China
November 29, 2010

Source: Farmers’ Daily

In the past few days, the Third National Conference on Alien Invasive Species, jointly sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences and China Society of Plant Protection, was held in Haikou city of Hainan Province. Attending at the conference were over 800 participants from research and education institutions from home and abroad including experts, scholars and managerial staff involved in the field of research on invasive alien species.

At the conference, the experts pointed out that the issue of alien invasive species had become a hot issue attracting widespread concern and close attention of governments and the public across the world, and China was one of the countries that was suffering severe invasion of alien species. According to statistics, at present there were more than 520 alien species found in the ecosystems of agriculture and forestry in the country, of which more than 100 had been observed over large areas and caused serious damages. Along with a rapid development of economical globalization and international trade, the incidence of alien invasive species was on the increase. For example, in 2009 up to 32 000 such species were intercepted at various ports of the country, which was 3.1times that of 2002.

Taking Global Warming and Alien Invasive Species as its theme, the conference had a wide-ranging discussion on relevant theories and practices in the fields of early warning, surveillance and monitoring, control and regulation of alien invasive species in the country, especially in the situation of global climate change. At the meeting, the experts also had exchange of their research results and discussion on the status quo of the alien invasive species, the development of control practices and research, the control and plans at the following stage.
 

Website: http://www.agri.gov.cn

Published: December 1, 2010