The staff and board of the North American Invasive Species Management Association review invasive species headlines each month. This helps us stay on top of trends and further our mission to support, promote, and empower invasive species prevention and management in North America. We then share invasive species news most relevant for people who manage terrestrial and aquatic invasive species across the the United States, Canada, Mexico and the world.
Prevention, Outreach and Education
Pennsylvania Invasive Species Projects StoryMap
Pennsylvania — Explore on Esri StoryMaps
Updates from member organizations of the Governor’s Invasive Species Council highlighting their invasive species efforts.
The Ants, Bees and Wasps of Canada, Alaska and Greenland: A Checklist of 9250 Species
North America, Greenland — Read on Phys.org
These distributional lists provide essential baseline information required prior to undertaking studies to introduce biological control agents of invasive pests that may have escaped their native, natural enemies when they arrived in North America.
New Research
Two Invasive Beachgrasses are Hybridizing
Oregon — Read on Science Daily
The findings are important in the context of coastal vulnerability to the effects of climate change, including increasing danger from flooding and erosion from storms and rising water.
Invasive Species Costing Africa $3.66 tn a Year: Study
Africa — Read on Phys.org
The team studied open source and peer-reviewed literature on species that were not native to the continent but had caused crop losses to assess the economic impact on yield, management and the cost of research.
Insect and Animal Invasions Can Teach us About COVID-19
Global — Read on Phys.org
An investigation by an international team of scientists, including the University of Leeds’ School of Biology, says the emergence of human diseases share many of the same challenges as species invasions and that studying them together could provide solutions.
Invasive Species Alters Marine Community, Interferes in Post-disaster Recovery
North Carolina — Read on Phys.org
Clavelina oblonga, an invasive marine fouling species, not only reduces diversity in communities it invades, it also interferes in their recovery following natural disasters—a process known as “succession.”
Detection, Management and Control
Oregon to Set ‘Murder Hornet’ Traps on Washington Border
Oregon — Read on Portland Tribune
As a research team from UC Davis discovered, invasive species don’t go quietly. Nor do they react well to full-on assaults. In fact, years of digilent and costly crab removal from a Bay Area lagoon went terribly wrong, triggering an unexpected population explosion.
Conversations
Nectar Thieves: How Invasive Bumblebees Threaten Hummingbirds
Global — Read on The Revelator
This excerpt from a new book describes how the invaders may be contributing to the decline of native Chilean bumblebee species, through competition and, perhaps, through diseases they carry to which native bumblebees have little or no resistance.
Return the National Parks to the Tribes
North America — Read on The Atlantic
Through hard practice—and in the face of centuries of legal, political, and physical struggle—Indian communities have become adept at the art of governance. And tribes have a hard-earned understanding of the ways in which land empowers the people it sustains.
