Impact of alien species on the native forest community of Mauritius: lessons and implications for conservation management
| MSI07P4227 | |
| Florens, F. B. V. Baider, C. | |
| Impact of alien species on the native forest community of Mauritius: lessons and implications for conservation management | |
| Tropical Biology: Meeting the needs of changing tropical ecosystems: Program and Abstracts. Annual Meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, 18-21 July 2006 Kunming, Yunnan, China. | |
| Conference paper | |
| 2006 | |
| p. 69-70 | |
| Kunming: Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden and Chinese Academy of Sciences. | |
| Abstract only | |
| En | |
| En | |
| Mauritius is located within one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. Its biota has a high degree of endemism (eg. 45 per cent of strict and 67 per cent of Mascarenes endemic flowering plants) but also a high rate of extinction: some 11 per cent of the native plants, 34 per cent of the land snails and 60 per cent of the land birds are already extinct due mainly to habitat destruction. The island is recognized by the IUCN as currently having one of the most threatened biota in the world, indeed less than 3 per cent of the original native vegetation remains. While habitat destruction has virtually stopped, threats to native biodiversity are still intense and come largely from a variety of invasive alien species. We quantified the current invasion level in five sites and invasion speed by alien plants in three areas of native forest remnants and investigated responses among the native plant community. Some impacts of selected invasive alien animal species, particularly feral pigs (Sus scrofa), rats (Rattus spp.) and long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) on native plants were documented. The findings have the potential to improve the effectiveness of current in-situ management practices in Mauritius and reduce management costs. These should facilitate the much needed increase of areas under alien species control, which currently concerns merely 2 per cent of the remaining mainland native vegetation, scattered in non-viable tiny pockets averaging 4.5 ha and varying from 0.2 to 19 ha. | |
| invasive alien species tropical forest conservation management | |
| Mauritius | |
| Flora | |
| 2007-01-09 | |
| En | |
| HERB | |
| CAT | |
| Herb |