Contributions to the National Status Report on Biological Invasions in South Africa

The state of a nation’s health, wealth and happiness is measured by a wide variety of indicators. Such background information is essential for policy-makers. Data on the levels of disease prevalence, education and social cohesion all provide crucial background information to determine the demand for schools, hospitals and community facilities. Governments need to know how much to spend, where to spend it, what to spend it on and whether spending is effective or not. Setting, and obtaining agreement on, particular goals is a key approach taken to stimulate action. For example, eight Millennium Development Goals were set to focus and coordinate efforts to reduce extreme poverty over the period 2000–2015. Although the goals have not been fully met, they have arguably had a significantly positive impact at global, national and local levels (United Nations 2015).


Introduction
The state of a nation's health, wealth and happiness is measured by a wide variety of indicators.Such background information is essential for policy-makers.Data on the levels of disease prevalence, education and social cohesion all provide crucial background information to determine the demand for schools, hospitals and community facilities.Governments need to know how much to spend, where to spend it, what to spend it on and whether spending is effective or not.Setting, and obtaining agreement on, particular goals is a key approach taken to stimulate action.For example, eight Millennium Development Goals were set to focus and coordinate efforts to reduce extreme poverty over the period 2000-2015.Although the goals have not been fully met, they have arguably had a significantly positive impact at global, national and local levels (United Nations 2015).
South Africa has committed to several international environmental agreements, and to achieve their goals it has developed national policy frameworks and legislation to manage biodiversity loss.In particular, South Africa has produced a series of National Biodiversity Assessments (e.g.Driver et al. 2012).Although these includesections on the impact of the drivers of global change, biological invasions have not been a core focus of the reports.
In October 2014, the Regulations on Alien and Invasive Species (A&IS Regulations 2014) were made into law in terms of Section 97(1) of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (NEM:BA, Act 10 of 2004).Section 11(1)(a)(iii) of the regulations mandates the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) to submit a report on the status of biological invasions South Africa has committed to producing a National Status Report on Biological Invasions by October 2017 and thereafter every three years.This will be the first status report at a national level specifically on biological invasions.As part of soliciting input, a workshop was held in May 2016 that led to this special issue of 19 papers in the journal Bothalia: African Biodiversity and Conservation.
This editorial introduces the symposium, discusses the special issue and summarises how each contribution provides an estimate of 'status'.Papers focus on key pathways, taxa, areas, and evaluations of interventions, specifically the movement of taxa between South Africa and neighbouring countries; the dispersal pathways of amphibians; a review of alien animals; a report on changes in the number and abundance of alien plants; in-depth reviews of the status of invasions for cacti, fishes, fungi and grasses; an assessment of the impact of widespread invasive plants on animals; reviews on invasions in municipalities, protected areas and sub-Antarctic Islands; assessments of the efficacy of biological control and other control programmes; and recommendations for how to deal with conflict species, to conduct scientific assessments and to improve risk assessments.
The papers in this special issue confirm that South Africa is an excellent place to study invasions that can provide insights for understanding and managing invasions in other countries.Negative impacts seem to be largely precipitated by certain taxa (especially plants), whereas invasions by a number of other groups do not, yet, seem to have caused the widespread negative impacts felt in other countries.Although South Africa has effectively managed a few biological invasions (e.g.highly successful biological control of some invasive plants), the key challenge seems to be to establish and maintain a strong link between implementation, monitoring, reporting and planning.every three years (Box 1).The aim of the national status report is to consolidate information on the extent and impact of biological invasions as well as the effectiveness of interventions in a way that can be used to inform policy responses.
As part of initial efforts to gain input into the national status report, the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology and the SANBI convened a 3-day symposium (18-20 May 2016) in the Western Cape (Figure 1).

The 43rd Annual Research Symposium on the Management of Biological Invasions in South Africa
The symposium was one in a long line of very valuable and fruitful annual meetings.The first in this series of meetings was held in 1973 at Rhodes University and was attended by five people who discussed the science and practice of the biological control of weeds (Moran, Hoffmann & Zimmermann 2013).These symposia have expanded in size over time, and, particularly in the last decade, the scope of meetings has expanded -from an initial sole focus on biological control to research on the management of plant invasions more generally.The 2016 meeting was the first to cover all aspects of biological invasions, but it still included talks on technical aspects of the biological control of alien plants (Moran, Hoffmann & Hill 2011) and, to a lesser extent, alien plant incursion response planning (Wilson et al. 2013;Wilson, Panetta & Lindgren 2017).
The 173 delegates who attended the 2016 symposium represented 30 institutions including universities, governmental and non-governmental organisations, commercial partners and private individuals from across South Africa (Figure 1).Seventyfour presentations were given on topics ranging from pathogens to invasive birds to introduction pathways.Keynote talks focussed on scientific assessments, reporting on biological invasions and risk analyses.See Online Appendix 1 for the full programme and list of delegates (also available at http://www.invasives.org.za/events#abstracts).
Not since the inaugural research meeting of the Working for Water programme in 2003 (Macdonald 2004;van Wilgen 2004) has there been a national gathering that addressed the full spectrum of issues pertaining to the research and management of biological invasions across all taxa.Meetings like these bring special challenges, but they also provide unique opportunities for the exchange of ideas.Presenters were required to communicate their information to others from different and often unfamiliar disciplines, and to emphasise the implications of their work for managers.The focus on providing material and syntheses for the upcoming status report assisted in this process, resulting in a series of productive exchanges that promises to take the science forward in more transdisciplinary ways.
Although the '43rd Annual Research Symposium on the Management of Biological Invasions in South Africa' was somewhat of a departure from previous versions of this meeting, these meetings have always provided valuable opportunities to network and engage, and should remain a cornerstone in South Africa's efforts to improve our understanding of biological invasions and their management.It remains to be seen whether such meetings would be more productive and cohesive if they were to revert to concentrating on alien plants or whether a wider remit of biological invasions (which includes non-plant taxa and aspects of policy development and management effectiveness) would be more valuable.
The symposium is, of course, not the only forum for discussing biological invasions in South Africa.Over time, there have been various regional meetings, including the C.A.P.E.Invasive Animal Working Group (Wilson et al. 2014) and the KZN Invasive Alien Species Forum.Two taxon-specific national working groups have also been established to focus research efforts and provide fora for stakeholders to discuss issues: the Cactus Working Group (Kaplan et al. 2017) and the Alien Grass Working Group (Visser et al. 2017).Such groups have been very effective in stimulating applied research and its uptake (e.g. both groups resulted in papers in this special issue), and there is an urgent need for other taxon-or theme-focussed groups (Packer et al. in press) that are also sustainably funded and facilitated.

The special issue as an input to the national status report
In the initial planning of the national status report, it was clear that the report would need to be a collaborative exercise BOX 1: Regulatory requirement for a national status report as per South Africa's Alien and Invasive Species Regulations.
In terms of Section 11 of the Alien and Invasive Species Regulations promulgated under the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (NEM:BA, Act 10 of 2004), the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) is mandated to draw up a status report on biological invasions.The wording of the relevant section of the regulations is as follows: '11.National status reports 1) The Institute [i.e.SANBI] or a body designated by the Institute must, for the purpose of reporting as contemplated in section 11(1)(a)(iii) of the Act, submit a report on the status of listed invasive species to the Minister within three years of the date on which these regulations come into effect, and at least every three years thereafter.
2) A report contemplated in sub-regulation (1) must contain a summary and assessment ofa. the status of listed invasive species and other species that have been subjected to a risk assessment; and b. the effectiveness of these regulations and control measures based inter alia on information fromi.notifications received from owners of land regarding listed invasive species occurring on their land; ii. permits issued for listed invasive species; iii.Invasive Species Monitoring, Control and Eradication Plans received from organs of state and management authorities of protected areas; and iv.emergency interventions and enforcement actions involving listed invasive species issued by the Minister.
In preparing a report contemplated in sub-regulation (1), the Institute must carry out the research and monitoring necessary to identify the matters contemplated in sub-regulation (2)'.
Source: Department of Environmental Affairs 2014 relying heavily on partnerships to deliver content.Although much relevant data on particular issues had been collected, much of it was not collated or published.It was decided to use a journal special issue as a means by which input into the status report could be facilitated.The aim of the special issue was to collate reports on as broad a range of topics relating to invasions in South Africa as possible.In particular, we felt it was important to gain insights from a range of approaches encompassing work on pathways, taxonomic groups, particular geographical areas and interventions at the various stages of the invasion process.
During the latter half of 2015, experts were asked if they would be prepared to write a paper on a particular topic, and an open call for paper proposals was distributed (to core team members of the Centre for Invasion Biology, to attendees of the previous symposium and through the South African invasives-l server, invasives@wordlink.co.za, see Online Appendix 2).Proposals for papers were evaluated by the editorial team, and submissions that were deemed relevant to the status report were accepted for inclusion in the symposium programme (34 out of 51 proposed papers were presented at the symposium).After the symposium, presenters were invited to submit manuscripts for consideration as papers in the special issue of Bothalia: African Biodiversity and Conservation.All papers were subjected to standard peer review.Of 23 papers that were eventually submitted, 4 were either withdrawn or rejected during review stage, leaving 19 papers in this special issue (Table 1).
There were several reasons that certain topics were not included.Firstly, some topics had already been recently comprehensively reviewed [e.g.marine invasions (Griffiths et al. 2010;Robinson et al. 2016)

Introduction pathways between South Africa and the rest of Africa
There is a dynamic interchange of species between South Africa and the rest of Africa (with South Africa being a net donor of some taxa and a net recipient of others).This poses a serious challenge to biosecurity.
Improved regional co-operation in biosecurity is needed to prevent introductions to the region and spread within the region, although preventing inter-regional spread will be very difficult in many cases.
The problems are the same for continents that are composed of many nation states.Assessments of the costs and effectiveness of control operations are seldom done, and this is recognised as an area where scientists need to focus more effort globally (Kettenring & Adams 2011).There are 256 alien grass species in South Africa, 37 of them invasive.The fynbos appears to be where the largest impacts due to alien grasses have been recorded.
The identity of many alien grasses in South Africa is uncertain, as is their introduction status.More work is needed to address these shortcomings.
South Africa appears to be less invaded and suffers fewer extreme impacts from alien grasses than comparable regions.This is perhaps because natural fire regimes prevent their establishment and invasion (Africa burns more than other regions), and because there has been in general a lower introduction effort (Visser et al. 2016).

Introduction status, distribution, and impacts of alien fungi
Little is known about alien fungi in South Africa.The regulatory lists have numerous errors in them (e.g.some taxa are listed as not in South Africa when they are and vice versa), and the listed taxa primarily pose agroeconomic threats as opposed threats to native biodiversity.
The regulations need to be revised.A scoping exercise is needed to identify what can realistically be done with various levels of investment.
As yet there have been no known large-scale devastating impacts caused by fungi, though it might just be a matter of time.Woodford et al. (2017) https://doi.org/10.4102/abc.v47i2.2124

Interventions/Taxa
Invasive fish management in the context of invasive species legislation The currently promulgated lists and regulations for alien and invasive freshwater fishes provide a practical legal framework under which the further spread of invasive species can be actively discouraged, through the prosecution of parties guilty of illegal transport and stocking.The regulations also provide a legal context for active control.
Given the extremely limited capacity for active management of invasive fish populations within provincial conservation agencies, it is crucial to prioritise control efforts against alien fish populations with high conservation risk, and those that are logistically feasible to manage.
South African legislation relating to invasive fish is among the most comprehensive globally.However, conflicts of interest and poor implementation of legislation reduce the effectiveness of such measures.Implementation efforts, and integration of biological control with other control methods need to be improved.Increased investment is required to maximise benefits from biological control, particularly in implementation and post-release evaluation, as well as in targeting additional invasive alien plants.

Conflict of interest species
Of the 552 alien species assessed (including most NEM:BA-listed species), most were classified as inconsequential (55%) or destructive (29%).Some species (10%) were regarded as more beneficial than harmful, and (6%) of species were considered to be conflict-generating (both harmful and useful).Managing these species will be challenging, and trade-offs will need to be made.
There is an urgent need to identify all stakeholders when considering the regulation of conflict-generating species, and to recognise that these stakeholders might hold very divergent perceptions on the problem posed by the invasive species.
Conflicts over invasive species are common globally, especially for trees (Dickie et al. 2014) and freshwater fishes (Woodford et al. 2016).summarised a few of the issues that still need to be addressed in Box 2. Whether these can be dealt with in depth in the first national status report remains to be seen, but they should be prioritised for future reports.

Determining 'status'
One of the key challenges given to authors and reviewers was that the papers should have a clear focus on 'status'.This was particularly difficult as the framework for the status report itself was still in development, as were international standards for monitoring invasions (Latombe et al. in (Fill et al. 2017;McConnachie et al. 2012;McConnachie et al. 2016;Shackleton et al. 2016;van Wilgen et al. 2012).Although this is not ideal, the fact that South Africa has a nationally mandated biodiversity institute and a government-funded centre of excellence focussing on biological invasions places it in a much better position to compile such a report than most other countries.
The information in the papers from the special issue will be combined with other published literature and substantial contributions from the scientific, management and regulatory communities where this information resides.Taking the 'pathway, species, area, intervention' framework, the data will then be organised into a series of sections of the report, with publication due in October 2017.The papers presented in this special issue therefore represent an important snap-shot in time.In some cases, they provide a base-line, in other cases an additional point in an existing time-series of data.By combining these over time, we can hope to ultimately be able to assess the scale of South Africa's invasion debt (Rouget et al. 2016) and to be able to prioritise resources to the most effective interventions.For this to happen in practice, though, research and implementation should no longer be seen as processes that happen separate to the needs and concerns of the wider society (Toomey, Knight & Barlow in press).For example, if we are to effectively respond to new incursions, we should not have separate institutions mandated to detect the problems, develop the appropriate response and implement control.These functions need to be organised as a single integrated process (Wilson, Panetta & Lindgren 2017).

BOX 2:
Selected knowledge gaps that should be prioritised to facilitate the reporting on biological invasions in South Africa.
The National Status Report on Biological Invasions will need to discuss all aspects of biological invasions, the state of knowledge of these in South Africa and how effective interventions are.There is much that could be done so some issues will need to be prioritised.The selection here is based primarily on issues that were identified during consultations with colleagues while soliciting papers for this special issue.In some cases, these were papers that were proposed but were not written, whereas in others they were raised as issues, but substantial dedicated research will be required for status to be determined, and finally, there are issues where there will need to be some theoretical development before it is clear how status should be measured.As such, this list is preliminary and incomplete, but, we believe, useful.Feedback on potential issues that should be included in this and future reports would be very gratefully received (Invasives@sanbi.org.za).
• A quantification of the rates of species introduction into, and spread within, South Africa.
• An assessment of the relative prominence of dispersal pathways within South Africa.
• A consolidated national inventory of introduced taxa, a physical reference specimen of each, and an assessment and regular updating of the status documented according to the Blackburn et al. (2011) classification scheme (cf.Henderson & Wilson 2017).
• Systematic agreed methods for projecting future threats, that is, a method for measuring and reporting on the invasion debt (Rouget et al. 2016).
• A summary of the extent of areas invaded and a method of estimating the overall impacts caused by these various invasions on biodiversity and ecosystem services.
• History, status and effectiveness of pathway, species and area-based management in South Africa.
• History, dynamics, and impact of workshops, forums and working groups that address biological invasions in South Africa.
• The scale and impact of herbicides used (cf.Wagner et al. 2017) as well as the effectiveness of herbicide application in terms of quantity and timing.
• The value and role of ecological restoration in managing biological invasions and contributing to conservation goals.
and the impact of invasive plants on water resources (Le Maitre et al. 2016)].
across groups or areas.However, we look forward to case studies being used extensively to test the proposed framework for monitoring and reporting on biological invasions.Finally, many issues were identified as critical for a status report, but there was simply not enough time to solicit a contribution for this special issue.We have Source: Photo by Travor XivuriFIGURE 1: The delegates of the 43rd Annual Research Symposium on the Management of Biological Invasions in South Africa, Goudini Spa, 18-20 May 2016.http://www.abcjournal.orgOpen Access

TABLE 1 :
Papers in the special issue and their insights on status in South Africa in the context of similar initiatives elsewhere in the world. http://www.abcjournal.orgOpenAccess

TABLE 1 (
Continues...): Papers in the special issue and their insights on status in South Africa in the context of similar initiatives elsewhere in the world. http://www.abcjournal.orgOpenAccess (Driver et al. 201214ndgren 2017)nt in work conducted in terms of South Africa's National Strategy for Biological Invasions (https://sites.google.com/site/wfwplanning/strategy), a recent book on incursion response planning(Wilson, Panetta & Lindgren 2017)and the development of the concept of invasion debt(Rouget et al. 2016), a logical basic framework has emerged.This framework suggests that any national status report on biological invasions should have sections dedicated to the status of pathways, species, areas and interventions [see alsoMcGeoch et al. (2016)].Authors were therefore requested to concentrate on producing headline statistics, for example, the number of alien taxa present, the impacts of invasions in terms of formal schemes (e.g.Blackburn et al. 2014) and whether management interventions have actually led to measurable effects on biological invasions.An additional request was to place the topic reviewed in South Africa both in the context of invasions elsewhere and in the context of other types of invasion in South Africa.We have summarised some of the key findings of the papers in this special issue in Table1.SANBI is required by the NEM:BA A&IS Regulations to compile a status report and to do the necessary research for informing it (Box 1).In reality, SANBI does not have the capacity to do everything required in this regard, and must rely on others, as was the case for the biodiversity assessments(Driver et al. 2012).