National Parks

Last August, a panel of scientists from the Australian Greenhouse Office and the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), called on the federal and state governments to expand the number of nature reserves in Australia in a bid to protect animal populations from climate change.

Following on from Queensland’s climate-linked plan of doubling its declared reserves, the Federal Government has now pledged $180 million to expand the National Reserve System.

“Today’s announcement will help protect key habitats at a time when native species such as the mountain pygmy possum, tree kangaroos and hare wallabies need them most – as they struggle to adapt to the impacts of climate change,” Mr Garrett said.

WWF‘s Protected Areas Policy Manager, Dr Martin Taylor, said the $180 million funding boost was a promising step toward saving Australia’s wildlife from a “decade of neglect”.

“National parks and nature reserves are the proven best and most secure method of arresting declines of threatened wildlife toward extinction and buffering nature against climate change,” Dr Taylor said.

A little over 11 per cent of Australia is presently reserved, which is apparently less than many developing countries. However, associating declared reserves with protection unfairly suggests Australia is eighty-nine percent unprotected.

The irony of the entire exercise is that it is underpinned by an environmental ethos, held by the majority and enunciated through the bidding of elected representatives, but only if others pay it for. As far as I know, there has never been a transfer of reserved land into private-ownership for improved protection. It has only ever been the other way. Australia incrementally increases its reserve system, leaving an ever-decreasing off-reserve portion.

Perhaps a more inclusive and cost-effective national approach would be possible if our elected representatives represented the protective interests of land-holders off-reserve.

Public submissions in response to the Draft Feral Horse Management Plan for Barmah Forest close today.

The plan proposes the removal of horses from the Barmah Forest firstly by using lure and trap techniques over two years, which will commence following the approval of a final plan. The removal program would be reviewed annually and all feral horses are proposed to be removed from the Barmah Forest within five years of the program commencing. The involvement of key stakeholders will be through comment on this draft plan. The feral horse removal program will be managed jointly by the Department of Sustainability and Environment and Parks Victoria.

In a note from Angela Downey of the Great Divide Team:

Earlier this morning we received notification that the Victorian Government and their able assistants, not content with killing the Legend of the Man from Snowy River, by their banning of the Mountain Cattlemen and their Barmah counterparts, it seems now they are set to remove another icon of Victoria’s heritage under the guise of saving the environment and questionable animal humanity reasons.

On Monday members of Parks Victoria will set about removing 150 brumbies from the Barmah Forest which covers an area of 75,000 acres. It is claimed this small number of horses are causing severe damage over this huge area.

A decision was made to remove the animals from the park following this years harsh drought and with another to possibly to follow, with the implication that this small number of brumbies would place the environment and the resident native fauna under undue stress due to competition for feed and water. Many of the horses live in small family groups and are spread throughout the park. No doubt it has been a harsh year for them and many of the other animals.

However no mention has also been made of the contribution to the lack of feed made by other feral animals such rabbits, wild pigs, goats, foxes, dogs and cats all of which inhabit the forest. Such other feral animals often have massive explosive populations and cause direct and monumental damage to the environment.

An option of using helicopters with snipers on board to do the deed was considered but due to the potential of a similar outcry such as the furor over the Guy Fawkes National Park slaughter of 2000. During that episode many horses were shot but died a slow and agonising death from bullet wounds.

The Victorian National Parks propose to round up the Barmah brumbries, destroy any stressed and old animals on site and remove the rest to the abattoirs.

These animals would be obviously suffering due to the current dry conditions as would the native fauna. . They are more than happy to leave the suffering native fauna to their own devices in the Park while also making little impact on the removal of other feral fauna with populations of thousands which happily munch their way through tonnes of native flora and fauna, digging holes, slopping around in bogs, and bulldozing their way around the Park.

The removal of the Brumbies will have little impact on the environment of the Park. One has to question the governments motives in removing this small population of an Australian icon and part of our heritage.

If Parks Victoria are actually so concerned with the plight of the brumbies there are other options out there.

Further recommendations have been made by the Victorian Environment Assessment Council in its River Red Gum Forests Investigation Draft Proposals Paper (which states):

Domestic stock grazing has occurred in Barmah forest for several generations. The average of 2000 (summer) and 800 (winter) head of cattle agisted in the forest has been reduced in response to recent drought conditions, culminating in the destocking of the forest for the 2007 winter term. There are also 7 current grazing licences covering a total of 78 hectares and with a total carrying capacity of 112 Dry Sheep Equivalent that would be included in the proposed national park. Grazing with domestic stock is incompatible with national park status and will not be permitted in the proposed park. As well as domestic stock, Barmah forest is also grazed by feral horses and deer which, together with feral pigs, should also be promptly removed from the proposed national park to protect its highly significant natural values.

In Chapter 4 of the report, Social, economic and environmental implications, a candid expression of economic impact is made:

A team of consultants led by Gillespie Economics was commissioned by VEAC to independently assess the social and economic implications of VEAC’s proposed recommendations. The consultants concluded that the proposed recommendations would result in a net increase in economic value to Victoria of $92 million per year excluding the costs of environmental water. The breakeven price for environmental water would be between $1320 and $2880 per megalitre. Most of the benefits from the proposed recommendations result from non-use values for environmental protection, which are heavily dependent on adequate environmental water. These benefits would accrue mostly to people outside the Investigation area, especially in Melbourne, while the costs of the proposed recommendations would be largely borne within the Investigation area particularly in the areas near where public land timber harvesting and grazing are focussed. The towns of Cohuna, Koondrook, Nathalia and Picola are likely to be most sensitive to these effects, as they would be occurring in the context of the contraction of local economies and populations in these areas that has been experienced in recent years.

This is yet another abrogation of environmental responsibility in a seemingly endless succession, as defined within the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment 1992.

As people and communities are included in the definition of the environment, the threat of serious or irreversible socio-economic damage (as identified by the consultants) should bring the precautionary principle into play. Under the policy principle of intergenerational equity, the present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment is maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations. And, environmental goals, having been established, should be pursued in the most cost effective way, by establishing incentive structures, including market mechanisms, which enable those best placed to maximise benefits and/or minimise costs to develop their own solutions and responses to environmental problems.

In the late 1990’s, a scientific ‘pig-exclosure’ project was established in the Cape Tribulation section of the Daintree National Park. The project involved the construction of an 80 metre square fence, anchored aggressively to the ground with steel trimmer bar and pegs. The site selection encompassed much of the very restricted, endangered and previously studied laurel, Endiandra cooperana.

The purpose of the project was to collect comparative data, inside and outside the exclosure, to quantify the adverse impacts of feral pigs upon seedling recruitment rates of an endangered plant species.

Criticisms of the project at the time included the accessibility by piglets into the exclosure through the mesh squares, the obstruction to cassowaries in a known corridor, proximity to two roads and the contention that even blind Freddy could see that pigs were damaging to seedling recruitment rates.

Despite these concerns the project proceeded and there it remained for many years. Eventually, the land manager agreed to remove the construction, but was so under-resourced it dismantled only one corner section and middle panel on each side, leaving around eight 30-metres sections of fence in the rainforest, where they remain to this day.

In around the year 2000, another scientific study was carried out in the vicinity of the pig-exclosure project. This one sought to capture the primitive rainforest macropod, Musky-rat Kangaroo Hypsiprymnodon moschatus. The methodology required the placement of several hundred metres of plastic barrier through known habitat, stretched to form walls with strategic openings every thirty or so metres. The animals would familiarise themselves with the openings and after a period of adjustment, cages would be placed at the openings into which the animals would be herded by the research scientist. Once caged, they would be analysed and genetic material collected from hole-punched tissue from the ears of specimens.

More recently, another similar project was transferred to the same locality from rainforest in the Cyclone Larry affected areas. Different plastic barriers were constructed, for the same purpose, but this time the project sought to map the liberation of captured animals by gluing a cotton reel to the released subjects so that the thread would leave a variety of passages that could be compared relative to the adjacent roadway, to determine whether roads had a quantifiable impact on evasive mammal behaviour.

All very interesting projects, but why are the researchers abandoning their materials in the forest?

Last June the Victorian State Government banned cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park. A protest website emerged at about the same time.

According to the most recent newsletter from this website:

Several small mobs of cattle are continuing to move slowly across the Alpine National Park. This is a week-long protest by many Mountain Cattlemen’s families against the loss of their grazing licences and subsequent treatment by the Victorian Government.

While the focus was on one of the small and symbolic herds yesterday, today it is becoming apparent that there are several groups of cattlemen, each with a small mob of cattle. This protest is clearly being supported by mountain cattlemen from all sides of the Alpine National Park, all wanting a return to alpine grazing.

The cattle and their drovers will be on the track for the next seven days as they travel to the annual Cattlemen’s Get-Together to be held at Rose River near Whitfield next weekend. The cattle are not in the Park to graze, they are travelling through.

The protest is being fully supported by lobby group Country Voice and the Mountain Cattlemen’s Association and many other groups concerned at the direction the Victorian Government is taking with public land and national park management

These small mobs are travelling on the original stock routes and bridle tracks across the Victorian High Country. The mountain cattlemen have been banished by the Bracks’ Government from the Alpine National Park for its political gain but at Australians cultural expense. end quote

According to Peter Attiwell quoted at my blog post of 16th June last year:

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. end of quote

It is interesting to ponder that grazing was only allowed in about 15 percent of the Alpine National Park. Many may argue that there should be no grazing in National Parks. But what about Ramsar Wetlands? Most of the Ramsar Wetland listed Macquarie Marshes is grazed and there is evidence that this is having a significant negative impact, click here for earlier blog post.

We have a very adhoc and political approach to environment protection in Australia.