Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the help, support and constructive advice given by many people, some of whom are named below. When contemplating so large a task not previously undertaken within Australia, it was necessary to obtain a range of ideas and views. The authors thank all those people across Australia who listened to our ideas and offered comments and contributions.

Without the work of John Virtue, Richard Groves and Dane Panetta, who developed the initial assessment system for invasiveness and impacts, the project would have lacked the sound foundation needed to assess weed risks.

Compilation of the national data-sets relied on the commitment of the many people in State and Territory primary industry and conservation agencies who contributed baseline data, often working in their own time.

The members of the reference panels contributed generously and were a pleasure to work with in discussing and compiling information from over 2,500 pages of questionnaires. Panel members were:

 
    Tropical Dr Tony Grice Division of Tropical Crops & Pastures
    CSIRO, Qld
      Dr Rachel McFadyen Dept of Natural Resources, Qld
      Mr Ian Miller Dept of Primary Industry & Fisheries NT
      Mr Andrew Mitchell Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, NT
      Dr Trevor Stanley Dept of Natural Resources, Qld
      Mr Colin Wilson Parks and Wildlife Commission NT
         
    Sub-tropical Mr George Batianoff Queensland Herbarium
      Mr Steve Csurhes Dept of Natural Resources, Qld
      Mr Geoff Cummings Dept of Natural Resources, Qld
      Mr John Hosking NSW Agriculture
      Dr Dane Panetta Dept of Natural Resources, Qld
      Mr Geoff Sainty Sainty and Associates, NSW
         
    Temperate Mr Robin Adair Dept of Natural Resources & Environment, Vic
      Mr Andrew Bishop Dept of Primary Industries, Water & Environment, Tas
      Mr John Hosking NSW Agriculture
      Mr Greg Keighery Dept of Conservation & Land Management, WA
      Dr David McLaren Dept of Natural Resources & Environment, Vic
      Dr John Virtue Animal & Plant Control Commission, SA
      Mr Rod Randall Agriculture Western Australia

We acknowledge also:

  • the dedicated work of Lindsay Hood, Jane Stewart and Christine Atyeo, staff of the Bureau of Rural Sciences, who devised the mapping technique and undertook data analysis for the current distribution of weeds;

  • Kim Malafant, statistician with Complexia, who conducted the statistical analysis, particularly of the panel data, and provided extensive advice on the model design;

  • Rod Randall of Agriculture Western Australia, who generated the predicted distributions and supporting maps under extreme pressure of time;

  • the National Weeds Strategy Executive Committee, which provided guidance and vision on the practical development of the framework to determine weeds of national significance from the original objectives expressed in goal 2 of the National Weeds Strategy; and

  • the National Weeds Program component of the Commonwealth’s Natural Heritage Trust that is jointly administered by Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry – Australia and Environment Australia, which provided funding for various aspects of the project.

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