Prioritisation of targets for weed biological control II: the South African Biological Control Target Selection system

Invasive alien plants (IAPs) are considered one of the greatest threats to biodiversity in South Africa and are often associated with negative socio-economic and human health consequences. Biocontrol is seen as an effective strategy for managing IAPs however it can realistically only be considered for a subset of such plants given the limited funding resources available. Some plants are also better targets for biocontrol than others. This paper develops a prioritisation system to create an objective, transparent and easily usable method in which to target IAPs plants that are most suited to biocontrol in South Africa. The Biological Control Target Selection (BCTS) system builds on twelve previously developed prioritisation systems. The system uses three sections encompassing thirteen attributes that are combined to present the highest predicative powers to rank potential target IAPs as biocontrol targets.