Invasive alien species reach 529, costing China 57 billion yuan a year

More than 500 invasive alien species “devour” 57 billion yuan a year

By Zhang Wen, National Business Daily, from Beijing

The invasion of alien organisms, while severely disrupting ecosystems, has also brought China average annual economic losses of more than 57 billion yuan. The Ministry of Agriculture announced on July 29 that China's invasive species have reached 529. Among them, more than 100 occur over large areas and cause serious harm, posing a huge threat to China's biodiversity and agricultural and livestock production.

Wang Yanliang, director of the Agricultural Ecology and Resource Protection Station of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that since the 1980s, alien species have shown a faster growth trend in China, with nearly 50 new invasive species added in the past 10 years, and more than 20 dangerous invasive species have successively broken out and caused disasters over large areas in China. The scope of alien biological invasions is also quite broad, involving almost all ecosystems, including farmland, wetlands, forests, rivers, islands and urban residential areas.

National Business Daily reporters learned that since the beginning of summer, over-proliferating water hyacinth has broken out in many places across the country, accompanied by blocked waterways, disruption of shipping and water pollution. Water hyacinth absorbs harmful substances such as nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metals from the water; after rotting and sinking to the bottom, it causes secondary pollution of water quality. It also depletes oxygen in the water, causing the death of large numbers of aquatic animals and plants, damaging local biodiversity; the impact on shipping is the main harm.

Zhang Guoliang, a PhD from the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, pointed out that the manual salvage of water hyacinth alone costs 100 million yuan each year, and chemical control costs also reach tens of millions of yuan.

In addition to water hyacinth, animals and plants such as common ragweed and golden apple snail are also squeezing out the living space of native organisms. In the Yangtze River basin and areas to its south, the golden apple snail runs rampant. As one of the 52 key alien invasive species under national management, the golden apple snail has strong environmental adaptability and reproduces rapidly, posing a serious threat to agricultural production, the ecological environment and the safety of people and livestock, with particularly serious harm to rice production.

Because alien organisms have characteristics such as latency and suddenness, and different species have different incubation periods, this creates certain difficulties for prevention and control. From an ecological perspective, with the rapid development of global trade, alien species invasions have become an important factor leading to species endangerment in China.

“Alien biological invasions not only bring economic losses, but the ecological losses they bring are even harder to make up for,” said Wang Jiuchen, deputy director of the Agricultural Ecology and Resource Protection Station of the Ministry of Agriculture. Among the 100 most threatening alien organisms published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 51 have already invaded China; in the past ten years, 24 vicious alien species have newly invaded China, and 120 species cause harm over large areas year after year.

Data show that about 50% of the alien species invading China spread after being introduced, and among the currently known invasive alien plants, about 58% of the species were introduced as useful plants. Wang Yanliang said that the alien species invading China will seriously disrupt and damage the structure, functions and ecological environment of ecosystems such as oceans, forests, lakes and grasslands, causing huge economic losses and irreparable ecological losses. Affected by factors such as global climate change, agricultural structural adjustment, environmental pollution and the convenience of transportation and trade, China's prevention and control situation for invasive alien organisms will become increasingly severe.

Reporters learned that the Ministry of Agriculture, as the lead management department for alien species, has established an Office for Invasive Alien Species Management and a Research Center for the Prevention and Control of Invasive Alien Species, organized the drafting of the Measures for the Management of Alien Species, revised the Emergency Response Plan for Invasive Alien Species Incidents, issued the National List of Key Alien Invasive Species under Management, organized localities to carry out surveys and monitoring and early warning, and carried out concentrated eradication and scientific and technological research on Crofton weed and alligator weed, formulated emergency prevention and control technical guidelines, established an emergency eradication and clearance mechanism, and worked hard to promote the gradual improvement of the prevention and control system for invasive alien species.