Differing priorities explain why some people profit from an alien invader, while others lose out.
Abstract
This paper describes the impact of the invasive tree, Prosopis juliflora, on the supply of ecosystem services. Prosopis significantly increased the supply of shade, wood production and honey production, but reduced the supply of water availability, tourism potential and biodiversity protection. Priorities for specific services differed between stakeholder groups. Although most groups assigned a high priority to provisioning services, such as water and crop production, it was either provisioning or cultural services which were a primary source of income, that were deemed most important. Combining supply and priority data showed that most stakeholder groups saw a net decrease in ecosystem service multifunctionality with increasing Prosopis invasion, or no significant change overall. Increasing Prosopis cover increased multifunctionality for only two stakeholder groups, charcoal producers and non-governmental organizations involved in regional development.