Woody Weeds team member Berhanu Megersa of the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research (EIAR) has treated an area of nearly four hectares to demonstrate the effectiveness and cost of applying basal bark herbicide treatment to kill Prosopis juliflora.

Treating the area only took a few hours and most of the trees have been killed. More than one hundred pastoralists have visited the demonstration plot and a visit by national decision makers is planned later this year. You can now also observe the effect of the treatment as a square feature in the landscape on images taken by the Sentinel 2 satellite.

An important component of invasive species control is removal of seedlings and restoration of the original habitat. The community chairman has decided to ban grazing of the treated area for a few months to allow establishment of grasses and are now benefiting of the restored grassland.