Management of alien aquatic invasive species: Strategic guidelines and policy in India

Abstract

The present article is aimed at understanding current policies and implementation strategies for the management of aquatic invasive species in India and identifying opportunities for improvement. Existing management approaches and policies have briefly been put into place concerning fish introductions and aquatic invasive species, but looking at their effectiveness, it is argued that mitigating the negative impacts caused by invasive species should be at the core for their successful management. International institutions have explicitly recognized the need to contain and eradicate biological invasions and have set of relevant guidelines and enforcements. In India, risk assessment, risk management, quarantine, biosecurity and regulatory mechanisms have been developed and implemented to filter fish introductions and consequently check aquatic invasions. Nevertheless, invasive species introduced into the inland waters are emerging as ‘chronic risks’ to the aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem services. It is imperative that these emerging issues are put on the National Agenda and Action Plan to regulate fish invasions and minimise their adverse impacts. A National Policy on prevention and control of aquatic invasive species is urgently needed to deal with nuisance and harmful impacts. Some future needs have also been suggested to tackle this issue.

Preventing and controlling nonnative species invasions to bend the curve of global freshwater biodiversity loss

“…For example, in some jurisdictions, there is no legislation for managing non-native species in freshwaters and/ or there is legislation that promotes their use in aquaculture. In many freshwater biodiversity-rich nations such as Brazil and India, legislation permits the use of nonnative fishes within freshwater aquaculture (e.g., Brito et al 2018;Singh 2021), with these species then escaping into the wild during biosecurity lapses (Casimiro et al 2018) and/ or extreme climatic events (Raj et al 2021). Even where national legislation does exist to prevent introductions, the introduction pathway of many freshwater non-native species involves global trade routes and importing species through busy traffic areas (e.g., ports, airports).…”