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Published by: USDA. Forest Service. Publication FHTET-2002-04.

Biocontrol is an important management tool that utilizes one species (a biocontrol agent) to control another (a target host) and can be an effective approach for controlling populations of invasive species across broad spatial scales. Climate change, though, is complicating biocontrol, raising concerns that mismatches between how biocontrol agents and their hosts respond to climate change could alter the efficacy of current and future biocontrol programs. In response, a team of RISCC (Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change) Management Network and NE CASC (Climate Adaptation Science Center) researchers has published a new "Management Challenge" that details how climate change impacts the relationship between biocontrol agents and their target hosts and outlines management implications arising from this problem.

Biocontrol is an important management tool that utilizes one species (a biocontrol agent) to control another (a target host) and can be an effective approach for controlling populations of invasive species across broad spatial scales. There are growing concerns that mismatches between how biocontrol agents and their hosts respond to climate change could alter the efficacy of current and future biocontrol programs.
See also: Environmental Conversation Education Materials for additional educational materials (2011 to present)

Biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey are racing the clock to pull four species of native Hawaiian Honeycreeper forest birds back from the brink of extinction. Factors such as habitat loss, invasive species, and non-native predators have been fueling the birds' decline for centuries. However, introduced diseases, particularly avian malaria spread through mosquitos, which are not native to the Hawaiian Islands, coupled with climate change, are the greatest threat facing Hawaiian forest birds today. 

"As the climate warms and more mosquitoes move into the once malaria-free regions of the mountains, healthy birds are running out of places to escape the cycle of infection," said Eben Paxton, a research ecologist with the USGS Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center (PIERC) in Hawai'i. Now, PIERC biologists are working with a range of partners, including other Interior Department bureaus and the Birds Not Mosquitos Coalition, to intercept the disease cycle using a novel conservation tool.