Resource Search

Invasive species are one of the most dire threats to the endemic flora and fauna of the Galápagos Islands. One of the most aggressive species is the Giant African Snail (Lissachatina fulica), which was reported for the first time in Galápagos in 2010 and is a highly invasive species that appears on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) list of the 100 most harmful invasive species in the world. Galápagos Conservancy President Dr. Paul Salaman recently signed a new agreement with the Galápagos Biosecurity & Quarantine Regulation & Control Agency (ABG) to strengthen control actions and prevent the spread of the African snail on the islands.

More than 50 non-native species have found their way to the Galápagos Islands, over 10 times more than scientists previously thought, reports a new study in Aquatic Invasions published Thursday, March 28. The study, a joint effort of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Williams College, and the Charles Darwin Foundation, documents 53 species of introduced marine animals in this UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of the largest marine protected areas on Earth. Before this study came out, scientists knew about only five.

Invasive species are a real threat to British Columbia’s amazing natural environment. With the right education about invasive species early on, we can hope our youth will hit the ground running. These fun games, video and activities for kids help break down the issues around invasive species and their impacts.

Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolate) is a highly destructive invader in North America. As well as hindering the survival of native plants, it poses a particular threat to the survival of the rare West Virginia white butterfly (Pieris virginiensis).

A new GBIF task group will address the urgent need for improved access to better data and information on invasive alien species in response to the landmark Invasive Alien Species Assessment approved by the the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) this month.
See related resource:  Media Release: IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) Invasive Alien Species Assessment

See also: Invasive Species Fact Sheets for more resources

See also: Biocontrol Factsheets for more information on biocontrol agents

The escalation of the spread of African swine fever (ASF) has placed most of the world's domestic and wild pig populations under direct threat. To support countries' efforts to protect economies and food security, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have launched a joint initiative for the Global Control of ASF.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world's governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.

Provides mapping functions for species globally. The GBIF network draws sources together through the use of data standards, such as Darwin Core, which forms the basis for the bulk of GBIF.org's index of hundreds of millions of species occurrence records. Publishers provide open access to their datasets using machine-readable Creative Commons license designations, allowing scientists, researchers, and others to apply the data in hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and policy papers each year. Many of these analyses—which cover topics from the impacts of climate change and the spread of invasive and alien pests to priorities for conservation and protected areas, food security and human health— would not be possible without this.

Note: USGS's BISON (Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation) which provided North American species occurrence data and maps moved away from the 10-year-old infrastructure of the previous BISON website (bison.usgs.gov) to a GBIF data portal for the U.S. provided by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The new site became live on October 1, 2021, and the previous BISON website was be taken down on December 17, 2021.

The GBIF Backbone Taxonomy is a single, synthetic management classification with the goal of covering all names GBIF is dealing with. It's the taxonomic backbone that allows GBIF to integrate name based information from different resources, no matter if these are occurrence datasets, species pages, names from nomenclators or external sources like EOL, Genbank or IUCN. This backbone allows taxonomic search, browse and reporting operations across all those resources in a consistent way and to provide means to crosswalk names from one source to another.
See also: GBIF Introduces New Version of the Backbone Taxonomy (Sep 9, 2019). The new version of the taxonomy adds approximately 725,000 names, around 85 per cent of them animals. The update also adds 100,000 accepted species names not previously included in the backbone.