Due to adverse weather conditions the completion of the Giant Hogweed control has been delayed somewhat. Our contractors have completed work on the Rivers Irvine and Garnock as well as the Annick Water and Water of Coyle. The River Ayr work has almost been completed and with the few dry days we are having at the moment i am hopeful that it will be complete by the end of the week.

Our next target will be the Himalayan Balsam with the Japanese Knotweed control starting when the plant is in flower.

 

Himalayan Balsam (Our next target)

With this in mind it was time to call upon our pool of volunteers for some help. ART now has 22 trained volunteers which are trained to NPTC PA6AW level with a further three going through the course at the end of July. Unfortunately the budget has now run out for 2012 but we will be able to train more people next year.

I organised a volunteer evening for Wednesday 11th July and invited all our volunteers to come along. The purpose of this was to allow ART to relay information about the project to the volunteers but also to allow the volunteers to meet each other and for everyone to discuss our strategy. A good number of people turned up although some were unable to make it on the evening due to other commitments, which is understandable. What i did notice though was that every person in the room was very keen to help us tackle the problem we have in Ayrshire with Invasive Non Native Species (INNS).

I am confident that together we can make great progress this year and tackle a large portion of the problem. I will shortly be organising some balsam bashing days with our volunteers. No training is required for this method of control so if anyone would like to join us please get in touch. I will advertise these days on the blog around a week in advance.

I would like to thank everyone who attended the meeting last night and indeed all of our volunteers in general.