Victorian Country Hour
Oct 15, 2026 · 55 min · 11 segments
We look at the VAGO report into fire services with a particular focus on forest fire services
Oct 15, 2026 · 55 min · 11 segments
We look at the VAGO report into fire services with a particular focus on forest fire services
The growing locust population in the northwest of Victoria is causing increasing concerns amongst farmers.
Agriculture's Victoria's chief plant health officer, Stephen Dibley, though, says locust numbers are at the highest levels in 15 years, but they aren't at plague levels.
He says the department's locust surveillance program is just that and farmers should not expect help managing locusts on their property.
Agriculture Victoria is not responsible for doing any of the actual active treatment apart from our own lands.
So we're there to collect that information and to pass that information on to the relevant public or private landholders.
So you won't see Agriculture Victoria doing the treatment, but we will work with everyone we can to ensure that everyone's informed and can do the right treatment.
We're getting plenty of reports coming in from the public.
People shouldn't expect us to call back.
We will call back if we need further information.
Generally what we're seeing is the reports give us all the information that we need to provide this broader understanding of where they are and so there won't be any further direct contact and what we've done is made sure we're feeding that information back for people who make reports now to make that clear of when we would need to make contact.
Dr Dibley says farmers seeing increased locust activity on their properties are responsible for controlling them.
The responsibility for treatment of locust is on the land holder or manager, whether that's private or public.
So there's a range of different government departments who will look after national parks or roadsides.
And we've been engaging actively with them for months about this to understand the risk.
And then the fantastic surveillance data that we're collecting and the reports are coming in are allowing us to feed back to those organisations to let them know where the populations are.
And then we'll work with them to hopefully get some treatment of those roadsides and other public areas.
So we are engaging with all of those, including the private, the councils, the Parks Victoria, transport, a whole heap of areas there.
And everyone has been very open and receptive to that work.
Our surveillance program, it's multi-pronged.
We have our own staff.
We have several teams out on the ground up in northwestern Victoria.
They are travelling primarily along the roadways and public access to look at where we expect to see them based on what we saw in autumn.
The growing locust population in the northwest of Victoria is causing increasing concerns amongst farmers.
Agriculture's Victoria's chief plant health officer, Stephen Dibley, though, says locust numbers are at the highest levels in 15 years, but they aren't at plague levels.
He says the department's locust surveillance program is just that and farmers should not expect help managing locusts on their property.
Agriculture Victoria is not responsible for doing any of the actual active treatment apart from our own lands.
So we're there to collect that information and to pass that information on to the relevant public or private landholders.
So you won't see Agriculture Victoria doing the treatment, but we will work with everyone we can to ensure that everyone's informed and can do the right treatment.
We're getting plenty of reports coming in from the public.
People shouldn't expect us to call back.
We will call back if we need further information.
Generally what we're seeing is the reports give us all the information that we need to provide this broader understanding of where they are and so there won't be any further direct contact and what we've done is made sure we're feeding that information back for people who make reports now to make that clear of when we would need to make contact.
Dr Dibley says farmers seeing increased locust activity on their properties are responsible for controlling them.
The responsibility for treatment of locust is on the land holder or manager, whether that's private or public.
So there's a range of different government departments who will look after national parks or roadsides.
And we've been engaging actively with them for months about this to understand the risk.
And then the fantastic surveillance data that we're collecting and the reports are coming in are allowing us to feed back to those organisations to let them know where the populations are.
And then we'll work with them to hopefully get some treatment of those roadsides and other public areas.
So we are engaging with all of those, including the private, the councils, the Parks Victoria, transport, a whole heap of areas there.
And everyone has been very open and receptive to that work.
Our surveillance program, it's multi-pronged.
We have our own staff.
We have several teams out on the ground up in northwestern Victoria.
They are travelling primarily along the roadways and public access to look at where we expect to see them based on what we saw in autumn.
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