The control of willows in alpine boulderfields is part of the Mountain Pygmy-possum Recovery Project. Willows are challenging weeds to remove, so contractors revisit sites year after year to ensure that willows don’t overstay their welcome ensuring that Mountain Pygmy-possums will always have a place in the Australian alps to call home. Willows are also fast growing and out-compete the slower growing natives like the Mountain Plum Pine that the possums rely on for food.įor the past five years, Parks Victoria has worked towards removing this uninvited and unwelcome house guest from prime Mountain Pygmy-possum real estate in the Alpine National Park.Įxperienced weed control contractors visited the boulderfields at Mt Loch, Mt Bundara and Mt Jaithmathang and any willows they found were cut down with their root system poisoned through the careful application of herbicide to the cut stem. Willows grow between the boulders and have extensive root systems that choke the spaces the possums occupy. Willows have been a relatively recent addition to this list of threats, arriving in the high country after the 2003 fires in clouds of air-borne seeds that blew up from the valleys and landed in the boulderfields producing thousands of seedlings. Their biggest threats are increased temperatures, frequent and severe fires and predation by foxes and feral cats. The possums are critically endangered, with only around 2000 individuals left in the wild. Mountain Pygmy-possums live in the small spaces between the basalt and granite boulders and during the winter months, when the boulderfields are blanketed with snow, the possums hibernate safely in these spaces. And, if willows decide to come and stay, you could be left out in the cold. When you live in a boulderfield, as Mountain Pygmy-possums do, there’s not much room to move.
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