Open Meeting Thurs 22 Feb 2024

Join us at 7.30pm Redbourn Village Hall, AL3 7LW. All Welcome at this FREE event.

UK weed biocontrol initiatives on waterbodies with guest speaker Djami Djeddour, Senior Researcher at CABI.
The evening will open with short reports on the state of the Ver’s water and the wildlife. After a short break for refreshments, we’ll hand over to our guest speaker.

Biocontrol is a well-established approach to weed management worldwide and has the potential to play an important role in protecting aquatic and riparian habitats, where chemical and mechanical control options are impractical or prove to be prohibitively expensive. On the River Ver the invasive non-native water fern Azolla filiculoides is being successfully managed through Stenopelmus rufinasus, a weevil native to the Americas. Djami’s talk will be focusing on Floating pennywort, Azolla and Himalayan balsam.

CABI is a not-for-profit international organisation providing science-based solutions to pests and disease problems across the world (www.cabi.org). The Invasive Species Management team at CABI in Egham, Surrey have been funded by Defra and other partners since 2011 to investigate the scope of biological control (biocontrol) of invasive, non-native aquatic and riparian plant species in the UK.