The commercial practice of site-based comprehensive weed control

Inseparable from the methodogy as practised at Kaipatiki Creek and Gahnia Grove are the observation, exploration, discovery and study that are integral to working with a living, growing piece of wild vegetation. Time recorded includes time contemplating, pondering and enjoying the ongoing changes. Also logged are hours of offsite research to assess the implications of the discoveries made, and amend restoration plans accordingly.

This whole process is as much recreation and citizen science as labour.

It is difficult to say how much of the time spent in these activities is necessary to achieve successful restoration (ie without loss of species or habitat). however, we note that if this practitioner, having learnt from this project, were employed to restore a similar environment and plant communities, they would probably log about 60% of the time spent; ie would expect to be able to produce the same results without the additional hours spent discovering and learning.

Since the practice of this Methodology as an occupation does not yet exist, the required knowledge-base and manual skill-set are rarely found combined in the workforce or community. So the additional hours would have to have been spent at some stage for the necessary professional development.

Our assessment so far is thus that :

1. A system needs to be developed to attract and train those with the necessary aptitudes.
2. Until such training is developed and implemented, and its graduates employed, the most economical way to achieve restoration without loss of habitat and biodiversity might be to team a specialist ecological restoration contractor with one or a few volunteers for combined project-planning, enabling the contractor to reduce or avoid chemical use through the ongoing manual follow-up by the volunteer, who would enjoy an uncontaminated environment in which to watch and assist the ongoing spontaneous regeneration and increasing diversity.

It is observed that contractors are currently required to use enough chemicals to ensure there is little or no regrowth during a year.

It is also observed that many chemical operations are, despite best practice, unable to fully discover and treat all parts of all invasions, so that regrowth often occurs anyway.

Contractors relieved of current expectations for total single-visit chemical control could be teamed with volunteers trained to monitor and contain regrowth and to remove seedlings while still easy to uproot. Species loss would be less, environments would have more appeal for volunteers, and eradication of many invasions would be achieved, instead of repeated treatments of the same invasions, and expensive control of matured specimens which could have been pulled out easily a year before.

We recognise that contractors are currently attempting to achieve such effective weed control currently, but with the number and size of natural areas in Kaipatiki, at least, we do not believe current budgets can avoid the waste and destruction of unnecessary chemical use and the expensive future maturation of current young invasions.

We note that the current weed control contract system for this area is only a year or two old, and we continue to learn how it is practised and to observe and assess its results.

Publicado el septiembre 2, 2018 09:59 TARDE por kaipatiki_naturewatch