General Discussion

***** or Spongy Moth. our area used to spray for them up until like 2 years ago, and now their population has exploded. extremely unpleasant to deal with.

luckily they die out in the autumn/winter, but its still extremely irritating

Fireworms. Worms squick me out enough already, so I'm not linking pictures.
So much algae. I hear the harvests of native seaweeds are getting worse as the invasive stuff chokes them out.
Crown-of-thorns sea stars.
Pigs. House cats. Several species of rats. Mongoose to hunt the rats (a terrible idea).
Every bird I see on a regular basis.
We have an isolated mob of wallabies in a valley grove.
Fire ants. Cockroaches. Mosquitoes. The lizards eat those, but they also eat the native buggies.
I'm pretty sure grasses are invasive here. If not that, then we got weeds and stuff too.

Herb Robert, also known as Stinky Bob, because the roots are a slightly unpleasant and aromatic smell.
English Ivy.
Himalayan Blackberry.
Dandelion.
Butterfly bush.
Snapping Turtles.
Red-eared sliders.
European starlings.
House sparrows.
Bullfrogs.

One of the ones I know about here in Britain is the Asian hornet, they are blown across the channel every year and people are encouraged to report them if they spot one.

So in a dreadful combination of people buying pets they aren't prepared to take care of (which means they get dumped instead of taken to someone who can actually take care of them) and climate change making Maine winter's not as severe as they used to be (it should be cold enough that the ground is frozen for like ~5 months), there are now Burmese pythons overwintering in Maine. It's probably the most ridiculous one here, but the most well known examples are emerald ash borers, asian longhorn beetles, and multicolored asian lady beetles (not ladybugs, lady beetles). And that's not even getting into the feral cat populations.

Japanese beetles and Eurasian collared doves

I hate both of them with a passion. I have a grape vine and every other Summer those stupid beetles come out and are bloody everywhere and those Eurasian doves are really aggressive and get into gang wars with other birds. I think they chased away the mourning doves because we had mourning doves for a while, then the collared doves for a while, then the mourning doves again and finally once more those ugly collared ones. Usually I love animals but not those.

(Dis)honorable mention: Marmorated stink bug

@IceheartAnew hey, another one from Maine! Thankfully, last I heard the pythons were still struggling to survive anywhere colder than Florida, but with how we are being affected by climate change, it is really only a matter of time. Currently, though, there's no chance of them surviving more than a month out in the wild here, since anything below freezing for any amount of time will prevent them from surviving.

However, our winters are getting pretty scary - especially with aquatic invasive species. The spread of water milfoil has been accelerated with our warming lakes, and there's concern about zebra mussels being found closer to the state than ever. European naiad is another plant that has been devastating our aquatic ecosystems, and it might be even worse than milfoil because it has thousands of microscopic seeds that it sends out into open water.

A terrible (but very important) fact, since I'm here! The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest warming spots in the ocean, and it is devastating our reefs - reefs most people don't even know exist. It's also creating the perfect environment for invasive species to thrive.

yeesh, that's kind of a dark infodump reading it over. But, there is a good thing! Maine has been preemptively adding a ton of plant species to the do not sell list, in anticipation that they could become invasive in the future due to warmer winters. hopefully, it can stamp out a ton of problem plants before they even reach up here!

starlings,kudzu,bradford pears,kudzu,zebra mussels,several kinds of carp,
and by god the kudzu

@Falconidae I mean I hope they can't overwinter! The last I heard was in Waterville and how they were finding evidence of them trying to overwinter, so I hope that's not the case because that'd be devastating.

And I heard about all of that, sounds tangentially related to the neurotoxin algae that's exploding in the northern part of Alaska, which is just going to get worse because of the damn Willow Project - and as an aside, besides the fact that it threatens the elk population there and all sea life on the coast, it's also breaking through treaty land that should be owned by the Iñupiat. And related to the coastline issue, that's another factor in why Maine and Maritime archaeologists are so concerned about the coast, because habitat damage + climate change has been destroying archaeological sites all along the coast. Really depressing intersection, but at least it means that more people are trying to address the issue.

Then there's the snails that people accidentally dump out that get brought in with aquarium plants. That one's not even intentional because it's really hard to keep snails from showing up, they're hard to catch as eggs, and before you know it they're everywhere. Super invasive, super hard to deal with, and they spread fast. All of the fish that people dump instead of dealing with properly. I'm glad our state government seems to at least be trying to do something, but it's hard to go against people who have no sense wrt releasing animals to the wild.

Unfortunately Japanese knotweed, zebra muscles, spongy moth, boxwood moth, and Asian lady bugs.