Dear IPRNG Members  

It is to inform all the IPRNG group members  that National Research Centre for Weed Science is observing "Parthenium Awareness Week"  during  6-12 September 2007 involving All State Agricultural Universities, 27 centres of All India Co-ordained Research Programme  on weed control, All the ICAR Institutes, KVKs, many NGOs, Schools, Municipalities etc. Dr. Jay. G. Varshney, Director of the institute has urged all the above agencies to observe this week to make people aware to fight against this nation weed.

 

To facilitate the above agencies, NRCWS has sent posters, extension folders and a documentary film on Parthenium and its management on CD with the request to multiply this material and distribute to stakeholders.

 

Last year too, Parthenium Week was observed with great zeal and we received reports from many organizations which is in the final stage of its printing.

 

I also urge all the IPRNG members to observe Parthenium awareness week during 6-12 September as you deem fit. 

 

To get more details about posters and folders pl. visit our web site www.nrcws.org.

 

 

Sushilkumar

NRCWS, Jabalpur

From APWG List



Invasive weed a fuel for West's wildfires



By Patrick O'Driscoll, USA TODAY

DENVER â€" Cheatgrass, a wispy Eurasian weed accidentally brought to the

USA in the late 19th century, has become a 21st century headache

across the West, fueling some of this summer's most destructive wildfires.



The largest blaze in Utah history, the 567-square-mile Milford Flat

fire last month, raced across rangeland infested with the highly

combustible, straw-colored plant. Bone-dry expanses of cheatgrass in

Idaho and Nevada also stoked the 1,020-square-mile Murphy Complex

fires, the largest to burn in Idaho in 97 years.



The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) estimates 2 million acres

have burned in the Great Basin, the West's expanse of sagebrush

steppes vulnerable to cheatgrass fires.



The governors of Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming formally declared war

this month on the invader, which now dominates between 25 million and

100 million acres of sagebrush in the Great Basin. They pledged

cooperation in replanting charred areas before the weed can take root

again. The BLM estimates cheatgrass invades 4,000 acres of new terrain

a day.



"It's exploding on us," says ecologist Mike Pellant, head of the

agency's Great Basin Restoration Initiative, which does research and

rehabilitation. "We've been at war with cheatgrass for years now. It's

like the Dutch boy with the finger in the dike. You work hard in an

area and make progress, and then somewhere else, (fire) happens all

over again."



http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2007-08-29-cheatgrass_N.htm