Title: Australian 'weed of national significance' can be eaten by goats
[ABC Rural News by Keva Gocher 25 April 2012] -- Noel Watson is a happy farmer. He proves that community lobbying works when it comes to securing federal government assistance for weed control. The beef producer from the Bega valley of the NSW south coast convenes a regional fireweed committee that formed with the express aim of alerting the Federal Government to the negative impact of the exotic fireweed on agricultural production. Fireweed is a 13-petalled, yellow-flowering daisy-like plant that is toxic to most livestock, although it can be tolerated by goats and sheep. The Bega valley puts on a vivid yellow show for several months a year during flowering of the fireweed, when the weed infestations are very obvious on the landscape and along roadsides. The warm climate weed is spreading south from northern NSW and is a relatively new weed to be introduced to the Kiah River farming valley, toward the Victorian border. "Unfortunately with the fireweed going on the list, it hasn't created any more funding; and what it has done is spread the existing funding thinner because there was 20 on there, and now they have added another 12, without extra funding; but at least having it on there is something."
The University of New England's Professor Brian Sindel has spent his professional life working on fireweed. "It (the listing) is a good move and prioritises this weed as an important weed to have research and other work done on it." He says the national focus will be a catalyst for action. "It also allows better co-ordination from the states on a national level, and all the various environmental and Landcare groups and other groups that are interested in controlling fireweed, so I think it is a good step in the process of managing fire weed." Brain Sindel is Professor of Weed Science, UNE School of Environmental and Rural Science, and helped write the proposal that resulted in fireweed becoming nationally prominent on the weeds list. "The university was the one who put the proposal together on behalf of the Federal Government, and that is bad news for fireweed itself but good news for landholders."
Professor Sindel says fireweed has the potential to become a pest plant across Australia. "New South Wales is where fireweed is heaviest; south-east Queensland has quite bit of fireweed; Victoria is largely free of the weed at the moment but there is nothing to stop it moving down into Victoria, and there are anecdotal reports of that happening; so Victoria is certainly a state that should be on the alert." He says the plant is acclimatising. "There is nothing to stop fireweed going in parts of Western Australia, South Australia and possibly even Tasmania."
A control can't come soon enough for the thousands of landholders regularly picking and burning the weed. Margaret Wheatley at Springvale near Bega is one of these diligent landholders. She is a survivor and she has met other survivors since retiring to the Bega valley from Canberra where she was burnt out by bushfires. But now Ms Wheatley is meeting the ultimate survivors on her 23 hectare property: the weeds. "I have been picking them by hand and I think I have got it under control." That is an enormous job for a older lady to consistently and regularly walk the paddocks to pull out weeds. "Sometimes it is (a full time job) when it really grows, and I notice it is starting to come back again now, so I will have to start pulling again."
Autumn is the growing season for the fireweed and landholders are being advised by weeds authorities to spray now while plants are small. "I didn't have a lot on the block so I decided to do it all by hand." Did she know about fireweed control when she bought the property? "No, and it certainly is a problem."
This problem has consumed the professional life of Brian Sindel, who started the fireweed research 30 years ago with a PHD. The last two years of federal funding for fireweed research has enabled his work to continue. "(It is) a research project funded by the Federal Government to look particularly at biological control of fireweed and the possibilities there, as well as doing some ecological and control work with fireweed."
He says the project has several prongs. "We have been doing a few things: We have had a national survey of landholders, and we have also produced a guide for landholders to better control fireweed, and we have had people working in South Africa looking at the possibilities of biological control of fireweed." He says the fireweed pest plant has similarities to a larger Australian native plant in the seneceo genus of plants. "There are a number of insects and diseases that could do damage to the fireweed (but) it is a difficult task to get a biological control agent, particularly for a weed like fireweed because we have lots of native seneceo species and it is very hard to find something that is going to be selective that will control fireweed, but not touch the other (Australian) native species."
Professor Sindel says exhaustive research takes time. "It could be five to 10 years and initially we had funding for two years from the Federal Government, but we would obviously like to see more from that work that has been started now."
Beef producer and weeds activist Noel Watson says the international research into a biological control is progressing well, although slowly. The lobbying from the Bega valley fireweed committee led two years ago to federal funding being granted to help with best management practise and control research. Noel Watson is following the progress of Australian fireweed research in South Africa. "$200,000 was secured to do some research and put out a book of best management practise." He says research has been successful in Africa through the CSIRO. "There are six insects that they have got listed at this stage, but don't think for one minute that it will be out here (to help our problem) in Australia in the short term." "It is a long-term process but there is a slight glimmer of hope." He says the two years of funding will end in June. "We need $150,000 per year to keep the program going as it has got to be pursued as the only long term solution."
Mr Watson says the scientific process takes many years, as the country does not want a repeat of the situation like cane toads where a predator was introduced to fix a problem, but then that predator become another issue for pest management. "It is one thing to find something in South Africa, then you have got to get a permit to bring it into Australia, then the research and studies start all over again because you have to feed it all types of different species of things from Australia, because it is a long drawn-out process - but it has to kept going."
Margaret Wheatley welcomes progress on fireweed control as she hand pulls the plant, yet chemically treats her other weed problem with a spray that kills her blackberry weeds. Will hand pulling be viable as a long-term fireweed management tool on her property? "There will always be some somewhere (on the property)." Margaret Wheatley does not consider herself a farmer, yet is a land manager with responsibilities for weed control.
Beef producer Clare McMahon does not like to use chemical sprays on her farm, but says it was the only way she could reduce the fireweed to a manageable level. "I don't spray a lot for weeds. I try not to and I keep the slasher going (to cut them down)." She manages weeds as part of her overall land management. "If you keep them slashed and don't let them seed, you reduce the population without having the cost of sprays." However, Ms McMahon found the fireweed was expanding despite her mowing management. "I tried not spraying, and then I had to." "I didn't boom spray, I spot sprayed, and I got all the little plants that you can't see around that plant and that helped me enormously." She has found, like others in the Bega valley, that spraying has become a costly and regular expense for fireweed control. "I am sorry if that is the way we have all got to go, but that has brought it all back (to a manageable weed burden.)"
Professor Brian Sindel says landholders are having success with their own biological controls for fireweed by grazing the plants. "Goats and sheep certainly are an effective means of controlling fireweed, and landholders have told us that for a number of years now, and they are far more tolerant of the weed than other livestock, so they don't develop toxicity nearly as quickly as other livestock."
Clare McMahon at Kiah is one of the many landholders reluctant to use sheep and goats to eat the fireweed. "What happens to the goats and you eat - the goats that have been living on fireweed?"
Margaret Wheatley runs cattle and a horse on the small grazing property but won't buy sheep or goats for biological fireweed control as the infrastructure cost would be too great. "My fences are not good enough, and also goats and sheep will only eat it if there is nothing better to eat."
Professor Brian Sindel says goats and sheep are being used as an effective fireweed control. "I think they can be used as a (weed control) method, and I don't know that we have any evidence of the toxin going into the food chain through eating the meat of those animals, as far as I am aware."
As the rain falls this April, south coast landholders are planning their seasonal assault on fireweed in the latest effort to reduce the impact of the toxic weed. And they watch with interest this latest development in the long process of making fireweed nationally significant enough to attract consistent research funding. Noel Watson has watched the issue develop since the 1980s and is determined to see a solution at work in the farming paddocks of the Bega valley. "I'd love enough money to be able to lock it (research) in for five years, but enough money for 12 months at a time, that would be great."
