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Really, An Association for Weeds! ©
By: Arlene Wright Correll
Today there are associations, groups and clubs for just about everything and anything and you can imagine my surprise when I discovered there was the North American Weed Management Association.
NAWMA as it is called is comprised of members from the United States, Canada and Mexico and if you hurry you still have plenty of time to sign up for the 2008 Weeds Across the Borders that will be held in Banff, Alberta, Canada from May 27 to May 30.
According to their home page NAWMA is a network of public and private professional weed managers who are involved in implementing any phase of a county, municipal, district, state, provincial or federal noxious weed law.
NAWMA’s mission or objective is "to foster cooperation among noxious weed managers, throughout North America in the exchange of information, education, training, weed management practices, programs, and technologies." According to them their goal is "to empower North American noxious weed managers by improving their professionalism and the image of noxious weed managers."
NAWMA assists in the development of uniform international, national, provincial, and state weed management legislation and regulation through out the three member countries . They invite Canada, Mexico and the United States to foster cooperation and involvement in noxious weed management among federal, provincial, state, municipal district, county, and private land managers throughout North America.
NAWMA’s efforts to coordinate enforcement in noxious weed management among federal, provincial, state, municipal, district, county, and private land managers" is highly effective and through all their efforts they are able "to promote the funding of weed management projects, research, and programs that are international, national, or regional in scope and effectiveness."
The North America Weed Management Association publishes a quarterly newsletter "to increase environmental awareness of the negative impacts of noxious weeds and exotic plants and one can get educational materials such as a weed ID booklet encompassing the 52 weeds on the Regional Weed Free Forage Certification Program list of invasive plants."
We rarely think of weeds except in our own little gardens or lawn but weeds are a major problem and "NAWMA is the lead organization in the Weed Free Forage Program, providing leadership, central administration, budgeting and accounting, and promotional and educational direction for the program."
One can go to their website and join as a member in the event this program interests you. It might even interest your county or town officials should your area be having a weed problem.
We recently had a gravel pit opening up not far from our home and there was a lot of local input from our neighbors who were against it and that are how I discovered the NAWMA because two of their new projects included guidelines for gravel pit standards and a gravel pit inspection form.
In my research which led me to their website I was curious as how they controlled the weeds and I could not find out how they controlled weeds. However, if they use government guidelines I am sure it is with pesticides. I remember two early summers back when a county truck came in and wanted to spray our fence lines with a chemical weed killer on a day we had 35 mile an hour winds. We said Thanks, but no Thanks.
Author Resource:-> For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/ To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books. Arlene says, "All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site."
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