Quote:
Originally Posted by Lancashire Lad  Just seen this thread, and as ceterach & LindaB have said, current thinking has it that herbicidal/biological control is the best solution, as Azolla filiculoides (American water Fern) is incredibly invasive.
I would be surprised if the management team for the waterway concerned, are not already aware of the possibility for biological control, but the links below provide some useful information: -
(PDF File - Document size approx 200Kb) - http://www.nerc-wallingford.ac.uk/re...liculoides.pdf
(PDF File - Document size approx 2.75Mb) - http://www.invasivespeciesireland.co...%20control.pdf
(HTML Document - Document size approx 25Kb) - Newsroom - British Waterways
Regards
Mike. |
Well done Mike, you have posted most of the information I have at home. I have just one or two more links but the above links provide plenty of info on how to proceed. Some of this information is not easy to find on the internet either, it takes some searching lol.
There is a little pond near where I work that had a vast amount of money spent on it about 3 or 4 years ago for de-silting it by vacuum as its a sensitive area. It filled up nicely with rainwater (eventually) and all the wildlife started to return - and so did the idiots that dumped their ghost carp into the pond! I could see disturbance around the edge of the pond and eventually saw many carp appearing. I then started to see the fairy moss - which obviously came from the 'idiots' pond!
I was mortified when I saw it in there, knowing how serious this could be. Within a couple of months it rapidly took over - and I was on a mission! It was heartbreaking to see the newly hatched moorhens struggling to get through it and being a sitting target for any opportunistic bird. Some of the fish were struggling to get air during the summer months.
Cutting a long story short(ish lol), after researching and contacting various people, I came up with the above, and so did the local council responsible for the upkeep of the pond. I was fortunate enough to be there when these little weevils were being put in - they are very small indeed. A relatively small number were placed around the edge of the water and within a couple of months, very large areas of clear water appeared. I would say it took about 8 months to be almost completely clear with just bits around the edge, but the weevils obviously continued to work and it has been clear ever since. The speed in which the waterway clears is very much dependent on how many are added to the water initially (and how much they are prepared to pay).
Seeing this sort of thing is something I feel pretty strongly about and I do wish that this plant was banned from being sold (too late for those who already have it of course). I also feel that it should be compulsory to treat any waterway 'infected' with this stuff in the above manner, by whoever is responsible for the upkeep of it.