Economic Impacts of Non-Native Forest Insects in the Continental United States

By J. Aukema, B. Leung, K. Kovacs, Corey J. Chivers, K. Britton, J. Englin, S. Frankel, Robert G. Haight, T. Holmes, Andrew M. Liebhold and 2 more. PLoS ONE, 2011

597 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Reliable estimates of the impacts and costs of biological invasions are critical to developing credible management, trade and regulatory policies. Worldwide, forests and urban trees provide important ecosystem services as well as economic and social benefits, but are threatened by non-native insects. More than 450 non-native forest insects are established in the United States but estimates of broad-scale economic impacts associated with these species are largely unavailable. We developed a novel modeling approach that maximizes the use of available data, accounts for multiple sources of uncertainty, and provides cost estimates for three major feeding guilds of non-native forest insects. For each guild, we calculated the economic damages for five cost categories and we estimated the probability of future introductions of damaging pests. We found that costs are largely borne by homeowners and municipal governments. Wood- and phloem-boring insects are anticipated to cause the largest economic impacts by annually inducing nearly $1.7 billion in local government expenditures and approximately $830 million in lost residential property values. Given observations of new species, there is a 32% chance that another highly destructive borer species will invade the U.S. in the next 10 years. Our damage estimates provide a crucial but previously missing component of cost-benefit analyses to evaluate policies and management options intended to reduce species introductions. The modeling approach we developed is highly flexible and could be similarly employed to estimate damages in other countries or natural resource sectors.

Subfields: Food Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/35b9e0ae405e28cb68bef5a38698c8511caaf937

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Citations in the corpus

Natural enemies and environmental factors affecting the population dynamics of the gypsy moth (2013, background): “The recently estimated costs of loss caused by the gypsy moth and other foliage feeders in the USA and the government expenditures to manage these pests range between 4 and 120 million dollars annually (see Aukema et al. 2011).”
Increasing forest loss worldwide from invasive pests requires new trade regulations (2014, background): “In addition to tightening trade restrictions for live material, trade in the movement of plant products such as logs, wood chips, and wooden pallets must also be reduced (Aukema et al. 2011; Liebhold et al. 2012).”
Ecology of forest insect invasions (2017, background): “Collectively their estimate of damages exceeded 4 billion USD annually, even though impacts on values such as ecosystem services were not considered (Aukema et al. 2011).”
Individual and Cooperative Management of Invasive Species in Human-mediated Landscapes (2014, background): “Invasive species are one of the leading drivers of global environmental change, and cause large ecological and economic impacts (Olson 2006; Aukema et al. 2011).”
Urban trees: bridge-heads for forest pest invasions and sentinels for early detection (2017, unknown): “As a consequence, the impacts of invasive species have not been adequately accounted for in trade policies (Aukema et al. 2011).”
Live plant imports: the major pathway for forest insect and pathogen invasions of the US (2012, background): “Only 12.5% of borers (the most costly insect guild; Aukema et al. 2011) are believed to have entered via live plants (WebTable 3).”
Economics of Harmful Invasive Species: A Review (2014, unknown): “7 billion) [46].”
Endophytes vs tree pathogens and pests: can they be used as biological control agents to improve tree health? (2019, background): “Some non-native pests are highly destructive and can cause substantial damage to forests and urban/suburban trees (Aukema et al. 2011).”
Hemlock woolly adelgid in the southern Appalachians: Control strategies, ecological impacts, and potential management responses (2013, background): “Hemlocks are also prized and valued for their visual beauty in both forest and urban settings (Holmes et al., 2010; Aukema et al., 2011).”
Benefits of invasion prevention: Effect of time lags, spread rates, and damage persistence (2015, methodology): “For example, Aukema et al. (2011) estimated the annual impacts of individual invading forest insect species during “typical” 10-year periods.”
Differential persistence of blue ash and white ash following emerald ash borer invasion (2012, background): “planipennis is the most costly forest insect to invade the US, with annual economic impacts in excess of US$900 billion (Aukema et al. 2011; Kovacs et al. 2011).”