25 May 2021
Protecting the Australian environment is a battle for environmental land managers. The Australian environment is constantly under attack from invasive weeds and other pests.
Like farmers, Australia’s environmental land managers, such as the parks and wildlife services, rely on the use of pesticides to effectively defend and protect our natural environment from threats.
Invasive weeds and other pests can have major negative impacts on Australia’s natural environments as they can damage the diversity and balance of ecosystems.
These changes threaten the survival of many native plants and animals because weeds compete for space, moisture, nutrients and sunlight.
Endangered species face numerous threats, including development, pollution and climate change. The greatest threat they face is from established invasive species. Pesticides are crucial tools employed by environmental land managers in protecting Australia’s endangered species.
The plant science industry provides Australia’s land managers with the innovative tools that are crucial to controlling invasive weeds and pests throughout Australia’s national parks, in public parks, golf courses, gardens and to control weeds alongside roads, buildings, pathways and other public infrastructure.
In a great example of environmental conservation targeted weed control, the ACT Parks and Conservation Service has used the tools of the plant science industry to successfully control the spread of blackberries in the wet sclerophyll forests of the northern area of the Namadgi National Park.
While we all love blackberries in fruit salad, in the pristine environments of national parks the blackberry bush can spread rapidly if not controlled, destroying the native flora and compromising the natural ecosystem.
Without the use of a range of specialised pesticides and the hard work of park rangers, spray contractors and other environmental land managers, ecosystems such as those in Namadgi National Park would succumb to the significant threat of invasive species.