Mills Street Drain Hydrocotyle Control
Project Overview
This is a contract project on a Water Corporation owned waterway. Since March 2012, SERCUL has been controlling Hydrocotyle ranunculoides in Mills Street Main Drain.
This Weed of National Significance (WoNS) has the potential to severely impact on aquatic ecosystems and has been prolific in this drain prior to work commencing in 2012.
Initial treatment began by using herbicide to get the infestation down to a point where hand removal is the preferred option. In March 2012 H. ranunculoides covered 1,820m² and was present in 547 individual points. It is now down to less than 2m² and present at 11 individual points.
Due to continued germination of seedlings ongoing management is required until this infestation is completely eradicated making the rehabilitation of particular sites in this drainage network viable without the threat of reinvasion.
Key Achievements
We are aiming at eradicating Hydrocotyle from this system and have now managed to get the infestation down to very isolated instances where it is only small numbers of new germinants appearing. Both chemical and manual removal methods are used on a monthly basis to move towards eradication of this serious weed.