Horticultural trade is the primary pathway for the introduction of invasive plant species. Increasingly, trade is conducted online via e-commerce platforms. We used automated web scraping to capture snapshots of the online plant trade in Australia across 11 e-commerce websites between 2020 and 2023, aiming to identify potentially invasive species for sale. We identified 3,822 species for sale, which we categorised based on their Australian regulatory, naturalisation and native status, as well as their evidence of impacts elsewhere. We found the sale of 194 ‘Priority’ species, which are already considered invasive in Australia; 544 ‘Attention’ species, which have naturalised in Australia; and 175 ‘Watch’ species that are invasive elsewhere in the world but have not yet naturalised in Australia. We further prioritised the 175 Watch species, highlighting four species (Berberis thunbergii, Artemisia vulgaris, Rosa rugosa, and Elaeagnus angustifolia) for immediate investigation based on global occupancy and abundance, climate suitability, propagule pressure, and evidence of impacts. We also evaluate invasion risk across e‑commerce platform types, finding that public online marketplaces list more plant taxa over time than nursery websites and that marketplaces and generalist nurseries tend to offer species with higher invasion risk than specialist nurseries. We recommend that this dataset is used as an aid for prioritising weed risk assessments by government authorities to prevent the establishment of new invasive plant species.

AbstractThe trade of alien species as pets is increasingly recognized as a biosecurity risk due to their intentional and accidental release into the wild. However, pets are often categorized as native or non‐native at a national level, meaning that their presence outside of their native range, yet within their native country, may be an overlooked biosecurity threat. So‐called “domestic non‐natives” have established new populations across several countries and, in some cases, become invasive. Here, we investigated the extent of the domestic trade of native Australian pet species outside of their natural distributions and determined whether such locations were climatically suitable for potential alien establishments. Australia provides a unique system to explore this issue because it deters the trade of most alien species yet permits the keeping of a large diversity of native pets. We monitored trade from a popular Australian e‐commerce site used to trade native pet birds, reptiles, and amphibians (29 k advertisements over 1 year; from July 2019 to July 2020). Of the 177 native vertebrate species we observed in the pet trade, 129 species (73%) had at least some instances of their trade occurring outside of their natural distribution. We found that climatically suitable environments were present outside the native range of 90 species and that these regions were proximal to suburbs where we observed trade. Our results indicate that the “domestic non‐native” trade is widespread in Australia and that, if captive pets escape or are released into the wild in sufficient numbers, there is a risk of establishment for most of these species. We suggest that regulations pertaining to the trade of native pets ensure that careful biosecurity consideration is given in circumstances when trade occurs beyond a species' native range, both in the context of Australia and for other large countries with widespread pet industries.

Effective regulation is essential for preventing the establishment of new invasive plants and managing the environmental, social, and economic impacts of those already established. Invasive plants are regulated by jurisdictions at a mix of local, regional, national, and international levels. Enhanced coordination of policy and regulations has been identified as a key strategy for addressing the impacts of invasive species; however, coordination between jurisdictions, and even within jurisdictions, is not always considered. To review regulatory coordination in Australia, we compiled a comprehensive dataset of noxious weeds (defined as invasive plants and potentially invasive plants with controls specified in regulation) in each Australian jurisdiction (i.e., state or territory). We found that jurisdictions on average shared ca. 67% (SD = 15%) of noxious weed listings. Neighboring jurisdictions were not more similar than separated jurisdictions in their noxious weed listings. There were significant differences in the biogeographic native ranges of noxious weeds between jurisdictions, with species native to temperate Asia being most frequently listed overall. The predominant likely entry pathway for noxious weeds in Australia was the ornamental trade. Listings were primarily dedicated to proactive control, prohibiting the cultivation of noxious weeds to avoid their naturalization. There were 415 noxious weeds regulated in a harmonious manner across jurisdictions. However, there were 327 noxious weeds regulated by jurisdictions in a discordant manner, potentially leaving neighboring jurisdictions vulnerable to invasion. We suggest jurisdictions reassess the regulation of these 327 discordant noxious weeds in Australia and utilize a national taxonomic standard to avoid problematic synonyms. Improved cohesion of policies could be achieved through wider adoption of existing regulatory systems and codevelopment of regulations between government and industry.

Invasive plants seriously impact our environmental, agricultural and forestry assets, and the ornamental plant trade is a major introduction pathway. The variety and extent of the ornamental plant trade is growing in reach and is increasingly facilitated by the internet (i.e., through e-commerce). A lack of surveillance and regulation of e-commerce has resulted in invasive species being widely traded on these platforms. Here, we investigated the extent of illegal trade in invasive plant species in Australia by collecting advertisements found on a popular public e-commerce website. Across a 12-month period we collected a total of 235,162 plant advertisements. From 10,000 of these advertisements (4.25% of total advertisements) we found 155 plant taxa advertised online that were prohibited to trade in at least one Australian State or Territory (12.5% of Australia's total prohibited plant taxa). We detected 1,415 instances of invasive plants advertised, of which 411 breached local jurisdictional (i.e., State or Territory) laws. Opuntia cacti and invasive aquatic plants were traded in the greatest quantities. A variety of uses for plants prohibited to trade were reported by the sellers, with aquatic uses being the most popular (i.e., water filtering and habitat for aquatic animals). We used generalised linear mixed-effects models to test the effect of prohibiting the sale of invasive plants on the quantity and price of online advertisements. Despite Australia's strict internal biosecurity regulations, we found that trade prohibitions had no influence on the quantity and price of trade in illegal invasive plants. Given this, and the extent of illegal invasive plants traded, we believe increased monitoring and regulation of online plant trade is warranted. We demonstrate that targeted searches using string matching is an effective tool for detecting e-commerce trade of invasive species. However, to obtain the most optimal outcomes, regulations should be coupled with increased cooperation from e-commerce platforms and public awareness campaigns. Future weed risk assessments should consider online trade as a key factor in the long-distance dispersal and propagule pressure of a plant. Jurisdictions would also benefit from greater alignment on plant trade prohibitions and revision of associated compliance policies.

Supporting data from publication "The dark web trades wildlife, but mostly as drugs"

Summary The trade of plants is a major source of invasive species introductions and establishment. In Australia, a large-scale informal plant trade is facilitated by publicly accessible e-commerce websites. This unregulated trade has enabled a rapidly emerging pathway for the spread of invasive plant species (weeds). The trade of declared weeds is illegal and presents biosecurity professionals with a unique set of problems and significant challenges to address. Thus far, investigations of the online weed trade are done on an ad hoc basis by biosecurity professionals manually searching websites. In response, we have developed a semi-automated method utilising webscrapers to systematically capture the online plant trade. We match search terms based on scientific, common and trade names with text from online plant advertisements to detect weeds being traded. Visual identification with listing images is used to verify detections. Our aim is to quantify and describe the trade to better understand trade dynamics and participant motivations. Preliminary results show the online trade of weed species is frequent and widespread, with illegal trade present in all states and territories. To date, we have detected more than 100 different species of declared weeds traded online. Cacti, aquatic plants and horticulturally popular, yet invasive, species are the most traded weeds. Misidentification of plants and the use of generic (non-scientific) names by traders is common. This behaviour suggests an overall lack of awareness of the species being traded, their legal status, and the potential consequences of trading a declared weed. Culinary, medicinal and other uses for plants are purported by sellers, providing insight into the desire for certain weeds. These insights and the methodology developed for this project will provide biosecurity professionals with the information and tools required to detect illegal sales and therefore prevent future weed incursions.

The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) threatens conservation and biosecurity efforts. The Internet has greatly facilitated the trade of wildlife, and researchers have increasingly examined the Internet to uncover illegal trade. However, most efforts to locate illegal trade on the Internet are targeted to one or few taxa or products. Large-scale efforts to find illegal wildlife on the Internet (e-commerce, social media, dark web) may be facilitated by a systematic compilation of illegally traded wildlife taxa and their uses. Here, we provide such a dataset. We used seizure records from three global wildlife trade databases to compile the identity of seized taxa along with their intended usage (i.e., use-type). Our dataset includes c. 4.9k distinct taxa representing c. 3.3k species and contains c. 11k taxa-use combinations from 110 unique use-types. Further, we acquired over 45k common names for seized taxa from over 100 languages. Our dataset can be used to conduct large-scale broad searches of the Internet to find illegally traded wildlife. Further, our dataset can be filtered for more targeted searches of specific taxa or derived products.

Spatially large and multiple use coastal regions face unprecedented pressures. Decision makers need to build policy that links social, economic and ecological dimensions in ways that build the adaptive capacity of these systems while not compromising individual values. This paper reports on an inter-disciplinary project that used a Capitals approach to build socio-economic indicators robust enough to use in integrated community assessments of adaptive capacity. Using the Spencer Gulf, South Australia as a case study, we demonstrate the utility of these indicators to derive quantitative assessments of socio-economic adaptive capacity. We argue that such assessments used at regular periods, in conjunction with scientific indicators, have the potential to be powerful management tools and provide ongoing ability to measure community adaptive capacity over time.