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New partnership maps invasive risks and pathways

A new project with Monash University has just begun that will work out what environmental pests that we should be trying to stop entering Australia and how they will arrive.
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Our new partnership with Monash University will would inform surveillance efforts at arrival points across Australia. Photo: Danielle | Flickr | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Our new partnership with Monash University will would inform surveillance efforts at arrival points across Australia. Photo: Danielle | Flickr | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

How do you know which new invasive species need to be stopped from entering Australia if you haven’t worked out what it is you are stopping or how it will arrive? These are just some of the questions we are trying to answer as part of a major new partnership with Monash University.

In designing a risk-based biosecurity system, the first step is to identify the highest risks. Then the most likely pathways would be identified and surveillance, quarantine and early response systems set up to prevent the pests from arriving.

For Australia’s main livestock and horticulture industries the priority pests, disease risks and pathways have been identified. For the environment, the work so far has been very rudimentary.

This was recognised by the 2015 Senate inquiry which recommended the federal government “develop and publish a national priority list of pests and diseases not yet established in Australia that are of environmental biosecurity concern”.

Also, a draft report of this year’s review of Australia’s inter-governmental biosecurity agreement warned that “national environmental pest and disease risks are yet to be systematically identified, prioritised and planned for”.

To remove this road block and strengthen Australia’s environmental biosecurity system, we have teamed up with Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences and, generously backed by the Ian Potter Foundation, created the environmental biosecurity risks and pathways project.

The $600,000 three-year project will systematically map and develop a national priority list of potential insect and plant disease invaders that could harm Australia’s natural environment. It will identify likely pathways of arrival and the impacts if they do make it into our country.

We believe this is the first time in the world a non-government partnership has led this type of detailed biosecurity risk identification (let us know if you are aware of other similar non-government led projects).

Further contributions are being sought to expand the scope of the project. Federal and state governments will be invited to join the project reference group.

Recent high profile breaches show Australia’s biosecurity system is still not robust enough to keep dangerous new invaders out of the country. This project will provide clear advice to governments on how to strengthen that system and address its gaps.

More info

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The Invasive Species Council was formed in 2002 to seek stronger laws, policies and programs to protect nature from harmful pests, weeds and diseases.

The Invasive Species Council acknowledges the Traditional Custodians throughout Australia and their connections to land and sea. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

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Your gift is a lifeline for nature.

Our protected areas are being trashed, trampled, choked and polluted by an onslaught of invaders. Invasive species are already the overwhelming driver of our animal extinction rate, and are expected to cause 75 of the next 100 extinctions.

But you can help to turn this around and create a wildlife revival in Australia.

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    Dear Project Team,

    [YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

    I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

    The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

    The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

    This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

    Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

    Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

    Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

    I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

    Kind regards,
    [Your name]
    [Your email address]
    [Your postcode]


    Dear Project Team,

    [YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

    I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

    The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

    The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

    This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

    Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

    Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

    Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

    I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

    Kind regards,
    [Your name]
    [Your email address]
    [Your postcode]