Tiakina Whangārei project lead Jo Skyrme has been trialling an initiative in which Onerahi residents can drop Moth plant pods off to a collection point at Jeremy Busck's Dragonfly Springs property for later disposal. Photo / Michael Cunningham.
Tiakina Whangārei project lead Jo Skyrme has been trialling an initiative in which Onerahi residents can drop Moth plant pods off to a collection point at Jeremy Busck's Dragonfly Springs property for later disposal. Photo / Michael Cunningham.
Experts are planning to ramp up a community attack on the invasive weed moth plant in Whangārei’s urban environment.
A trial project aimed at encouraging Onerahi residents to rid their neighbourhoods of as much of the invasive vine as possible began this month and ends next week.
Organised by Tiakina Whangārei - a community-led conservation group supported by the Northland regional and Whangārei district councils - the Onerahi initiative called on local weed-busting enthusiasts to bag as many of the vines’ seed-loaded pod heads as possible then drop them off at a collection point for burying.
Project lead Jo Skyrme said there’d been a good haul of pods so far and it had also been a chance to provide some additional education about the plant and how to get rid of it.
She was already looking ahead to next year when she hoped to extend the initiative to the whole of Whangārei’s urban area and run it as a competition. She also wanted to see schools get involved.
Skyrmesaid similar competitions in Auckland had previously proved a successful way to help combat the moth plant there.
Each pod collected and disposed of properly stopped a flood of new generations of the weed.
Suffocation of the pods and burial of them was an important part the process, Skyrme said. If simply dumped on a green waste heap, the pods could burst or be run over by machinery and the thousands of fluffy thistledown-like seeds inside each one would be blown by the wind to a host of new locations - potentially up to 30km from the source.
Able to establish themselves in virtually any frost-free habitat, the seeds quickly grew into vines up to about 10m long, smothering any plants that get in their way and forming a canopy that prevented regeneration of other plants.
Each year weed-buster groups on Whangārei Heads took on the challenge of trying to control the plant there. However, this was the first time Tiakina had been involved and in a project targeting moth plant in the urban environment.
Each moth pod contains hundreds, if not thousands, of seeds that can be dispersed by wind up to 30km away from the original source. Photo / Michael Cunningham.
The Onerahi pilot showed Whangārei’s urban community was keen to get onboard with the eradication effort, Skyrmesaid. And, there was as much of the nuisance plant lurking around urban yards and reserves as anywhere.
Long-time conservationist Jeremy Busck provided the gateway of his Onerahi eco-sanctuary property Dragonfly Springs as the collection point for the pods. He too is keen to see the initiative grow next year, especially with the involvement of schools.
Busck has spent the last 30 or more years re-establishing a wetland on his property at the edge of Onerahi’s urban sprawl and hosting education programmes there.
He knows the importance of teaching youngsters - especially 5-to 7-year-olds - to protect their natural environment and to learn about the issues at stake.
“If you want to save tomorrow, you’ve got to educate today,” Busck said.
“It was frustrating to see all these kids marching in the street about global warming and somebody else should do it (remedy it). It’s our planet, it’s our New Zealand, and the whole five million of us should be going out and getting moth plant or looking after the planet and not putting rubbish out in the street.”
About weed moth plant
Moth plant (Araujia hortorum) also known as cruel plant, kapok vine, milk vine, milk weed, and wild choko vine, is a South American plant first introduced to New Zealand as an ornamental species and recorded as naturalised in 1888.
