An innovative approach to reducing herbivore damage
The challenge
Pest damage for mammalian browsers represents a significant cost to temperate hardwood plantation growers. The industry spends millions on browsing mammal control, including fencing, repellents, lethal methods and tree guards. Tree growers are urgently seeking new solutions to this problem.
The solution
This project will create and field-test an entirely new, innovative approach to reducing herbivore damage, using odour misinformation. Mammalian herbivores rely on plant odour to choose where to go and what to eat. The research will test two specifically designed artificial odours. These odours will help protect vulnerable seedlings by either: mimicking odours of unpalatable plants to deter the browser or to create an “invisibility cloak” that distorts and negates otherwise informative odours of plantation seedlings, so herbivores fail to recognise seedlings as food and so ignore them.
Outcomes
If successful, this new approach to protecting seedlings will result in greater survival and reduced damage to Eucalyptus nitens seedlings and establishment costs overall. The industry will have access to a non-lethal yet economically viable product to better protect plantation seedlings of any species.
“Most current methods depend on animals encountering a deterrent. What’s exciting is that this approach relies on natural behavioural responses This one could work before they even get close.” Thomas Baker – Sustainable Timbers Tasmania.
