Pests on the move: Taking climate change into account in Pest Risk Assessments

ByCourtney Glancy

Darren J. Kriticos (1), Rebecca M.B. Harris (2)

1 CSIRO, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, darren.kriticos@csiro.au, @darrenkriticos

2 Antarctic Climate Ecosystems CRC, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 80, Hobart 7001

Bioclimatic modelling is a central tool in pest risk assessment, contributing directly to understanding risks of a pest establishing in a new environment, and to estimating the impacts it might have.  In recognizing that climate change is altering the potential ranges of species, and that species invasions typically bring about irreversible changes, PRA frameworks have recently started including consideration of climate change scenarios.  However, the emerging analytical frameworks provide no guidance to analysts on how to handle the future climate risk scenarios and the Intergovernmental Standards for Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures is mute on the issue.  The situation is fraught.  The costs from pest invasions can be significant.  There are vast, irreducible uncertainties in the future climates.  Jurisdictions need to be mindful that trade restrictions to prevent a threat that is emerging due to global warming may be perceived as a technical barrier to trade, and may be challenged in the World Trade Organisation court.  If a pest threat is perceived, biosecurity managers will want firm guidance on how to manage the threats.  Fortunately, there is a prudent framework for dealing with this type of situation.  We describe the framework, and demonstrate it with a case study.

Similar Posts

Survey of Wildlife Resources as Basis for Ecotourism Development at Ebomi Lake, Ondo State, Nigeria

ByCourtney Glancy

Mr Opemipo Alaba Ijose1 1Department Of Wildlife And Ecotourism Management, University Of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria Ensuring local community support for biodiversity hotspot is viewed as a paramount ingredient for conservation and sustainability. This is advocated for community based ecotourism. Ebomi Lake (EL) is a natural scenic area with potentials for income-generating activities and capacity for…

Introducing the open-access COMPADRE and COMADRE databases

ByCourtney Glancy

Dr Pol Capdevila Lanzaco, Rob Salguero-Gomez, Owen Jones, Judy Che-Castaldo and Haydee Hernandez Yanez University of Oxford   Description: Demography is central to ecology. Most questions related to conservation biology, fundamental and applied ecology, and evolution can be tackled with a demographic approach. This workshop will introduce the open-access COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database and COMADRE Animal Matrix Database, which…

|

Spatial Planning of area-based conservation for climate change: Terrestrial and Marine perspectives

ByCourtney Glancy

Lee Hannah, Patrick Roehrdanz Species on the Move (SOTM)  present unique challenges for protected areas and other area-based conservation efforts that are fixed in space.  Nearly a decade of research now shows that area-based conservation deployed in the right places can minimize extinctions due to SOTM.  But multiple methods of planning conservation for SOTM have…

Abrupt and non-uniform movement of thermal habitat boundaries in a warming world

ByCourtney Glancy

Sen Gupta, Alex (1) ,van Sebille, Erik (2) , Brown, Jaclyn .N (3), Jourdain, Nicolas .C (4), Ganachaud, Alexandre (5), Vergés, Adriana (6) Climate Change Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, sengupta@unsw.edu.au Grantham Institue, Imperial College London,UK,…

|

The costs of poor range shift detections – how can we sharpen our lens?

ByCourtney Glancy

Jennifer Sunday Department of Biology, McGill University   Detecting range shifts requires repeated surveys across space and long durations of time. As such, our key datasets have been opportunistic, often coarse in spatial and temporal grain, and difficult to synthesize coherently. Yet the promise of range shift detections remains that systematic observations at high spatial…

|

Transforming understanding of when and where species move in response to environmental change

ByCourtney Glancy

Prof Jeremy Kerr1, Mr Peter Soroye1 1University Of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada It has taken more than a century of collecting primary species observations to identify species’ approximate geographical ranges and seasonal timing. Yet, rapid environmental changes are altering such patterns more quickly than new data can be assembled. Yet, rapid emergence of citizen science programs…