Indicate which actions have been carried out to implement this Resolution :
Convene stakeholders/Networking
Education/Communication/Raising awareness
Scientific/technical activities
Describe the results/achievements of the actions taken:
Operative 1 – EICAT Union wide consultation & data integration.
During 2018, the IUCN Secretariat & SSC ISSG analysed the results of the IUCN wide consultation, processed the comments, and developed responses to all questions raised. In parallel to this to the Chair of the SSC ISSG established an EICAT Authority which incorporated nine ISSG members, to support the consistent application of EICAT and to finalise the EICAT standard in response to the consultation. A workshop was held in Switzerland with two EICAT Authority members and some users to improve the standard and develop a template for reporting.
In terms of integrating the outcomes of EICAT, there has been some progress in implementing the strategy developed in 2017 to integrate all IUCN SSC ISSG invasive species databases into one, and incorporating EICAT into the Global Invasive Species Database. The SSC ISSG databases are supported by IUCN member Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale (ISPRA). More work to finalise this integration is required in 2019.
Operative 3 – Fostering adoption of EICAT.
In 2018 EICAT was adopted as an indicator for the assessment of the status of alien species in South Africa, see South Africa’s first national report on the status of biological invasions (SANBI and CIB. 2018). In November 2018, an EICAT training workshop for Swiss national authorities was run by members of the ISSG (at the request of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment), to evaluate how EICAT can be implemented in the Swiss invasive alien species strategy. Also in 2018 the IUCN Mediterranean Office with support from the SSC ISSG ran an EICAT training and assessment workshop focusing on local scale assessments of selected freshwater species in Spain, and a training course and workshop was held in Melbourne, Australia, to assess Australian alien insects with EICAT.
In addition, EICAT (and the associated Socio-Economic Impact Classification of Alien Taxa, SECIAT) has been presented to a number of conferences in 2018 including; RISCC Symposium (NE Management Network on Invasive species and Climate Change) Amherts, USA, 12 July 2018; IOBC WG Meeting Risks and Benefits of Exotic Biocontrol Agents, Azores, 10-13 September 2018; Neobiota, Dublin, Ireland, 3-6 September 2018; Artsdatabanken IAS Conference. Oslo, Norway, 5 June 2018.
Operative 4 – application of EICAT.
The scientific community has worked closely with the SSC ISSG to apply EICAT in 2018. This has led to a number of peer review publications using EICAT to assess the impacts of alien species groups, including alien gastropods in South Africa (Kesner and Kumschick 2018), feral mammals in South Africa (Hagen and Kumschick 2018), and alien marine fishes in the Eastern Mediterranean (including SECIAT, Galanidi et al. 2018). Additional EICAT assessment completed but not yet published include, bamboos introduced globally, alien grasses in South Africa, and alien snakes globally. Several EICAT assessments are also in progress, for example alien beetles, alien mammals globally, and European alien freshwater fishes (publications in 2019). Planned EICAT assessments to begin in 2019 include alien Vespoidea (wasps), global alien mammals, and European alien beetles.
References:
• Evans et al. 2018. Determinants of data deficiency in the impacts of alien bird species. Ecography,
41: 1401–1410. doi: 10.1111/ecog.03232
• Evans et al. 2018. Identifying the factors that determine the severity and type of alien bird impacts. Diversity and Distributions, 24:800–810. DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12721
• Galanidi, M. et al. 2018. Assessing the socio-economic impacts of priority marine invasive fishes in the Mediterranean with the newly proposed SEICAT methodology. Mediterranean Marine Science, 19(1), 107-123. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/mms.15940
• Hagen, B. and Kumschick, S. 2018. The relevance of using various scoring schemes revealed by an impact assessment of feral mammals. NeoBiota, 38:37-75. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.38.23509
• Kesner, D. and Kumschick, S. 2018. Gastropods alien to South Africa cause severe environmental harm in their global alien ranges across habitats, Ecology and Evolution, DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4385
• SANBI and CIB. 2018. The status of biological invasions and their management in South Africa in 2017. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Kirstenbosch and DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch.
• Vila et al. 2018. A review of impact assessment protocols of non-native plants. Biological Invasions, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-018-1872-
What challenges/obstacles have been encountered in the implementation of this Resolution and how were they overcome :
The primary challenge has been the lack of capacity both within the IUCN Secretariat and the ISSG to process the results of the consultation. This has slowed the desired time frame to respond to the consultees with a revised standard, and propose it to the IUCN Council for adoption. In addition, funding is still required to finalise the database integration and development, so that the results of EICAT can be stored and displayed in the IUCN ISSG Global Invasive Species Database.
Briefly describe what future actions are needed for the implementation of this Resolution:
IUCN ISSG and Secretariat are currently trying to source funds to run a workshop that will bring together the EICAT Authority members to i) finalise the EICAT standard, based on the findings of the consultation and its application over 2018, ii) Finalise a name and logo for EICAT, iii) finalise data integration with the GISD, iv) discuss governance issues. Following the workshop IUCN ISSG & Secretariat will provide the responses to the consultation along with the revised EICAT standard. Once the EICAT standard and name are finalised, and the GISD data structure ready (incorporating EICAT outputs), the EICAT Standard will be submitted to IUCN Council hopefully in late 2019.
Are these actions planned for yet:
