Invasive species removals and scale - contrasting island and mainland experience

Abstract

The removal or eradication of invasive alien species is increasingly used as a conservation tool. New legislation, for example the European Union’s Invasive Alien Species Regulation, will also place increasing responsibilities on states to remove or eradicate high risk species. Both of these considerations are driving an increased number of management programmes at increasing scales and there is a need to understand how the costs and constraints change in relation to scale. A large number of published eradications have been based on islands, often at relatively small scales, while a small number of larger programmes have been based on mainland experience. There is a need to pull together these diff erent sources of evidence, to support an assessment across a wider range of scales than can be achieved by considering islands or mainland eradications in isolation.