Abstract
The effectiveness of small-scale lionfish removals as a management strategy: effort, impacts and the response of native prey and piscivores
Highlights
In the language of biologists, vectors are the various mechanisms for entraining, transferring, and introducing potentially invasive species
We noted in our introduction that economic optimization of the aquatic invasive species (AIS) problem requires that we minimize the sum of prevention costs, plus probabilistic environmental damages, including any mitigation costs that may be economically justified
The apparent introduction to the West Coast of the United States (US) by several taxa obviates the discounting of environmental damages by the likelihood that they will happen
Summary
In the language of biologists, vectors are the various mechanisms for entraining, transferring, and introducing potentially invasive species. The economic cost of the environmental harm imagined for the runaway nitrogen example includes both monetary losses (i.e., increased health care costs or reduced fish harvests) and the value of losses for which there are no markets and, no readily apparent monetary values An example of this latter type of loss is the disruption of an ecosystem in someone’s favorite natural place. The middling estimate from Mach and Chan (2014) of assets at risk in Puget Sound, Washington, USA is $3.72 million per year, while their higher estimate is $23.8 million These are, only monetary costs and do not include non-market welfare losses from the introduction of the green crab to the West Coast. No one has yet ventured a cost estimate in the peer-reviewed literature for controlling the green crab population for the entire Pacific coast
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