Plants
Pest plants are those plants which either cause, or have the potential to cause, adverse impacts on Southland's environment. Many have been brought into New Zealand as garden plants, but have jumped the fence and escaped into the wild where they grow and spread.
Pest plants tend to come in two types: environmental pests and agricultural pests. Environmental pests mainly have an impact on biodiversity, while agricultural pests affect the productivity of farming operations. The nature of the pest and its impact or potential impact helps determine the type of programmes for a particular pest plant.
Current Programmes
Factsheets
Download the Environment Southland pest plant factsheets below:
Plant Me Instead
The Plant Me Instead booklet is produced by Weedbusters (http://weedbusters.co.nz). Weedbusters is a weeds awareness and education programme which aims to protect New Zealand's environment from the increasing weed problem.
Environment Southland and Weedbusters are inviting home gardeners to help them fight back on behalf of our native species, through the "Plant Me Instead" booklet.
The booklet is available free from Environment Southland and garden centres around the region and identifies common "weedy species" that people are likely to find in their gardens, with suggestions of similar but benign plants that they could plant instead.
Weed disposal
When you've done the hard work of getting rid of a weed, the last thing you want to do is to accidentally let that weed spread further by improper disposal! Illegal or "Fly" dumping is a major source of weed spread in Southland.
Weed disposal at home:
The Weedbusters site has some disposal ideas for various weeds at home (http://weedbusters.co.nz/resource_centre/dispose.asp.
Weed disposal at a refuse transfer station:
Disposal costs at a transfer stations are usually low compared to other forms of waste.
Southland District Council (SDC) accepts green waste at its seven transfer stations. Separated green waste can also be taken to their Wallacetown and Riversdale sites on Saturdays and Sundays. The green waste is then composted and used as mulch for SDC planting projects.
Invercargill City Council accepts green waste at its Invercargill transfer station. Currently there are no green waste facilities at Bluff. Composted green waste from the Invercargill transfer station is spread over the old refuse site as planting mulch.
Gore District Council accepts green waste at its Matuara and Gore stations. Material that can be chipped is used around the towns as mulch on street plantings. The remainder of the material is composted for 1-2 years and then used as a mulch layer over the old refuse site as planting mulch.
For further information on the nearest transfer station, opening hours, fees and what material they will accept visit http://www.wastenet.org.nz/.
Use of Vigilant herbicide gel
Preliminary investigation of potential non-target effects of the use of Vigilant herbicide gel
A report investigating the potential non-target effects of the herbicidal gel Vigilant in Southland, has found that its use is unlikely to have caused the observed damage to mature native tree species. However, there are risks associated with using Vigilant and heavy application at a typically wet time of the year may have caused non-target damage at one site. The report recommends best practice guidelines be developed to inform people how to use Vigilant correctly as well as outline its potential risks.
Environment Southland is the brand name of Southland Regional Council.