New research has revealed the species that are hitching rides from Africa, South America and Asia into Europe on ornamental pot plants and cut flowers, a global industry worth almost £20 billion a year.
They range from a Colombian tree frog found in a florist’s shop in Sheffield to tiny insects and other invertebrates that could potentially become economically catastrophic agricultural pests.
They also include the viperine water snake, an animal (as its name suggests) that hunts in water and that can grow to nearly 1 metre long and numerous wall lizards and geckos.
The study published in the journal BioScience says the enormous volume of trade, which is approaching a value of £20 billion a year, makes it impossible to monitor and control everything that is coming through – in 2017, for example, the Netherlands imported nearly 15,000 tons of bulbs, more than 360,000 tons of live plants, 270,000 tonnes of cut flowers and 84,000 tonnes of ornamental foliage.
It’s hard to enough to detect the frogs and reptiles that are coming through customs in these shipments, let alone the insects and even fungi that could be far more damaging in the long term.
“Even with the best of intentions, unwanted hitchhikers are getting though customs import checks all the time,” says Dr Silviu Petrovan from the University of Cambridge, who was a senior author of the paper.
But it’s not just the threat of alien species causing environmental harm outside of their native regions that concerns the researchers – they also note that many plants are being illegally traded, threatening wild populations, and that industries such as floriculture in Kenya are have other negative impacts because of their excessive water consumption. The carbon footprint of transporting cut flowers is extremely high, too.
Main image: Columbian tree frog (not the individual found in the Sheffield florist's shop)
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