Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Arkansas
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Invasive species can be ecologically and economically devastating. The ability to predict the next catastrophic invasive species before it arrives and established could yield incredible dividends. Project Horizon Scan seeks to review approximately 19,000 potentially invasive species and rank their risk of establishing in the United States based on propogule pressure (how many individuals are brought into the USA each year), how well the climate matches between their native range and parts of the USA, their taxonomic relationship to other invasive species, and aspects of their life history. Horizon Scan uses these qualities to rank each of the 19,000 species to identify the 500 most likely future invaders and then convenes panels of taxonomic experts to evaluate these rankings. This information will be crucial to policy makers in deciding how to regulate the importation of particular species.