Biological invasions entail massive biodiversity losses and tremendous economic impacts that justify significant management efforts. Because the funds available to control biological invasions are limited, there is a need to identify priority species. This paper first review current invasive species prioritization methods and explicitly highlights their strengths and pitfalls. We then construct a cost-benefit optimization framework that offers the theoretical foundations of a simple method for the management of multiple invasive species under a limited budget. We provide an algorithm to operationalize this framework and render explicit the assumptions required to satisfy the management objective.
A cost-benefit approach for prioritizing invasive species
5 December 2017