Invasive species are costing New South Wales billions of dollars a year, with plants and agricultural losses dominating reported impacts and major gaps remaining in how environmental and non-market damages are counted.
Accounting for the costs incurred due to biological invasions is important for informing invasive species management policies and for understanding and mitigating future losses. InvaCost, a living review and large database of cost estimates, is a valuable open science resource that can support informed policy and management of invasive species and has been the basis of many regional and national cost assessments.
This work aimed to comprehensively collate existing data to estimate the historical and current reported costs for the state and to assess the utility of InvaCost for smaller-scale regional assessments. Our findings show that invasive species costs within NSW are on the scale of billions of dollars annually and have increased substantially over time.
