As industries innovate to promote biodiversity, one category hangs in the balance: should invasive species be afforded animal welfare rights? Or are they a disposable nuisance?
In an effort to mitigate the environmental impacts of leather production, such as pollution, deforestation, and land and water overuse, the fashion industry has been churning out a slew of innovative leather alternatives. Instead of cowhide, companies are making leather-like materials from pineapple leaves, cactus, mushrooms, cork, recycled plastic bottles, and more. But one Florida-based company, Tampa’s Inversa Leathers, is looking to revolutionize the leather market with a different type of hide.
Instead of cattle, Inversa makes luxury leather products from the skins of lionfish, Burmese pythons, and Asian capr — all invasive species quickly expanding throughout the Caribbean, the Everglades, and the Mississippi River Basin. The company claims to ethically source these species through humane removals and tan the skins domestically, creating high‑quality materials that help restore ecological balance (e.g., one python hide protects up to 460 native animals). By turning environmental challenges into a regeneratively sourced fashion commodity, Inversa says that it not only supports biodiversity but also drives community resilience and sustainable economic systems.
But is the company’s exotic leather an innovation set to disrupt the leather industry or a complete ethical nightmare?
Popular among aquarists, the Pacific red lionfish became an invasive species due to human error. Experts believe unwanted lionfish established in the waters off of the southeast coast in the 1980s after being dumped from home aquariums.
Featuring white and brown, red, or maroon stripes and fan-like fine, lionfish may look beautiful — but they’re deadly. Active hunters, they feast on more than 50 different species of fish. Their venomous spine gives them the distinction of being one of the top predators in the Atlantic’s coral reefs.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a lionfish can reduce the amount of native fish in a coral reef environment by 79 percent. This is problematic for the coral, which relies on the nutrients found in ammonium excreted by the fish.
So, what better way to solve an environmental crisis and protect biodiversity than by creating leather out of invasive species? According to Inversa, each hide saves upwards of 70,000 native reef fish. Other control efforts for managing invasive lionfish have varied over the years. In 2018, the Florida Wildlife Commission issued a $5,000 bounty for dead lionfish.
Or take the Burmese python. Native to Southeast Asia, it was introduced into Florida’s Everglades through the exotic pet trade — accelerated in the 1990s by habitat release following Hurricane Andrew — and has since established a prolific, reproducing population. As apex predators, these pythons have triggered catastrophic declines in native wildlife. According to the U.S. Geological Society, by 2012, raccoon populations fell by 99 percent, opossums by 99 percent, and bobcats by 87 percent in areas where pythons are long established.
According to Inversa, each python hide used contributes to restoring up to 90 percent of native wildlife populations in the Everglades. This practice transforms a profoundly destructive species into a regenerative resource, aligning high-end fashion with biodiversity restoration efforts.
But just how ethical are the methods used to control invasive species?
Many conservationists are drawing parallels between invasive species and immigrants. “The fear of immigration is never isolated to humans,” Banu Subramaniam wrote in The Ethics and Rhetoric of Invasion Ecology. “It includes nonhuman migrants in the form of unwanted germs, insects, plants, and animals.”
In the U.S. alone, there are more than 6,500 invasive species of plants and animals (70 percent are plants) according to the United States Geological Survey. Also known as alien, non-native, or nonindigenous species, invasive species are capable of causing great economic and ecological harm to an environment that is not their native habitat. Invasive animal species in the U.S. outside of the lionfish include zebra mussels, bullfrogs, common starlings, nutria, feral swine, and the common housecat, to name a few.
Animals, plants, fish, and insects can be introduced into a new ecosystem either by accident or on purpose. Invasive species can spread unintentionally on the propellers of boats or when firewood is moved from one place to another. Conversely, they can be purposefully introduced to control pests on crops. Since they don’t have any natural predators in their new environment, the species usually go unchecked and they’re able to breed and spread rapidly.
One need look no further than the common housecat as a prime example. Domesticated cats, which kill anywhere from one to four billion birds per year, are included in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s list of the top 100 invasive species.
Human activities like fishing and global warming can also cause species to migrate. “Species invasion is one of the major threats the oceans face today, and can be closely related to issues such as fishing and climate change,” explained Abel Valdivia, a marine conservation scientist. “With rising temperatures due to global warming, several marine species are shifting their geographical range; occupying new environments; establishing new ecological interactions with established residents, and therefore changing the community structure and composition of the invaded systems.”
Compassionate conservation
Other methods for controlling non-native species can run the gamut from the use of chemicals to prescribed burns. However, a new term has emerged in the management of invasive species: “compassionate conservation.” The method involves finding a solution that is beneficial to all parties — the environment, the invasive species, and the native species — that doesn’t cause any animal suffering.
For example, as it pertains to domestic cats, trap and neuter initiatives are working to capture feral cats, spay or neuter them, vaccinate them, and then return them where they were found.
Instead of killing off encroaching foxes in Australia, compassionate conservationists advocate for the use of guard dogs to ward them off. In lieu of killing Kenyan elephants — a species that is endangered — for destroying farms, compassionate conservationists are calling for fences fit with beehives to keep the elephants at bay.
As it pertains to lionfish, researchers have posed the question as to whether the introduction of groupers — a predator to lionfish — would suffice in naturally controlling populations of the venomous fish. It is worth noting that groupers, another type of reef fish, are a hot commodity in the fish market and are thus highly exploited and overfished.
Perhaps the real question isn’t whether invasive species deserve rights — but whether we can afford to keep denying them. As human disruption reshapes the planet, every species — welcome or not — becomes more than a marker of environmental change. It’s a mirror of our values.
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