Many years ago, early September was an exciting time for a youngish state government officer making his way in the exciting world of weeds and pests.
You see, Weedbuster Week was coming and anyone involved in environmental management would be knee-deep in vines and bushes – talking weeds, pulling weeds, busting weeds … living the dream!
Weedbuster Week was a groundbreaking program started by the old Queensland Department of Natural Resources in 1994 as a community awareness campaign, held in the first week of September, to draw attention to the impacts of invasive weeds on agricultural and other industries, the environment and our way of life.
It was so successful that it went national in 1997, engaging with tens of thousands of people, busting tonnes of weeds in the process.
From the start until 2006, I used to work with many (many) Landcare groups, environment groups, Bushcare groups, farmers, schools, local governments and other state agencies across south-east Queensland to help them run their Weedbuster Week events.
I only stopped in 2006 when I left the Sunshine Coast Council (where I then ran the pest plants and animals section) to work in the Glasshouse Country & Maleny News for the then-editor (and my wife) Lea Parkes.
In fact, in another ‘life’ Lea was actually the Queensland Weedbuster Week Coordinator for a number of years in the late 1990’s.
As a promotional vehicle, Weedbuster Week was amazingly successful.
I would have spoken at, help with, contributed to hundreds of events over those years, meeting thousands of like-minded people who cared about their local environment and reversing the impacts weeds were having.
Weeds were a hot topic and something that politicians wanted to be involved with … we were going to win that war against weeds and nothing was going to stop us.
But then something happened. Weedbuster Week just disappeared from the zeitgeist. One year it was there … next it wasn’t.
What changed?
Funding models changed; state government governance thinking changed; politicians changed. Government needed something new and sexy to fund to show they were relevant and responsive. Bureaucrats went down a devolution pathway, off-loading responsibilities onto others. And politicians followed the most populist path, moving onto the next news-cycle-trending topic which came along.
Suddenly weeds were still a problem, but the priorities of authorities moved on.
The trouble is, those affected by the weeds – farmers, landcarers, environmental volunteers – don’t have that luxury of just ‘moving on’. They still had (and have) to deal with them every day.
And the weeds didn’t move on … they kept growing and spreading and causing problems. In fact, we ended up with dozens of newer and nastier weeds on top of what we already were battling.
So, in what would have been the start of Weedbuster week, let’s not forget that weeds are still the number one problem facing our agricultural industries and our biodiversity management. Weeds still cost us billions of dollars each year in lost productivity and control costs.
In reality, instead of Weedbuster Week petering out, it should have been super-charged into Weedbuster Year.
There are still many weedos who haven’t lost the faith and are making a difference. Kudos to the Glasshouse Mountains Action Network (GMAN), Mooloolah River Landcare, Barung Landcare, Hinterland Bush Links, Cahill Scrub Bushcare Group, Lake Baroon Catchment Care Group … just to name a few locals.
And you can make a difference just by helping out a group near you.
Keep the fires burning people … weed on.
