‘The Denialists Are Coming!’ Well, Not Exactly: A Response to Russell and Blackburn

Russell and Blackburn’s [1] call to action against ‘invasive species denialism’ appears to be invasion biology’s desperate last stand. Invasion biologists’ insistence that species introductions constitute a unified ecological crisis is losing support from both the scientific community and the informed public. It is being replaced by a more equivocal notion of ecological novelty, which can accommodate recognizing and responding to a spectrum of phenomena ranging from great good to great harm, with a good deal of relative insignificance in between.