About ParrotNet

Reasons for the action

Research activities on parakeets have, so far, been isolated from one another, limiting any scope for wider synthesis to address the parakeet problem across Europe and beyond. The use of multiple methods makes it difficult to harmonise approaches across the EU landscape. Consequently, results cannot be generalised and knowledge gaps cannot be easily identified and filled. Therefore, current efforts to characterise agro-economic and societal impacts (and to forecast risks) of parakeets across Europe and the means to mitigate them are severely compromised. More broadly, a spatial, temporal and societal perspective of invasion is sadly lacking, but is crucial to address, understand and solve the ‘alien species problem’. The Action will tackle these complex interdisciplinary issues for the parakeet and thereby develop an approach for dealing with the 12 other invasive parrot species recently established in Europe. The Action will strengthen Europe’s scientific networking capacity in IAS in relation to the European Research Area, and will fulfil key objectives of the EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy (and more widely, Europe 2020) and will stimulate novel research for EU-level instruments such as Horizon 2020.

Advancing science and meeting European socio-economic needs:

To address the problems that parakeets pose to society and the environment (see B. 1), the Action will unify (i) scientific approaches to studying parakeets and their ecological impacts and (ii) important socio-economic and social science methodologies aimed at measuring human perceptions of parakeets and impacts on society. This dual framework provides a novel interdisciplinary approach to a complex problem.