Economic costs of biological invasions within North America

Crystal‐Ornelas, Robert; Hudgins, Emma J.; Cuthbert, Ross N.; Haubrock, Phillip J.; Fantle-Lepczyk, J.; Angulo, Elena; Kramer, Andrew M.; Ballesteros‐Mejia, Liliana; Leroy, Boris; Leung, Brian; López‐López, Eugenia; Diagne, Christophe; Courchamp, Franck

doi:10.3897/neobiota.67.58038

Cited by 67 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Most costs stemmed from direct damage rather than management spending and principally impacted the agriculture sector. This dominance of damage-related costs over management aligns with trends in other geographic regions worldwide (Crystal-Ornelas et al 2021;Haubrock et al 2021a;Heringer et al 2021;Liu et al 2021). Invasion impacts in the UK were largely driven by animals, which were both the most studied and costliest taxa.…”

Section: Question 1: Invasion Costs Distributions Through Space and Sectorssupporting

confidence: 67%

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom

Cuthbert¹,

Bartlett²,

Turbelin³

et al. 2021

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Although the high costs of invasion are frequently cited and are a key motivation for environmental management and policy, synthesised data on invasion costs are scarce. Here, we quantify and examine the monetary costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom (UK) using a global synthesis of reported invasion costs. Invasive alien species have cost the UK economy between US$6.9 billion and $17.6 billion (£5.4 – £13.7 billion) in reported losses and expenses since 1976. Most costs were reported for the entire UK or Great Britain (97%); country-scale cost reporting for the UK's four constituent countries was scarce. Reports of animal invasions were the costliest ($4.7 billion), then plant ($1.3 billion) and fungal ($206.7 million) invasions. Reported damage costs (i.e. excluding management costs) were higher in terrestrial ($4.8 billion) than aquatic or semi-aquatic environments ($29.8 million), and primarily impacted agriculture ($4.2 billion). Invaders with earlier introduction years accrued significantly higher total invasion costs. Invasion costs have been increasing rapidly since 1976, and have cost the UK economy $157.1 million (£122.1 million) per annum, on average. Published information on specific economic costs included only 42 of 520 invaders reported in the UK and was generally available only for the most intensively studied taxa, with just four species contributing 90% of species-specific costs. Given that many of the invasive species lacking cost data are actively managed and have well-recognised impacts, this suggests that cost information is incomplete and that totals presented here are vast underestimates owing to knowledge gaps. Financial expenditure on managing invasions is a fraction (37%) of the costs incurred through damage from invaders; greater investments in UK invasive species research and management are, therefore, urgently required.

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Section: Question 1: Invasion Costs Distributions Through Space and Sectorssupporting

confidence: 67%

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom

Cuthbert¹,

Bartlett²,

Turbelin³

et al. 2021

Self Cite

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“…Management costs were similarly very low in Central and South America (2.1%, Herigner et al 2021). In other continents, management expenses were always higher than in Asia, yet consistently much lower than damage and loss costs: Africa (27%, Diagne et al 2021), Europe (16%, Haubrock et al 2021), or North America (<20%, Crystal-Ornelas et al 2021). This suggests the necessity of increasing funding for invasion management in Asia.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Economic costs of biological invasions in Asia

Liu¹,

Diagne²,

Angulo³

et al. 2021

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Invasive species have caused severe impacts on biodiversity and human society. Although the estimation of environmental impacts caused by invasive species has increased in recent years, economic losses associated with biological invasions are only sporadically estimated in space and time. In this study, we synthesized the losses incurred by invasions in Asia, based on the most comprehensive database of economic costs of invasive species worldwide, including 560 cost records for 88 invasive species in 22 countries. We also assessed the differences in economic costs across taxonomic groups, geographical regions and impacted sectors, and further identified the major gaps of current knowledge in Asia. Reported economic costs of biological invasions were estimated between 1965 and 2017, and reached a total of US$ 432.6 billion (2017 value), with dramatic increases in 2000–2002 and in 2004. The highest costs were recorded for terrestrial ectotherms, for species estimated in South Asia, and for species estimated at the country level, and were related to more than one impacted sector. Two taxonomic groups with the highest reported costs were insects and mammals, and two countries with the highest costs were India and China. Non-English data covered all of 12 taxonomic groups, whereas English data only covered six groups, highlighting the importance of considering data from non-English sources to have a more comprehensive estimation of economic costs associated with biological invasions. However, we found that the estimation of economic costs was lacking for most Asian countries and for more than 96% of introduced species in Asia. Further, the estimation is heavily biased towards insects and mammals and is very limited concerning expenditures on invasion management. To optimize the allocation of limited resources, there is an important need to better and more widely study the economic costs of invasive alien species. In this way, improved cost reporting and more collaborations between scientists and stakeholders are needed across Asia.

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“…Compared to other regions, Central and South America have higher accumulated costs than Africa (USD 18.2 billion; Diagne et al 2021b) and a similar cost to that found in Europe when we used the same inclusion criteria, considering low reliability or potential costs (USD 140.2 billion; ). However, Central and South America have lower costs than North America and Asia (USD 1.26 trillion and USD 432.6 billion, respectively; Crystal-Ornelas et al 2021;Liu et al 2021). These differences were not entirely surprising considering the lower number of invasive alien species in Central and South America compared with North America (van Kleunen et al 2015;Pyšek et al 2019), as well as the research deficit in invasion biology in Central and South America (Bellard and Jeschke 2015), which can negatively affect the number of reported costs to the continents.…”

Section: General Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The economic costs of biological invasions in Central and South America: a first regional assessment

Heringer¹,

Angulo²,

Ballesteros‐Mejia³

et al. 2021

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Invasive alien species are responsible for a high economic impact on many sectors worldwide. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of studies assessing these impacts in Central and South America. Investigating costs of invasions is important to motivate and guide policy responses by increasing stakeholders’ awareness and identifying action priorities. Here, we used the InvaCost database to investigate (i) the geographical pattern of biological invasion costs across the region; (ii) the monetary expenditure across taxa and impacted sectors; and (iii) the taxa responsible for more than 50% of the costs (hyper-costly taxa) per impacted sector and type of costs. The total of reliable and observed costs reported for biological invasions in Central and South America was USD 102.5 billion between 1975 and 2020, but about 90% of the total costs were reported for only three countries (Brazil, Argentina and Colombia). Costs per species were associated with geographical regions (i.e., South America, Central America and Islands) and with the area of the countries in km2. Most of the expenses were associated with damage costs (97.8%), whereas multiple sectors (77.4%), agriculture (15%) and public and social welfare (4.2%) were the most impacted sectors. Aedes spp. was the hyper-costly taxon for the terrestrial environment (costs of USD 25 billion) and water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) was the hyper-costly taxon for the aquatic environment (USD 179.9 million). Six taxa were classified as hyper-costly for at least one impacted sector and two taxa for at least one type of cost. In conclusion, invasive alien species caused billions of dollars of economic burden in Central and South America, mainly in large countries of South America. Costs caused by invasive alien species were unevenly distributed across countries, impacted sectors, types of costs and taxa (hyper-costly taxa). These results suggest that impacted sectors should drive efforts to manage the species that are draining financial sources.

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Economic costs of biological invasions within North America

Cited by 67 publications

References 69 publications

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom

Economic costs of biological invasions in Asia

The economic costs of biological invasions in Central and South America: a first regional assessment

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