Invasive alien species pose a serious threat to India's biodiversity hotspots. Critically examine the regulatory and ecological challenges, with reference to Prosopis juliflora in the Banni grasslands.

The IPBES assessment (2023) records over 37,000 alien species worldwide, of which 3,500-plus are invasive, costing more than $423 billion annually [3]. Prosopis juliflora — listed among IUCN's 100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species [2] and planted in Kutch's Banni in 1961 to check the advancing Rann — shows that the challenge is as much regulatory as ecological.

Ecological challenges

• Allelopathy and habitat conversion: the shrub's root exudates suppress native grasses; over half of Banni's ~2,600 sq km savanna has turned to thorn scrub, shrinking fodder for Maldhari pastoralists.
• Restoration is not automatic: the Forest Department's working plan before the NGT records that roughly 70% of Banni's soils are saline-alkaline, so clearing alone need not revive native grass [5].
• Persistence: deep taproots and livestock-borne seed dispersal cause vigorous regrowth after mechanical cutting.
• Critically, eradication is not costless — Prosopis now sustains a local charcoal and fuelwood economy, so blanket removal carries livelihood trade-offs.

Regulatory challenges

• India has no dedicated invasive species law; the Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022 inserted Section 62A, empowering the Centre to regulate import, trade, possession and proliferation of invasive alien species [4] — a welcome first, but confined to threats to wildlife and habitat, with limited notified lists and enforcement capacity.
• Institutional fragmentation: MoEFCC, state forest departments and biodiversity boards act separately; the same department that introduced the species now leads removal.
• Tenure friction: Banni's 1955 Protected Forest status with unsettled community rights complicates coordinated restoration.

Banni's experience argues for a shift from ad-hoc clearing to science-led, use-based management — community forest management committees, a phased Prosopis working circle [5], and value chains such as Deendayal Port's green methanol initiative, where MoPSW targets about 500 KTPA of e-methanol by 2028-29 [1], converting weed biomass into marine fuel. A statutory risk-assessment framework before introduction, coupled with such problem-to-resource models, would align invasive species control with India's biodiversity and net-zero commitments.