Highland Invasive Species Forum
In June 2008 the Highland Biodiversity Partnership convened the first meeting of the Highland Biodiversity Forum, this group was made up of over 50 organisations and individuals. Its aims were decided to be;
- To bring together the key players and take stock of the situation regarding invasive non-native species in Highland;
- To raise awareness and spread good practice;
- To identify any major gaps and prioritise key areas for future work; and
- To work together to secure new resources and funding.
Sub-group
A sub-group was created to deliver projects to help deliver these aims. It will identify gaps in current work and priorities for future action, investigate sources of funding, and work up a proposal for a future Highland Invasive Species Project for submission to the full Highland Invasive Species Group. In addition to this medium term work, the Sub Group will discuss and make progress on a small number of “quick wins” to capitalise on the enthusiasm generated by the creation of the Highland Invasive Species Group.
The sub-group identified five priority invasive non-native species (INNS) that initial work should be focussed on an the Highland level. It was accepted that there were species that are local problems, for example Brown Rats on some islands and Salmonberry in Caithness, but not over the whole Highland area and they should be addressed at the local level.
The top five most important invasive non-native species requiring managment in Highland are:
- Japanese Knotweed.
- American Mink.
- Rhododendron ponticum.
- Giant Hogweed.
- Himalayan Balsam
Leaflets
Four leaflets were produced in late 2009 to raise awareness of some of the key invasive non-native species in Highland. In 2011 the Rhododendron leaflet was updated and a leaflet on the Inverness Non-native Plant Species Project was produced. To download these documents click on the links on the right hand side.
Mapping Invasive Species
In March 2010 a project collating the available data on the top 5 Invasive Species in Highland was completed. A final report was produced, with distribution maps and a list of the metadata (information about the individual datasets) collected. You can download this document from the "Current Documents" section on the right hand side of this page.