Latest news with #weedmanagement
ABC News
22-05-2025
- Science
- ABC News
Camels help eradicate costly weed
Andy Park: Dozens of giant creatures with stomachs of steel have been called in to dine on an out-of-control weed in outback Queensland. The camels were brought in to eat the prickly acacia, an invasive plant costing farmers millions of dollars every year in lost production. The first stage of the trial was so successful, more farmers across Australia are hungry to join. Abbey Halter has the story. Abbey Halter: They're not your usual pest control team. But if camels are good at anything, it's eating. A thorny weed called prickly acacia has been plaguing farmland in outback Queensland since the early 1900s. Cattle unintentionally spread the weed when feeding, so experts brought in camels to try and eradicate their costly prickly problem. Geoff Penton is an expert in weed management who helped organise the study. Geoff Penton: The main impact the camels have had is stopping the plants or reducing the plants from setting seed and spreading. Abbey Halter: 30 camels were brought onto a 40,000 hectare property in the outback town of Muttaburra in western Queensland as part of the four-year trial. Geoff Penton: Their predominant diet becomes prickly acacia. About 30% of the plants have been knocked down but not destroyed. So what we've observed so far is that they don't kill prickly acacia plants through their foraging, but they reduce their impact, they stop them from setting as much seed, not entirely, but predominantly stop it from setting seed. Abbey Halter: Paul Keegan has been a camelier for 40 years at his property near Mount Isa in northwest Queensland. He donated some of his camels for the trial. Paul Keegan: When the prickly acacia are flowering, they absolutely hammer the flowers so there's no seeds. It takes a little bit of training but you've got a couple of caged camels, quiet ones that can lead the way, well it doesn't take a hell of a lot of brains to work it out, you know. They do the job but you've got to work with them. The company selling the herbicides are making a fortune out of it and it'll keep on going unless you implement something to take the flower and seed out. So they're going around spraying and treating trees that the camels can take care of. Abbey Halter: David Batt is a sheep and cattle farmer in Queensland's central west. He's not involved in the trial but has been using camels to help control the prickly trees for decades. David Batt: They are effective, there's no doubt, they won't get rid of the prickly bushes, you know, they can't do, oh well they would have yet enough of them, but they will slow it down to a certain extent. The trouble is they only attack the trees when it's really dry, you know, towards the end of light years or droughts, that's when they really hammer them. Otherwise they're eating all the good stuff on the ground that your other livestock are eating, so they're just directly competing with them. Abbey Halter: The trial's organiser, Geoff Penton, says one camel for every thousand prickly acacia plants was an ideal ratio and if left uncontrolled it's estimated within five years the weed could dominate more than 470,000 square kilometres of land across Queensland and into the Northern Territory. The second stage of the trial is now underway and Geoff Penton hopes more landowners will develop an appetite for the strategy. Andy Park: Abbey Halter and friends with that report
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Mesa man awarded for helping maintain Tonto National Forest from his backyard
The Brief Mesa man Don Pike won an award for Weed Manager of the Year for his work in the Tonto National Forest. Almost every morning, Pike sneaks out of his backyard fence to pull invasive weeds like buffel, fountain grass and stinknet. He has been pulling weed for nearly 12 years. MESA, Ariz. - If you ever pull weeds in your yard, you know what a pain it is. Now imagine pulling weeds in the Tonto National Forest. That's the task a Mesa man is taking on, and he's making some pretty good progress in a unique spot in the East Valley, where Mesa meets the Tonto National Forest. Roughly 3,000,000 acres of federally protected land, slowly but surely, is being eaten alive by invasive plants. So how do you tackle such a big problem? One weed at a time. Dig deeper Almost every morning, Don Pike slips through a barbwire fence from his backyard into the Tonto National Forest. He's not here to hike, he's here to hunt. Don is searching for dozens of invasive weeds like buffel, fountain grass and the new one: stinknet, which can wipe out native plants and raise the fire risk. That's why you won't find any near his home and the 14,000 acres where the neighborhood meets nature. What they're saying After a half-mile hike, Don spots a patch of bad weeds growing along a wash. "When I'm by myself I just walk. I'm walking, and I walk off trail. So if I see one or if it's a big patch like this I will put it on the map," he said. The plants are mostly dried out but still able to spread by the roots or by the seeds. "Well, you have to keep coming back. You can't just remove it and then leave it," he said. Local perspective Don maps his progress and highlights areas he still has to hit, either pulling the weeds by hand, digging them out with a shovel or using herbicides. He knows all too well there's only so much one man can do. He says while he can clear spots, there's no way to clear the whole forest, but he keeps at it every morning, weed by weed. Why? Because he believes someone should. Why you should care He has been pulling weeds out here for 12 years with the help of other volunteers and last year won a unique award for his efforts: Arizona's Weed Manager of the Year. You could almost call it a labor of love. "I put a lot of work into it and a lot of rewards for the show. I'm happy to get the recognition, but it's just what I love to do," said Pike.
