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  • What's a Weed? Knowledge, Attitude and Behaviour of Park Visitors about Weeds

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    105261_1.PDF (364.5Kb)
    Author(s)
    Ansong, Michael
    Pickering, Catherine
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Pickering, Catherine M.
    Ansong, Michael
    Year published
    2015
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    Abstract
    Weeds are a major threat to biodiversity globally degrading natural areas of high conservation value. But what are our attitudes about weeds and their management including weeds in national parks? Do we know what a weed is? Do we consider weeds a problem? Do we support their management? Are we unintentionally spreading weeds in parks? To answer these questions, we surveyed visitors entering a large popular national park near the city of Brisbane, Australia. Park visitors were knowledgeable about weeds; with >75% correctly defining weeds as 'plants that grow where they are not wanted'. About 10% of the visitors, however, ...
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    Weeds are a major threat to biodiversity globally degrading natural areas of high conservation value. But what are our attitudes about weeds and their management including weeds in national parks? Do we know what a weed is? Do we consider weeds a problem? Do we support their management? Are we unintentionally spreading weeds in parks? To answer these questions, we surveyed visitors entering a large popular national park near the city of Brisbane, Australia. Park visitors were knowledgeable about weeds; with >75% correctly defining weeds as 'plants that grow where they are not wanted'. About 10% of the visitors, however, provided their own sophisticated definitions. This capacity to define weeds did not vary with people's age, sex or level of education. We constructed a scale measuring visitors' overall concern about weeds in parks using the responses to ten Likert scale statements. Over 85% of visitors were concerned about weeds with older visitors, hikers, and those who could correctly define weeds more concerned than their counterparts. The majority think visitors unintentionally introduce seeds into parks, with many (63%) having found seeds on their own clothing. However, over a third disposed of these seeds in ways that could facilitate weed spread. Therefore, although most visitors were knowledgeable and concerned about weeds, and support their control, there is a clear need for more effective communication regarding the risk of visitors unintentionally dispersing weed seeds in parks
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    Journal Title
    PLoS One
    Volume
    10
    Issue
    8
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135026
    Copyright Statement
    © 2015 Ansong, Pickering. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
    Subject
    Environmental Management
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/168570
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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    • Gold Coast
    • Logan
    • Brisbane - Queensland, Australia
    First Peoples of Australia
    • Aboriginal
    • Torres Strait Islander