Improving the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT): a summary of revisions to the framework and guidelines

Volery, Lara; Blackburn, Tim M.; Bertolino, Sandro; Evans, Thomas; Genovesi, Piero; Kumschick, Sabrina; Roy, Helen E.; Smith, Kevin G.; Bacher, Sven

doi:10.3897/neobiota.62.52723

Cited by 38 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…reviews) but always search for primary reports (but see Sheet S1, for inaccessible primary reports). In accordance with the EICAT standards (IUCN, 2020a; Volery et al, 2020), only observed impacts were classified; potential, hypothetical, projected or extrapolated impacts were considered non‐relevant (but see Sheet S2, for non‐relevant information sources). Species for which no impact observation was found were classified as Data Deficient (IUCN, 2020a).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…alien taxon directly interacts with the impacted native taxon) and indirect (i.e. alien taxon modifies another factor of the environment, thereby indirectly affecting the native taxon) mechanisms (Volery et al, 2020). Uncertainty was captured by assigning a confidence level (high, medium or low) to each observation indicating how confident the assessor is that the assigned magnitude is the ‘true’ one (IUCN, 2020b; Volery et al, 2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…alien taxon modifies another factor of the environment, thereby indirectly affecting the native taxon) mechanisms (Volery et al, 2020). Uncertainty was captured by assigning a confidence level (high, medium or low) to each observation indicating how confident the assessor is that the assigned magnitude is the ‘true’ one (IUCN, 2020b; Volery et al, 2020). A High confidence level indicates that the assessor is confident that the assigned magnitude is the true one, a Medium confidence level indicates that there is potential for the true magnitude to be different from the assigned one and a Low confidence level indicates that it is likely that the true magnitude is different from the assigned one.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ranking alien species based on their risks of causing environmental impacts: A global assessment of alien ungulates

Volery

Jatavallabhula

Scillitani

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

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For an efficient allocation of the limited resources to alien species management, the most damaging species should be prioritised. Comparing alien species based on their impacts is not straightforward, as the same species can cause different types and magnitudes of impacts when introduced to different contexts, making it difficult to summarise its overall impact. The Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) systematically summarises and compares detrimental impacts caused by alien populations to native biota and has been adopted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. For each alien species, all reported impacts to native populations within the introduced range are classified into five levels of severity, from negligible impact to irreversible local extinction. Currently, EICAT only compares alien species based on their highest impact, thereby ignoring variation in impact magnitudes. Here, we used information on the variation in impact magnitudes of alien species to estimate their risks to cause high impacts if introduced to a novel environment. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by classifying the global impacts of alien ungulates. We found impact reports for 27 of the 66 alien ungulate species established worldwide, highlighting substantial knowledge gaps in invasion science. We classified a total of 441 impacts to native fauna and flora caused by these 27 species. Twenty‐six of the species were found to cause harmful impacts (native population declines or local extinctions). Mouflon (Ovis orientalis, Gmelin, 1774) and dromedary (Camelus dromedarius, Linnaeus, 1758) had a higher risk of causing local extinctions if introduced to a novel environment than sika deer (Cervus nippon, Temminck, 1838) and goats (Capra hircus, Linnaeus, 1758). Including risk of high impacts allows to discriminate among species with the same EICAT classification and improves alien species prioritisation for management.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ranking alien species based on their risks of causing environmental impacts: A global assessment of alien ungulates

Volery

Jatavallabhula

Scillitani

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

Self Cite

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“…Although a level of subjectivity is inevitable, some of this uncertainty may be reduced through improvement in the protocol, such as the refinement of guidelines, which is already reflected in the succession of EICAT guidelines (Blackburn et al 2014;Hawkins et al 2015;IUCN 2020a). However, clarification about the changes and ensuring these are effectively communicated will be important to maximise consistency (see Volery et al 2020, as the application of different versions of the guidelines may further lead to inconsistencies across different assessments. Conducting workshops, training sessions and developing online tools that help guide assessors through the process-giving examples where uncertainty is most likely to arise-might help reduce these uncertainties.…”

Section: Biases In the Data Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding uncertainty in the Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (ICAT) assessments

Probert¹,

Volery²,

Kumschick³

et al. 2020

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The Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) and the Socio-Economic Impact Classification of Alien Taxa (SEICAT) have been proposed to provide unified methods for classifying alien species according to their magnitude of impacts. EICAT and SEICAT (herein “ICAT” when refered together) were designed to facilitate the comparison between taxa and invasion contexts by using a standardised, semi-quantitative scoring scheme. The ICAT scores are assigned after conducting a literature review to evaluate all impact observations against the protocols’ criteria. EICAT classifies impacts on the native biota of the recipient environments, whereas SEICAT classifies impacts on human activities. A key component of the process is to assign a level of confidence (high, medium or low) to account for uncertainty. Assessors assign confidence scores to each impact record depending on how confident they are that the assigned impact magnitude reflects the true situation. All possible sources of epistemic uncertainty are expected to be captured by one overall confidence score, neglecting linguistic uncertainties that assessors should be aware of. The current way of handling uncertainty is prone to subjectivity and therefore might lead to inconsistencies amongst assessors. This paper identifies the major sources of uncertainty for impacts classified under the ICAT frameworks, where they emerge in the assessment process and how they are likely to be contributing to biases and inconsistency in assessments. In addition, as the current procedures only capture uncertainty at the individual impact report, interspecific comparisons may be limited by various factors, including data availability. Therefore, ranking species, based on impact magnitude under the present systems, does not account for such uncertainty. We identify three types of biases occurring beyond the individual impact report level (and not captured by the confidence score): biases in the existing data, data collection and data assessment. These biases should be recognised when comparing alien species based on their impacts. Clarifying uncertainty concepts relevant to the ICAT frameworks will lead to more consistent impact assessments and more robust intra- and inter-specific comparisons of impact magnitudes.

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“…ICAT Schemes are two evidence-based classification systems for evaluating the ecological and socioeconomic impacts of non-native species (Blackburn et al 2014;Bacher et al 2017). Their assessment requires the collection and evaluation of all the papers reporting data on impacts produced by the target species in its global introduction range and their scoring according to different mechanisms of impact (Volery et al, 2020). Due to the high number of species to assess, we used an expert-based approach where single experts used ICAT Schemes as reference systems for scoring the species after a rapid search of literature and without considering the mechanism of impact.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A framework for prioritising present and potentially invasive mammal species for a national list

Bertolino¹,

Ancillotto²,

Bartolommei³

et al. 2020

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The European Union (EU) has recently adopted a regulation on invasive alien species that foresees the possibility of developing lists of species of National Concern. We developed a prioritisation process for alien mammals already established in Italy, but not yet included in the EU list (n = 6 species) and a systematic horizon-scanning procedure to obtain ranked lists for those species that are already introduced worldwide or traded in Italy (n = 213). Experts were asked to score these species, by evaluating their likelihood of establishment and spread and the magnitude of their potential impacts on biodiversity, economy, human-health and society. The manageability of each species was also evaluated, both for the proritisation and the horizon-scanning processes. We produced five lists that ranked species according to their potential spread and impacts and their manageability. These will allow policy-makers to select outputs according to a balance between risk assessment and risk management, establishing priorities for alien species management at the national level.

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Improving the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT): a summary of revisions to the framework and guidelines

Cited by 38 publications

References 28 publications

Ranking alien species based on their risks of causing environmental impacts: A global assessment of alien ungulates

Ranking alien species based on their risks of causing environmental impacts: A global assessment of alien ungulates

Understanding uncertainty in the Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (ICAT) assessments

A framework for prioritising present and potentially invasive mammal species for a national list

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