This Autumn, you are invited to join us for the inaugural John Mumford Research to Impact Seminar to be held at on Thursday, 3 October at 17.00, with drinks and conversation afterwards. This is the first Policy Seminar of the term and it will be delivered by Professor Helen Roy to consider the risk assessments of non-native species, their potential impacts on biodiversity and how these guide international biosecurity policy.

Click here to receive further details and register for this event.

Invasive non-native species are one of the major drivers of ongoing global biodiversity loss, adversely impacting people and nature in all regions of Earth. Indeed, recent IPBES reporting provides unequivocal evidence of the major and growing threat of invasive alien species. There are, however, many realistic approaches to manage biological invasions with far reaching benefits. Biosecurity is a critical to managing biological invasions. Risk assessments are needed to underpin biosecurity and specifically to inform risk management. John Mumford made critical contributions to this topic from the development of innovative quantitative approaches for use within risk assessment frameworks to convening global networks of experts to inform biosecurity and decision-making. John recognised the importance of sustainable international cooperation in holistically addressing global biosecurity concerns. Professor Roy will provide an overview of biological invasions to highlight the ways in which, by working together, we can make ambitious progress to address the threat of invasive non-native species.  

Professor Helen Roy is an Individual Merit Scientist at the UK CEH and Professor in Ecology at the University of Exeter, and is very active in Biodiversity Science. She leads programmes to develop zoological monitoring and research in collaboration with the volunteer wildlife recording community. She also heads up global collaborations to deliver high impact research, relevant to the Environmental Challenges recognised by NERC, to understand and predict the effects of biological invasions on biodiversity and ecosystem function using large-scale and long-term species distribution and abundance datasets. 

Since 2008 Helen has led a Defra-funded project to compile information on invasive non-native species for Britain and is currently leading a Darwin Plus project to compile information on invasive non-native species for all the UK Overseas Territories. Prevention, early detection and rapid response are critical to the management of invasive non-native species and the collaborative approaches Helen has developed for horizon scanning to inform prevention have achieved international recognition and application. Her research on biological invasions has gained her international recognition both through informing policy and advancing science including as co-chair of the IPBES thematic assessment on Invasive Alien Species their Control.