Conservation and Invasive Alien Species: Violent Love Krithika Srinivasan and Rajesh Kasturirangan Introduction Some alien invaders have to travel all the way from another planet while others need only journey from another part of Earth ‘Alien invader threatens Britain’s native wildlife’, warns a front page headline from a special edition of the UK Canal & River Trust’s newsletter (WaterPatrol 2015) Describing the American crayfish as an ‘aggressive predator’ that can ‘infiltrate’ rivers and canals and ‘cause the destruction of native populations’, the newsletter seeks support from the public, for its invasive species control programme (WaterPatrol 2015, p 1) Animals such as mink, terrapins, the Chinese mitten crab, killer shrimp, and zebra mussels, as well as plants such as the Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, Himalayan balsam, and floating pennywort are some of the non-native invaders that are the targets of the Canal & River Trust’s eradication programme (Canal and River Trust 2015) K Srinivasan (*) University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom e-mail: k.srinivasan@ed.ac.uk R Kasturirangan Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India e-mail: rajesh@rajeshkasturirangan.org © The Author(s) 2017 J Maher et al (eds.), The Palgrave International Handbook of Animal Abuse Studies, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43183-7_20 433