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

Creating watchlists for potential high-risk invaders can serve as a strong proactive invasive species management tool, but the biggest challenge for creating watchlists is identifying which species out of thousands are “high risk” for becoming harmful invaders. Rapid horizon scans can narrow down non-native species lists from thousands of non-native species to hundreds, and then in-depth risk screening summaries, such as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Ecological Risk Screening Summary (ERSS) protocols, can further winnow lists down to a handful of high-risk species. However, there remain key gaps in the USFWS ERSS protocols: the summaries are not tailored for finer-scale ecoregions, the climatic analyses do not account for future climate scenarios, and the literature review for understanding risks of establishment, spread, and impacts is not standardized. To support preventative invasive species management in Arkansas by identifying potential watchlist species, there is a critical need to have and implement a standardized protocol for in-depth ecological risk screening summaries for species that are high-risk for becoming invasive in Arkansas. To fill this need, we propose to customize and improve upon the USFWS ERSS protocols. Our specific objectives are: 1) Customize and make improvements on the USFWS ERSS protocols for Arkansas by (a) tailoring climate matching to Arkansas and (b) developing and implementing a standardized, semi-automatic systematic literature review for high-risk species; and 2) Implement the new Arkansas ecological risk screening summary protocols on the top 10 heighted risk freshwater fish species identified in the U.S. Geological Survey’s Vertebrates in Trade Horizon Scan. As a result of this project, Arkansas will have customized and improved ecological risk screening summary protocols for conducting in-depth risk screening of potential invasive species. We envision these ERSS protocols will fit into an overarching workflow for proactive invasive species management that starts with (i) horizon scanning (rapid risk screening), moves to (ii) ecological risk screening (in-depth risk screening for species flagged in horizon scanning), and then finishes with (iii) considering species categorized as high-risk for addition to an Arkansas aquatic nuisance species watchlist. This project will ensure Arkansas has a clear set of methods for identifying potential watchlist species.