Kakadu National Park Landscape Symposia Series 2007-2009. Symposium 2: Weeds management

About the report

The Weeds Management Workshop is the second in the series of symposia and workshops held by Kakadu National Park focusing on agents of landscape change. The first symposium 'Landscape Change Overview' was published as IR532.

The aim of workshop is to serve as a forum for knowledge exchange between stakeholders in the Kakadu region, including identifying management issues, emerging threats, knowledge gaps and research needs pertaining to weed management on a local, regional and national scale. The aim was to achieve this through an effective two-way transfer of knowledge between Kakadu National Park staff, researchers, the Kakadu Research Advisory Committee (KRAC) members, stakeholders and Traditional Owners.

The objective was to place this knowledge in a management context and pose questions to Park Managers and Traditional Owners regarding future management frameworks and research directions. The topics of remaining forums in this series are Fire, Climate Change and Feral Animal Management.

The symposium was held at the eriss Jabiru Field Station, Jabiru East, Kakadu National Park, on 27 and 28 of November 2007.

Over fifty participants from a wide range of stakeholders including government agencies, academic institutions, landholders, Traditional Owners and Indigenous Associations attended. There is a list of the participants on page iv.

The forum included an optional field trip on the afternoon of Monday 26 November followed by two days of presentations and workshops.

The field trip looked at:

• Grassy weeds at Mudginberri paddocks
• Salvinia at billabong on Magela floodplain
• Para grass on Nardab floodplain (from Ubirr)

Topics presented at the symposium included:

• National and Northern Territory perspectives on weed management
• The West Arnhem Land perspective on weed managment
• Threat to Western Arnhem Land: Weedy Time Bomb Project overview
• Kakadu region perspective on weed managment
• Incorporating dispersal ecology and simulation modelling into the management of plant invasions
• Risk assessment and prioritising effort in weed management

Workshops were held on the following topics:

• Weed management in woodlands (grassy weeds including gamba grass, mission grass, grader grass)
• Floodplain/wetlands weed management (mimosa, salvinia, para grass, olive hymenachne, others)
• Escarpment and riparian weed management

The intention is to feed as much of the outcomes of the forum into on-ground management and research as possible and this has already been occurring.

One of the clearest messages was the need for greater regional and across jurisdiction cooperation in training, sharing technology and on ground management and significant steps have already been taken to progress this.