Planning to plant an Australian native like wattle? Read this first — you might be spreading a weed

Coastal wattle.
Dr David Chael, Author provided

Singarayer Florentine, Federation University AustraliaAustralian native plants are having a moment in the sun, with more of us seeking out and planting native species than in the past. Our gardens — and our social media feeds — are brimming with beautiful Australian native blooms.

But not all Australian native species belong in all Australian environments. In fact, many have become pests in places far from their original homes.

They can crowd out other native endemic species, affect the local balance of insects and other animals, wreck soils and even increase fire risk.

Here are three Australian native plants that have become invasive species after ending up in places they don’t belong.

Sydney golden wattle (Acacia longifolia subspecies longifolia)

Originally extending from East Gippsland in Victoria up about as far as Brisbane in Queensland, this species is undoubtedly photogenic. It’s also an invasive weed in parts of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

It was spread across the nation by well-meaning gardeners who saw it as a charming ornamental plant. However, its seeds made their way into the wild and took off — it’s what’s known in my field as “a garden escapee”.

Like many weeds, this species can capitalise on a natural disaster; after fire it can send out shoots from its base. Acacias are often one of the first species to sprout following a bushfire. They’re now completely dominant and spreading in many areas.

Sydney golden wattle is an invasive weed in other parts of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
Gill Armstrong, Author provided

Seeds of Sydney golden wattle can last in the soil for many decades, long after the parent plants have died. The heat from a fire cracks the hard seed coat, allowing water to enter and germination to take off.

In the Grampians, in Victoria, Sydney golden wattle is causing terrible soil problems. Many native plants endemic to this area don’t like high levels of soil nitrogen, but Acacia longifolia subsp. longifolia is a nitrogen-fixing plant.

Acacia longifolia subsp. longifolia has quite long, thin seed pods.
Gill Armstrong, Author provided

In other words, it increases the nitrogen in the soil and changes the soil nutrient status and even physical aspects of the soil. It can grow tall and produce a lot of foliage, which reduces the amount of light coming to the ground. That makes it harder for native species lower to the ground to survive.

This is a major challenge, especially in biodiversity-rich places like the Grampians.

Coast wattle (Acacia longifolia subspecies sophorae)

The blooms on Acacia longifolia subspecies sophorae (Coast wattle) look more or less the same as many other wattles, but the leaves are a bit shorter and stubbier.

Originally, Coast wattle occurred along the east coast from western Victoria — up about as far as Brisbane and down south as far as Tasmania (where Sydney golden wattle did not occur naturally).

Acacia longifolia subsp. sophorae, also known as ‘Coastal Wattle’, has shorter, stubby leaves.
Tatters ✾/Flickr, CC BY

It was originally restricted to sandy sites at the top of beaches but has been deliberately planted as a “sand-binder” in other sites. It’s also naturally spread into heathlands inland of the beaches and is now causing huge problems around our coasts.

Like the earlier example, it dominates local ecosystems and displaces native species endemic to the area (particularly in our species-rich heathlands), which affects local insect habitats. It is also now modifying natural sand dune patterns.

It is increasing fire risk by changing heathland plant profiles from mostly short shrubs of limited bulk to tall, dense shrublands with much higher fuel levels.

Coast teatree (Leptospermum laevigatum)

As with Coast wattle, Coast teatree was formerly restricted to a narrow strip on sandy soils just above the beaches of south-eastern Australia. But it has now spread into nearby heathlands and woodlands. It’s even reached as far as Western Australia.

Coast teatree, Leptospermum laevigatum, is now an invasive species in some areas.
Flickr/Margaret Donald, CC BY

This teatree plant is now considered an invasive species in parts of Victoria and South Australia.

Although the mature plants are usually killed by fire, the seeds are abundant and very good at surviving; they pop out of their capsules after fires.

Coast teatree produces a lot of seeds.
Dr David Chael, Author provided

They are high-density plants that burn quickly in a fire. They are very quick to take over and push out endemic species.

For example, parts of the Wilson’s Prom National Park in Victoria, which was originally a Banksia woodland, have now been converted almost to a teatree monoculture. It is very sad.

A call to action

Authorities are trying their best to keep these and other native invasive species under control, but in some cases things may never go back to the way they were. Sometimes, the best you can hope for is just to strike a balance between native and invasive species.

When you do landcare restoration work or home gardening, I urge you to look up the plant history and see if the species you’re thinking of planting is listed as one that might cause problems in future.

When you go to purchase from a nursery or plant centre, be cautious. Think twice before you bring something into your garden. Too many species have “jumped the garden fence” and now cost us a great deal in control efforts and in native species loss.

Lots of apps, such as PlantNet, can help you identify plants and see what is native to your area.

Australia has spent billions trying to control invasive species and environmental weeds. Anything you can do to help is a bonus.

Singarayer Florentine, Professor (Restoration Ecologist), Federation University Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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These historic grasslands are becoming a weed-choked waste. It could be one of the world’s great parks

Adrian Marshall, Author provided

Adrian Marshall, University of Melbourne

Volcanic plains stretching from Melbourne’s west to the South Australian border were once home to native grasslands strewn with wildflowers and a vast diversity of animals. Today, this grassland ecosystem is critically endangered.

To protect the last remaining large-scale patch, the Victorian government proposed the “Western Grassland Reserve”. But in June, a damning Auditor General’s report revealed this plan has fallen flat.

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EcoCheck: Victoria’s flower-strewn western plains could be swamped by development

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With weeds choking the native grasses and many animals now locally extinct, the deteriorating reserve represents a failure of imagination.

Debate has raged about funding, timelines and bureaucratic processes. But what the debate is missing is a new vision, with funding and management models, for the Western Grassland Reserve, that recognises its deep culture and history, and its potential to be one of the great parks of the world.

Failing our flora and fauna

The Victorian government’s plan was to acquire 15,000 hectares of mostly farmland beyond Melbourne’s outer limit between 2010 and 2020. The money is coming from offsets, where developers are, in effect, charged a fee to be allowed to destroy federally protected remnant grassland within the urban growth boundary.

But the Auditor General’s report found a scant 10% of Western Grassland Reserve land has been purchased, with little offset money remaining for further purchases.

In addition, delays in purchasing land are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars because of rising land prices. A predicted substantial downturn in development further exposes the flaws of a funding model inadequate to its conservation task.

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Read more:
Can we offset biodiversity losses?

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We urgently need to investigate new funding and management models that embrace the reserve as a cultural landscape for people.

A quintessential Australian experience

As a patchwork of farms overlaid on traditional Wathaurong land, the Western Grassland Reserve could be shaped into one of the greatest large parks of the world – a cultural landscape capturing a quintessential Australian experience, speaking of Indigenous culture, our colonial past, and who we are today.

A well-designed reserve could show us the history of grassland pastoralism that gave rise to the saying “Australia rides on the sheep’s back”. It could immerse us in Dorothea MacKellar’s “land of sweeping plains”. It can give us back the immense flowered landscape that so stunned the explorer Thomas Mitchell, he coined the phrase “Australia Felix”, which means “happy Australia”.

And it could show us something of the profound knowledge Indigenous people hold. Few know this, but the Wurdi Youang stone circle near Little River – though as yet undated – may well be one of the oldest known astronomical structures in the world, far predating Stonehenge or the pyramids.

Part of the Wurdi Youang stone circle, that may be one of the oldest astronomical structures in the world.
Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Imagine its potential

Imagine a picnic under a spreading gum beside an old farm dam. There’s a bluestone dairy repurposed to fine dining, a grand farmhouse for overnight stays, bike trails, and a series of regional playgrounds emphasising natureplay and adventure for all abilities.

With the right conservation, ephemeral wetlands and creeklines could be bursting with birdlife and ready to explore, and even working farms retained for school visits.

Nearby, at Mount Rothwell, a fenced conservation area contains almost extinct small marsupials – bandicoots, potoroos and apex predator quolls. These were once commonplace, and still a night visit is an unforgettable experience, yet one few Melburnians have enjoyed.

The critically endangered plains wanderer, the world’s most unique bird, once lived in these grasslands.
Shutterstock

Innovation in management

Part of a bigger picture for the Western Grassland Reserve is a new management model beyond a poorly-funded Parks Victoria asset being managed solely for environmental values.

Options abound for innovation and leadership here. We can create a well-coordinated network of different management approaches and protection levels with traditional publicly owned national parks, conservation reserves, private land covenants, private protected areas and Indigenous protected areas.

Funding for management also needs rethinking. Market-driven models can ensure performance-based outcomes. For example, farmers can be paid to graze sustainably. And a new model leveraging resources and expertise could encourage the involvement of NGOs, traditional owners and community groups, species-specific teams, the Royal Botanic Gardens, with research input by universities.

Built-in commercial seed production, which is fundamental to restoring degraded areas, can kick-start the native seed industry in a win–win for commerce and the environment.

These sorts of alternative management and funding have been achieved in the south of France, within the Carmague and the stony plains of Le Crau. There, 10,000 hectares of grassland and wetland complexes are managed by broad alliance of NGOs and conservation agencies across defence land, national parks and private protected areas.

And in the USA, the largest tallgrass prairie in the country is managed by Kansas State University and the Nature Conservancy, with federal and philanthropic input. It also has an educational program that brings in more than 100 school and public events a year.

So what are we waiting for? The Great Ocean Road was built during the Great Depression, let the Western Grassland Reserve be a visionary project for these difficult times under COVID-19.

Adrian Marshall, Academic, Landscape Architecture and Urban Ecology, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Pulling out weeds is the best thing you can do to help nature recover from the fires

Australians are keen to help nature recover after a season of devastating bushfires.
Darren England/AAP

Don Driscoll, Deakin University

Many Australians feel compelled to help our damaged wildlife after this season’s terrible bushfires. Suggested actions have included donating money, leaving water out for thirsty animals, and learning how to help the injured. But there is an equally, if not more, important way to assist: weeding.

An army of volunteers is needed to help land owners with judicious weed removal. This will help burnt habitats recover more quickly, providing expanded, healthy habitat for native fauna.

Other emergency responses, such as culling feral animals and dropping emergency food from aeroplanes, are obviously jobs for specialists. But volunteer weeding does not require any prior expertise – just a willingness to get your hands dirty and take your lead from those in the know.

Volunteer weeding will help burnt habitats recover more quickly.
Silje Polland/Flickr

Why is weeding so critical?

The recent bushfires burned many areas in national parks and reserves which were infested with weeds. Some weeds are killed in a blaze, but fire also stimulates their seed banks to germinate.

Weed seedlings will spring up en masse and establish dense stands that out-compete native plants by blocking access to sunlight. Native seedlings will die without setting seed, wasting this chance for them to recover and to provide habitat for a diverse range of native species.

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Read more:
Many of our plants and animals have adapted to fires, but now the fires are changing

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This mass weed germination is also an opportunity to improve the outlook for biodiversity. With a coordinated volunteer effort, these weeds can be taken out before they seed – leaving only a residual seed bank with no adult weeds to create more seed and creating space for native plants to flourish.

With follow-up weeding, we can leave our national parks and reserves – and even bushland on farms – in a better state than they were before the fires.

Bush regeneration groups are well placed to restore forests after fire, but need volunteers.
Flickr

Weeding works

In January 1994, fire burned most of Lane Cove National Park in Sydney. Within a few months of the fire, volunteer bush regeneration groups were set up to help tackle regenerating weeds.

Their efforts eradicated weeds from areas where the problem previously seemed intractable and prevented further weed expansion. Key to success in this case was the provision of funding for coordination, an engaged community which produced passionate volunteers and enough resources to train them.

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Conservation scientists are grieving after the bushfires — but we must not give up

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Following recent fires in the Victorian high country, volunteers will be critical to controlling weeds, particularly broom (Scotch broom and related species), which occurs throughout fire-affected areas .

Fire typically kills these woody shrubs but also stimulates seed germination. Without intervention, broom will form dense stands which out-compete native plant species .

However, swift action now can prevent this. Mass germination reduces the broom’s seedbank to as low as 8% of pre-fire levels, and around half of the remaining seeds die each year. Further, broom usually takes three years to flower and replenish its seedbank. So with no new seeds being produced and the seedbank low and shrinking, this three-year window offers an important opportunity to restore previously infested areas.

Scotch broom, a native shrub of Western Europe, has infested vast swathes of Australia.
Gunter Maywald-CSIRO/Wikimedia

Parks Victoria took up this opportunity after the 2003 fires in the Alpine National Park. They rallied agencies, natural resource management groups and local landholders to sweep up broom . Herbicide trials at that time revealed that to get the best outcome for their money, it was critical to spray broom seedlings early, within the first year and a half.

Broom management also needs to use a range of approaches, including using volunteers to spread a biological control agent.

Plenty of work to do

Parks Victoria continue to engage community groups in park management and will coordinate fire response actions when parks are safe to enter. Similar programs can be found in New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and the ACT.

A wide range of weeds expand after fire and warrant a rapid response. They include lantana, bitou bush, and
blackberry.

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Read more:
Yes, native plants can flourish after bushfire. But there’s only so much hardship they can take

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Managing weeds after fire is currently a high priority at many sites. At the edges of the World Heritage Gondwana rainforests of southwest Queensland and northern and central NSW, there is a window to more effectively control lantana. In many forested areas in NSW, Victoria and South Australia, fire has created an opportunity to address important weed problems.

State government agencies have the mapping capacity to locate these places. Hopefully they can make these resources easy for the public to access soon, so community groups can self-organise and connect with park managers.

A koala badly injured during the Canberra bushfires before it was returned to the wild.
ALAN PORRIT/AAP

All this needs money

Emergency funding is now essential to enable community-based weed control programs at the scale needed to have a substantial impact. Specifically, funding is needed for group coordinators, trainers and equipment.

While emergency work is needed to control regenerating weeds in the next 6-18 months, ongoing work is needed after that to consolidate success and prevent reinfestations from the small, but still present, seed bank.

Ongoing government funding is needed to enable this work, and prepare for a similar response to the next mega-fires.

Want to act immediately?

You can volunteer to do your bit for fire recovery right now. In addition to state-agency volunteer websites, there are many existing park care, bush care and “friends of” groups coordinated by local governments. They’re waiting for you to join so they can start planning the restoration task in fire-affected areas.

Contact them directly or register your interest with the Australian Association of Bush Regenerators who can link you with the appropriate organisations.

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Read more:
You can leave water out for wildlife without attracting mosquitoes, if you take a few precautions

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If we do nothing now, the quality of our national parks will decline as weeds take over and native species are lost. But if you channel your fire-response energy and commitment to help manage weeds, our national parks could come out in front from this climate-change induced calamity.

By all means, rescue an injured koala. But by pulling out weeds, you could also help rescue a whole ecosystem.

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Dr Tein McDonald, president of the Australian Association of Bush Regenerators, contributed to this article.

Don Driscoll, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How invasive weeds can make wildfires hotter and more frequent

Mixed grill: burning combinations of invasive and native plants helps us understand how invasive plants make fires hotter and more likely.
Sarah Wyse, CC BY-ND

Tim Curran, Lincoln University, New Zealand; George Perry, and Sarah Wyse

Over the past year the global media has been full of reports of catastrophic fires in California, the Mediterranean, Chile and elsewhere. One suggested reason for increases in catastrophic wildfires has been human-induced climate change. Higher temperatures, drier weather and windier conditions all increase the impact of fires.

While climate change indeed raises the risk of wildfires, our research shows that another way humans can change patterns of fire activity is by introducing flammable plants to new environments.

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Read more: How will Canada manage its wildfires in the future?

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Plantations of highly flammable exotic species, such as pines and eucalypts, probably helped to fuel the recent catastrophic fires in Portugal and in Chile. In arid regions, such as parts of the US southwest, the introduction of exotic grasses has transformed shrublands, as fires increase in severity.

Invasive plants and fire

How do invasive plants change fire patterns? We burned species mixtures (aka “mixed grills”) on our plant barbecue to help find out.

Invasive plants are responsible for changing the patterns of fire activity in many ecosystems around the world. In particular, invasive species can lead to hotter and more frequent fires.

Invasive plants can also reduce fire frequency and fire intensity, but there are fewer examples of this occurring worldwide.

One of the main ways flammable invasive plants can have long-lasting impacts on an ecosystem comes from positive fire-vegetation feedbacks. Such feedbacks can occur when a flammable weed invades a less fire-prone ecosystem. By changing the available fuel the invader makes fires more likely and often hotter.

If the invading species has characteristics that allow it to outcompete native species after a fire, then it will further dominate the ecosystem. Such traits include thick bark, the ability to resprout following fire, or seeds that survive burning. This invasion will likely lead to more fires, changing the species composition and function of the ecosystem in a “fire begets fire” cycle. Extreme examples of this dynamic are where flammable grasses or shrubs invade forests, leading to loss of the forest ecosystems.

Mixed grills

We wanted to understand how invasive plants interact with other species when burned in combination. To explore the mechanisms underpinning such feedbacks, we examined how invasive plants might change the nature of a fire when burned together with native species.

We collected 70cm shoots of four globally invasive species (of both high and low flammability) and burned them in pairwise combinations with New Zealand native trees and shrubs to determine which characteristics of a fire could be attributed to the invasive plants.

Samples of Hakea sericea (foreground) and Kunzea robusta (rear) arranged on the grill of our plant barbecue.
Sarah Wyse, CC BY-ND

We found that overall flammability was largely driven by the most flammable species in the mixture, showing how highly flammable weeds could set in motion fire-vegetation feedbacks.

We established that a greater difference in flammability between the two species led to a larger influence of the more flammable species on overall flammability. This outcome suggests weeds that are much more flammable than the invaded community can have larger impacts on fire patterns.

Importantly, we also showed the influence of the highly flammable species was independent of its biomass, meaning highly flammable weeds may impact community flammability even at low abundances.

When we looked closer at the different components of flammability (combustibility, ignitability, consumability and sustainability) we found some important nuances in our results.

While the maximum temperature reached in our burns (combustibility) and the ignition speed (ignitability) were both most influenced by the more flammable species, consumability (the amount of biomass burned) and sustainability (how long the fire burns) were equally influenced by both the more flammable and less flammable species.

In short, more flammable weeds will cause a fire to ignite more quickly and burn hotter.

However, less flammable species can reduce the duration of a fire compared to when a more flammable species is burnt alone. These results could have important ecological implications, as the longer a fire burns the more likely it is to kill plants: low-flammability plants could reduce this impact.

Measuring how long a fire burns on our plant barbecue.
Tom Etherington, CC BY-ND

Managing weeds to reduce fire impacts

Even low abundances of highly flammable invasive weeds could set in motion positive fire-vegetation feedbacks that lead to drastic changes to ecosystems. If this result holds when our shoot-scale experiments are repeated using field trials, then land managers should work quickly to remove even small infestations of highly flammable species, such as gorse (Ulex europaeus) and prickly hakea (Hakea sericea).

Conversely, the role of low flammability plants in extinguishing fires further supports the suggestion that the strategic planting of such species across the landscape as “green firebreaks” could be a useful fire management tool.

In any case, our “mixed grill” study further highlights the role of exotic plants in fuelling hotter wildfires.

Tim Curran, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand; George Perry, Professor, School of Environment, and Sarah Wyse, Early Career Research Fellow, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Research Fellow, School of Environment

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Tiny desert mice could help save Australia’s grasslands from invasion

Christopher Edward Gordon, University of Wollongong and Mike Letnic, UNSW Australia

You should stop skylarking about with those bloody desert mice and try and stop those woody weeds. I could see clear through that paddock in the ‘60s. Now look at it. That scrub costs us tens of thousands of dollars in lost fodder and it’s almost impossible to muster the livestock.

That blunt assessment of our research, first offered by a local farmer in Australia’s arid rangelands almost seven years ago, raised an irresistible question for us as field ecologists. Why are Australia’s (and many others around the world) grasslands becoming woodier?

It certainly was a question worth asking. Shrub encroachment – an increase in the cover of woody shrubs in areas once dominated by grasses – is not just an issue in Australia.

In two recent papers published in the journals Ecography and the Journal of Animal Ecology, we looked at one key reason why trees are invading grasslands, and how we could stop them. And it all comes down to tiny desert mice.

Shrub invasion

“Invasive native vegetation”, as bureaucrats call it, is a major problem for livestock producers in drylands throughout the world. This is because the shrubs compete for space and light with the grasses needed to feed their cattle and sheep.

Shrub encroachment ‘inside’ the Dingo Fence.
Dr Ben Moore

It is a hard problem to tackle. Clearing and fire are the most common methods of controlling woody shrubs. But these methods are laborious and often hard to implement on large scales.

Removing shrubs is also contentious because these are typically native species that provide important habitat for wildlife. The New South Wales parliament’s controversial relaxation in November of regulations governing vegetation clearing were designed partly to allow farmers to remove invasive native vegetation.

What’s going on?

The causes for the spread are complex and poorly understood. Shrub encroachment is often attributed to overgrazing by livestock, which favours the growth of shrubs over grasses. It has also been linked to a reduction in bushfires that wipe out the shrubs and an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which can promote their growth.

However, we suspected another important factor could be at play. And it was those little desert mice that provided us with a big clue – and a possible solution.

Since European settlement, livestock grazing and the introduction of foxes, feral cats and rabbits have decimated Australia’s native mammals, especially in arid and semi-arid areas.

The bilbies, bettongs, native rodents and other small mammals that became rare or extinct across much of the continent in the early 20th century once played essential roles in Australian ecosystems, by shifting vast amounts of soil and consuming vegetation and seeds.

Historical accounts suggest that shrub encroachment quickly followed European settlement and mammal extinctions in many areas. This coincidence led us to ask: could the loss of native mammals be making Australia’s drylands woodier?

Hopping to it

To answer this question, we went to the northwest corner of NSW. Here the Dingo Fence marks the border with Queensland and South Australia.

The Dingo Fence.
Ben Moore

We wanted to know whether the local extinction of a native mammal, the dusky hopping mouse, which eats shrub seeds and seedlings, would allow more shrubs to grow. The Dingo Fence was the perfect study site because dusky hopping mice are common on the northwest side, “outside” the fence, where dingoes are present.

Dingoes keep fox numbers down, which are the mouse’s major predator. However, dusky hopping mice are rare on the “inside” of the fence (the NSW side), where dingoes are less common and foxes roam.

We first used historical aerial photographs to show that shrub cover was consistently higher inside the dingo fence (rodents rare) than outside (rodents common). We then did field surveys, which showed that the numbers of shrubs, their seedlings and their seeds were greater where rodents were rare.

We also showed that dusky hopping mice were major consumers of shrub seeds and capable of keeping the numbers of shrub seeds in the soil down.

Fieldwork in the Strzelecki Desert.
Dr Ben Moore

Going wild again

These results are exciting because they suggest that the loss of native mammals such as the dusky hopping mouse may be an important and overlooked driver of shrub encroachment, not only in arid Australia but also globally.

Perhaps more exciting, however, is how we can apply our work. Our research suggests that “rewilding” drylands by re-establishing rodents and other native mammal species that eat shrub seeds and seedlings, such as bettongs and bilbies, could curb the shrub invasion.

Although an abstract and even controversial idea, rewilding of native mammals would provide a long-term solution to a problem that has affected pastoralists for more than a century.

Further, it would represent a natural and cost-effective strategy with enormous benefits for the conservation of imperilled native mammals.

Before we can do so, we have to control foxes and feral cats across vast areas, which is no small feat. However, the economic and conservation potential make it an approach that is well worth taking seriously.

Christopher Edward Gordon, Associate Research Fellow, University of Wollongong and Mike Letnic, Associate Professor, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Blackbutt Reserve

Kevin's Daily Photo, Video, Quote or Link

Since I was unable to visit Gap Creek Falls the other day, I decided I might pop in to have a look at the new animal enclosures at Blackbutt Reserve near Newcastle. I will say straight off the bat that I do have something of a prejudice against Blackbutt Reserve, as I see the place as nothing like a natural bush setting, it being far too ‘corrupted’ by human activity, weeds and the like. Having said that it is a good place for a family or group outing/event. It certainly has its place, but it is not a true nature reserve (in my opinion).

ABOVE: Visitor Centre

I do think that some well designed animal and bird enclosures at Blackbutt could lift the value of the reserve dramatically and make it a really great place for families, especially young families. There are opportunities for educational visits for kids, possible environmental…

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Antarctica: Weed Invasion Threat

The article below reports on the threat to Antarctica posed by weeds brought in by human visitors. This is a threat that will continue to grow with climate change.

See also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/opinion/seeding-the-southern-continent.html

Antarctica: Invasion of the Weeds and Pests

The link below is to an article reporting on the invasion of weeds and pests in Antarctica. The threat is growing with climate change and human visitation.

For more visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17258799

India: Kaziranga National Park – The Rhinoceros now Threatened by Weeds

The link below is to an article about the threat posed to Rhinos in India by the weed Mimosa diplotricha. According to the article poaching is somewhat under control (poaching for horns), but now the Rhino is threatened by the rapidly spreading Mimosa weed that is smothering out grasses that provide feed for the Rhino.

For more visit:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106803