The economic cost of managing invasive species in Australia

By B. Hoffmann, L. Broadhurst. 2016

191 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Like most jurisdictions, Australia is managing a broad range of invasive alien species. Here, we provide the first holistic quantification of how much invasive species impact Australia’s economy, and how much Australia spends on their management. In the 01–02 financial year (June to July), the combined estimated cost (economic losses and control) of invasive species was $9.8 billion, rising to $13.6 billion in the 11–12 financial year. Approximately $726 million of grants funded through the Commonwealth of Australia (i.e. federal funding) was spent on invasive species management and research between 1996 to 2013. In 01–02, total national expenditure on invasive species was $2.31 billion, rising to $3.77 billion in 11–12. Agriculture accounted for more than 90% of the total cost. For 01–02 and 11–12, these expenditure figures equate to $123 and $197 per person per year respectively, as well as 0.32 and 0.29% of GDP respectively. All values provided here are most likely to be underestimates of the real values due to the significant constraints of the data obtainable. Invasive species are clearly a significant economic burden in Australia. Given the extent of the issue of invasive species globally, there is a clear need for better quantifications of both economic loss and expenditure in more jurisdictions, as well as in Australia.

Subfields: Ecology, Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c17bf613754c6f592b95948cee9cdf09df80b0b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. E. Angulo
2. E. García‐Berthou
3. B. Hoffmann
4. C. Diagne
5. F. Courchamp
6. F. Essl
7. C. Bellard
8. R. D. Zenni

In Insect Science

1. E. García‐Berthou
2. B. Hoffmann
3. E. Angulo
4. C. Diagne
5. F. Courchamp
6. F. Essl
7. C. Bellard
8. R. D. Zenni

Citations in the corpus

• Economic costs of invasive alien ants worldwide (2021, background): “Finally, costings to date are very specific to jurisdictions or commodities and are very fragmented geographically (Hoffmann and Broadhurst 2016).”
• The economic costs of biological invasions around the world (2021, background): “of biological invasions for specific countries (e.g., Pimentel et al. 2005; Hoffmann and Broadhurst 2016) or globally (e.”
• Alien flora of Turkey: checklist, taxonomic composition and ecological attributes (2017, unknown): “…the current research on biological invasions, for guiding legislation and code of conducts, as input to decision making and risk assessment and in the formulation of management policies and strategies for nature conservation (Hoffmann and Broadhurst 2016, Woodford et al. 2016, Jacobs et al. 2017).”