By Hilda Diaz-Soltero usda senior Invasive Species Coordinator

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U.S. Department of Agriculture

Report to the Invasive Species Advisory Council

By Hilda Diaz-Soltero

USDA Senior Invasive Species Coordinator

November 18, 2009
As of October 1, 2009, CSREES became the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).
A. USDA Progress on ISAC recommendations from the October 2003 meeting

ISAC recommendation: Increase efforts in economic analysis to make the case for investments in invasive species efforts.

The Economic Research Service (ERS) is continuing the “Program of Research on the Economics of Invasive Species Management” (PREISM) initiated in FY 2003. PREISM supports economic research and the development of decision support tools that have direct implications for USDA policies and programs for protection from, control/management of, regulation concerning, or trade policy relating to invasive species. Program priorities are selected through extensive consultation with APHIS, OBPA and other agencies with responsibility for program management.

For example, ERS developed a pest-ranking decision tool for APHIS to determine which pests would be on its 2004 and 2005 Federal-State Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey (CAPS) list, making transparent the basis for selecting the pests for which State cooperators could receive targeted pest surveillance and detections funds. Also, the rapid spread of soybean rust in South America prompted ERS, in April 2004, to publish a study of the economic and policy impacts of its windborne entry into the United States. USDA used the ERS analysis in refining rapid response strategies when APHIS confirmed the presence of soybean rust on November 10, 2004 in Louisiana. ERS extended this work to examine the value to producers of USDA’s coordinated framework to detect and report the presence of Asian soybean rust in different producing areas and released a report in 2006.
In addition to ERS-led analyses of invasive species issues, PREISM allocated about $6.8 million in extramural research cooperative agreements through a peer-reviewed competitive process in FY 2003-08. About $1.1 million per year were allocated for extramural agreements in FY 2005 and FY 2006; $950,000 was allocated in FY 2007 and $970,000 in FY 2008. No funds were allocated in FY 2009.
PREISM-funded researchers are addressing important issues. For example, a Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University research team collaborated with APHIS staff to analyze a rule to allow importation of avocados from Mexico, using a framework developed under a PREISM-funded agreement. The framework and economic analysis were published in the Federal Register with the APHIS rule. PREISM-funded researchers, as part of their projects, are collaborating with agencies to address invasive species issues and decisions, such as the coordination of prevention and control strategies for Brown Tree Snakes and Miconia calvescens in Hawaii, management of cheat grass, management of diseases transmitted between livestock and wildlife, insect resistance management in strawberry production, responses to outbreaks of foreign animal diseases, and prioritizing invasive plant management by public agencies. At the invitation of the Council on Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics (C-Fare) and the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA), Muniswamy Gopinath (Oregon State U.) and Bruce Maxwell (Montana State U.) briefed congressional staff about their PREISM-funded projects on May 5, 2006.
ERS organizes workshops each year to provide a forum for dialogue on economic issues associated with agricultural invasive species.
Following are some preliminary findings from PREISM-funded research projects:

Prevention and management resources should be allocated to species and strategies with the highest return (in terms of damage reduction over time). Ideally, marginal benefits and costs should be equal across species and strategies.

Decision-support tools that follow sound economic principles and reveal underlying scientific assumptions and value judgments provide a basis for expert and stakeholder involvement in decision-making and promote efficient allocations of funds.

Optimal invasive species management strategies depend upon the stage of the invasion and associated rates of growth and spread. Eradication may be optimal for small invasions; reduction to a containment level for larger invasions. If eradication is feasible, the effort will reduce discounted damages more if it occurs early when populations are small. Delays result in more damages. If total cost increases rapidly as population increases, eradication when the population is small followed by prevention may be the best strategy.

Under-funded eradication or management efforts can be cost-ineffective or wasteful, with little or no effect on invasive species growth and total damage. Higher initial expenditures can reduce long term damages and control costs, even if the species is not eradicated.

For established invasive species infestations, per unit costs of removal can increase as populations decrease or become more isolated, making complete eradication difficult or cost-inefficient. In some cases, accommodation to low levels of invasion is economically preferable to the high cost of eradication. The higher is the cost of removal, the larger the residual population that will remain which will need increased surveillance and continual management.

Higher invasive species infestation or population growth rates reduce benefit-cost ratios of control efforts, and at high enough rates, control might not be worthwhile. If population has surpassed that of maximum growth rate, the best strategy could be a pulse-like effort that drives populations below a critical population level and growth rate, followed by containment strategy.

Probability of occurrence maps for invasive weeds based on GIS and other inventory or survey data and related population growth rates can improve weed management efficiency by reducing: 1) costs by targeting sites to monitor invasiveness, and/or 2) damage by initiating control of highly invasive populations before they spread.

Coordination of regulations across U.S.-Canada, State, and provincial boundaries could: 1) more effectively reduce the cross-border spread of exotic horticultural plants that become invasive, and 2) reduce incentives for cross-border firm relocations to take advantage of more lenient regulations.

Ecological and agronomic differences influence cross-State differences in noxious weed and weed-seed lists, but stakeholder lobbying also has significant effects.

Beginning in 2007, CSREES (now NIFA) National Research Initiative (NRI) Program, Biology of Weedy and Invasive Species in Agro ecosystems, has required an economic component in the integrated projects it funds. Specifically, the focus of such programs is the development, delivery, and implementation of ecologically-based, invasive species management programs (e.g. use of cover crops, grazing, tillage, and biocontrol agents) that include economic decision support tools to evaluate tradeoffs of different management strategies. A total of $4 million was awarded such projects. This priority was continued in the new Agricultural and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) grants program in FY09 (and will continue in FY10), with an additional priority focusing on the abundance of weedy and invasive species and the individual and/or collective impacts of these species on a broad suite of ecosystem services, both market and non-market, and that can be used to evaluate tradeoffs of different management strategies.

One example of this interdisciplinary approach is a study funded in FY2008 to Cynthia Brown and colleagues at Colorado State University. This study called “Ecological and Economic Risk Assessment Decision Tool for Management of Bromus tectorum invasions” is developing ecological and economic decision support tools that enable land managers, producers and extension specialists to fight cheatgrass invasions. The need for the study originated from extensive interactions with stakeholder groups, most notably, the Southeast Wyoming Cheatgrass Partnership, a group of public and private land managers and extension specialists from Colorado and Wyoming. A key part of the study is the integration of a process‐based ecosystem simulation model with a production driven economic model to test management strategies and implications at larger spatial scales and under different environmental conditions. Outreach includes development of a website, management handbook, workshops and field tours targeting stakeholder groups.

B. USDA progress on ISAC recommendations from the March 2004 meeting

ISAC recommendation: What are NISC agencies doing to avoid harm?

USDA’s has eight agencies included in its invasive species portfolio: Forest Service (FS), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Economic Research Service (ERS), Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), Farm Service Agency (FSA), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA, formerly CSREES, the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service).

Securing input from the USDA agencies, the USDA Senior Invasive Species Coordinator created the USDA DO NO HARM REPORT, a report to ISAC and NISC, by fiscal year, including 3 categories of activities:

a) Invasive Species Program activities USDA agencies are carrying out to do no harm;

b) The way in which, when they do carry out other agency programs activities, they are also designed to do no harm; and

c) A list of activities that ARE doing harm and the future actions the agency will take to change the activities so that they do no harm.

Within the above categories, agencies include their own activities as well as activities that are coordinated with other Federal agencies, per the mandate under the Invasive Species Executive Order.
The following Do No Harm reports have been presented to ISAC (meeting date in parenthesis):

- FY04 report NRCS, APHIS, ARS, CSREES & ERS (Oct. 04)

- FY04 report for US Forest Service (Feb. 05)

- FY05 report for NRCS, APHIS, CSREES, ERS & FS (Oct. 05)

- FY05 report for ARS (April 06)

- FY 06 report for FS, NRCS, CSREES, and ERS (May 2007)

- FY 06 USDA (APHIS) Do No Harm Report Part 2 (Oct. 2007

- FY 07 USDA Do No Harm Report (May 2008)

- FY 08 USDA Do No Harm Report (May 2009) for APHIS, ARS, ERS, CSREES, ERS, NRCS and USFS.

Copies of the USDA reports are available online at http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/resources/orgfedusda.shtml

The next USDA Do No Harm report for FY 2009 will be available in February 2010.

ISAC recommendation: NISC should request all Federal agencies to identify existing grant programs, cooperative agreements and other mechanisms that are potential sources of funds for invasive species projects.

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