Native 32 Games
Katelin
In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often popularised as "with no human intervention") during history.[1] The term is equivalent to the concept of indigenous or autochthonous species.[2][3] A wild organism (as opposed to a domesticated organism) is known as an introduced species within the regions where it was anthropogenically introduced.[4] If an introduced species causes substantial ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage, it may be regarded more specifically as an invasive species.
The notion of nativity is often a blurred concept, as it is a function of both time and political boundaries.[5][6] Over long periods of time, local conditions and migratory patterns are constantly changing as tectonic plates move, join, and split. Natural climate change (which is much slower than human-caused climate change) changes sea level, ice cover, temperature, and rainfall, driving direct changes in habitability and indirect changes through the presence of predators, competitors, food sources, and even oxygen levels. Species do naturally appear, reproduce, and endure, or become extinct, and their distribution is rarely static or confined to a particular geographic location. Moreover, the distinction between native and non-native as being tied to a local occurrence during historical times has been criticised as lacking perspective, and a case was made for more graded categorisations such as that of prehistoric natives, which occurred in a region during prehistory but have since suffered local extinction there due to human involvement.[7]
A native species in a location is not necessarily also endemic to that location. Endemic species are exclusively found in a particular place.[8] A native species may occur in areas other than the one under consideration. The terms endemic and native also do not imply that an organism necessarily first originated or evolved where it is currently found.[9]
Native species form communities and biological interactions with other specific flora, fauna, fungi, and other organisms. For example, some plant species can only reproduce with a continued mutualistic interaction with a certain animal pollinator, and the pollinating animal may also be dependent on that plant species for a food source.[10] Many species have adapted to very limited, unusual, or harsh conditions, such as cold climates or frequent wildfires.[11] Others can live in diverse areas or adapt well to different surroundings.
The diversity of species across many parts of the world exists only because bioregions are separated by barriers, particularly large rivers, seas, oceans, mountains, and deserts. Humans can introduce species that have never met in their evolutionary history, on varying time scales ranging from days to decades (Long, 1981; Vermeij, 1991). Humans are moving species across the globe at an unprecedented rate. Those working to address invasive species view this as an increased risk to native species.
As humans introduce species to new locations for cultivation, or transport them by accident, some of them may become invasive species, damaging native communities. Invasive species can have profound effects on ecosystems by changing ecosystem structure, function, species abundance, and community composition.[12] Besides ecological damage, these species can also damage agriculture, infrastructure, and cultural assets. Government agencies and environmental groups are directing increasing resources to addressing these species.
Native plant organizations such as the Society for Ecological Restoration, native plant societies,[13] Wild Ones, and Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center[14] encourage the use of native plants. The identification of local remnant natural areas provides a basis for this work.
Many books have been written on the subject of planting native plants in home gardens.[15][16][17] The use of cultivars derived from native species is a widely disputed practice among native plant advocates.[18]
When ecological restoration projects are undertaken to restore a native ecological system disturbed by economic development or other events, they may be historically inaccurate, incomplete, or pay little or no attention to ecotype accuracy or type conversions.[19] They may fail to restore the original ecological system by overlooking the basics of remediation. Attention paid to the historical distribution of native species is a crucial first step to ensure the ecological integrity of the project. For example, to prevent erosion of the recontoured sand dunes at the western edge of the Los Angeles International Airport in 1975, landscapers stabilized the backdunes with a "natural" seed mix (Mattoni 1989a). Unfortunately, the seed mix was representative of coastal sage scrub, an exogenous plant community, instead of the native dune scrub community. As a result, the El Segundo blue butterfly (Euphilotes battoides allyni) became an endangered species. The El Segundo blue butterfly population, which had once extended over 3200 acres along the coastal dunes from Ocean Park to Malaga Cove in Palos Verdes,[20] began to recover when the invasive California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum) was uprooted so that the butterflies' original native plant host, the dune buckwheat (Eriogonum parvifolium), could regain some of its lost habitat.[21]
Native Americans, sometimes called American Indians, First Americans, or Indigenous Americans, are the Indigenous peoples of the United States or portions thereof. At its core, it includes peoples indigenous to the lower 48 states plus Alaska; it may additionally include any Americans whose origins lie in any of the Indigenous peoples of North or South America. The United States Census Bureau publishes data about "American Indians and Alaska Natives", which it defines as anyone "having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment."[4] The census does not, however, enumerate "Native Americans" as such, noting that the latter term can encompass a broader set of groups, e.g. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islander Americans, which it tabulates separately.[5]
The European colonization of the Americas that began in 1492 resulted in a precipitous decline in the size of the Native American population because of newly introduced diseases, including weaponized diseases and biological warfare by European colonizers,[6][7][8][9][10] wars, ethnic cleansing, and enslavement. Numerous historians have classified the elements of colonization as comprising genocide. As part of a policy of white settler colonialism, European settlers continued to wage war and perpetrated massacres against Native American peoples, removed them from their ancestral lands, and subjected them to one-sided government treaties and discriminatory government policies. Into the 20th century, these later policies focused on forced assimilation.[11][12][13]
When the United States was established, Native American tribes were generally considered semi-independent nations, because they generally lived in communities which were separate from communities of white settlers. The federal government signed treaties at a government-to-government level until the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 ended recognition of independent Native nations, and started treating them as "domestic dependent nations" subject to applicable federal laws. This law did preserve the rights and privileges agreed to under the treaties, including a large degree of tribal sovereignty. For this reason, many Native American reservations are still independent of state law and the actions of tribal citizens on these reservations are subject only to tribal courts and federal law, often differently applicable to tribal lands than to U.S. state or territory by exemption, exclusion, treaty, or superseding tribal or federal law. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States who had not yet obtained it. This emptied the "Indians not taxed" category established by the United States Constitution, allowed Natives to vote in state and federal elections, and extended the Fourteenth Amendment protections granted to people "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. However, some states continued to deny Native Americans voting rights for several decades. Titles II through VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applies to the Native American tribes of the United States and makes many but not all of the guarantees of the U.S. Bill of Rights applicable within the tribes (that Act appears today in Title 25, sections 1301 to 1303 of the United States Code).[14]
Since the 1960s, Native American self-determination movements have resulted in positive changes to the lives of many Native Americans, though there are still many contemporary issues faced by them. Today, there are over five million Native Americans in the United States, 78% of whom live outside reservations. The states with the highest percentage of Native Americans in the U.S. are Alaska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, South Dakota, Montana, and North Dakota.[15][16]
Beginning toward the end of the 15th century, the migration of Europeans to the Americas led to centuries of population, cultural, and agricultural transfer and adjustment between Old and New World societies, a process known as the Columbian exchange. Because most Native American groups had previously preserved their histories by means of oral traditions and artwork, the first written accounts of the contact were provided by Europeans.[17]
Ethnographers commonly classify the Indigenous peoples of North America into ten geographical regions which are inhabited by groups of people who share certain cultural traits, called cultural areas.[18] Some scholars combine the Plateau and Great Basin regions into the Intermontane West, some separate Prairie peoples from Great Plains peoples, while some separate Great Lakes tribes from the Northeastern Woodlands. The ten cultural areas are:[citation needed]
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