PAT NEAL: National Invasive Species Awareness Week

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 4, 2026

HOW WAS YOUR National Invasive Species Awareness Week? Chances are, with our modern world of the future spinning wildly out of control, you didn’t know invasive species were a problem. They are.

Invasive Species Awareness Week is an international event dedicated to raising awareness about invasive species, the threats they pose and the actions that can be taken to prevent their spread.

Invasive species have been spreading across the length and breadth of the Olympic Peninsula ever since the European invaders got here.

From Canary grass to Evergreen blackberries, our pristine ecosystem has been choked with these invasive species from vacant lots to riverbanks, endangering native plants, limiting land use and impacting our quality of life in general.

The King Kong of invasive species, the European Green crab, first reared its ugly head on our Pacific Coast at Willapa Bay in 1961, when it was suspected to have arrived in seaweed that lobsters from the East Coast were packed in. By the 1990s, green crab were found from Northern California to British Columbia.

The green crab are trouble because they can dig down 6 inches and eat small clams and oysters while destroying eelgrass beds that are critical habitat for everything from Dungeness crab to salmon.

The green crab was first observed on our Atlantic Coast in 1817 in Massachusetts, where it was blamed for wiping out the soft-shell clam industry by the early 1900s.

Native to the northeast Atlantic Ocean and the Baltic Sea, the green crab has migrated around the world in the bilge water of ship hulls, earning the title of being among the world’s 100 worst alien invasive species.

On our Atlantic coast green crab are considered “a most delicious scourge,” where the motto is, “if you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em.”

You would think that allowing people in Washington to harvest the green crab would be an effective method of controlling the numbers of these dangerous invasive species, but you would be wrong.

Here in Washington, green crab are protected.

Crabbing for green crab is a catch-and-release fishery.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, a bureaucracy with many years of experience eradicating marine species from our environment with the best available science, made it illegal to possess or collect green crab, claiming Washingtonians are too ignorant to tell the difference between a green crab and a native crab.

This ignores the fact that anglers and crabbers in Washington must identify eight species of trout, five species of salmon, 12 species of rockfish, four species of shrimp and eight different species of clams to avoid getting a ticket.

Anglers, clammers and crabbers in Washington are obviously experts at identifying species, or else.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, crabbers must be a whole lot smarter than the rubes in Washington because they are allowed to keep 35 green crab a day.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the green crab population is exploding.

In a press release announcing the end of Invasive Species Awareness Week, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that “Green Crab management is a collaborative effort.” WDFW, along with “more than 50 co-managers, Tribes and partners have been working together to remove invasive crabs and slow their spread.”

In 2025, more than 1,096,169 green crab were removed from state waters, which, according to the press release, is “slightly more than the number of green crab removed in 2024.”

While the overall pattern shows an increase in green crab populations, it proves the eternal maxim of government agencies everywhere that there is lot more money available to study the problem than there is to fixing the problem.

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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.

He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.