Citizen science can enhance strategies to detect and manage invasive forest pests and pathogens

Abstract

Incorporating a citizen science approach into biological invasion management strategies can enhance biosecurity. Many citizen science projects exist to strengthen the management of forest pest and pathogen invasions within both pre- and post-border scenarios. Besides the value of citizen science initiatives for early detection and monitoring, they also contribute widely to raising awareness, informing decisions about eradication and containment efforts to minimize pest and pathogen spread, and even finding resistant plant material for restoration of landscapes degraded by disease. Overall, many projects actively engage citizens in the different stages of forest pest and pathogen invasions, but it is unclear how they work together across all stages of the entire biological invasion process to enhance biosecurity. Here we provide examples of citizen science projects for each stage of the biological invasion process, discuss options for developing a citizen science program to enhance biosecurity, and suggest approaches for integrating citizen science into biosecurity measures to help safeguard forest resources in the future.

Opportunities for Biodiversity Conservation via Urban Ecosystem Regeneration

“…As an added incentive, native vegetation is less likely to require supplemental watering, a strong incentive in a world where almost a billion urbanites are already water limited, a number expected to double by 2050 [99]. Citizen science, touted as effective in addressing invasion in natural habitats [100], offers an avenue for harnessing the interest of urban residents and getting them better engaged in exurban conservation issues as well (e.g., [101]).…”

The power of citizen science to advance fungal conservation

“…It should be noted that absence‐only data can also be a valuable contribution to conservation. After Sweden's ash populations were devastated by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus , the Rädda Asken (Save the Ash) CS program was created to locate healthy trees that lacked signs of H. fraxineus infection, successfully identifying hundreds of genotypes for resistance breeding (https://raddaasken.nu/en/home; Hulbert et al., 2023).…”

Citizen science is a vital partnership for invasive alien species management and research

“…Citizen science has been applied to IAS across terrestrial, 22 , 23 freshwater, 24 and marine 25 ecosystems. To date, however, much of the focus of IAS citizen science (including the focus of policy) has been on early detection of IAS and surveillance of spread 2 , 10 , 26 , 27 (see the section “Citizen science can be used across the biological invasion process”).…”