[RIRDC 08 Sept 2011] As communities across eastern Australia are participating in Weedbuster Week activities, new research is identifying how local action can significantly limit the spread of weeds. More than 50 local community events are being held this week across Queensland, NSW and Victoria as part of Weedbuster Week – a program that assists groups to increase community involvement in weed control activities and educates the public on weed prevention. This year’s Weedbuster Week theme is “Prevent, Restore, Recover”, which emphasises the need for on-ground action as part of a broader land management strategy.
The role of community groups in combating weed damage is also recognised in the Australian Government’s National Weeds and Productivity Research Program, managed by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC).
“Weeds are one of the major threats to Australia’s primary production and to the natural environment, but controlling weeds is a responsibility of everyone in the community and literally starts in ‘our own backyard’,” RIRDC Senior Research Manager Ken Moore said.
“The RIRDC Weeds Program is investing in projects that will improve the knowledge and understanding of weeds, and two projects in particular are focussing on the effects of community action on larger scale weed spread and prevention.
“Given that weeds do not respect property boundaries, the challenge for policy makers is to bring together thousands of individual land owners, each confronting just a small part of a weed invasion, in a united and coordinated approach to a common threat.”
University of Queensland researcher Dr Yvonne Buckley is researching how an individual’s land management motivations fit in with such wide-scale ecological protection.
By understanding how individual land managers make their decisions, Dr Buckley’s team hopes to improve the adoption of existing weed control measures.
A second project, led by Professor Brian Sindel at the University of New England, is engaging with sectors of the community in two contrasting rural pastoral regions to identify the barriers and incentives to adoption of weed control by individuals and institutions.
By comparing activities in the New England and the Southern Tablelands of NSW, the researchers hope to identify strategies to overcome these adoption constraints. In total the RIRDC Weeds Program is providing around $12.4 million (GST inclusive) to more than 50 research projects, which will report back in May 2012.