Less affluent countries more prone to damage caused by biological invasions despite lower trade volume 

30 03 2024

Non-native species introduced mainly via increasing trade of goods and services have huge economic, health, and environmental costs. These ‘biological invasions’ involve the intentional or unintentional transport and release of species beyond their native biogeographical ranges, facilitating their potential spread. 

Over the last few decades, invasive species have incurred an average cost of at least US$26.8 billion per year globally, and are predicted to continue increasing. Investing in early management to control their potential damage and spread is widely recognised as more cost-effective than waiting until an invasive species demonstrates clear impacts. 

However, there is limited information available demonstrating whether a country’s capacity to manage its invasive species is effective at limiting future damage.

Our new study published in the journal Ecological Economics found that while more affluent countries with higher economic activity are vulnerable to more damage from invasive species, they also have the highest potential to limit damages incurred by investing more in management. Consequently, a nation’s economic capability partially determines the efficacy of investing in the control and prevention of invasive species.

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Categories : alien species, biodiversity, economics, environmental economics, environmental policy, invasive species, investment, management, research

Assessing the massive costs of biological invasions to Australia and the world

6 09 2023

A global database set up by scientists to assemble data on the economic cost of biological invasions in support of effective government management strategies has grown to include all known invasive species.

Now involving 145 researchers from 44 countries — the current version of InvaCost has 13,553 entries in 22 languages and enables scientists to develop a clear picture about the major threats globally of invasive species to ecosystems, biodiversity, and human well-being.

Biological invasions are caused by species introduced on purpose or accidentally by humans to areas outside of their natural ranges. From cats and weeds, to crop pests and diseases, invasive species are a worldwide scourge. 

Invasive species have cost over US$2 trillion globally since the 1970s by damaging goods and services, and through the costs of managing them, and these economic costs are only increasing.

A new synthesis published in the journal BioScience documents the progress of the InvaCost endeavour. The study provides a timeline of the state of invasion costs, starting with prior flaws and shortcomings in the scientific literature, then how InvaCost has helped to alleviate and address these issues, and what the future potentially holds for research and policymakers.  

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Categories : agriculture, alien species, Australia, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, environmental economics, environmental policy, extinction, invasive species, management

Better codes of practice for control of feral animals

24 02 2023

From time to time I turn my research hand to issues of invasive species control, for example, from manipulating pathogens to control rabbits, to island eradication of feral cats and pigs, to effective means to control feral deer.

Not only do invasive species cost well over $1.7 trillion (yes, that’s trillion, with 12 zeros) each year in terms of damage and control (a minimum of $25 billion per year in Australia alone), they are one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss globally. So, if you baulk at lethal forms of control of invasive species, you are simultaneously stating that you’re fine with the torture and death of millions (if not, billions) of native animals each year.

Thanks to the collaborative and evidence-driven foresight of my colleagues at PIRSA Biosecurity and Landscape Boards, I was recently involved in more research examining the most efficient, cost-effective, and humane ways to cull feral dear in South Australia. The resulting paper is now in review in NeoBiota, but we have also posted a pre-print of the article.

Feral deer are a real problem in Australia, and South Australia is no exception. With six species of feral deer in the country already (fallow Dama dama, red Cervus elaphus, hog Axis porcinus, chital A. axis), rusa C. timorensis, and sambar Rusa unicolor deer), fallow deer are the most abundant and widespread. These species are responsible for severe damage to native plants, competition with native animals, economic losses to primary industries (crops, pastures, horticulture, plantations), and human safety risks from vehicle collisions. Feral deer are also reservoirs and vectors of endemic animal diseases and have the potential to transmit exotic animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth. If left uncontrolled, within 30 years the economic impacts of feral deer could reach billions of dollars annually.

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Categories : alien species, animal welfare, Australia, cat, conservation, environmental science, harvest, human-wildlife conflict, invasive species, mammal, management, research, South Australia

Influential conservation papers of 2022

3 01 2023

Following my annual tradition, I present the retrospective list of the ‘top’ 20 influential papers of 2022 as assessed by experts in Faculty Opinions (formerly known as F1000). These are in no particular order. See previous years’ lists here: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

Genetic variance in fitness indicates rapid contemporary adaptive evolution in wild animals — “… this paper adds a much-needed perspective to the status of genetic diversity and adaptive potential in contemporary populations.“

Habitat, geophysical, and eco-social connectivity: benefits of resilient socio-ecological landscapes — “… distinguishes four distinct but interrelated types of connectivity: landscape, habitat, geophysical, and eco-social connectivity, of which the fourth type is new. The authors discuss how these different types of connectivity are related to ecosystem services and disservices, and how they interact with each other to influence landscape sustainability issues.“

Glyphosate impairs collective thermoregulation in bumblebees — “… low-dose glyphosate, combined with global increases in temperature, converge to disrupt homeostatic regulation in bee colonies. This is a crucial revelation for understanding the loss of bees across the globe, as they serve as major pollinators in nature and agriculture.“

Human disturbances affect the topology of food webs — “… provides great opportunities for the study of food web structures, their dynamics and stability under different human influences.“

A comprehensive database of amphibian heat tolerance — “… provides estimates of amphibian upper thermal limits – a relevant trait for assessing the vulnerability of this highly-threatened group of ectotherms to rising temperatures – derived from thousands of experimental studies.”

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Categories : alien species, biodiversity, birds, climate change, climate shift, community ecology, connectivity, conservation, conservation biology, conservation ecology, coral reefs, deforestation, disease, ecology, ecosystem, ecosystem services, environmental policy, extinction, fish, fragmentation, frog, genetic diversity, genetics, habitat loss, invasive species, management, marine, marine protected area, modelling, monitoring, Murray-Darling, ocean, population dynamics, predator, protected area, recovery, research, restoration, science, seagrass, sustainability, synergies, threatened species, top-down ecology, trophic cascades, tropical, vegetation

Can we resurrect the thylacine? Maybe, but it won’t help the global extinction crisis

9 03 2022

NFSA

(published first on The Conversation)

Last week, researchers at the University of Melbourne announced that thylacines or Tasmanian tigers, the Australian marsupial predators extinct since the 1930s, could one day be ushered back to life.

The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), also known as the ‘Tasmanian tiger’ (it was neither Tasmanian, because it was once common in mainland Australia, nor was it related to the tiger), went extinct in Tasmania in the 1930s from persecution by farmers and habitat loss. Art by Eleanor (Nellie) Pease, University of Queensland.
Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage

The main reason for the optimism was the receipt of a A$5 million philanthropic donation to the research team behind the endeavour.

Advances in mapping the genome of the thylacine and its living relative the numbat have made the prospect of re-animating the species seem real. As an ecologist, I would personally relish the opportunity to see a living specimen.

The announcement led to some overhyped headlines about the imminent resurrection of the species. But the idea of “de-extinction” faces a variety of technical, ethical and ecological challenges. Critics (like myself) argue it diverts attention and resources from the urgent and achievable task of preventing still-living species from becoming extinct.

The rebirth of the bucardo

The idea of de-extinction goes back at least to the the creation of the San Diego Frozen Zoo in the early 1970s. This project aimed to freeze blood, DNA, tissue, cells, eggs and sperm from exotic and endangered species in the hope of one day recreating them.

The notion gained broad public attention with the first of the Jurassic Park films in 1993. The famous cloning of Dolly the sheep reported in 1996 created a sense that the necessary know-how wasn’t too far off.

The next technological leap came in 2008, with the cloning of a dead mouse that had been frozen at –20℃ for 16 years. If frozen individuals could be cloned, re-animation of a whole species seemed possible.

After this achievement, de-extinction began to look like a potential way to tackle the modern global extinction crisis.

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Categories : Australia, biodiversity, captive breeding, climate change, cloning, conservation, conservation biology, demography, disease, DNA, ecosystem function, ethics, evolution, extinction, genetic diversity, genetics, harvest, human-wildlife conflict, inbreeding depression, invasive species, living dead, minimum viable population, predator, recovery, research, threatened species

Influential conservation papers of 2021

5 01 2022

Following my annual tradition, I present the retrospective list of the ‘top’ 20 influential papers of 2021 as assessed by experts in Faculty Opinions (formerly known as F1000). These are in no particular order. See previous years’ lists here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change — “… confirms what the sparse forest inventory has suggested, that climate change and land-use change is driving Amazonian ecosystems toward carbon sinks. … the research team provides a robust estimate of the carbon dynamics of one of the world’s most important ecosystems and provides insights into the role of land use change and potentials for mitigating direct carbon losses in the future.“

Organic and conservation agriculture promote ecosystem multifunctionality — “… a very clear insight into the trade-offs between the different ecosystem services and indicate that yield and product quality are lower in organic systems compared to conventional systems, yet organic systems have higher economic performance due to higher product prices and subsidies.“

Biodiversity of coral reef cryptobiota shuffles but does not decline under the combined stressors of ocean warming and acidification — “… even with similar richness, community function is very likely to be perturbed by ocean warming/acidification with unpredictable impacts on economically important species such as fish and corals.“

Local conditions magnify coral loss after marine heatwaves — “… show that climate-induced coral loss is greater in areas with elevated seaweed abundance and elevated sea urchin densities, both of which commonly result from local overfishing … effective local management can synergize with global efforts to mitigate climate change and help coral reefs survive the Anthropocene.“

Large ecosystem-scale effects of restoration fail to mitigate impacts of land-use legacies in longleaf pine savannas — “… while restoration can have major benefits in longleaf savannas, land-use legacies have clear effects on many aspects of the ecosystem.“

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Categories : agriculture, alien species, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, conservation, coral reefs, deforestation, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, evolution, extinction, fish, fisheries, food, fragmentation, habitat loss, invasive species, protected area, reforestation, restoration

An eye on the past: a view to the future

29 11 2021

originally published in Brave Minds, Flinders University’s research-news publication (text by David Sly)

Clues to understanding human interactions with global ecosystems already exist. The challenge is to read them more accurately so we can design the best path forward for a world beset by species extinctions and the repercussions of global warming.

This is the puzzle being solved by Professor Corey Bradshaw, head of the Global Ecology Lab at Flinders University. By developing complex computer modelling and steering a vast international cohort of collaborators, he is developing research that can influence environmental policy — from reconstructing the past to revealing insights of the future.

As an ecologist, he aims both to reconstruct and project how ecosystems adapt, how they are maintained, and how they change. Human intervention is pivotal to this understanding, so Professor Bradshaw casts his gaze back to when humans first entered a landscape – and this has helped construct an entirely fresh view of how Aboriginal people first came to Australia, up to 75,000 years ago.

Two recent papers he co-authored — ‘Stochastic models support rapid peopling of Late Pleistocene Sahul‘, published in Nature Communications, and ‘Landscape rules predict optimal super-highways for the first peopling of Sahul‘ published in Nature Human Behaviour — showed where, how and when Indigenous Australians first settled in Sahul, which is the combined mega-continent that joined Australia with New Guinea in the Pleistocene era, when sea levels were lower than today.

Professor Bradshaw and colleagues identified and tested more than 125 billion possible pathways using rigorous computational analysis in the largest movement-simulation project ever attempted, with the pathways compared to the oldest known archaeological sites as a means of distinguishing the most likely routes.

The study revealed that the first Indigenous people not only survived but thrived in harsh environments, providing further evidence of the capacity and resilience of the ancestors of Indigenous people, and suggests large, well-organised groups were able to navigate tough terrain.

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Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, Australia, biodiversity, climate change, climate shift, conservation, conservation biology, deforestation, development, economics, education, Endarkenment, environmental economics, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, fire, Flinders University, habitat loss, health, invasive species, modelling, planning, research, science, sustainability

And this little piggy went extinct

24 11 2021

Back in June of this year I wrote (whinged) about the disappointment of writing a lot of ecological models that were rarely used to assist real-world wildlife management. However, I did hint that another model I wrote had assistance one government agency with pig management on Kangaroo Island.

Well, now that report has been published online and I’m permitted to talk about it. I’m also very happy to report that, in the words of the Government of South Australia’s Department of Primary Industries and Regions (PIRSA),

Modelling by the Flinders University Global Ecology Laboratory shows the likelihood and feasibility of feral pig eradication under different funding and eradication scenarios. With enough funding, feral pigs could be eradicated from Kangaroo Island in 2 years.

This basically means that because of the model, PIRSA was successful in obtaining enough funding to pretty much ensure that the eradication of feral pigs from Kangaroo Island will be feasible!

Why is this important to get rid of feral pigs? They are a major pest on the Island, causing severe economic and environmental impacts both to farms and native ecosystems. On the agricultural side of things, they prey on newborn lambs, eat crops, and compete with livestock for pasture. Feral pigs damage natural habitats by up-rooting vegetation and fouling waterholes. They can also spread weeds and damage infrastructure, as well as act as hosts of parasites and diseases (e.g., leptospirosis, tuberculosis, foot-and-mouth disease) that pose serious threats to industry, wildlife, and even humans.

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Categories : agriculture, alien species, Australia, conservation, demography, disease, ecology, environmental policy, harvest, invasive species, investment, management, mathematics, modelling, pig, predator, research, restoration

PhD opportunity in control strategies of feral deer

30 09 2021

In collaboration with Biosecurity South Australia, the Global Ecology Lab at Flinders University is happy to announce a wonderful new PhD opportunity in feral deer control strategies for South Australia.

The project is tentatively entitled: Refining models of feral deer abundance and distribution to inform culling programs in South Australia

Feral fallow deer (Dama dama) digging in a mallee fowl (Leipoa ocellata) mound © Lee Williams

The project brief follows:

South Australian legislation requires that all landholders cull feral deer on their properties. Despite this, feral deer abundance and distribution are increasing across South Australia. This arises because culling by land managers and government organisations is not keeping pace with rates of population growth, and some landholders are harbouring deer for hunting, whereas some deer escape from deer farms.

There are an estimated 40,000 feral deer in South Australia, and state government agencies are working to ramp up programs to cull feral deer before their numbers reach a point where control is no longer feasible.

Planning such large-scale and costly programs requires that government agencies engage economists to measure the economic impacts of feral deer, and to predict the value of these impacts in the future. That modelling is done regularly by governments, and in the case of pest-control programs, the modelling draws on models of feral deer population growth, farmer surveys about the economic, social, and environmental impacts of feral deer, and analyses of culling programs and trials of new culling techniques.

The economic models predict and compare both the current and future costs of:

  • deer impacts on pastures, crops, native plants, and social values (including illegal hunting)
  • culling programs that achieve different objectives (e.g., contain vs. reduce vs. eradicate)

The outputs of the models also inform whether there are sufficient public benefits from the investment of public funds into the culling of feral deer.

This PhD project will collate published and unpublished data to refine models of feral deer distribution and abundance under various culling scenarios. This project will drive both high-impact publications and, because this project builds extensive collaborations with government agencies, the results will inform the management of feral deer in South Australia.

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Categories : agriculture, alien species, Australia, conservation, harvest, invasive species, management, mathematics, modelling, South Australia, southern Australia

Video explainer — nasty alien species in Australia

15 09 2021

You know you’ve made it to the big time in Australia when Behind The News does a story on your research. Practically every kid in Australia watches the show at some point during their school years.

Although this was produced last month, I thought I’d post the entire 4-minute video here for your viewing pleasure.

When you popularise your research story for kids, it really gets the message across well.

Thank you, Natasha and BTN for this opportunity.


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Categories : alien species, cat, conservation, economics, environmental economics, fox, invasive species

It’s a tough time for young conservation scientists

24 08 2021

Sure, it’s a tough time for everyone, isn’t it? But it’s a lot worse for the already disadvantaged, and it’s only going to go downhill from here. I suppose that most people who read this blog can certainly think of myriad ways they are, in fact, still privileged and very fortunate (I know that I am).

Nonetheless, quite a few of us I suspect are rather ground down by the onslaught of bad news, some of which I’ve been responsible for perpetuating myself. Add lock downs, dwindling job security, and the prospect of dying tragically due to lung infection, many have become exasperated.

I once wrote that being a conservation scientist is a particularly depressing job, because in our case, knowledge is a source of despair. But as I’ve shifted my focus from ‘preventing disaster’ to trying to lessen the degree of future shittyness, I find it easier to get out of bed in the morning.

What can we do in addition to shifting our focus to making the future a little less shitty than it could otherwise be? I have a few tips that you might find useful:

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Categories : Australia, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, conservation ecology, decline, deforestation, disease, ecology, economics, education, environmental economics, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, fire, flood, governance, habitat loss, health, human overpopulation, invasive species, management, mathematics, modelling, poverty, prioritisation, research, science, sustainability, threatened species

Pest plants and animals cost Australia around $25 billion a year — and it will get worse

2 08 2021
AAP

Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University and Andrew Hoskins, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Shamefully, Australia has one of the highest extinction rates in the world.
And the number one threat to our species is invasive or “alien” plants and animals.

But invasive species don’t just cause extinctions and biodiversity loss – they also create a serious economic burden. Our research, published today, reveals invasive species have cost the Australian economy at least A$390 billion in the last 60 years alone.

Our paper – the most detailed assessment of its type ever published in this country – also reveals feral cats are the worst invasive species in terms of total costs, followed by rabbits and fire ants.

Without urgent action, Australia will continue to lose billions of dollars every year on invasive species.

Feral cats are Australia’s costliest invasive species. Source: Adobe Stock/240188862

Huge economic burden

Invasive species are those not native to a particular ecosystem. They are introduced either by accident or on purpose and become pests.

Some costs involve direct damage to agriculture, such as insects or fungi destroying fruit. Other examples include measures to control invasive species like feral cats and cane toads, such as paying field staff and buying fuel, ammunition, traps and poisons.

Our previous research put the global cost of invasive species at A$1.7 trillion. But this is most certainly a gross underestimate because so many data are missing.

Read more:
Attack of the alien invaders: pest plants and animals leave a frightening $1.7 trillion bill

As a wealthy nation, Australia has accumulated more reliable cost data than most other regions. These costs have increased exponentially over time – up to sixfold each decade since the 1970s.

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Categories : agriculture, alien species, Australia, biodiversity, buffalo, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, dingo, disease, ecology, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental economics, environmental policy, extinction, Flinders University, health, human-wildlife conflict, impact, invasive species, kangaroo, mammal, management, monitoring, predator

‘Living’ figures

8 07 2021

Have you ever constructed a database and then published the findings, only to realise that after the time elapsed your database is already obsolete?

This is the reality of scientific information today. There are so many of us doing so many things that information accumulates substantially in months, if not weeks. If you’re a geneticist, this probably happens for many datasets on the order of days.

While our general databasing capacity worldwide has improved enormously over the last decade with the transition to fully online and web-capable interactivity, the world of scientific publication still generally lags behind the tech. But there is a better way to communicate dynamic, evolving database results to the public.

Enter the ‘living figure’, which is a simple-enough concept where a published figure remains dynamic as its underlying database is updated.

We have, in fact, just published such a living figure based on our paper earlier this year where we reported the global costs of invasive species.

That paper was published based on version 1 of the InvaCost database, but a mere three months after publication, InvaCost is already at version 4.

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Categories : alien species, biodiversity, conservation, economics, environmental economics, invasive species

… some (models) are useful

8 06 2021

As someone who writes a lot of models — many for applied questions in conservation management (e.g., harvest quotas, eradication targets, minimum viable population sizes, etc.), and supervises people writing even more of them, I’ve had many different experiences with their uptake and implementation by management authorities.

Some of those experiences have involved catastrophic failures to influence any management or policy. One particularly painful memory relates to a model we wrote to assist with optimising approaches to eradicate (or at least, reduce the densities of) feral animals in Kakadu National Park. We even wrote the bloody thing in Visual Basic (horrible coding language) so people could run the module in Excel. As far as I’m aware, no one ever used it.

Others have been accepted more readily, such as a shark-harvest model, which (I think, but have no evidence to support) has been used to justify fishing quotas, and one we’ve done recently for the eradication of feral pigs on Kangaroo Island (as yet unpublished) has led directly to increased funding to the agency responsible for the programme.

According to Altmetrics (and the online tool I developed to get paper-level Altmetric information quickly), only 3 of the 16 of what I’d call my most ‘applied modelling’ papers have been cited in policy documents:

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Categories : conservation, conservation biology, ecology, economics, environmental economics, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, fisheries, harvest, invasive species, investment, management, mathematics, minimum viable population, modelling, mvp, planning, population dynamics, population viability analysis, PVA, research, science, species distribution model

Killing (feral) cats quickly (and efficiently)

20 05 2021

I’m pleased to announce the publication of a paper led by Kathryn Venning (KV) that was derived from her Honours work in the lab. Although she’s well into her PhD on an entirely different topic, I’m overjoyed that she persevered and saw this work to publication.

Here, killa, killa, killa, killa …

As you probably already know, feral cats are a huge problem in Australia. The are probably the primary reason Australia leads the world in mammal extinctions in particular, and largely the reason so many re-introduction attempts of threatened marsupials fail miserably only after a few years.

Feral cats occupy every habitat in the country, from the high tropics to the deserts, and from the mountains to the sea. They adapt to the cold just as easily as they adapt to the extreme heat, and they can eat just about anything that moves, from invertebrates to the carcases of much larger animals that they scavenge.

Cats are Australia’s bane, but you can’t help but be at least a little impressed with their resilience.

Still, we have to try our best to get rid of them where we can, or at least reduce their densities to the point where their ecological damage is limited.

Typically, the only efficient and cost-effective way to do that is via lethal control, but by using various means. These can include direct shooting, trapping, aerial poison-baiting, and a new ‘smart’ method of targeted poison delivery via a prototype device known as a Felixer™️. The latter are particularly useful for passive control in areas where ground-shooting access is difficult.

A live Felixer™️ deployed on Kangaroo Island (photo: CJA Bradshaw 2020)

A few years back the federal government committed what might seem like a sizeable amount of money to ‘eradicate’ cats from Australia. Yeah, good luck with that, although the money has been allocated to several places where cat reduction and perhaps even eradication is feasible. Namely, on islands.

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Categories : alien species, Australia, cat, conservation, conservation biology, decline, demography, ecology, economics, environmental economics, extinction, harvest, human-wildlife conflict, invasive species, investment, mammal, management, modelling, planning, population dynamics, population viability analysis, predation, predator, research, restoration, South Australia, southern Australia, threatened species

Attack of the alien invaders: pest plants and animals leave a frightening $1.7 trillion bill

19 04 2021

Shutterstock

They’re one of the most damaging environmental forces on Earth. They’ve colonised pretty much every place humans have set foot on the planet. Yet you might not even know they exist.

We’re talking about alien species. Not little green extraterrestrials, but invasive plants and animals not native to an ecosystem and which become pests. They might be plants from South America, starfish from Africa, insects from Europe or birds from Asia.

These species can threaten the health of plants and animals, including humans. And they cause huge economic harm. Our research, recently published in the journal Nature, puts a figure on that damage. We found that globally, invasive species cost US$1.3 trillion (A$1.7 trillion) in money lost or spent between 1970 and 2017.

The cost is increasing exponentially over time. And troublingly, most of the cost relates to the damage and losses invasive species cause. Meanwhile, far cheaper control and prevention measures are often ignored.

Yellow crazy ants attacking a gecko
Yellow crazy ants, such as these attacking a gecko, are among thousands of invasive species causing ecological and economic havoc. Dinakarr, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

An expansive toll

Invasive species have been invading foreign territories for centuries. They hail from habitats as diverse as tropical forests, dry savannas, temperate lakes and cold oceans.

They arrived because we brought them — as pets, ornamental plants or as stowaways on our holidays or via commercial trade.

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Categories : Africa, agriculture, alien species, Australia, biodiversity, conservation, disease, environmental economics, environmental policy, fish, health, invasive species, management, predator

One trillion dollars!

1 04 2021

Or thereabouts.

Let’s step back to 2015. In a former life when I was at another institution, I had the immense fortune and pleasure to spend six months on sabbatical in a little village just south of Paris working with my friend and colleague, Franck Courchamp, at Université Paris-Sud (now Université Paris-Saclay).

Sure, I felt a bit jammy living there with my daughter in a beautiful house just down the street from two mouth-watering pâtisseries and three different open marchés. We ate well. We picked mushrooms on the weekends or visited local châteaux. We went into the city and visited overwhelmingly beautiful museums at our leisure. We drank good champagne (well, I did, not my eight-year old). We had communal raclettes.

But of course, I was primarily there to do research with Franck and his lab, despite the obvious perks.

While I busied myself with several tasks while there, one of our main outputs was to put together the world’s first global database of the costs of invasive insects, which we subsequently published in 2016.

But that was only the beginning. With funding that started off the process with insects, Franck persevered and hired postdocs and took on more students to build the most comprehensive database of all invasive species ever compiled — InvaCost.

I cannot stress enough how massive an undertaking this was. It’s not simply a big list of all the cost estimates in existence, it’s also a detailed assessment of cost reliability, standardisation, and contextualisation. I’m not sure I would have had the courage to do this myself.

While the database itself has already been published, today we are pleased to announce the publication in Nature of the main results — High and rising economic costs of biological invasions worldwide — led by Christophe Diagne (one of the nicest people I’ve ever met), and co-authored by Boris Leroy, Anne-Charlotte Vaissière, Rodolphe Gozlan, David Roiz, Ivan Jarić, Jean-Michel Salles, me, and Franck Courchamp (of course).

Herein we described how the economic costs of invasive alien species accumulated since 1970 are tremendous, and that they have been steadily increasing over time.

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Recreational hunting, conservation and livelihoods: no clear evidence trail

2 03 2021
Enrico Di Minin, University of Helsinki; Anna Haukka, University of Helsinki; Anna Hausmann, University of Helsinki; Christoph Fink, University of Helsinki; Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University; Gonzalo Cortés-Capano, University of Helsinki; Hayley Clements, Stellenbosch University, and Ricardo A. Correia, University of Helsinki
In some African countries, lion trophy hunting is legal. Riaan van den Berg

In sub-Saharan Africa, almost 1,400,000 km² of land spread across many countries — from Kenya to South Africa — is dedicated to “trophy” (recreational) hunting. This type of hunting can occur on communal, private, and state lands.

The hunters – mainly foreign “tourists” from North America and Europe – target a wide variety of species, including lions, leopards, antelopes, buffalo, elephants, zebras, hippopotamus and giraffes.

Read more: Big game: banning trophy hunting could do more harm than good

Debates centred on the role of recreational hunting in supporting nature conservation and local people’s livelihoods are among the most polarising in conservation today.

On one hand, people argue that recreational hunting generates funding that can support livelihoods and nature conservation. It’s estimated to generate US$200 million annually in sub-Saharan Africa, although others dispute the magnitude of this contribution.

On the other hand, hunting is heavily criticised on ethical and moral grounds and as a potential threat to some species.

Evidence for taking a particular side in the debate is still unfortunately thin. In our recently published research, we reviewed the large body of scientific literature on recreational hunting from around the world, which meant we read and analysed more than 1000 peer-reviewed papers.

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Conservation paradox – the pros and cons of recreational hunting

20 02 2021
The recovery of species such as mountain zebra (Equus zebra) was partly supported by the economic benefits generated by trophy hunting. © Dr Hayley Clements

Through the leadership of my long-time friend and collaborator, Enrico Di Minin of the Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science, as well as the co-leadership of my (now) new colleague, Dr Hayley Clements, I’m pleased to report our new paper in One Earth — ‘Consequences of recreational hunting for biodiversity conservation and livelihoods‘.

My father was a hunter, and by proxy so was I when I was a lad. I wasn’t really a ‘good’ hunter in the sense that I rarely bagged my quarry, but during my childhood not only did I fail to question the morality of recreational hunting, I really thought that in fact it was by and large an important cultural endeavour.

It’s interesting how conditioned we become as children, for I couldn’t possibly conceive of hunting a wild, indigenous species for my own personal satisfaction now. I find the process not only morally and ethically reprehensible, I also think that most species don’t need the extra stress in an already environmentally stressed world.

I admit that I do shoot invasive European rabbits and foxes on my small farm from time to time — to reduce the grazing and browsing pressure on my trees from the former, and the predation pressure on the chooks from the latter. Of course, we eat the rabbits, but I tend just to bury the foxes. My dual perspective on the general issue of hunting in a way mirrors the two sides of the recreational hunting issue we report in our latest paper.

Wild boar (Sus scrofus). Photo: Valentin Panzirsch, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT, via Wikimedia Commons

I want to be clear here that our paper focuses exclusively on recreational hunting, and especially the hunting of charismatic species for their trophies. The activity is more than just a little controversial, for it raises many ethical and moral concerns at the very least. Yet, recreational hunting is frequently suggested as a way to conserve nature and support local people’s livelihoods. 

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Time for a ‘cold shower’ about our ability to avoid a ghastly future

13 01 2021

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,’ said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Frodo Baggins and Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

Today, 16 high-profile scientists and I published what I describe as a ‘cold shower’ about society’s capacity to avoid a ghastly future of warfare, disease, inequality, persecution, extinction, and suffering.

And it goes way beyond just the plight of biodiversity.

No one who knows me well would mistake me for an optimist, try as I might to use my colleagues’ and my research for good. Instead, I like to describe myself as a ‘realist’. However, this latest paper has made even my gloomier past outputs look downright hopeful.

And before being accused of sensationalism, let me make one thing abundantly clear — I sincerely hope that what we describe in this paper does not come to pass. Not even I am that masochistic.

I am also supportive of every attempt to make the world a better place, to sing about our successes, regroup effectively from our failures, and maintain hope in spite of evidence to the contrary.

But failing to acknowledge the magnitude and the gravity of the problems facing us is not just naïve, it is positively dangerous and potentially fatal.

It is this reason alone that prompted us to write our new paper “Underestimating the challenges of
avoiding a ghastly future” just published in the new journal, Frontiers in Conservation Science.

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