NATIMUK residents are fed up with their town's ongoing fairy grass problem.
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Parks Victoria describes fairy grass as “a native blown grass which colonises in damp, bare areas and germinates as soon as temperature and moisture levels are suitable”. The grass grows inside Natimuk Lake when its dry, and around the foreshore.
Natimuk Lake Foreshore Committee member and farmer Brian Klowss owns property next to the lake.
Mr Klowss said grass inside the lake was burned off in 2002 which helped subside the problem, however the grass came back in 2010. He said the problem become "really bad" last year.
"It's built up around the town and it's blowing into buildings. We've also got it across paddocks and there's a lot of it actually growing inside the paddocks," he said.
"The biggest issue is the fire risk; the grass has a very similar flash point to what petrol has. At Miga Lake, it was sprayed a few times and they had it grazed, which was found to be a great method of control."
It comes after the Mail-Times reported on Wednesday that Clear Lake residents were battling to find a solution to the town's own fairy grass epidemic.
Mr Klowss said Parks Victoria, which manages the lake, wasn't doing enough to combat the grass.
"This has been a problem for many years. There was a steering committee that I was on that set guidelines for management of fairy grass in Victoria and so were many others from the Wimmera," Mr Klowss said.
"But Parks Victoria don't recognise any work that was done of that committee or the recommendations we made. Parks management don't actually recognise the severity of what is going on. It's going to take something tragic to happen before Parks takes proper action."
He said Parks Victoria slashed the grass last year after concerns were raised.
Parks Victoria area chief ranger Zoe Wilkinson said many lakes in the Wimmera were affected by fairy grass during the summer, which "naturally occurred on public and private land".
“An inspection of Lake Natimuk last week confirmed that the vast majority vegetation growing on the dry lake-bed is native Orach, a benign herbaceous shrub," she said.
“This shrub has dominated the fairy grass through natural competition, which available evidence suggests is the best treatment. We’ll keep an eye on the lake to see if it continues this progress and replaces the thin strip of fairy grass that remains.”
Ms Wilkinson said burning the grass was not always a good solution.
“Burning fairy grass has been found to help increase the density of fairy grass in later seasons because it removes competing vegetation," she said.
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