Global economic costs of mammal invasions

• Published in: The Science of the total environment 2023-01, Vol.857, p.159479-159479, Article 159479
• Main Authors: Wang, Siqi, Deng, Teng, Zhang, Jiaqi, Li, Yiming
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Damage; Economic cost; InvaCost; Invasive alien mammals; Management cost
• ISSN: 0048-9697; 1879-1026
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159479

Invasive alien mammals cause huge adverse ecological impact on human society and natural ecosystems. Although studies have estimated economic costs of mammal invasions at regional scales, there is lacking the large-scale comprehensive assessment of currency costs for this taxon. Here, we estimated the economic cost of invasive alien mammals on a global scale using the most comprehensive global database compiling economic costs of invasive species (InvaCost). From 1960 to 2021, mammal invasions caused costs (summing damage costs and management costs) of US$ 462.49 billion to the global economy, while the total amount of robust costs reached US$ 52.49 billion. The majority of the total economic costs corresponded to damage costs (90.27 %), while only 7.43 % were related to management cost. Economic costs showed an increasing trend over time. The distribution of costs was uneven among taxonomic groups and regions, with the global total cost highly biasing toward to 5 species (European rabbit, Domestic cat, Black rat, Wild boar and Coypu), and North America reporting much higher costs (60.78 % of total economic costs) than other regions. The total costs were borne by agriculture, environment, authorities stakeholders and other sectors. Geographic and taxonomic biases suggested that total economic costs caused by invasive alien mammals were underestimated. Integrated research efforts are needed to fill in knowledge gaps in the economic costs generated by mammal invasions and to identify the drivers of the economic costs. [Display omitted] •Invasive alien mammals have total cost at least $462 billion globally since 1960s.•Taxonomic bias of economic costs exists across islands, continents and the world.•Reported costs are unevenly distributed, with the highest costs in North America.•Most of the total costs are related to damage (90.27 %) and agriculture (53.54 %).•Taxa, geographic and temporal gaps make the costs underestimated.