SALVINIA CONTROL

Folks while we were overseas apparently CHCC has contracted Wetland care Australia to help with writing a plan for the control of the aquatic weeds. They are seeking advice back from the community.

The question is do we want bio-control which takes longer but will be more successful or do we want them to physically remove the weeds which offers short term solution but will simply provide a chance for the weeds to return. At present CHCC is of the opinion that we the residents want physical removal not bio-control, Im not sure if that is representative of us all ?. Certainly we believe that while physical removal is a good short term option, that it is not a solution and will simply waste 40K. The more robust and long term effective tool is to release the bugs now and let them take a strong hold but that will take over a year to start seeing the results (so we are told). We would rather see CHCC remove some of the sediment which also helps reduce the physical foothold for the weeds and let the bio-agent kill the weeds for good.

Please let us know what you want so we can represent the Korora residents.

Update on Salvinia

Wetland care Australia has been in touch with us and have reviewed CHCC proposal to mulch the Salvinia and like us have advised that regardless of spraying or mulching the weed will continue to grow back. They also advised that the release of the Salvinia weevil was badly timed in winter and would not have started to proliferate. As such the advice to CHCC is to do another release of the weevil in summer that would require some strip spraying of the salvinia and then releasing the weevils on the new growth.

CHCC costed the mulching at 40K and so we should now lobby them to use that money to physically remove the sediment from the lagoons to help in reducing the foot hold for the weeds. Please lobby CHCC in this regard.

Please email us kersten@westnet.com.au and cc Josh Keating in Wetland Care Aust on josh.keating@wetlandcare.com.au.

More as it comes to hand.

Paul and Kersten