Alien Plants and Their Impact on Tristan Da Cunha Part 1: General Account
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Alien plants and their impact on Tristan da Cunha Part 1: General account Niek Gremmen & Ruerdje Lenna Halbertsma Tristan da Cunha Alien Plants - Report Part 1 1 This report is based on fieldwork done in Tristan from November 2007 to February 2008, funded by the Overseas Territories Environment Programme (OTEP), as part of project number TDC403, and supported by the South Atlantic Invasive Species project (SAIS), funded by the European Commission through EDF-9, and managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). dr Niek J M Gremmen & Ruerdje Lenna Halbertsma, Data-analyse Ecologie, Hesselsstraat 11 7981 CD Diever The Netherlands www.dataneco.nl [email protected] ISBN 978-90-808854-2-4 Text © 2009, Niek Gremmen & Ruerdje Lenna Halbertsma Illustrations © 2009, Niek Gremmen & Ruerdje Lenna Halbertsma This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/nl/legalcode). 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Tristan da Cunha Alien Plants - Report Part 1 2 Table of Contents Summary ..................................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 27 The island ..................................................................................................................... 27 The flora ....................................................................................................................... 31 Alien species and their impact ..................................................................................... 32 Alien species management .......................................................................................... 35 Feasibility of control ....................................................................................... 36 Importance and urgency of control ................................................................. 36 What we did and how we did it ................................................................................................ 37 Major Tristan habitats ................................................................................................. 39 Quantifying alien plant species impacts ...................................................................... 41 Results ...................................................................................................................................... 42 Alien trees and shrubs ................................................................................................. 50 Impact of alien trees and shrubs...................................................................... 52 Suggested control measures for alien trees and shrubs ................................... 57 Weeds of gardens and arable land (Potato Patches) .................................................. 59 Impact and management or agricultural weeds............................................... 69 Pasture species ............................................................................................................ 71 Impacts of introduced species on pasture quality ........................................... 73 Garden and cultivation escapes .................................................................................. 81 Impact and management ................................................................................. 81 Other alien species ...................................................................................................... 87 Impacts and management ................................................................................ 87 Conclusions .............................................................................................................................. 96 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 97 References ................................................................................................................................ 98 Part 2. Species accounts (in a separate volume) Tristan da Cunha Alien Plants - Report Part 1 3 Soft Rush (Juncus effusus; left) and Monterey Pine (Pinus radiata; right) invading grazed vegetation and native Phylica bush vegetation near Sandy Point. Tristan da Cunha Alien Plants - Report Part 1 4 Alien plants and their impact on Tristan da Cunha Summary With the vast increase in transport of people and goods across the globe, many plant and animal species have been dispersed to areas outside their natural distribution. In the new areas they colonize, alien species are a major threat to many of the local ecosystems. They also can have serious adverse economical impacts, for instance by reducing agricultural yields and greatly increasing the cost of weed management. Alien species are species of plants or animals that have arrived in an area where they do not occur naturally, by means of transport provided by people. Some species are brought in on purpose, for instance to grow them as food for humans or fodder for animals, or as ornamental garden plants. Others have arrived by accident, without the people bringing them in probably being aware of it. Examples of these are weed seeds that were brought in as impurities in vegetable or flower seeds, seeds that were present in hay that was imported from elsewhere, or seeds or plant fragments in soil in which plants were imported, or attached to containers or to imported cars. The basic objective of the management of the island is the maintenance in a sustainable way of the resources that maintain life on the island. The main resources of Tristan are 1) the fisheries (Tristan rock lobster and fish), which form the basis of the economy of the island; 2) the land, soils, hydrology, and ecosystems of the island, which make local food production possible, as well as providing a place to live, providing a good quality water supply, etc. , and 3) the natural biodiversity of the island, including a large number of endemic plants and animals, i.e. species that do not occur anywhere in the world outside the Tristan group. For instance, nearly half of the native flowering plants and ferns are endemic. The first two of these resources (fisheries and land with associated ecosystems as a place to live) are primarily of local importance. They provide the local community with an economic basis and a place to live. The third resource (natural biodiversity), however, has a global importance. From this global importance obligations arise for the maintenance of this biodiversity. One of the local reasons for conservation of this unique biodiversity is that it is a potential source of attracting outside funds for its safeguarding and management, as well as through ecotourism. This report provides the results of an alien plant survey of Tristan, during the summer of 2007/2008. In total we found some 137 species of alien vascular plants. One third of these were found only in small numbers, while two thirds were widely dispersed. Several of the presently restricted species are expected to become much more abundant and widespread. Of 131 alien species previously reported, 32 were not found by us. We have searched the sites for which these species were listed, and believe that most of these have disappeared. Conversely we found 38 species not previously recorded on Tristan. Of these a number have been on the island already for quite long (several decades, presumably) but have not been identified, or for some reason were never noticed. But about half of the newly listed species are probably recent arrivals. There is a steady increase in the number of alien species over time. Our results show clearly that invasions by alien plant species are a continuing process Tristan da Cunha Alien Plants - Report Part 1 5 FIGURE A.1. The increase of the number of alien plant species of different ecological groups on Tristan da Cunha over time. Weeds