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Fletcher CS, Westcott DA, Murphy HT, et al. Managing breaches of containment and eradication of invasive plant populations. J Appl Ecol. 2014;52(1):59-68doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12361.
Fletcher, C. S., Westcott, D. A., Murphy, H. T., Grice, A. C., & Clarkson, J. R. (2015). Managing breaches of containment and eradication of invasive plant populations. The Journal of applied ecology, 52(1), 59-68. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12361
Fletcher, Cameron S, et al. "Managing breaches of containment and eradication of invasive plant populations." The Journal of applied ecology vol. 52,1 (2015): 59-68. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12361
Fletcher CS, Westcott DA, Murphy HT, Grice AC, Clarkson JR. Managing breaches of containment and eradication of invasive plant populations. J Appl Ecol. 2015 Feb;52(1):59-68. doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12361. Epub 2014 Nov 21. PMID: 25678718; PMCID: PMC4312900.
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J Appl Ecol. 2015 Feb;52(1):59-68. doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12361. Epub 2014 Nov 21.

Managing breaches of containment and eradication of invasive plant populations.

The Journal of applied ecology

Cameron S Fletcher, David A Westcott, Helen T Murphy, Anthony C Grice, John R Clarkson

Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Land & Water Flagship, CSIRO Atherton PO Box 780, Atherton, Qld, 4883, Australia.
  2. CSIRO Land & Water Flagship, Australian Tropical Sciences and Innovation Precinct Private Mail Bag PO, Aitkenvale, Qld, 4814, Australia.
  3. Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sport and Racing, Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service PO Box 156, Mareeba, Qld, 4880, Australia.

PMID: 25678718 PMCID: PMC4312900 DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12361

Abstract

Containment can be a viable strategy for managing invasive plants, but it is not always cheaper than eradication. In many cases, converting a failed eradication programme to a containment programme is not economically justified. Despite this, many contemporary invasive plant management strategies invoke containment as a fallback for failed eradication, often without detailing how containment would be implemented.We demonstrate a generalized analysis of the costs of eradication and containment, applicable to any plant invasion for which infestation size, dispersal distance, seed bank lifetime and the economic discount rate are specified. We estimate the costs of adapting eradication and containment in response to six types of breach and calculate under what conditions containment may provide a valid fallback to a breached eradication programme.We provide simple, general formulae and plots that can be applied to any invasion and show that containment will be cheaper than eradication only when the size of the occupied zone exceeds a multiple of the dispersal distance determined by seed bank longevity and the discount rate. Containment becomes proportionally cheaper than eradication for invaders with smaller dispersal distances, longer lived seed banks, or for larger discount rates.Both containment and eradication programmes are at risk of breach. Containment is less exposed to risk from reproduction in the 'occupied zone' and three types of breach that lead to a larger 'occupied zone', but more exposed to one type of breach that leads to a larger 'buffer zone'.For a well-specified eradication programme, only the three types of breach leading to reproduction in or just outside the buffer zone can justify falling back to containment, and only if the expected costs of eradication and containment were comparable before the breach.

Keywords: biological invasions; breach; containment; eradication; management strategy; net present value; weeds

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