Invasive Alien Species in Kruger National Park: Where have we come from and where are we going to?
The statement that one needs to ‘Respond at the rate and scale of your threat or you will lose out to it’ has never been more apt than when dealing with the management of invasive alien species.
Plants that are introduced to new environments often thrive and become invasive. Globally there is an increasing realization of the ecological costs of biological invasions in terms of irretrievable loss of native biodiversity, and there is a high likelihood of invasive alien species exacerbating the impacts of global climate and other causes of environmental change. The IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) global assessment (https://ipbes.net/global-assessment), based on a wide range of scientific evidence, shows that the rate of introduction of new species is higher than ever before and there is no sign of the trends slowing. The Kruger National Park (KNP) faces these same global challenges.
In a series of short articles we provide a brief look at the introduction of Invasive Alien Species (IAS) and their control in the KNP since the first alien species were identified in 1937, to where they are now recognized as one of the greatest threats to the biodiversity and ecosystem function of the KNP, provides interesting insights into the management of a protected area.
