Abstract
Non-native species can cause negative impacts when they become invasive. This study entails a comparison of risk classifications for 25 aquatic non-native species using various European risk identification protocols. For 72% of the species assessed, risk classifications were dissimilar between countries. The pair-wise comparison of Freshwater Fish Invasiveness Scoring Kit (FISK) scores of in total 28 fish species from the UK, Flanders (Belgium) and Belarus resulted in a higher correlation for scores of Flanders- Belarus than that of Flanders-UK and Belarus-UK. We conclude that different risk classifications may occur due to differences in (1) national assessment protocols, (2) species-environment matches in various biogeographical regions, and (3) data availability and expert judgement. European standardisation of risk assessment protocols, performance of biogeographical region specific risk classifications and further research on key factors for invasiveness of aquatic ecosystems are recommended.
Highlights
In the last decades, risk assessment has gained much interest as an instrument to support policy makers in their decisions regarding the need for managing non-native species (Anderson et al 2004; Byers et al 2002)
Based on the limited comparisons made in this study, risk classifications of pre-screening tools used in Europe resulted in different outcomes for the majority of the tested species (72%)
Application of the same protocol in different countries resulted in differences in risk classifications of some fish species, Risk classifications of aquatic non-native species indicating that variations in assessment outcomes may stem from other reasons
Summary
Risk assessment has gained much interest as an instrument to support policy makers in their decisions regarding the need for managing non-native species (Anderson et al 2004; Byers et al 2002). Recent estimates of environmental, social, and economic costs of 25 invasive nonnative species in Europe vary between 12 and 20 billion euro per year for documented and extrapolated costs, respectively (Kettunen et al 2008). These costs mainly result from damage and control measures. Circa ten percent of nonnative species entering a country or region outside their natural distribution area is able to become highly invasive in marine and freshwater systems (Ricciardi and Kipp 2008). High impacts of non-native fish invaders are limited to about 19% of the total regions they invade (Ricciardi and Kipp 2008)
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