Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for June 2005

Expert Advice on Alpine Grazing

By

If we care about the environment, we must also care about rural and regional Australia because this is where most of our environment is.

A lot of people in the bush (I use bush in the broadest context to include even rainforest dwellers) are extremely unhappy with how national parks are being managed/not managed.

The banning of cattle grazing in the high country has become a catalyst for the coming together of different groups in Victoria and the new Country Voice website.

This site includes an expert opinion on grazing in the Alpine National Park from x-University of Melbourne botanist Peter Attiwell. He writes:

“It is now critical that Parks Victoria clearly define goals for management of biodiversity. A critical goal for future management is the definition of appropriate burning regimes. The question should not be one of grazing or no grazing. The critical question is: what are our goals for management of ecological diversity and of fire?

The critics of alpine grazing use science to support the basic tenet that grazing is incompatible with use of the land as a national park, as encapsulated in the slogan ‘National Park or Cow Paddock?’. The slogan is totally misleading. A cow paddock, once abandoned, will never return to the ecosystem that was destroyed to create it.

In contrast, there is no evidence that cattle grazing in the High Country has eliminated rare and threatened species, nor has species composition or diversity been irrevocably altered. Indeed, 170 years of controlled cattle-grazing has left by far the greater part of the High Country in excellent condition. Clearly, at the long-term and landscape levels, cattle grazing over some part of the High Country can be accommodated within management plans to achieve specific goals without an irreversible deterioration in biodiversity.

There is no doubt that the opponents of grazing use science to achieve their end of stopping grazing completely (just as the opponents of timber harvesting in native forests will continue to pursue their aim until there is no harvesting in native forests). That is, there is no point of compromise, despite the fact that both the intensity and extent of cattle grazing has reduced dramatically over the years.

… Cattle-grazing in the Alpine National Park now covers less than 15 per cent of the area. Let us now stop quibbling and taking the high moral ground offered by this or that bit of science. The record stands for itself – the quality of the ecosystems of the High Country has not been destroyed by grazing over the past 150 years, and the cattlemen are hallowed within the image and folklore of Australia.”

While Attiwell’s opinion is respected, and on the Country Voice website, there is a lot of anger with ‘expert scientists’ generally as expressed in the following comment:

“As a long time resident of the Licola area, a landholder and a fire Brigade Captain with landholders adjacent and surrounded by the Alpine National Park to look after, I am just appalled at the level of scientific debate supporting the removal of Alpine cattle grazing. The so called science to support this has been non existent, less than honest or shonky at best, with I believe deliberate efforts to mislead.

After the Caledonia fire of 1998, plots were fenced off around rocky outcrops, dead limbs, fallen bark and places where little grass ever grew, then monitored to see how they would grow. Botanists placed transect lines beside active wombat and rabbit burrows and on areas last burnt out decades ago as there was so much grass on the areas under study. “Expertise” was bought in from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife service – who had been repeatedly burnt out.

Decisions on grazing in burnt areas were made with vegetation surveys consisting of two drafts and a summary, all unsigned. A “Draft Internal Working Paper” was passed off as “scientifically credible information needed to determine management options for the area.” This had no finding or conclusion, no indication of who did the work, or their qualifications and no references from text books on the methodology, which in places could have been little more than guess work.

The science was so bad even their own people on the “expert” panel to recommend on the return of grazing were critical “is the PV draft proposal a joke? Its appalling! I have read both drafts of the proposed methodology and, in their current state, neither would pass as first year biology assignments”.

Grass fuel on areas burnt in 1998 is now at dangerous levels around sphagnum bogs, ancient single trunk snow gums and private land holdings and in two years would have carried a hotter faster fire. The risks from snow grass on places like the Wellington Plains can only be measured in how many times it is off the fire intensity scale over the extreme category. Much of this country that did not burn in 1998 because of grazing, would now carry a frightful fire from 4 to 16 times the extreme intensity. This is on areas where grazing was banned and not allowed to continue because of claims it had not regenerated enough, as there was too much bare ground.

A few years ago we were told by alpine ecologists that fires were not part of the ecology. Now that their management has failed, with the 2003 fires, we are told fires are a one in a hundred year event. If this is the best we are getting out of our universities they should close down the environmental sections and concentrate on turning out engineers, chemists and bushfire scientists where they have an impressive record.”

L.Ralph Barraclough Target Ck Rd. Licola Ph 5148 8792. 14-6-2005

I am keen to post some text/opinion from those against grazing in the Alpine National Park, or perhaps the Macquarie Marshes?

Platypuses Can Live with Supermarkets

By

There seems to be much excitment about the discovery of lots and lots of playtpuses at Maleny, 100 odd kms north of Brisbane, where some locals have been trying to stop the building of a Woolies for many, many months.

The ideas is that because there are Platypuses there should be no supermarket. Indeed according to ABC Online:

Opponents of the development of a major supermarket at Maleny, in south-east Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland, are hailing extensive research they believe may sound the death knell for the development.

They say a team of scientists has irrefutable proof of a large colony of platypuses, living under the site and they have called on Environment Minister Desley Boyle to intervene to stop construction of the supermarket.

Under the Nature Conservation Act it is an offence to knowingly disturb a platypus habitat.

One of the scientists, Graham Kell, says more than 50 platypus burrows have been discovered on the site and all have been photographed and their location fixed by satellite tracking.

Mr Kell says it is a remarkable discovery.

“There’s a lot more activity at the proposed Woolworths site than I’ve seen in many regions before…the burrow activity at Maleny is just phenomenal,” he said.

Yeah, And isn’t the development well back from the watercourse and aren’t there platypuses in the Yarra as far downstream as the suburb of Heidelberg in Melbourne.

The idea that wild animals can’t coexist with development, and using the presence of wild animals to block development, may not be in the longer term interests of this and other platypus colonies.

Should Academics Play E-Politics?

By

What role might Universities play in the “small-p politics” of the environment? This is the subject of a piece in today’s The Australian in which I am quoted as saying, academics should foster informed debate but not be “advocates of a particular perspective”.

Professor Peter Fairweather from Flinder’s University is quoted, “We (academics) have to primarily give the scientific view first because nobody else can really do that.”

I note the word “scientific view”. I would like to think it was a poor choice of words.

It seems to me that academics increasingly confuse evidence, facts, theories and hypothesis, from arguments, from knowledge. Then there is opinion and there are views. And then there is the truth.

The Professor goes on to suggest that, when scientists spoke in the policy debate they should make this clear since as citizens they did not “necessarily have any more importance than anyone else, because everyone’s got a view of what we should do policy-wise,” he said.

What waffle! There are views and views and views. But it requires discipline and knowledge to build a robust argument.

The piece in The Australian is reporting on a decision by the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee to consider a role for universities in environmental politics.

I do think it is good the issue is being considered. But let us not pretend that Universities are not already involved in environmental politics. I know a professor in a Life Science Faculty that has unashamably very publicly driven campaigns for WWF.

GM Food Crops (Part 3)

By

Yesterday ABC radio’s The World Today ran a story on GM wheat as a solution to Western Australia’s salinity problems. While a general solution to salinity I am sure it is not, a salt tolerant/more salt tolerant wheat variety must be a welcome addition to the mix of varieties currently available.

I was aware of research at the South Australian-based Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG) focused on developing new drought and frost tolerant varieties.

According to discussions I had with these researchers in SA about a year ago, frost tolerance has become an issue because plant breeders have been selecting for early maturing varieties in order to escape potential summer drought. But, this has now exposed crops to frost during flowering.

There is apparently variation for traits for frost and salt tolerance in the “crossable” gene pool for wheat and barley, but there are far better genes in other plants and these would need to be transferred via GM methods.

I am well known as ‘a fan’ of GM food crops.

I often repeat the statistic that 90 per cent of Queensland and NSW cotton growers now plant GM and use on average 88 per cent less insecticide than those growing conventional varieties.

It is perhaps less well know that I am genuinely puzzled by many people’s aversion to GM.

I can understand and respect the ethical arguments, but the “I hate corporations therefore I am against GM” seems rather trite.

And the argument that Monsanto is all powerful just doesn’t wash. That all State governments (except Queensland which has a climate unsuitable for canola) have now passed legislation banning the commercial production of GM food crops (cotton exempt in NSW on the basis it is grown primarily for fibre even though about 35 percent of the vegetable oil we eat in Australia is from cotton seed) as a direct consequence of the successfully Greenpeace campaign against Monsanto’s GM canola would suggest to me that it is Greenpeace, not Monsanto, that has most pull with State governments.

I do crave some really honest and informed public discussion on GM.

Monsanto

By

“Monsanto is not alone in the research and development of crops designed to ward off destructive pests and disease, to require reduced pesticide applications, and to increase nutrition and yield in areas with traditionally poor showing for both.

Some of these pioneering life science research centers are for-profit firms. Some are government agencies. Others are academic institutions also working to find new ways to bolster the world’s food supply and alleviate hunger. In one form or another, these agriculture research operations are found in nations around the world: in China, Japan, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, India, Australia, France, Switzerland, Germany, the U.S., etc. Burdensome local biases against intellectual freedom so necessary for science to thrive cause many of these firms to operate out of research centers located in the United States. One key component common to each grouping of scientists is how to achieve their goals without contributing more deleterious stress on the environment.

Regardless of the number of firms in the biotech field and despite the promise and products of this research, the harshest criticism, not praise, is reserved for Monsanto. …

Arguably, to characterize Monsanto’s century plus of labor as completely chivalrous, saintly and beyond reproach is to present only the “glass half full” portrait of the company and the chemical industry in general. The history of the field and firm is hardly free from legitimate environmental concerns. The most egregious include a horrific legacy of indifference in waste disposal. Admittedly most of the offensive practices by Monsanto and others took place during an era, before the birth of environmentalism in the 1970s, when newspaper empires embodied in the great dailies such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, when Members of Congress, the nations cities, factories and everyone else flushed raw sewage and piped every type of industrial and human waste into our waterways, forests, oceans and wild lands. It was an accepted practice with no evil to the earth intended. That’s just what everyone did without regard to the immediate or long-term consequences.”

The above text is from The International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources website with the article at http://biotech.ifcnr.com/article.cfm?NewsID=500.

This is Part 2 of ‘GM Food Crops’. Part 1 was posted on 8th June.

Update: Nuclear, Forest & Cattle, &

By

Pilliga-Goonoo

Pilliga-Goonoo forest communities want Premier Bob Carr to visit, but it doesn’t look like he will. They are lamenting job loses.

I reckon they would have a better chance of getting their jobs back if they focused on the environmental issues – the need for active management of these forests.

Alpine Grazing

In response to the Victorian government locking the mountain cattlemen out of the Alpine National Park the federal government appears to have successfully had the Park included on its National Heritage List under emergency provisions. The Victorian government has said cattle will still be banned. Which government will win this battle of the cattle?

Federal Labor AGainst Nuclear Debate

Federal Labor MPs have apparently shouted down New South Wales Premier Bob Carr’s call for a debate on the merits of nuclear power. The ALP’s state conference in Sydney is apparently set to reaffirm the party’s opposition to nuclear power with Peter Garrett saying it is an option not worth considering. Strong words.

Another Matter Altogether

Ian Beale PhD sent in the following thought: The trouble, at least on the surface, seems to be that any government department would rather spend a dollar on simulation than a dime on in-service testing, and the simulation frequently misses vital points while stressing irrelevancies.