Awareness of INNS risk
All interview participants recognised that INNS pose major risks to the environment. However, they displayed varying levels of awareness of the pathways by which specific INNS can be spread (especially of the risks attached to the kinds of activities the organisations themselves were carrying out). Some (6/15) also displayed poor knowledge of the types of negative impact brought about by specific INNS. These differences in knowledge and awareness were largely attributable to staff expertise on the subject. Participants that had background qualifications in ecology knew a great deal about INNS, whilst those without were less aware of how their organisation’s activities might contribute to the spread of INNS and were confused about the impacts associated with particular species.
The risks associated with INNS were identified as both the risks of negative impacts of INNS, and also the risk of contributing to the spread of INNS through field activities. Negative impacts could be both direct and indirect, with direct impacts having measurable financial repercussions for organisations’ operational capacity. Direct impacts such as riverbank erosion due to burrowing Signal Crayfish or the dieback of Himalayan Balsam monocultures, public health and safety issues caused by phytotoxicity of Giant Hogweed, loss of timber due to tree diseases, damage to infrastructure and associated flooding risks, and impacts on drinking water quality and supply from Zebra Mussel infestations of reservoirs, were all identified. Indirect impacts (relating mainly to environmental effects such as biodiversity loss), whilst not always causing immediate financial problems, were still recognised as undesirable. For example, for those organisations with a remit to encourage public enjoyment of natural areas, biodiversity loss was perceived as a threat to visitor numbers:
If we start losing native species that are in decline then it could have significant impacts [on visits] (Interview participant K).
Indirect impacts also included the risks of reputational damage and possible prosecution for failing to act on INNS.
Many activities were identified as risky for spreading INNS, including travel between sites and the re-use of equipment. Generally, greater awareness was displayed of the risks associated with field activities involving aquatic environments (such as ecological monitoring using nets, dredging and reservoir safety tests). A theme identified by all participants was that greater risk was attached to activities carried out by members of the public and contractors because these groups were considered to be less aware of (or inclined to implement) biosecurity measures.
A degree of ambivalence about INNS was evident for a small number of participants (2/15), who suggested that over longer timespans INNS may be assimilated ecologically so that they are eventually no longer considered INNS. But participants more commonly agreed (9/15) that it was important to act early in order to stop new INNS invasions before they became established.
Some of the larger organisations represented by participants (7/15) had taken the step of employing dedicated biosecurity personnel or explicitly including responsibility for biosecurity within the remit of specific staff members, but for smaller organisations (which were often membership-based and leisure-focussed) taking such a step wasn’t possible. Moves towards the development of official INNS strategies had also been taken by some of the larger organisations (5/15), with some engaged in the process of producing detailed risk assessments on a species by species basis (6/15). Detailing the risks associated with individual species was identified as a way that priority action (and budget allocation) could be initiated. However, this style of approach also aligned with a tendency to react to specific threats rather than to implement general preventative action.
Barriers to biosecurity uptake
Inevitably costs are associated with implementing biosecurity, and can act as impediments to adoption by organisations and their networks. Monetary costs identified related to purchasing duplicate sets of equipment, paying for awareness-raising placards to be put up in natural areas and the costs of paying for and transporting cleaning equipment. Additionally there were issues of time costs for staff employing biosecurity measures or undertaking spot checks to assess biosecurity compliance, as well as space costs for equipment drying. Logistical difficulties with washing large pieces of machinery and vehicles were also identified as a difficult cost barrier to overcome. Environmental employees can feel ‘overworked and underpaid’ (interview participant H) and requirements that add to workloads were considered to be unpopular. Other priorities may also outweigh biosecurity considerations within organisations:
£X million [for biosecurity] sounds like a lot of commitment but our business value is £X billion, so it’s small potatoes in terms of the risk to the company (Interview participant G).
The existence of conflicting guidance within the public domain about which biosecurity measures are effective, the lack of a well-developed, co-ordinated national strategy and adequate legislation, and poorly thought out and utilised communication channels were identified as particular problems. The lack of targeted information can result in information overload and individual inaction:
I think that there is information overload at times… so there is lots of information coming in from various directions and sometimes there is so much that people are so busy in their day to day stuff that it is probably not read…cascading some of that information onto other staff isn’t always as effective as it might be, only because whoever does it doesn’t do it as well or because people aren’t listening or interested or whatever (Interview participant D).
At the same time inadequate guidance can lead to a lack of action on the part of organisations against staff or contractors failing to comply with biosecurity:
There’s no real penalty there. How many people do you see prosecuted by the Environment Agency for non-compliance of biosecurity? (Interview participant F).
It can be difficult to get many people, each with their own identities and related beliefs, values, interests and attitudes, to collectively implement the same, or complementary, behaviour change. Whilst some individuals were acknowledged to have a passion for biosecurity, others were simply not interested and had other priorities, and ultimately convincing them to employ biosecurity would not happen overnight:
Yes. Well they are all stuck in their ways, it is a change of behaviour which takes time. (Interview participant C).
As a result it can feel futile to be undertaking biosecurity when others are failing to do the same:
I think the main internal and external barrier that I see is the Catch 22 of people being sceptical saying, ‘unless everyone’s doing it then there is no point’ (Interview participant D).
In this respect, groups of people who only sporadically visit resources, such as contractors and members of the public are of particular concern:
So it becomes a little bit of a difficult job because you are trying to get all your staff to do all this, but there are far more anglers than you have staff who will be going to different waterways wearing the same boots, using the same keep net, using the same rod. So it’s very difficult, you can do your absolute best every day of your life, but your impact will be diluted enormously by the activities of all the people who use your water (Interview participant F).
It was widely agreed (9/15) that it is important to act early by employing precautionary measures in order to prevent new INNS invasions before they become established:
The older ones that have been around for a while, some of them it is debatable to whether they are necessarily invasive… but in many respects the damage is already done with those species. New species coming into the area potentially have impacts that cause more damage, and it would be easier and will cost less to get rid of them to begin with (Interview participant H).
Despite this recognition that a precautionary approach should be guiding biosecurity commitments, in reality organisations were much more likely to undertake actions in response to specific known threats with the potential to directly impact on their organisation’s interests:
I work at the coal face so for me it is all about what impacts on us, but XXXX would give you a high level national answer… They would say ‘It is the species that we could have most influence over, just arrived’ and ‘the species that have the greatest impact on Water Framework Directive’ (Interview participant O).
Some interviewees (7/15) commented that before their organisation would be likely to formally request biosecurity measures from environment users (staff, contractors, members of the public and tenants) they would need clear, scientific evidence about how their activities might be associated with pathways of spread, and about the efficacy of the biosecurity measures being undertaken to combat this:
We don’t do anything on a precautionary principle because then people think ‘What are we doing this for?’… We just need to have the evidence to back it up and a pretty solid basis for asking people to do it otherwise they won’t (Interview participant B).
Linked to this are issues around the visibility of species and impacts. On one hand pathogens and many INNS propagules are invisible to the naked eye and therefore unlikely to be a conscious concern for many environment users:
Part of the problem with a lot of these issues is that, it’s a bit like radiation, a lot of the problem is you can’t see it. So people don’t understand. They tend to think if they can’t see it why are they doing it? (Interview participant F).
On the other hand, established invasions can be highly visible, with the risk of public criticism and reputational damage for not dealing with visible infestations, such as Japanese Knotweed, Giant Hogweed and Himalayan Balsam:
Hogweed and some of the plant diseases are health and safety risks where it’s an offence to spread them on the land. And Water Framework Directive is very clear, where we could get an ASBO, that’s a significant reputational issue (Interview participant G).
Action to protect an organisation’s reputation and to avoid alienating public support is often a priority, particularly given that most organisations now rely directly on support from the public in the form of membership fees, volunteer contributions, charitable donations or customer payments:
We tend to spend our money on things like Japanese Knotweed and Hogweed because the health and safety element of Giant Hogweed means you’ve got to treat it because from a reputation point of view if you’ve got Giant Hogweed and it’s growing next to somebody’s access… then it looks like it’s just negligent management, so we have to do it, and that’s why we prioritise it (Interview participant F).
But reputation as a key motivator for biosecurity has its downsides. The fear of scrutiny can prevent an organisation from disseminating biosecurity messages:
We have got to get our house in order, how on earth can we preach to other people if our own land is not properly treated? (Interview participant O).
Another problem with biosecurity efforts being driven by concerns for reputation was the potential for a separation between the front of ‘good practice’ presented by organisations and what is happening in reality. For example, whilst contractors are often awarded contracts on the basis that they promise to employ adequate biosecurity measures, respondents (9/15) were sceptical about how much such measures were actually employed on the ground and highlighted that the only way organisations can ascertain if measures are being undertaken is by implementing spot-checks, which are costly in terms of staff time. In addition, where non-compliance was discovered during routine checks, procedures were lengthy, paperwork-heavy and not rigorously employed. There was some cynicism about the degree to which organisations are genuinely committed to biosecurity (7/15), with suggestions that the bureaucracy of administration could be used to deflect the focus from their own shortcomings or to pass the responsibility on to someone else:
Part of the trick you see is that you pass on the responsibility to your contractor. We can smugly say, oh we’ve got policy here, this is what we want to see, go out and do it, but we won’t then be making sure that our staff are doing that. And this is part of the problem (Interview participant F).
A similar issue was raised relating to the degree of biosecurity information put out by organisations:
I’m being cynical, if you’re seen to be circulating things it looks like you are doing stuff, but actually, the things which have an effect are the stuff right up on the coal face here… (Interview participant F).
Drivers and opportunities
Whilst behavioural change tends to be a gradual and complex process involving communication pathways, awareness-raising activities and changes to norms and attitudes, there were mechanisms identified by which individuals could be influenced to undertake biosecurity. First, the role of positive peer pressure and the need for organisations to protect their reputation:
It sounds bad but through peer pressure… if someone sees you doing something wrong then they will be like, ‘Hang on why are you doing this, this is affecting everyone else’. So peer pressure in a positive way rather than a negative way (Interview participant B).
Whilst many participants (10/15) admitted that they felt their own biosecurity undertakings might not achieve effective results because of the activities of others, they still acknowledged that their organisation needed to be seen to be employing biosecurity in order to set a good example:
We do need to try to show good practice and hope that that will slowly rub off on some other people (Interview participant D).
Second, social relationships between staff members of organisations were identified as an important mechanism for sharing information about INNS:
We chat regularly so they would inform us of anything coming into the area (Interview participant D).
Third, experiential learning in the field, where first-hand experience, such as observing the damage caused by an INNS or comparing natives and invasives, worked to convince people of the need to take action.
Fourth, Several interviewees (9/15) noted the importance of capitalising on the energy that some enthusiastic and passionate staff and volunteers have about INNS issues. Face to face communication about INNS issues was considered to be more effective than the use of impersonal emails. As such the benefits brought about by key individuals and opportunities for partnership working were emphasized:
We need to find some people who are really interested in this, it’s just finding them. And then we can say, well here’s a project, develop a strategy and a policy for us and we could have, we’ve got a really good comms [communication] team and we could say why don’t we have a publicity campaign about biosecurity (Interview participant F).
Finally, the normalisation of biosecurity was identified as an important mechanism, similar to the process of Health and Safety regulations gradually being adopted in the past:
We went through a campaign… because our health and safety record wasn’t brilliant, what happened was our staff then all got trained up to a really good standard, and what they would do is they would shop the contractors if they saw them infringing health and safety practice on site… It’s empowered people, once we’d done the formal training we did, they launched a campaign… which was aimed at you, not being told by line managers ‘you should be wearing a life jacket when you are close to water’, but that it’s your responsibility to take responsibility for your co-workers (Interview participant F).
However, currently there are often limited opportunities to incentivize good biosecurity. In light of this there were calls for the development of an accredited national biosecurity standard.