DoC tags colourful tourist attraction for eradication

They are pretty - and a pretty big nuisance.

Roadside lupins lend a blaze of colour to the landscape of the Mackenzie Country. Masses of them bloom deep purple in the Waimakariri riverbed near Arthurs Pass.

The colourful flowers are a favourite with many travellers through these areas. Tour buses stop to let passengers take photos of them.

But not for long, if the Department of Conservation (DoC) has its way. It has mounted Operation Weedbuster to eradicate this floral display.

Connie Scott, of Godley Peaks Station, planted thousands of lupins to brighten up the bare highway from Burkes Pass to Tekapo more than 50 years ago.

Her efforts to beautify the road are marked on her gravestone, in the Burkes Pass cemetery, with the words "The lupin lady".

Unfortunately, says Joy Comrie, of DoC's Twizel office, the lupins are a pest. Much money is spent each year on spray to eradicate them.

Beautiful they may be, but the plants are aggressive invaders of waterways and riverbeds. There they crowd out wading birds, terns and dotterels and the endangered black stilt, which prefer open spaces. The lupins also provide cover for stoats and feral cats.

Arthurs Pass DoC officer Wayne Costello said lupins were so successful in colonising riverbeds they altered the behaviour of braided rivers. They could restrict a river to one stream, which caused erosion.

Lupins in the Arthurs Pass area had spread from the home gardens of railway workers. They had been controlled until 1980 but became rampant after control measures stopped then.

DoC had organised residents' efforts to behead plants and spray them in the spring of the past two years as part of Operation Weedbuster, Mr Costello said.

- NZPA