VJ Movement Investigates Invasive Species

VJ Movement, an online collaboration of videojournalists who pitch and vote on story ideas to determine which ones will be assigned, is celebrating its first anniversary with a site redesign. In addition to videos on individual themes, they explain, "we've started organizing our content into projects."

The first such project, featuring reports from four VJs in the US, UK and Mexico, is "Footing the Bill for Invasive Species."

In the absence of natural predators, non-native species of plants and animals can become invasive, unbalancing local ecosystems and causing material harm. Every year the European Union alone spends some twenty billion euros on damages and control costs of invasive species. Yet some argue that we should let invasive species be, and that the natural environment can manage without our interference.

This project looks at how countries deal with invasive species and asks if we should be spending huge amounts to eradicate them.

The videos include "Invasion of the Lionfish" (Isaac Brown & Ana Paula Habib), "Mexico's Future Corn" (Greg Brosnan), "Native vs. Non-Native" (Pierre Kattar), "Extreme Eradication of Japanese Knotweed" (Adam Westbrook).

Headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, VJ Movement features the work of 150 videojournalists from more than 100 countries.