Surprisingly high economic costs of biological invasions in protected areas

Biological invasions are one of the main threats to biodiversity within protected areas (PAs) worldwide. Meanwhile, the resilience of PAs to invasions remains largely unknown. Consequently, providing a better understanding of how they are impacted by invasions is critical for informing policy responses and optimally allocating resources to prevention and control strategies. Here we use the InvaCost database to address this gap from three perspectives: (i) characterizing the total reported costs of invasive alien species (IAS) in PAs; (ii) comparing mean observed costs of IAS in PAs and non-PAs; and (iii) evaluating factors affecting mean observed costs of IAS in PAs. Our results first show that, overall, the reported economic costs of IAS in PAs amounted to US$ 22.24 billion between 1975 and 2020, of which US$ 930.61 million were observed costs (already incurred) and US$ 21.31 billion were potential costs (extrapolated or predicted). Expectedly, most of the observed costs were reported for management (73%) but damages were still much higher than expected for PAs (24%); in addition, the vast majority of management costs were reported for reactive, post-invasion actions (84% of management costs, focused on eradication and control).

MOODLEY Desika;  ANGULO Elena;  CUTHBERT Ross;  LEUNG Brian;  TURBELIN Anna;  NOVOA Ana;  KOURANTIDOU Melina;  HERINGER Gustavo;  HAUBROCK Philip;  RENAULT David;  ROBUCHON Marine;  FANTLE-LEPCZYK Jean;  COURCHAMP Franck;  DIAGNE Christophe; 

2023-05-02

SPRINGER

JRC133533

1387-3547 (online),   

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-022-02732-7,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC133533,   

10.1007/s10530-022-02732-7 (online),