Australia's weedy
garden escapees

Our Work  |  Weeds  |  Photo: Blackberry, Matthew Baker

The majority of Australia’s weeds have been introduced deliberately, and most of them have escaped from gardens (garden escapees), doing terrible damage to our natural environment.

In NSW alone weeds pose a threat to nearly half of state’s threatened species, with about two thirds of them escaped garden plant varieties, almost a half of which are still available for sale.

Weeds also threaten the majority of Australia’s endangered ecological communities.

While thousands of Australians give up their time weeding their local bushland, many of those same weeds continue to be sold and planted in gardens.

That’s why the Invasive Species Council is pushing for much stronger regulation of invasive plants and the listing of escaped garden plants as a key threatening process under federal environmental law.

With no regulation of the majority of invasive or potentially invasive plants in Australia the damage bill from escaped escaped garden plants will continue to grow.
Southeast Queensland

The problem has reached epidemic proportions in southeast Queensland, with the area’s top five weed invaders all being escaped garden plants. They are:

  • Lantana (Lantana camara)
  • Groundsel bush (Baccharis halimifolia)
  • Mother of millions (Bryophyllum delagoense)
  • Cat’s claw creeper (Macfadyena unguis-cati)
  • Madeira vine (Anredera cordifolia)

Kangaroo Island

Two of the five most serious and widespread weeds on Kangaroo Island roadsides are escaped garden plants: bridal creeper (Myrsiphyllum asparagoides) and bridal veil (Myrsiphyllum declinatum).

The Biodiversity Plan for Kangaroo Island notes that all five of the weeds “are capable of totally replacing native ground flora, and have already done so on many roadsides on the island.”
Norfolk Island Exotic

Invasive weeds are one of the greatest dangers facing threatened species on both Norfolk Island and Philip Island.

The most significant weeds include eight escaped garden plants:

  • Red Guava (Psidium cattleianum var. cattleianum)
  • African Olive (Olea europaea subsp. africana)
  • Broad leaf pepper tree (Schinus terebinthifolius)
  • Lantana (Lantana camara)
  • Mist flower (Ageratina riparia)
  • Formosan Lily (Lilium formosanum)
  • Bleeding Heart (Homolanthus populifolius);
  • Morning Glory (Ipomoea cairica)

Forty six of Norfolk Island’s plant species are listed as threatened under the EPBC Act, 11 of which are critically endangered.

According to the Director of National Parks, woody weeds (guava, African olive and broad leaf pepper tree) dominate large parts of the national park and botanic gardens that harbour many of the threatened species, and “would destroy most Park and Botanic Garden values” if not controlled.

Read our submission

Your gift is a lifeline for nature.

Our protected areas are being trashed, trampled, choked and polluted by an onslaught of invaders. Invasive species are already the overwhelming driver of our animal extinction rate, and are expected to cause 75 of the next 100 extinctions.

But you can help to turn this around and create a wildlife revival in Australia. 

From numbats to night parrots, a tax-deductible donation today can help defend our wildlife against the threat of invasive weeds, predators, and diseases.

As the only national advocacy environment group dedicated to stopping this mega threat, your gift will make a big difference.

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Accordion Content

A silent crisis is unfolding across Australia. Every year, billions of native animals are hunted and killed by cats and foxes. Fire ants continue to spread and threaten human health. And the deadly strain of bird flu looms on the horizon. Your donation today will be used to put the invasive species threat in the media, make invasive species a government priority, ensure governments take rapid action to protect nature and our remarkable native wildlife from invasives-led extinction, death and destruction.

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    Dear Project Team,

    [YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

    I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

    The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

    The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

    This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

    Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

    Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

    Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

    I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

    Kind regards,
    [Your name]
    [Your email address]
    [Your postcode]


    Dear Project Team,

    [YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

    I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

    The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

    The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

    This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

    Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

    Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

    Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

    I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

    Kind regards,
    [Your name]
    [Your email address]
    [Your postcode]