The status of biological invasions and their management in South Africa in 2022 [FIRST DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT]

For citations in the scientific literature: Zengeya, T.A. & Wilson, J.R. (Eds.), 2022. The status of biological invasions and their management in South Africa in 2022 [FIRST DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT]. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Kirstenbosch and DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch. http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7414804

For citations in policy documents: SANBI and CIB 2022. The status of biological invasions and their management in South Africa in 2022 [FIRST DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT]. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Kirstenbosch and DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch. http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7414804

Note to reader: We are inviting you to submit comments, corrections, and queries on this third status report on biological invasions.  We have prepared a standard form for commenting that you can fill in if you wish, but if you would prefer to send in your inputs in your own format, please indicate the page and line numbers to which your comment refers. Many of the technical details (and data on which the report is based like the list of alien species) are available in the [ADD LINK TO: appendices]. Please also consider commenting on these.  If you are in a position to provide additional information, we would be very grateful, and will aim to ensure all contributors are appropriately acknowledged. If you do not wish to be named, please let us know.  We would like as many people and organisations to make inputs as possible, so please pass the report on to anyone you think might be able to contribute.  We will capture all comments received during this commenting period and respond to them. A database of these comments and the responses will be available on request once the report has been released.

Comments to be sent to:  IAS.report.SANBI@gmail.com  By: 28 February 2023

Form for commenting: https://tinyurl.com/mr2mu6xz

This is a “first draft for public comment”.  It outlines the format and sections of the intended report, and provides some preliminary findings, but many of the estimates of indicator values will change as a result of ongoing analysis, and because of inputs received during this review period.  In particular the report will be based on information up to the end of December 2022, this of course was not possible in this draft. Therefore the results should viewed as demonstrative of what the final report will look like rather than indicative of the current state.  Footnotes are added to the text to indicate where additional analyses are pending.

Thank you in advance for your comments, this report relies on the active participation of a wide range of stakeholders, and we appreciate you taking the time to engage with us.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Tsungai Zengeya (on behalf of the third status report drafting team)

Kirstenbosch, 20 December 2022

The previous status reports are available to download at http://iasreport.sanbi.org.za/ , links for on-line resources are available at end of this report.