Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Rangelands

Learning Dust Lesson to Fight Wildfires

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untitledIT is generally agreed that the worst dust storms since European settlement were during the 1944-1945 period.  

In his book Out of the West: A Historical Perspective of the Western Division of NSW, former Western Lands Commissioner, Dick Condon, says there were 34 severe dust storms at Wagga Wagga during the period 1944-45, many so bad that it would have been necessary to turn the lights on in order to see inside the average sized house.  

Mr Condon suggests the dust storms during the 1982-83 drought were not as bad as those during the period 1885 to 1945 because of the much improved conditions of the landscape in the semi-arid and arid grazing country in western New South Wales.

In contrast, it is generally agreed that bushfires are getting worse.   [Read more…] about Learning Dust Lesson to Fight Wildfires

Dust Storm Hits Central Eastern Australia

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dust car cutAS I look outside the sky is orange with dust.  It irritates the nose and eyes, tickles the throats and sits heavily on the chest.  And I am inside.

According to all the news reports visibility is 10 metres at Broken Hill to the far west and 100 metres in Sydney just 150 kilometres east of where I am.   Australian Bureau of Meteorology spokeswoman Jane Golding says gale force winds have whipped up the dust from Australia’s drought-stricken inland and spread it east.

According to ‘Out of the West: A historical perspective of the Western Division of New South Wales’ by Dick Condon (Published by Rangeland Management Action Plan, 2002) there were severe dust storms in 1902-03, 1937-39, 1983, 1993, but the worst were during the period from 1943-1945.  Some of these storms were often continuous day-in-day-out for several days.  [Read more…] about Dust Storm Hits Central Eastern Australia

Save the Snake, Graze Some Bush?

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WHILE some armchair environmentalists believe that burning bush is bad for biodiversity, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting otherwise.

Ongoing research at Sydney University by a group lead by Rick Shine suggests Australia’s most endangered snake would benefit from more controlled burns.

Researcher David Pike, at his Sydney University home page, goes as far as to suggest that:

“Following European settlement of Australia, the amount of vegetation (i.e., canopy shading) in many habitats has increased. The most likely causes for this change are the prevention of natural disturbance events, such as wildfires, and the cessation of aboriginal fire-stick farming, which aboriginal peoples used to effectively managed habitat for wildlife and food plants. In more recent times vegetation has encroached upon crucial habitat for the broad-headed snake, which is already restricted in distribution. This has caused a decrease in the amount of suitable overwintering habitat, and potentially has contributed to a range-wide decline.”

[Read more…] about Save the Snake, Graze Some Bush?

New Report on Australian Rangelands

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The rangelands cover some 81% of Australia and are popularly known as ‘the outback’.

A new report, ‘Rangelands 2008 — Taking the pulse’, is the first time that disparate datasets have been brought together at a national and regional scale to report change in Australia’s rangelands.

The hard copy version of Rangelands 2008 — Taking the pulse includes a CD with a hypertext-linked version of the complete report plus summarised information for each of the 52 bioregions wholly or partly within the rangelands. Copies can be ordered from Land and Water Australia at http://products.lwa.gov.au/products/pn21387.

The Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts has published a booklet entitled Australia’s Rangelands 2008 — At a Glance which provides highlights from the complete report as well as the CD above. This booklet can be obtained from the DEWHA Community Information Unit.

Shooting Roos to Save Rangelands? by Nichole Hoskin

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There are claims that the presence of too many sheep, cattle and kangaroos are damaging Australia’s rangelands and that commercial shooting of kangaroos will reduce overall grazing pressure.

In an article published today at On Line Opinion entitled ‘Kangaroo: Designed for our Times’ by Executive Officer of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, John Kelly, he writes that commercial harvesting of roos delivers, “a direct environmental benefits in our fragile arid rangelands where kangaroos are harvested” and that “these are extremely fragile areas which can support a limited number of grazing animals” and that “allowing the grazing pressure from all animals to increase is one of the most serious environmental hazards in these rangelands.”

Population numbers of red and grey kangaroos can fluctuate from 15 to 50 million. Under current government policy, 10-15 percent of this population is shot in any one year. So, commercial harvesting can potentially reduce grazing pressure particularly by limiting increases in wet years.

On the other hand, commercial shooting of kangaroos will not relieve grazing pressure if there is a corresponding increase in numbers of other grazing herbivores, such as sheep, cattle and ferals including horses, donkeys, camels, rabbits, buffalo and deer.

Gordon Grigg, an Australian expert on kangaroos, argues that, “Most of the grazing lands, unfortunately, show everywhere abundant signs of the foot and tooth pressure of the introduced hardfooted stock and there is simply no room for doubt that running sheep in the fragile arid inland has done a lot of damage. Graziers will argue that they obey the stocking rates recommended and many of them do, perhaps even most of them do. Maybe even all of them do, but the fact of the matter remains that the damage is everywhere evident.”

It remains unclear what proportion of grazing pressure directly results from kangaroos.

Carbon Trading Blocked until Farmers get Credits: Steve Truman

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“It had been the previous [Australian] coalition governments intention and by default the Rudd governments plan to meet it’s commitments to limit the nation’s Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2008-2012 to the Kyoto Target of an 8% increase above the levels achieved in 1990, by using these accumulated credits [from bans on landclearing] without paying farmers for them.

“The Federal Court in Sydney in December last year agreed that farmers have an arguable case against the Commonwealth over ownership of the 80 million Tonnes of carbon created from land clearing bans…

“Now the court has given Mr Spencer the Green light to file a “notice of motion” which is an injunction to stop the Commonwealth from entering into any carbon trading scheme, until the case is decided.

Read more here: http://www.agmates.com/blog/2008/02/24/108-billion-payment-to-farmers-to-meet-kyoto-commitment/