Wicked Weeds

Wicked Weeds focuses on raising awareness about weeds in our local area and riparian zones through fun and engaging youth-led community events. 

Invasive weeds are one of the biggest threats to our natural environment.

To help in the fight against weeds, MRL has recruited a young group of volunteers who call themselves the Weed Warriors.  The Weed Warriors are keen to help protect and regenerate our riparian ecosystems by connecting with their local communities to learn about local weeds.

These young Warriors work in close collaboration with our biocontrol “Wicked Weeds” team to create awareness and learning events and field based actions. Our Weed Warriors are taking action by organising monthly weed ID walks, bio-agent releases, weed busting with other local groups and publicising/promoting what they learn along the way.

The program is supported by an Seqwater community grant.

Wicked Weed Warrior Database

Here is a little database of printables, written and put together by our Weed Warrior Youth Team. These weed sheets are the outcome our Wednesday Weed of the Week social media posts which highlighted the local weeds we discovered and learned about during our monthly weed walks and other weed warrior activities. 

A big shout out to this great group of youth leaders, especially: Rex Gruspe, Tigerlily Boyce, Katie Johnson, Madeline Moss, Jett Walcott, Erin Monaghan and Hayley Keating who contributed so much great energy to the program. Also a big thank you to Rhys Meyers and Ann McGrath who shared their incredible weed knowledge and were wonderful weed walk leaders.

Along the learning journey, the group discovered some great weed identification and learning tools.  Some of our favourite field resources were: the Weed Spotters App, Weeds of the Sunshine Coast by Joan Heavey and Sonia MacDonald (available at our bookshop) and the Weed Society of Queensland’s publication, Weeds of Southern Queensland.  Great online resources include the Queensland Government’s Department of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Brisbane City Council’s online weed identification tool.