Non-native Species, Ecosystem Services, and Human Well-Being

Abstract

The management of biological invasions is necessary, not only to sustain biodiversity and the environment, but also to safeguard productive sectors. Non-native species, whether weeds in crops, pests in forests, or parasites in livestock, can heavily impact economic productivity in the agricultural, forestry, and fisheries sectors. Furthermore, many non-native species are vectors of human diseases and thus pose a serious threat to public health. In the last decade, there has also been increasing interest in the threat that some non-native species pose to social activities, such as leisure or ecotourism. Much of the focus of studies evaluating the impacts of the introduction and spread of non-native species has been on their effects on the environment, such as impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem properties, but translating these impacts into monetary value, especially when addressing cultural and aesthetic values, can be difficult. Yet independently of whether impacts fall most heavily on the environment, agriculture, or society, the costs of non-native species are incurred at every stage of the invasion process: from prevention and early warning, to control and local eradication, and to increased damage costs. In this book, we follow the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment framework to encapsulate the ecological and socioeconomic impacts of non-native species on a wide range of ecosystem services, thereby providing a comprehensive description of the impacts of non-native species from all five kingdoms of life across all categories of ecosystems.