ExotenNet Praktijkdag 2023

• Damiano Oldoni

ExotenNet 2023 Belgium Flanders Gent Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen
Image by Damiano Oldoni
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General

Talks

Opening symposium

Opening speech given by Tim Adriaens (INBO).

The presentation is available online.

Invasive Alien Species and the PrIUS report

Bram D’Hondt (INBO) and Nicolas Pardon (ANB)

Subtitle (original, NL): Een kader voor de aanpak van invasieve uitheemse soorten in Vlaanderen. Een prioritering voor natuurbeleid.

Subtitle (translated, EN): A framework for addressing invasive alien species in Flanders. A prioritization for nature policy.

The PrIUS report is published as open access: https://doi.org/10.21436/inbor.88096226 (see PDF)

The talk is prerecorded and available online as a YouTube video. The presentation is also available.

The presentation of Nicolas Pardon is available online as well.

Introduction: IAS and its legislative regulation

This is an introductory talk about Invasive Alien Species (IAS) and its legislative regulation given by Nicolas Pardon.

We consider IAS any species introduced by people (intentionally or unintentionally) after 1500.

Important to keep in mind the “3 tens rule” of Williamson (1996): the statistical rule holds that 1 in 10 of imported alien species appear in the wild (introduced or casual) (Williamson 1993), 1 in 10 of those introduced become established, and that 1 in 10 of those established become a pest (Holdgate 1986, Williamson and Brown 1986).

Is IAS regulated by law at EU level? Yes, we have the EU regulation 1143/2014 (22 October 2014) about prevention and sensibilization and management of the introduction and spread of IAS. In particular, the species resolution Chapter 4/1 + attachment 3/1 about management.

At Belgian level? We have a cooperation agreement signed on 3O/01/2019 between federal and regional actors.

EU legislation says that you may not, among others:

  • hold IAS
  • cultivate IAS
  • transport IAS
  • sell IAS

The species list is typically referred as the Union list.

Which are the problems due to IAS? More and more described by PAP(?) and IPBES. They are also more and more often picked up by media (television, newspapers) due to their impact on economy, biodiversity and human health.

Which are the priorities and responsabilties? They are decided by the Flemish governement.

Responsabilities (uitvoering):

  • De vervuiler
  • Elke terreinverantwoordelijke

Not always easy to apply.

Sometimes it’s better that external instances (e.g. Flemish authority) take care about the IAS management. Why?

  • Rapid response
  • Management niet technically achievable by the area manager
  • The management goals cannot be achieved by area manager

Which species are relevant in Flanders? A question of prioritization

This part is the core of the PrIUS report. This part is prerecorded.

Steps:

  1. Check species based on policy relevant criteria, or filters
  2. Integration of all these criteria

Criteria:

  • Marine (federal competency) vs non-marine (Flemish bevoegdheid): marine species are not taken into account
  • Risk to establish: complex process (especially for plants, but we can ). Approximation: climate niche study, zone “Cfb “ and “Cfa”
  • Impact type: based on risk judgement studies applied to Flemish situation
  • At which extent are these IAS in Flanders already? E.g. sporadic, traces, not yet seen. A way to assess this is to calculate the observed occupancy (number of 1x1km grid cells)
  • % occupied cells that fall in Natura2000 areas, i.e. specifity
  • % occupied cells of NAtura2000 areas, i.e. sensitivity. Sensitivity and specifity can then be plotted in a x(specifity) y (sensitivity) plot
  • Emerging or trend indicators based on TrIAS: assessing if a species is emerging (based on nubmer of occurrences and nubmer of cells in Belgium/Natura2000)
  • International resposnability: which species are/could invade other regions or countries due to their presence in Flanders?
  • Management feasibility: this is the most difficult criterium as it is very sensitive, data intensive and qualitative criterium.

Each criterium has a different weight depending on the stadium of the invasion class (absent, sporadic, established, invasive).

At last, species are grouped:

  • IRR: irrelevant
  • REL-AFW: relative absent species: early response
  • REL-AAN-SPO: no good candidates for total manamgent (too much unkonwn factors), well for partial management (e.g. by building barriers for further spread)
  • REL-AAN-GEV-BEP: the best candidate for total management
  • REL-AAN-GEV-VER-BUI: they are less manageable for natuurbeleidskern, but they can be interesting to manage for other reasons
  • REL-AAN-GEV-VER-NAT

Fiches are made for each species/group.

Improvements:

  • Further prioritization within groups
  • Reassessment needed if we have better data, better methods, progressive expansion and insight

Notice that PrIUS is based on already existing data and workflows, e.g. the assessment of emerging IAS based on GAM modelling for observed occupancy, which were indicators developed during the TrIAS project. And it synthesizes key statistics for natural policy.

Management responsability aspects: the role of ANB

Nicolas Pardon takes the floor to speak about some practice aspects such as management responsability aspects.

What is ANB responsible for?

  • Coordination alien species policy
  • Coordination alien species management
  • Management of IAS on their areas

ANB acts also based on several long-term framework agreements (raamcontracten in Dutch) for the management of specific IAS species, e.g. African clawed frog and alien gooses.

About Asian hornet, the role of ANB is quite comThey can also assess the detailed impact of a species, a communication goal by providing correct information, coordinating several actors such as Fire Department, local authorities, dL&V.

About tiger mosquito:

  • At the moment it’s invading North Europe coming from South EuropE
  • Monitoring and surveillance are coordinated by Sciensano

Sensibilization is a key factor to manage this species.

Workshops

There were 4 workshops:

  • Giant hogweed
  • Communication
  • Snelle Respons en early warning: Hoe pak je het aan als lokaal bestuur?
  • Biosecurity
  • Digitalization

The presentations given in each workshop and all other presentations mentioned above can be found on the ExotenNET presentations page.

Digitalization

Original title (NL): Digitalisering en integratie van databanken Full title (EN): Digitalization and integration of databases

The presentation is available online.

Tim Adriaens and I gave this workshop three times.

People from province and municipalities were interested in mobilizing their data and also in using the LIFE RIPARIAS early warning tool.

A mentimeter survey has been used for triggering and structuring the workshop.

Some IAS management applications often heard from the audience:

  • gisib
  • DIPLA
  • fieldmaps

A good suggestion from the audience: set up a collaboration with the Vlaamse Vereniging voor Steden en Gemeenten (VVSG) to coordinate the data mobilization.

The suggestions related to the warning tool were useful and have been added as new GitHub issues or as comments to existing ones and they refer to: