Environmental Economics: Review of Alien-Invasive Species Costs in US

This report provides a detailed analysis of the environmental and economic costs associated with alien-invasive species, reviewing a 2004 study by Pimentel, Zuniga, and Morrison. The review assesses the study's methodology, findings, and potential influence on environmental management. It highlights the significant economic losses incurred by the US due to these species while also noting their integral role in the US food system. The report critiques the study's limitations, including its focus on US data and its failure to address the global impact of alien invasions. The review concludes by emphasizing the need for more effective policies and international cooperation to mitigate the adverse effects of invasive species on both the environment and the economy, suggesting the establishment of more organizations and partnerships to control and manage these biological invaders.

Running head: ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
A Review of Update on the environmental and economic costs associated with alien-invasive
species in the United States by Pimentel, Zuniga and Morrison in 2004
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author note

1ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Analysis synoptic review of the selected journal:...........................................................................3
Assessment of the contribution of the selected journal:..................................................................3
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................4
References:......................................................................................................................................6

2ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
Introduction:
21st century is the era of development of technology and industry and along with this it
has been seen that deterioration of the environment is rising at an alarming rate. Various studies
are dealing with the change of climate and have seen that one of the main reasons for this
environmental devastation is the alien invasive species (Backer et al. 2018). An invasive species
is a type of animal species or fungus or it may be plant, which is not native in nature to specific
region, however, it seems to expand. Their tendency to rapidly grow causes damage to the
ecosystem as well as the human health and wealth. With the rise of alien invasive plants,
mammals and other living as well non living organism, ecosystem is having biodiversity;
however, they possess certain amount of threat. According to the study of Pimentel, Zuniga and
Morrison (2005) in the United States alone there were approximately 50,000 or more invasive
species has been introduced since 1906 to 1991 and it has cost the country more than 1.1 billion
USD (Hoffmann and Broadhurst 2016). One of the main issues with the invasive species is their
control cost and it is hard to determine the overall cost incurred by various economies due to the
magnitude of alteration posed on the ecosystem by these species (Turpie and Jurk 2016). This
report is meant to analyse the Update on the environmental and economic costs associated with
alien-invasive species in the United States by Pimentel, Zuniga and Morrison, published in 2004
in order to assess the control cost and the change in ecosystem due to the alien invasive species
(Pimentel, Zuniga and Morrison 2005). This review of the chosen journal critically examines the
contribution to the selected theme of the debate in the case of regional climate change analysis.
In the second section of this analysis a synoptic review of the selected journal will be provided
and later Assessment of the contribution of the selected journal will be highlighted.

3ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
Analysis synoptic review of the selected journal:
The author of the Update on the environmental and economic costs associated with alien-
invasive species in the United States sets out to contribute better understanding regarding the
environmental economic effect of the alien invasive species in the USA (Jardine and Sanchirico
2018). The author has stated that one of the main reasons of the deteriorating environmental
economic is caused due to the effect of the alien invasive species. Among 958 native species in
the USA, 400 are presently endangered due to the rapid growth of the invasive species (Keller et
al. 2018). Not only is the USA, besides this, various ecosystem of different region in the world
largely affected by the invasive species. 80% of the native species worldwide are in great danger
due to the invasion of the non native species in those regions. Among many invasive species, it
has been found that dogs, rats, crop weed and pigeons are the most danger in nature (Glen and
Vanak 2018). Control cost of these animals is higher compared to the other invasive species and
according to the estimates the control figure is as high as 44 million USD. According to the Paini
et al. (2016) threat from the invasive species in the global agriculture is rising day by day and it
has high correlation with degradation of the human health and environment. Selected journal also
highlights that how much the native lives are affected by several invasive organisms. Though the
selected journal is highly statistics based and categorically distributed, however, the nature of its
contribution is not clear throughout the study. Moving forward, an assessment of the selected
journal will be performed in order to perform detailed analysis of the selected journal and test
how good it fits with the selected theme of study.
Assessment of the contribution of the selected journal:
Update on the environmental and economic costs associated with alien-invasive species
in the United States published in 2004 is one of the studies that performs a detailed analysis of

4ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
the environmental economics in the case of alien invasive species. the report has illustrated the
environmental economics and has tried to discuss the effect of aliens invasive species on the
native species. The research was performed more than a decade ago that makes the estimated
values questionable. Besides this, the research work was mostly done on the US data, however
various articles like Rumlerová et al. (2016); Ghelardini et al. (2017), describes the
environmental economic performance of the alien invasive plants in European region. The report
fails to judge the ancient biological invasion and how it has affected the ecosystem of the islands
compared to the main land (Hofman and Rick 2017). This journal is mainly a case study of the
alien invasion in the US region, which miserably fails to assess the world environment. The
chosen model of the selected study is basic in nature and not suitable for future work due to the
lack of clear distinction between the various parts. It lacks the explanation regarding the key
variables and estimation details of the figures provided. However, it can be seen that the selected
study has been reflecting the figures published by the government authorities and the data from
previous researches in the case of demographical details (Weber 2017). The selected study
concludes with the idea to constrain the present situation of the alien invasion in the ecological
environment in the US (Veer and Nentwig 2015). Further it adds that it would be ideal to bring
in more government controlling agency like Invasive Species Council and Weed Awareness
Coalition to bring in sustainability in the ecosystem. Thus it clearly sets out a path for the
policymakers what to do in the case of deteriorating environmental economy.
Conclusion:
This report has analysed the Update on the environmental and economic costs associated
with alien-invasive species in the United States by Pimentel, Zuniga and Morrison published in
2004 for assessing the environmental economics of alien invasive species. The report has found

5ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
that over the year, various alien invasive species has cost the US economy an estimated loss of
1.1billion USD. However, the report has also found that 98% of these invasive species creates
the food system of the US and they are being used as pest control, pet, sports and for various
other purposes. The chosen journal was focused to discuss the environmental economic effect of
the alien invasive species; however, the report has found that it fails miserably to discuss the
condition of the other countries. For instance, the report has found that alien invasive species has
wide environmental economic effect on the European region and in the case of Australia.
Finding the errors in the previous researches in this field is not only the ultimate outcome;
finding and formulating effective policies to control the devastating effective of the alien
invasive species should be the main goal. For instance, as the report suggests, there should be
more plan like Invasive Species Council of USA, which was built by the then President of USA
Bill Clinton in the year 1999. In addition, bringing in more institutions like Invasive Weed
Awareness Coalition to control and maintain the spread of invasive plants. Besides this, it would
be ideal to bring in more partnership among the concerned economies and stimulate the research
to mitigate the issue with the said biological invaders (DiTomaso et al. 2017). Most of the alien
invasive plants have become the integral part of the human food cycle; however, the cost
incurred due to these macro organisms is beyond the scope of avoidance. To conclude it can be
stated that it is high time and investing to prevent the growth of these invasive organism is much
required to make the environment as well as the economy sustainable.

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References:
Bacher, S., Blackburn, T.M., Essl, F., Genovesi, P., Heikkilä, J., Jeschke, J.M., Jones, G., Keller,
R., Kenis, M., Kueffer, C. and Martinou, A.F., 2018. Socio‐economic impact classification of
alien taxa (SEICAT). Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 9(1), pp.159-168.
DiTomaso, J.M., Van Steenwyk, R.A., Nowierski, R.M., Vollmer, J.L., Lane, E., Chilton, E.,
Burch, P.L., Cowan, P.E., Zimmerman, K. and Dionigi, C.P., 2017. Enhancing the effectiveness
of biological control programs of invasive species through a more comprehensive pest
management approach. Pest management science, 73(1), pp.9-13.
Ghelardini, L., Luchi, N., Pecori, F., Pepori, A.L., Danti, R., Della Rocca, G., Capretti, P.,
Tsopelas, P. and Santini, A., 2017. Ecology of invasive forest pathogens. Biological
Invasions, 19(11), pp.3183-3200.
Glen and Vanak (2018). The bark side: domestic dogs threaten endangered species worldwide.
[online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/the-bark-side-domestic-
dogs-threaten-endangered-species-worldwide-76782 [Accessed 11 Feb. 2018].
Hoffmann, B.D. and Broadhurst, L.M., 2016. The economic cost of managing invasive species in
Australia. NeoBiota, 31, p.1.
Hoffmann, B.D. and Broadhurst, L.M., 2016. The economic cost of managing invasive species in
Australia. NeoBiota, 31, p.1.
Hofman, C.A. and Rick, T.C., 2017. Ancient biological invasions and island ecosystems:
tracking translocations of wild plants and animals. Journal of Archaeological Research, pp.1-51.
Jardine, S.L. and Sanchirico, J.N., 2018. Estimating the cost of invasive species control. Journal
of Environmental Economics and Management, 87, pp.242-257.

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Paini, D.R., Sheppard, A.W., Cook, D.C., De Barro, P.J., Worner, S.P. and Thomas, M.B., 2016.
Global threat to agriculture from invasive species. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 113(27), pp.7575-7579.
Pimentel, D., Zuniga, R. and Morrison, D., 2005. Update on the environmental and economic
costs associated with alien-invasive species in the United States. Ecological economics, 52(3),
pp.273-288.
Rumlerová, Z., Vilà, M., Pergl, J., Nentwig, W. and Pyšek, P., 2016. Scoring environmental and
socioeconomic impacts of alien plants invasive in Europe. Biological invasions, 18(12), pp.3697-
3711.
Turpie, J. and Jurk, C., 2016, January. Costs of meeting Aichi Targets for 2020: Target 9–
Invasive Alien Species. Convention on Biological Diversity. https://www. cbd.
int/doc/meetings/fin/hlpgar-sp-01/information/hlpgar-sp-01-aichitargets-05-en. pdf. Accessed.
Veer, G. and Nentwig, W., 2015. Environmental and economic impact assessment of alien and
invasive fish species in Europe using the generic impact scoring system. Ecology of Freshwater
Fish, 24(4), pp.646-656.
Weber, E., 2017. Invasive plant species of the world: a reference guide to environmental weeds.
CABI.