Within and outside the academe there is a growing chorus of dissenters arguing that we should not control invasive species. They believe we should disregard preferences for native species and develop an appreciation for the ‘novel ecosystems’ that invasive species create. One mode of reply is to establish that ecosystems have natural functions that invasive species disrupt. Under a normative theory of natural function (for example Ruth Millikan’s Proper Function) if an ecological system is functionally arranged it would have interests that we should act to defend. Two recent papers have attempted to establish ecosystems have such functional arrangements (Nunes-Neto et al. 2014; Dussalt and Bouchard 2017). I will find these attempts limited and unable to buttress a positive agenda. Appeals to natural teleology are ultimately misguided, they provide the wrong basis for conservation. This, however, does not entail a need to accommodate invasive species.