The media drives public interest in invasive plants in the US

Internet search data can accurately assess the intensity of public interest in environmental issues. Although invasive plants are a major environmental problem, public interest in invasive plants is generally considered low compared to climate change and threatened flagship species. To understand what drives public interest in invasive plants in the US, we investigated Google Trends search data from 2010 to 2020 for 210 invasive plant species found in the continental US. We investigated three hypothesized drivers of interest: (1) plant abundance as quantified by national and state-level occurrence records in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, (2) media coverage, in particular the volume and tone of news articles over the same 10-year period, and (3) five key plant traits that might influence plant conspicuousness to the general public: ornamental use, human health risks, monoculture formation, plants with positive economic value, and time since introduction. Google search interest was positively but indirectly influenced by species’ state and national level abundance patterns. In contrast, public search interest was most strongly and directly determined by species with greater human health risk and enhanced media coverage (through the number and tone of published articles). Ultimately, this suggests that enhanced media coverage of invasive plant species, particularly articles that detail their negative impacts, could generate increased public awareness for biological invasions.