| Invasive animal pests inflict many kinds of damage on the environment, and threaten native fauna and flora. We attempt to value the benefits from the extra biodiversity that is protected if these threats were removed. The NSW Rural Lands Protection Board is a major agency that undertakes pest control, and is organised into 48 districts across the state. A cross-sectional set of data on Board expenditures, pest abundance, and environmental and climatic characteristics, was compiled by district and analysed. The number of threatened native plant and animal species increases with pest abundance and with the total number of native species present in the district. But the number of threatened species decreases as Board expenditures on pest control increase. The... |
