Economic costs of invasive alien species in Spain

Abstract

Economic assessments for invasive alien species (IAS) are an urgent requirement for informed decision-making, coordinating and motivating the allocation of economic and human resources for the management of IAS. We searched for economic costs of IAS occurring in Spain, by using the InvaCost database and requesting data to regional governments and national authorities, which resulted in over 3,000 cost entries. Considering only robust data (i.e. excluding extrapolated, potential (not-incurred or expected) and low reliability costs), economic costs in Spain were estimated at US$ 261 million (€ 232 million) from 1997 to 2022. There was an increase from US$ 4 million per year before 2000 to US$ 15 million per year in the last years (from € 4 to 13 million). Robust data showed that most reported costs of IAS in Spain (> 90%) corresponded to management costs, while damage costs were only found for 2 out of the 174 species with reported costs. Economic costs relied mostly on regional and inter-regional administrations that spent 66% of costs in post-invasion management actions, contrary to all international guidelines, which recommend investing more in prevention. Regional administrations unequally reported costs. Moreover, 36% of the invasive species, reported to incur management costs, were not included in national or European regulations (i.e. Black Lists), suggesting the need to review these policies; besides, neighbouring regions seem to manage different groups of species. We suggest the need of a national lead agency to effectively coordinate actions, facilitate communication and collaboration amongst regional governments, national agencies and neighbouring countries. This will motivate the continuity of long-lasting management actions and the increase in efforts to report IAS costs by regional and inter-regional managers which will adequately provide information for future budgets gaining management effectiveness.

Biological invasions in France: Alarming costs and even more alarming knowledge gaps

“…Given that the apiculture revenue was € 135 million in France (corresponding to 2017 US$ 152.5 million) (Barbet-Massin et al 2020) and the yearly pollination services to agriculture were estimated at € 2 billion in France (2017 US$ 2.26 billion) (Gallai et al 2009), the actual economic impact of the Asian hornet is probably massive. The high costs found for France are very similar to the costs found in Spain for the same species (US$ 5.33 billion; Angulo et al 2021c).…”

“…By using phone calls, e-mailing, and by circulating questionnaires, we have been able to collect the majority of cost information (1,106 cost entries collected from 39 documents, as compared with 26 cost entries with the classical InvaCost Database search), revealing that even if cost data were poorly documented in France and overseas territories, those data do exist as grey literature. High percentages of non-English costs were also reported in other countries, such as in Spain or Japan (98%, Angulo et al 2021c;and 100%, Watari et al 2021, respectively), and this percentage was lower but also important in countries such as Germany or Ecuador (69%, Haubrock et al 2021b;52%, Ballesteros-Mejias et al 2021) or in general in the Central and South America continent and in Asia (Heringer et al 2021;Liu et al 2021). In line with the recent suggestion from Blackburn et al (2020), this observation proves that academics must continue their engagements towards a more collaborative science for improving the sharing of knowledge and having adequate communication of invasion science findings to the public (Mattingly et al 2020), and ultimately an ability to better tackle the issues caused by invasive alien species.…”

“…Globally, these authors projected US$ 14.08 billion in damage costs of pinewood nematode B. xylophilus in forests in Spain, France and Italy, should the species not be contained. These were not considered in our national estimate, but constituted 99% of the costs in Spain if potential costs were included (Angulo et al 2021c); a similar amount of annual losses was estimated in Russia (Kirichenko et al 2021) The Asian hornet, accidentally introduced in southwestern France in 2004, is the second costliest insect genus (after Aedes sp.) in France.…”

Economic costs of invasive alien ants worldwide

“…The newly developed InvaCost database (Diagne et al 2020) is the first comprehensive and standardised compilation of economic costs associated with biological invasions worldwide. This database provides unique opportunities to assess and understand the economic impacts of invasions holistically, and has already been used to assess the economic costs associated with specific taxa (e.g., Cuthbert et al 2021a, b;Haubrock et al 2021a) and jurisdictions (e.g., Angulo et al 2021a;Ballesteros-Mejia et al 2021;Bradshaw et al 2021;Crystal-Ornelas et al 2021;Diagne et al 2021b;Haubrock et al 2021b;Heringer et al 2021;Kourantidou et al 2021;Liu et al 2021). Here, we took advantage of this newly created database and other reported costs to present the first global assessment of the economic costs of invasive ants.…”

Assessing the Invasion Risk of Humulus scandens Using Ensemble Species Distribution Modeling and Habitat Connectivity Analysis

“…Ecological reconstruction projects require considerable resource investments and may have limited effects on the restoration of degraded natural habitats affected by IAPs, losing valuable ecosystem services in the process. Therefore, prevention and timely action plans can be the most cost-effective solutions [ 5 , 60 , 61 , 62 ], with a potential starting point in SDM approaches [ 63 ].…”