Biological invasions in France: Alarming costs and even more alarming knowledge gaps

Abstract

The ever-increasing number of introduced species profoundly threatens global biodiversity. While the ecological and evolutionary consequences of invasive alien species are receiving increasing attention, their economic impacts have largely remained understudied, especially in France. Here, we aimed at providing a general overview of the monetary losses (damages caused by) and expenditures (management of) associated with invasive alien species in France. This country has a long history of alien species presence, partly due to its long-standing global trade activities, highly developed tourism, and presence of overseas territories in different regions of the globe, resulting in a conservative minimum of 2,750 introduced and invasive alien species. By synthesizing for the first time the monetary losses and expenditures incurred by invasive alien species in Metropolitan France and French overseas territories, we obtained 1,583 cost records for 98 invasive alien species. We found that they caused a conservative total amount ranging between US$ 1,280 million and 11,535 million in costs over the period 1993–2018. We extrapolated costs for species invading France, for which costs were reported in other countries but not in France, which yielded an additional cost ranging from US$ 151 to 3,030 millions. Damage costs were nearly eight times higher than management expenditure. Insects, and in particular the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus and the yellow fever mosquito Ae. aegypti, totalled very high economic costs, followed by non-graminoid terrestrial flowering and aquatic plants (Ambrosia artemisiifolia, Ludwigia sp. and Lagarosiphon major). Over 90% of alien species currently recorded in France had no costs reported in the literature, resulting in high biases in taxonomic, regional and activity sector coverages. To conclude, we report alarming costs and even more alarming knowledge gaps. Our results should raise awareness of the importance of biosecurity and biosurveillance in France, and beyond, as well as the crucial need for better reporting and documentation of cost data.

Economic costs of invasive alien species in Spain

“…resulted in a high percentage of cost entries reported in Spanish (98%), consistent with findings in some other European countries that reported costs in their native language (e.g. 97% for France, Renault et al 2021; 69% for Germany, Haubrock et al 2021b). For instance, in Central and South America over 40% of cost estimates came from Spanish and Portuguese sources (Heringer et al 2021); and in Ecuador 51.8% of the costs were reported in Spanish (Ballesteros-Mejia et al 2021).…”

Economic costs of invasive alien species in Mexico

“…However, InvaCost only reported cost data for 35 species, suggesting a huge underestimation of invasion costs in Mexico -since costs are available for only 10% of known IAS. This proportion is similar to that reported in other studies, which have found that less than 10% of invaders have reported costs: Germany , France (Renault et al 2021), the United Kingdom, (Cuthbert et al 2021b), Asia (Liu et al 2021), Argentina (Duboscq-Carra et al 2021 or Australia (Bradshaw et al 2021). Even if one cannot conclude that actual costs should be ten times higher, the very high overall economic costs we found for only 10% of IAS in Mexico hints at a real, total cost that is staggering.…”

“…According to Contreras-Balderas and Gutiérrez (2009), at least 36 of the IUCN 100 of the world's worst IAS (van der Weijden et al 2007) are established in Mexico, and many of them were included in the present study, such as Eichhornia crassipes, Arundo donax, L. catesbeianus, Felis catus, Capra hircus, Mus musculus, Rattus rattus, among others, and are particularly economically costly (Cuthbert et al 2021a). E. crassipes and A. donax were also among the costliest species in Spain (Angulo et al 2021b), while mammals appear to be also very costly in other countries such as France (Rattus and Felis, (Renault et al 2021)), Japan (Rattus, (Watari et al 2021)) or Ecuador (Capra and Rattus, (Ballesteros-Mejia et al 2021)), mainly due to the management of these species in islands (e.g. invasive rodents, (Diagne et al 2021a)).…”

“…Moreover, increased investment should be aimed at controlling vector mosquitoes which substantially damage the health sector through human diseases (Medlock et al 2012); joint costs between Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus caused the greatest economic impacts in Mexico. These species caused high costs also in other American countries such as Ecuador (Ballesteros-Mejia et al 2021), Argentina (Duboscq-Carra et al 2021 or even in Central and South America (Heringer et al 2021) and in the French territories located in the Americas (Renault et al 2021).…”

Biological invasions in Singapore and Southeast Asia: data gaps fail to mask potentially massive economic costs

“…First, we showed that this is a general pattern in the region, with Singapore amongst the countries with most cost entries in Southeast Asia. Second, national or regional studies on the economic costs of biological invasions outside this region also consistently reported only between 2% and 10% of invasive alien species having recorded costs, for example, Argentina (Duboscq-Carra et al 20201), Asia (Liu et al 2021), Australia (Bradshaw et al 2021), France (Renault et al 2021), Germany (Haubrock et al 2021c), Mexico (Rico-Sánchez et al 2021 and United Kingdom (Cuthbert et al 2021a).…”