AQW 23328/11-15

Mr Paul Girvan
Democratic Unionist Party
South Antrim

Tabled Date: 20/05/2013
Answered On Date: 03/06/2013
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of the Environment what invasive alien species have been identified in river courses, broken down by (i) species; and (ii) river course.

Answer:

As part of Water Framework Directive monitoring undertaken by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency records of invasive alien species which are detected during survey work are gathered. These records, in addition to records gathered by local county recorders and members of the public, are submitted to the National Biodiversity Data Centre in Waterford and to the Centre for Environmental Data and Recording (CEDaR) based at the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

The National Biodiversity Data Centre in recent years have created a National Invasive Species Database for the island of Ireland. All records held in the database are made publically available through the interactive web mapping facility of their website (http://invasives.biodiversityireland.ie).

A table listing the invasive alien species records for rivers which are held by the National Invasive Species database and NIEA has been placed in the Assembly Library.