Prepare, Respond, and Recover: Selecting Immediate and Long-Term Strategies to Manage Invasions

Abstract

<p>When an invasion of a pest or disease is first discovered, the immediate response is typically to determine the extent of the incursion as quickly as possible and to control detected outbreaks. Ideally, this initial response preserves all longer-term management options, whether they be eradication, containment, impact reduction, or mitigation. Although eradication may be an appealing strategy for decision makers (as there is an expected end-date to expenditure and threat impacts), eradication is not always the most appropriate or cost-efficient strategy. The socio-political, technical, and economic feasibility of different management strategies must be carefully assessed prior to making any long-term decisions. Understanding how to efficiently allocate limited funding to manage outbreaks of biosecurity threats is a huge challenge for biosecurity agencies. In this chapter, we discuss the feasibility of longer-term management strategies and provide a decision-making framework to show how a biosecurity agency might select a cost-efficient strategy to respond to a pest incursion.</p>