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2. Administrative Structure and Process The project was conducted under the auspices of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Resource Management, the Standing Committee on Conservation and the Standing Committee on Forestry. These Committees support the Ministerial Councils responsible for agriculture and resource management, environment and conservation, and forestry. Membership of the Standing Committees comprises the relevant departmental secretaries/chief executive officers of Commonwealth, State, Territory and New Zealand government agencies. Figure 1 outlines the organisational structure for implementing the National Weeds Strategy initiated by the three Ministerial Councils. A requirement was that the WONS framework and process be agreed upon by the Standing Committees with final endorsement of the inaugural list of WONS by the three Ministerial Councils. An outline of the approach described in this paper was agreed upon by the Standing Committees in May 1998. Member States and Territories agreed to nominate weed species to be assessed against the WONS criteria and to provide the data needed to compile the national datasets. States and Territories nominated 73 individual weed species and the group of herbicide-resistant weeds to be assessed. This was reduced to 71 species (see Appendix 5) by combining Sporobolus natalensis with S. pyramidalis and Sena obtusifolia with S. tora. The process undertaken was unsuitable for prioritising multi-species problems such as herbicide-resistant weeds and this group was excluded from the assessment. Figure 1. The organisational structure for implementing the National Weeds Strategy
Following assessment of the nominated weeds, the National Weeds Strategy Executive Committee recommended to the Standing Committees that the 20 highest ranking weeds be nominated as the inaugural list of WONS. The three Ministerial Councils unanimously endorsed the list, details of which were released on 1 June 1999.
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