Title: Victoria allocates grants to help roadside weeding
[Border Mail, Sat 31 July, 2010, p. 51, by Natasha Sherwood] -- VICTORIAN councils have been handed further grants to boost their arsenal for combating roadside weeds and pests. Locally, Indigo Council received $40,000 and Towong Council was granted $6000. Wodonga Council did not apply The funding comes from the Victorian Government’s $205 million Future Farming Strategy At Indigo the funds will be used on blackberries, broom and gorse on roadsides at Beechworth, Chiltern and Yackandandah. The chemical control will be administered by contractors in spring when the weeds are actively growing.
Indigo Council natural resource management officer Shay Simpson said the priority would be follow-up work on areas previously targeted. Miss Simpson, who is based at Yackandandah said without the funding the work simply would not be done. "The responsibility of roadside weeds is still being negotiated by state and local government," she said. She said fighting weeds was a way of fighting rabbits because it took away their hiding places.
Wodonga Council director infrastructure, sustainability and environment Johan Louw said the council did not apply for the funding as the identified weeds were not considered a major issue on Wodonga’s roadsides. "Wodonga Council does not fund weed and pest control programs on rural roadsides, however, we’ve been successful in obtaining grant funding for the mapping of regionally controlled and prohibited weeds," Mr Louw said. He said the main weeds were Chilean needle grass and blackberry.
Article: WeedsNews742 (permalink) Categories: :WeedsNews:roadside weeds Date: 6 August 2010; 11:07:43 AM AEST