LOSS BY WEED PESTS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21728, 10 March 1936, Page 10

LOSS BY WEED PESTS

AUSTRALIA'S HEAVY

BURDEN

NATIVE AND IMPORTED

SPECIES

(FR'JU OUR OWN COiRESPO.VDEST. 1

SYDNEY, February 21

Curiosities of fact and legend distinguish a report on weed pests. made by Mr G. A. Currie, and published by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Of 150 weeds in Australia declared to be noxious, and 100 more not officially exposed, many are gifts from countries rich in pests. It was Germany, for example, which, about 1363, presented South Australia with a bouquet of stinkwort. The plant is most happily named, for when eaten by cattle and sheep it taints the milk, butter, and meat. Then there is the Bathurst burr, a great pest in New South Wales. The first burrs were "stowaways" in the tails of horses arriving from Chile in the 1840's. Graziers lose a lot of money each year through burrs infesting wool. What Australia's annual loss from weed pests amounts to cannot be guessed. But a single one of them, the Noogoora burr, prevalent in Queensland, decreases the national wool cheque by £50,000. No orchid rivals this weed in price. Cattle sometimes adjust themselves to the pests in their pastures. St. John's Wort is extremely irritating to the nose and the tops of the hoofs; yet cattle reared in St. John's Wort country develop a taste for the weed. Because of its irritating effect on the nerve endings in sunlight, -the cattle feed on it during the night, and retire during sunlight to dense shade to spend the day. When driven into "clean" country, so strong is their perverted craving for St. John's Wort that if there are no fences they will return to feed on it.

Goats adjust themselves to blackberry bushes. After the upper branches have been cut and burned goats readily devour the young shoots and ultimately leave the ground without a thorn.

Mr Currie's catalogue of the ways in which losses are sustained is given in his report. It includes:— Loss of land values through the presence of noxious weeds; loss of actual volume of crop and products from land through weeds competing against crop plants, and through poisonous plants killing stock; loss in quality of products from the land; losses in revenue expended by State and local authorities in enforcing weed legislation. Mr Currie states the money spent annually by States and local bodies on noxious weeds legislation and its eforcement, which totals about £250,000 for the whole of Australia, is an index to the losses actually sustained.