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Abstract
Scotch Broom is a serious environmental weed in Barrington Tops National Park and
the surrounding areas. It poses a significant threat of reducing the diversity of flora in
invaded ecosystems and generating a false understorey. It also harbours feral pigs,
which perpetuate the cycle of disturbance. To address problems caused by Scotch
Broom in the 10000 hectares already invaded and the threat of further invasion, it is
vital to understand why this species is able to invade and persist in Australian
ecosystems. Such understanding will be the key to developing effective management
strategies, both to prevent further invasions and to suppress dominance of Scotch
Broom.
The budget available for weed control, pests control, and other activities in the Park,
is limited and so managers must identify control strategies that are efficient and
sustainable. A deterministic dynamic programming model is developed for this
purpose in this paper. A simulation model, which captures Broom population
dynamics, was developed first and takes account of two state variables, which are
then incorporated in the dynamic program. The dynamic programming model
contains these two state variables and five control variables. The state variables are
the area occupied by Scotch Broom and the seed bank. The control variables are
excluding tourists, manual pulling, herbicide application, feral pig control and
biological control. We acknowledge the help of the NSW National Parks and
Wildlife Service for providing us with the information required by the models.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service already has an effective containment strategy
for Broom. In the present paper, we attempt to develop a management strategy that
covers the park area and surrounding agricultural areas.
Preliminary results are presented and further information requirements are discussed.