Proust Bushland Services - providing quality, best practice ecological restoration services to a range of land managers to assist in restoring degraded environments

Proust Bushland Services

... providing quality, best practice ecological restoration services for land managers

Serving:

• Illawarra
• Shoalhaven
• South Coast
• Southern Highlands

27,000 exotic plants have been introduced into Australia

Means of introduction and regions of origin of plant species naturalised in Australia between 1971 and 1995.
Source: Groves (1998).
2,779 have become environmental weeds (increasing by min.10 per year) (27 million hectares weed infested to some degree).
93% frogs, 89% reptiles, 85% plants, 84% mammals do not occur naturally anywhere else on this planet.
Australia has more threatened species of reptiles & frogs than any other country.
Over 80 land animal ‘pests’ & over 300 marine invaders currently in Australia.
Southern Highlands has over 60 invasive environmental weeds.
Paterson’s Curse ‘escaped’ from a garden near Albury in the 1840’s now costs us $30 million a year to control.
Honeysuckle can grow 15 metres a year.
Gorse seed can be viable for over 80 years.
Economic cost of weeds and 11 feral animals is estimated to cost $4 billion in losses and $720 million in control measures each year.
Over 250,000 plants worldwide.
90,000 plants in South America (78% are endemic)
20,000 plants in North America (21% are endemic)
15,000 plants in Australia (90% are endemic)
11,500 plants in Europe
10,000 plants in Madagascar (80% are endemic)
Australia is one of the 12 mega-diverse countries (Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Zaire, Madagascar, China, India, Malaysia and Indonesia). These countries have greater than 70% of the world biodiversity.