The Centre for Biological Control (CBC) said this week that the water hyacinth mat was severely impacted by the control agents feeding on them.

“We don’t have a recent optical satellite image because of all the cloud cover, but the radar image shows that the hyacinth coverage is currently at 13%. It has dropped 62% over the last two months,” said Professor Julie Coetzee of the CBC.
“The hyacinths are brown and finally dying.”
Coetzee said luckily the salvinia minima site where the new biological agent (weevil) was recently released has survived the rain and the weevils have established. “But it is early days, so the damage is very localised. We are rearing the weevils at Lakeland and hope to get good numbers for release over the next few months,” she said.