Jennifer Marohasy

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ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management

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ABC Television program Catalyst ran a story last night featuring the work of botanist Rod Fensham. Fensham has done some great research work on Queensland’s rangelands. But the program, by putting a popularist spin on it all, did our rangelands and Fensham no favours.

Catalyst started off by suggesting most of Queensland’s old growth forest had been cleared by graziers and then went on to explain how vegetation thickening is real. An overriding theme was that the bans on broad scale tree clearing are good and that current thickening is natural and a consequence of higher rainfall over the second half of the last century. Furthermore drought, not land clearing or fire, should be left to maintain the balance of nature.

I was left wondering what they meant by old growth forest, and how the old growth forest had survived the terrible drought to be destroyed by graziers. And wasn’t it generally acknowledged that these areas have been a fire mediated sub-climax ecosystem as in South Africa and the southern USA?

The following comment as part of the voice over was interesting:

But seeing the timbers dying in all districts of western Queensland it would seem not unreasonable to conclude that drought was the cause of thousands of miles of country in the never never to be denuded of scrub. …So there it was, proof that the climate had caused tree death and thinning.

The full transcript can be read at
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1435595.htm .

I used to have a beer with Fensham and other Brisbane-based botanists and entomologists on a Friday afternoon at the St Lucia golf links in the early to mid 1990s.

The Catalyst program suggested that Fensham was against the use of fire, as well as broad scale tree clearing. It didn’t ring true to me.

A link to a piece by him at the bottom of the Catalyst webpage also suggests otherwise.

In this piece titled ‘Trial by fire’ Fensham makes the following points:

1. The role of climate in shaping vegetation patterns should not be ignored in a land of notorious climatic extremes.

2. The structure and density of eucalypt woodlands in the Queensland pastoral zone is influenced by management (fire), land use (grazing) and climate (especially drought).

3. Appropriate burning regimes may offer Queensland pastoralists a management option that maintains productivity and is less devastating for biodiversity than tree clearing.

Read the complete article here
http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/publications_pdf/PN040707_trial_by_fire.pdf .

Earlier in the week I was sent this link
http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/environmental_research/2005_winner.htm .

It came with the note, “An interesting rewrite of history – a negative reality inversion.”

The link is to an announcement titled ‘Research that shaped new bush clearing laws’ and is about how Fensham has won the Eureka prize for Environmental research and includes the following text:

The recent debate on land clearing in Queensland was fierce, with the arguments often unsupported by clear scientific evidence. Dr Rod Fensham and Russell Fairfax changed that. Over ten years, these two scientists from the Queensland Herbarium have methodically developed a scientific foundation to measure and understand the fate of Queensland’s native rangelands. Their research, and their science advocacy, gave the Queensland Government the information it needed to create stronger laws on land clearing. Their work now earns them the $10,000 Sherman Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.

I observed at close range the politics that drove the bans on broad scale tree clearing in Queensland including as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Council – Vegetation Management (MAC-VM). Fensham’s work didn’t enter this policy debate which was driven almost exclusively by very dumb (but effective) campaigning by a coalition of environment groups spearheaded by the Wilderness Society and Queensland Conservation Council and supported by a Queensland University Professor.

Had Fensham’s work been influential, the clearing laws may have turned out at least half reasonable.
……………

Update 2pm

Following discussions with Rod I have the following additional comment, and I hope Rod might do a guest post for me/us:

The Eureka Award was in recognition of Rod’s contribution to our understanding of regional ecosystems and how they can be mapped. This mapping work occurred independently of the campaigning by the Wilderness Society and the mapping is critical to the current legislation and important if the current legislation is to ever deliver reasonable rangeland protection and management.

I have also updated the title for this post from ‘ABC TV and Eureka Awards Got it Wrong on Fensham’ to ‘ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management’.

On Jared Diamond and Environmental Law

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I had mentioned that I was reviewing Chapter 13 of Jared Diamond’s not so new book ‘Collapse’.

There have been some offline requests for copies of the review which has now been published by British Journal Energy and Environment. The chapter can be downloaded from the IPA website at,

http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=443 .

I recently also completed a paper for the AFFA inquiry to ‘secure a profitable and sustainable agriculture and food sector in Australia’. This long submission includes some detailed recommendations including the need to overhaul environmental regulation and legislation in Australia. It can be downloaded here,

http://www.agfoodgroup.gov.au/publications/Institute%20of%20Public%20Affairs.pdf .

Greenpeace Needs a New Campaign

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Greenpeace has been running a kept Australia GE free campaign for some time. The campaign should have got a boost over the last couple of weeks with findings of minuscule, but detectable quantities, of GM material in Australian canola. The material was first found in Victoria and more recently in WA. For some background on the origin of the GM material see a previous blog post here at https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000741.html .

Greenpeace campaigner Jeremy Tager is claiming,

This is the most serious genetic contamination event that Australia has ever faced, … and the response from State Governments in the coming days will determine their commitment to upholding Australia’s GE free status.

But the reality is that while Greenpeace through their campaigning managed to get state governments to ban the commercial planting of GM canola in Australia, we are importing and eating a range of GM foods from overseas including canola – and of course there is the vegetable oil from locally grown GM cotton (cotton seed oil).

On Sunday Robyn Williams (ABC Radio, Ockham’s Razor) interviewed Craig Cormick from Biotechnology Australia who had the following comments,

According to the supermarket chains, although they are often on the receiving end of anti-GM campaigns about their foods, there has been little to no diminution in sales of those foods that are labelled as containing GM ingredients.

Could this be put down to consumers simply not being able to find the fact that the food has a GM ingredient on the label? Perhaps. But at the deli counter in Woolworth’s, all across Australia, there are usually two or three types of sliced chicken loaf that is clearly labelled ‘contains genetically modified soy’ on a plastic label, standing up by the meat. It is clear and prominent, and I make it a habit of always asking the person in the deli, wherever I travel, whether anybody comments or complains about the GM ingredients. Invariably I’m met with a blank look and the response that nobody seems fussed about it.

The complete transcript is here http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1430804.htm .

I reckon Greenpeace really needs a new campaign.

On Politics (Part 1)

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I am amazed at how many comments on this web-log prove at least the first part of the following proposition:

The left think the right are evil, and the right think the left are dumb.

People with such a narrow world view really should get out and about a bit more.

ACF supports Tassie Farmers

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“…food miles is a measure of how far food travels – from paddock to plate – and is an indication of how environmentally-friendly it is. Food freight – especially by air and road – consumes fuel and energy, and releases greenhouse pollution, affecting the global climate.”

And, so, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) we should support the Tasmanian farmers in their campaign for country-of-origin labeling and buy Australian made, see http://www.acfonline.org.au/asp/pages/document.asp?IdDoc=2443 .

This seems to me like a rather superficial measure of the environmental friendliness of a food.

What about efficiency of land use measured in terms of tonnes per hectare of product? Condition of the soil resource? Quality of water in adjacent rivers and streams?

Robert Manne’s New Book

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Robert Manne has edited a new book titled ‘Do Not Disturb: Is the Media Failing Australia’ that includes a chapter titled ‘Murdoch and the Culture War’ by David McKnight.

Manne’s book is due out later this week but I did get to see a copy of the McKnight chapter today.

It focuses on The Australian newspaper and its purportedly special and amicable relationship with ‘right wing’ think tanks the CIS and IPA.

The analysis suggests McKnight has spent some time doing a content and author analysis of the Opinion pages of The Australian and also what is published in the IPA Review and Quadrant magazine.

While I work for the IPA I have not had such a good run in The Australian. Aspects of my ‘relationship’ with The Australian are explained in the piece I wrote for Quadrant magazine published in December 2004
http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/author_letter_list.php?author_id=393 .

McKnight must have seen this piece. I wonder if he read it? It does not support the general thesis of his chapter.

Perhaps he saw it as an exception to the rule? But even ‘exceptions’ can provide real insights.

While I haven’t been able to find anything about the new book on the internet (yet), McKnight did publish something by a similar title a few years ago,
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Feb04/McKnight.htm .

This piece, while significantly different to the new chapter, has a similar theme and begins,

Rupert Murdoch founded The Australian in 1964 as a bold statement of his belief that this country needed a quality national daily newspaper. His action was based on a nation-building vision that he shared with the leader of the Country Party, John McEwen, who deeply influenced him at that time.

For twenty years, The Australian lost money, a strange anomaly in the life of its ruthlessly commercial owner. In a 1994 address to the free-market think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies, Murdoch mentioned these losses but argued that some things were more important than short-term profits – ideas in society. He went on to quote John Maynard Keynes’s famous lines about the significance of political and philosophical ideas to men who regarded themselves as supremely practical. In the media business, ‘we are all ruled by ideas’, Murdoch added.