Biodiversity's Ticking Time Bomb: Understanding and Addressing
the Problem of Invasive Species in Europe 28 January 2013 | News
story On 21 February 2013, IUCN and BirdLife, with the support
of the European Habitats Forum, will organize a high-level
debate at the European Parliament in Brussels to discuss the
issue of invasive alien species in Europe and the development of
a EU policy instrument to tackle them. The event is hosted by
MEP Pavel Poc, Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists &
Democrats (S&D). NATURE Invasive alien species are acknowledged
as a serious threat to biodiversity in Europe, and the first
cause of documented extinctions at the global scale. Today,
Europe hosts over 11,000 alien species and invasions are growing
at exponential speed, with a recorded increase of 76% in the
last 30 years. MONEY The economic costs of invasions are
estimated at more than 12 billion Euros per year in Europe only.
This affects many economic sectors, from forestry to
agriculture, and to the shipping in