conservative estimates). Some species, like the giant pouch rats, were a threat from both perspectives.

Tackling those threats and impacts though seems to be plagued by inefficiencies and lack of political will. Federal government departments lack coordination and are under-resourced, and the change of inadequate legislation (dating back to 1900) is obstructed by the powerful pet industry lobby - despite the fact that the US incurs high costs for managing human diseases linked to wild animals (Defenders of Wildlife calculated that the government forked out about US$400 million in 2004, covering the import period 2003 to 2004). The financial cost of invasive species is harder to determine, but the conservation group estimates that the total damage wrought by species that were legally imported now runs at about $35 billion per year.

It was interesting to read that in Australia previous disasters with invasive species have prompted a more cautious approach. For example, screening for potentially invasive ornamental plants has proved cost-effective; it is estimated that it has already paid for itself over the decade it has been in operation (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073pnas.0605787104). For me the question though is: do we have similar schemes in place when agriculture is not affected; generally, and the above mentioned US health-related examples demonstrate that, governments only take action when human interests are at stake.

Me.dium is a Firefox and now also IE 7 browser add-on that uses in real-time your web browsing data to share the related information with your friends and the Me.dium community; the extend of that sharing is up to you. The extension presents itself in a browser sidebar and displays your Me.dium universe, or “your online world.” The map is based on your current Web location, your friends’ current browsing spots, and your recent Web activity.

Hovering over any of the sites in the Me.dium display shows information about Me.dium members on that site; sites are presented with favicon style images, and Me.dium users are colour coded (orange -yourself, yellow - friends, blue others). Like in all social networking applications your own status can be set to visible to all, friends, or to no one.

It is easy to chat with any of the users seen surfing: a simple click allows to talk to an individual user, to all or to the entire Me.dium community (”shout outs”). Three conversations can fit in the Me.dium sidebar; the rest is accessible via a drop-down menu. Me.dium has also released an embeddable super-slick designerd widget that can be added to social-networking home pages, blogs, or any other Web page, displaying your browsing activity.

One thing I particularly like is that Me.dium seems to take privacy seriously (unlike many other social networking sites, like Facebook). This is indicated by its cooperation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to address any issues (ideally) before they arise. Links to its privacy policy and terms of use are both highly visible during the Me.dium IE7 installation process, and the privacy policy is very explicit about the control and ownership of information shared with Me.dium. In addition to the upfront notices, Me.dium automatically turns off sharing whenever you visit a secure Web site, and turning it off completely is as easy as one click of a button.

For more information about Me.dium see CNet’s Daily Download Blog, from which this information was drawn and which also contains reflections on an interview with Me.dium founder David Mandell .