Weed controlprogram getsgood results

Greening Australia participants, in partnership with the Yandeyarra community, completed their first week on country battling Pilbara weeds.

With eight rangers and two work experience students taking part in the week-long weed survey, the focus was on the river systems and infrastructure areas, including old mining camps within the Yandeyarra country.

Greening Australia senior project officer Pip Short said she was excited to see the country being relatively free of weeds.

“The guys have a great eye for spotting weeds, they were running through thick sand in over 40C temps looking for more plants, which was rather impressive,” Pip Short said.

“We (Greening Australia) are just really excited about where this project will head, the guys are so keen to learn and have such great knowledge about their country and we also have so many groups willing to come and skill the rangers on different land management topics.”

Pilbara Mesquite Management Committee project manager Jo Kuiper joined the ranger group to educate members in weed identification, reporting and controlling weeds, and helped the group set up eight monitoring locations for future surveys.

”It was really impressive to see the country looking healthy and with so few weeds across the Yandeyarra tenure,” she said.

”The ranger team should be able to work with the PMMC and neighbours to ensure it stays this way.”

Next month the ranger program will be looking at pest animal control and native fauna monitoring.

Funding for the program was awarded last year by the State Government’s Natural Resource Management Program.

To find out more about the Yandeyarra ranger program or any of Greening Australia’s other programs contact Ms Short at pshort@greeningaustralia.org.au.