Building the capacity of Victorian Municipal Councils to manage weeds.

Victoria’s Tackling Weeds on Private Land initiative seeks to influence a range of key stakeholders to take responsibility for weed management. Municipal Councils play a key role in the management of weeds in Victoria as an educator, priority setter, advocate and land manager. Partnership based projects built around strategic weed management themes have supported local government investment and increased their capacity to undertake long term and best practice weed management. This paper presents results from a working program and is an example of how engagement with Municipal Councils on a statewide level is building partnerships, organisational capacity and creating change. This paper showcases the activities of Municipal Councils from baseline analysis through to the development and implementation of strategic projects, exploring their progress along a continuum of awareness, acceptance to action in fulfilling their weed management roles and responsibilities. The program promotes the concept of creating partnerships and knowledge sharing, and manages issues associated with delivering practice change and capacity building programs for weed management, as core business considerations.