Integrating Biological Control into Conservation Practice

What is it about?

Invasive species are a leading threat to native ecosystems. Biological control is the applied science that tests and subsequently releases appropriate highly-specialized insects predators, parasites or diseases to suppress populations of the most damaging invasive species. This approach has a long and often successful history as part of integrated pest management in agriculture but has also been successfully applied to invasive pests in wildlands. In particular the ability of biological controls to reproduce and spread on their own can make them much more effective at suppressing invasive species across the landscape than conventional mechanical and chemical methods. Despite that success, nature conservationists have been reluctant to embrace biological control because biological control involves releasing a non-native species to suppress another non-native species which inherently involves some risks. In this book, we examine these risks and successes in contrast to the alternatives through case studies and reviews from multiple perspectives. We conclude with proposals for how nature conservation could benefit from a closer collaboration with biological control scientists in the future, a future in which invasive non-native species are having an ever increasing impact on native ecosystems.

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