Hello,

Here comes some replies to our Monday questions:

From Tim Hirsch on GIASIP:

…the following points to the task group regarding GIASIP. Tim might get more news from IUCN UK headquarters and Kevin Smith and possibly from Donald Hobern, too.

· We cannot at present be definite about the future of the Global Invasive Alien Species Information Partnership (GIASIP) as its continuation as a funded activity will depend on decisions at the CBD COP13 in Mexico in December. Discussions are still under way around mechanisms that may bring this onto the agenda of COP13, including with reference to the Honolulu Challenge formulated at the World Conservation Congress in September. 

· However, we can share the main vision from GBIFS point of view as to the direction of this partnership which would be focussed on:

o Completing and maintaining GRIIS as the authoritative list of invasive species for all countries and island territories, maintained as a curated and (where possible) peer-reviewed set of authoritative checklists drawn from expert editors with full source references.

o Incorporating GRIIS lists into GBIF.org so that e.g. all relevant species pages could reference inclusion on a GRIIS country invasive list and provide appropriate links.

o GBIF would facilitate publication of IAS checklists using standard tools and vocabularies, enabling any partner or organisation to share those lists both directly through GBIF.org and as a contribution towards up to date versions of GRIIS, including e.g. Using GBIF tools to standardise taxonomies.

o GBIF would continue to maintain a GIASIP repository through an IPT that would enable the integrated country/species/status lists to be ingested by any platform including e.g. CBD country profiles through the Clearing House Mechanism.

· We would welcome recommendations from the IAS task group for key functionalities beyond GBIF.org that could be incorporated into future work of GIASIP based on the identified needs of invasion biology research – these recommendations will be helpful in the discussions of funding for GIASIP at COP13, and might even be included as an information document for COP13.

From Tim Robertson on subscription for updates:

· No.  I’m afraid there are no alerting functions currently, nor are they planned.  We’ve pondered this a few times, and it could be done, but is not going to be something within the next 6 months or so.