The Invasive Species Corporation was founded by experienced and successful entrepreneurs, Pam Marrone and Jim Boyd, with a mission to develop environmentally responsible solutions to control the spread and impact of invasive species in water, forestry and agriculture. Invasive species have caused more than $1 trillion in economic damage, are the second largest cause of biodiversity decline behind land use changes and are getting worse with climate change. 400 of the 958 threatened or endangered species are at risk due to competition with or predation by invasive species.

Synthetic chemical pesticides used to control pests are often acutely toxic. Some are suspected carcinogens and their use have other harmful effects on the environment, humans, animals and beneficial insects such as pollinators. Many of these chemical pesticides have not actually proven effective against the invasive species we are targeting or are too harmful to be applied to these sensitive environments.  Instead, we discover, develop and deploy biological solutions from microorganisms and other natural sources such as plant extracts.

We focus on six major invasive species groups as follows:

• Zebra and Quagga Mussels
• Asian Carp
• Toxic Algae
• Aquatic Weeds
• Agricultural and Forestry Weeds
• Forest Pests such as bark beetles, emerald ash and other borers, and hemlock wooly adelgid

Our two-pronged approach:

• License existing technology/products to sell and develop next generation formulations (e.g. Zequanox® for invasive zebra and quagga mussels and Piscamycin® for invasive carp
• Our own discovery platform to discover pesticidal microorganisms and commercialize them in 4 years or less