Abstract

Climate change and invasive species pose novel and combined challenges to ecosystem management and ecological restoration. Managers and decision-makers can address these challenges via climate-smart invasive species management, defined as any management strategy or action that considers and aims to reduce the interactive effects of climate change and invasions.

To facilitate this approach in the Northeastern U.S. and Canada, members of the Northeast Regional Invasive Species & Climate Change Management Network (NE RISCC) have created a set of guidelines for how to consider and incorporate the interactive effects of climate change and invasions at multiple stages of management based on feedback from managers via surveys, formal research interviews, informal conversations, a workshop at the 2023 New York Invasive Species Expo, and an online workshop in April 2024. The focus of these guidelines is on the areas served by the NE RISCC, but can also serve as a starting point for climate-smart invasive species management efforts in other regions. 

Our ultimate goal for these guidelines is to provide actionable options for climate-smart invasive species management from which practitioners can select and adapt ideas into their own planning and action. Some of these suggestions may already be standard practice in your own management, but by including them in this list, we explicitly call attention to them as part of ongoing efforts to make invasive species management more climate-smart (and as areas for continued funding and support). Given the wide variety of habitat types, focal species, and management priorities of different organizations and property owners in the Northeast, not all recommendations will be applicable in a given context. Furthermore, many options will require some investment of time, funding, or capacity, and further tailoring to fit your organization's values. 

We recognize that many barriers still limit the implementation of climate-smart strategies; to address these barriers, we also highlight areas where policy, funding, and research could further support and facilitate climate-smart invasive species management. Even when such barriers are addressed, considerable uncertainty may remain regarding the specific ways climate change and invasive species will interact in a given site and location. As such, climate-smart invasive species management will entail not only thinking about the future, but being flexible in the moment and learning by doing.