Rangelands

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) spearheaded a campaign to end broadscale tree clearing in western NSW. The resulting legislation has proven difficult for government to administer and a nightmare for landholders wanting to clear woody weeds including species of acacia and pine.

In response, the NSW government appointed a committee to “independently” review the Invasive Native Species (INS) regulations that sit under the legislation.

The NSW government appointed a director of the WWF, Dr Denis Saunders, to head the committee.

Farmers have cried foul asking how the board member of a lobby group totally opposed to land clearing can head an independent review of the legislation.*

But it gets worst.

Dr Saunders is not only a director of WWF, he was a member of The Wentworth Group. This groups is described at the Australian Museum website as not only driving the media campaign against broadscale tree clearing in NSW, but also producing the “model for landscape conservation” that was subsequently adopted by the state government.

The Wentworth Group was funded by Robert Purves, a businessman and also President of WWF Australia, through a $1.5 million donation. The campaign was coordinated by Peter Cosier, a former senior environmental policy advisor to Senator Robert Hill.

So Denis Saunders was actively involved in the campaign which resulted in the new legislation. Furthermore he was part of the team that proposed the model for the legislation that was subsequently adopted by government. Incredibly government has now made him head of a committee to “independently” review the mess his team helped create.

So “Caesar is judging Caesar”!

Journalist Ross Coulthart detailed some of the problems with the NSW legislation and the environmental impact of native invasive scrub encroachment in the cover story for the Sunday Program of the 6th August entitled ‘The great land-clearing myth’.

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* Veg Review Compromised? By Lucy Skuthorp, The Land, pg. 11, 17th August 2006.

NSW Regional Community Survival Group has issued the following media release:

“Media Release
Thursday, 17 August 2006
Farmers outraged over woody weed recommendations

Farmers have rejected the recommendations of a NSW Government review into the management of woody weeds, claiming a conflict of interest by the Chair of the review committee, Dr Denis Saunders, who is also a Board Member of Australia’s most powerful green group.

“How can farmers have any faith in the recommendations of the so-called Invasive Native Scrub Working Group when its Chair is on the Board of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) of Australia, which campaigns against land clearing?” said a spokesperson for the NSW Regional Community Survival Group, Doug Menzies.

The Regional Community Survival Group is made up of farmers from western NSW who are fed up with bureaucratic, nonsensical laws that prevent farmers from controlling infestations of woody weeds that have invaded up to 20 million hectares (an area three times the size of Tasmania) of western NSW.

Woody weeds (also called invasive scrub) invade native grasslands and pastures, leaving the landscape like a desert with no natural groundcover – making the countryside prone to massive wind and water erosion.

NSW Minister for Natural Resources, Ian Macdonald, gave Dr Saunders the task of ‘refining’ the rules and regulations associated with the management of woody weeds in March 2006.

“Given the WWF has an axe to grind on land clearing issues, how can farmers have any confidence in the integrity of the review recommendations? It is painfully obvious that Dr Saunders has a massive conflict of interest on this issue and I’m surprised that such a senior scientist would place himself in such a conflicted position,” Mr Menzies said.

The Regional Community Survival Group has called upon Premier Iemma to immediately remove Dr Saunders from any further direct involvement in the process of drafting new rules for controlling the spread of infestations of woody weeds in western NSW.

Mr Menzies said that not a single farmer was a member of the Working Group – a group made up of nine bureaucrats – and this was reflected in the absurdity of some of the final recommendations.

A key recommendation of the Working Group was for farmers to leave 20 per cent of the area of their farm infested with woody weeds. This leaves one-fifth of your farm being degraded by woody weeds that smother out native grasslands and pastures. Areas infested with woody weeds also harbour feral pigs and goats.

“Farmers are more than happy to preserve areas of native bushland, but leaving 20 per cent of a farm infested with woody weeds is like a surgeon only removing 80 per cent of a tumour.”

Mr Menzies said farmers who wish to rehabilitate their land are also prevented from clearing more than 20 per cent of the area of woody weeds on their property at any one time. If a farmer wants to clear woody weeds above 20 per cent, this can only be done in 20 per cent increments and only after each increment consists of more than 75 per cent of native grasses.

“Depending on weather conditions (e.g. drought), it could take years for a grassland to consist of more than 75 per cent of native species. Hence, this provision in the regulation is a ‘handbrake’ on land rehabilitation.”

“The review also recommends that farmers leave a certain number of weeds per hectare. For example, farmers have to retain some woody weed species that have a trunk diameter (at breast height) of less than 20cm.

“For western NSW alone, there are over 70 rules on retaining woody weed species at various trunk diameters, making the physical removal of weeds by tractor and chain totally impractical.”

Last week on Channel 9’s Sunday Program, Reece Turner from The Wilderness Society stated: “We haven’t seen any scientific evidence to show that biodiversity is being impacted negatively by these woody weeds.”

Sunday reporter Ross Coulthart then asked Turner, “Do you accept that there are woody weed areas causing major environmental damage?” Turner’s response to the question was: “No. We don’t accept there are major environmental damages being caused by woody weeds.”

Mr Doug Menzies, in a media release from NSW Regional Community Survival Group, said that The Wilderness Society needs to drop its emotive rhetoric on land clearing in western NSW and urgently review the scientific literature on how infestations of woody weeds degrade the landscape.

The media release continued:

“The Channel 9 footage showing vast tracts of land degraded by woody weeds clearly showed how little understanding Reece Turner has on this issue. Turner needs to get off his bum and make the effort to review the scientific literature that details the negative environmental impacts of woody weeds,” Mr Menzies said.

Below are just some of the published scientific journals and reports that confirm the destructive impact of infestations of woody weeds on the environment:

Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Scrub and Timber Regrowth in the Cobar-Byrock district and other areas of the Western Division, NSW. February 1969.
“The density of timber and scrub regrowth on level loamy soils, which would normally run little water, is such that the small open spaces between clumps are completely bare and becoming wind sheeted and water sheeted. This class of country thus becomes a mosaic of bare, wind and water sheeted patches on which nothing can grow, interspersed with small clumps of thick scrub.”

Alchin, B.M., Proude, C.K., and Condon, R.W. (1979). Control of Woody Weeds in Western NSW. Proceedings of the 7th Asian-Pacific Weed Science Conference.
“Regrowth of woody weeds is a major problem over millions of hectares on the rangelands of western NSW. The regrowth reduces pasture growth, increases management costs and results in soil erosion.”

Control of Woody Weeds. Woody Weeds Taskforce. Information Sheet 5. September 1990.
“Woody weeds are native shrubs which have encroached formerly open lands of western NSW. The encroachment has lowered pastoral productivity, reduced botanical and faunal diversity, reduced land values and increased the risk of water and wind erosion. Much of the area has now changed and is dominated by a dense understorey of shrubs. It has been estimated that 20 million hectares of western NSW are either already encroached or highly susceptible to woody weed encroachment.”

Booth, C.A., King, G.W., and Sanchez-Bayo, F. (1996). Establishment of woody weeds in western NSW. 1. Seedling emergence and phenology. Rangeland Journal. Vol. 18, Issue 1. pp 58-79.
“While the semi-arid range lands of Australia have historically been regarded as amongst the nation’s greatest assets, millions of hectares have unfortunately deteriorated considerably due to the spread of unpalatable native shrubs on open grazing lands. As a consequence of the reduced feed available on infested land, livestock and native animals graze more heavily on unaffected areas, which in turn become more susceptible to erosion and to further invasion by shrubs.”

Daly, R.L., and Hodgkinson, K.C. (1996). Relationships between grass, shrub and tree cover on four landforms of semi-arid eastern Australia, and prospects for change by burning. Rangeland Journal. Vol. 18, Issue 1. pp 104-117.
“The range of grass, shrub and tree levels present in the Louth region of western NSW was determined in an area where woody weeds are considered to be rampant, and the prospects for change by burning were evaluated. The survey confirmed the perception of pastoralists, administrators and scientists that shrub cover is unacceptably high for pastoralism throughout much of the region. Additionally, the perennial grass cover was very low and this would increase the instability of forage supply to pastoral herbivores.”

CSIRO. Media Release – “No Half Measures to Deal with Woody Weeds.” May 15, 1998.
“Woody weeds have been a problem for more than a century. Since the first two decades of pastoral settlement, there has been a vast area affected by increasing density of the shrubs, largely as a result of declining fire frequency. Some 35 million hectares or 25 per cent of NSW is affected.” Dr Jim Noble, CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology.

Blueprint for a Living Continent. A Way Forward from The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (Nov 2002).
“Clear distinction needs to be made between the need to stop broadscale clearing of remnant native vegetation and the need to control shrub invasion in the semi-arid and arid pastoral areas of Australia. This part of Australia has been managed by indigenous Australians for 45,000 years, using fire. Since European settlement these fire management practices have changed which is causing environmental damage in some areas.”

Landholders in western NSW and Queensland may have felt some relief last Sunday with well known journalist Ross Coulthart acknowledging the very real problem of invasive woody weeds. But it appears the Wilderness Society is now going to ignore the event and the issues it raised. There has been no official response from the organisation; no media release attempting to justify their position. I guess this strategy makes it difficult for landholders to get any traction on the issue in the mainstream media? How do you have a debate when one side won’t debate?

You may remember that some weeks ago the Channel 9 Sunday Program featured a documentary on salinity title ‘Australia’s Salinity Crisis: What Crisis’. While researching the dryland salinity issue, reporter Ross Coulthart got interested in land clearing issues. This Sunday (6th August) the current affairs program will feature a documentary titled ‘Woody Weeds: How Trees Can Be Bad’. I’ve just received the media release:

“This week SUNDAY travels to far western NSW to check out the claims being made by many Green groups and politicians of a looming ecological disaster being caused by land clearing.

What we find overturns many of the alarmist claims that many of Australia’s largely city dwelling environmentalists have taken as gospel.

SUNDAY reporter Ross Coulthart details the strong evidence to show that current Government policies restricting land clearing, pushed by a powerful environmental lobby, are in fact causing serious environmental damage.

As several eminent scientists reveal this week too many trees in that landscape can actually be bad for the environment.

As recently as six years ago, Australia’s peak science body, the CSIRO, was warning of the ecological threat posed by invasive native scrub – the farmers call them “woody weeds” – that has taken over what was once largely, sparsely-treed, open grasslands across far western NSW and southern Qld.

Even the Wentworth Group of Scientists, in their 2002 ‘Blueprint for a Living Continent’ warned that laudable restrictions on broad-scale land clearing needed to be clearly distinguished from the “need to control shrub invasion in the semi-arid and pastoral areas of Australia.”

As local Nyngan aboriginal elder Tommy Ryan explains, for 45,000 years these largely open grasslands were managed by indigenous Australians using fire. But since European settlement that lack of burning has caused a huge growth of invasive scrub that has taken over between 15-25% of NSW alone.

Now tens of millions of hectares of that once open grassland are effectively being locked-up by Native Vegetation laws that NSW farmers claim are excessively restricting their clearing of what they say is environmentally harmful woody weeds.

Farmers are commonly demonised as the villains responsible for broad-scale land clearing, and that’s what the farmers of Nyngan and Cobar are now accused by the Wilderness Society’s public campaign of doing.

But the farmers claim the plants and animals that evolved to depend on those open grasslands are under threat because of the very trees the Greenies are fighting to save.

And, as SUNDAY details, they have some heavy-weight scientific backing for their arguments. As former Western Lands Commissioner and soil scientist Dick Condon tells Coulthart:

“We don’t need forest. We need open space for the species that use that grassland.”

Mick Keogh, Executive Director of the Australian Farm Institute, says the evidence is there to show that the magnitude of vegetation loss across Australia has been grossly over-exaggerated. Yet the official estimates of 650,000ha being cleared a year in 1989-90 went on to become the cornerstone of Australia’s negotiating position at Kyoto, where limits on greenhouse gas emissions were negotiated. He believes that in order to ensure the reduction in land clearing occurred, the Federal Government made State funding dependent on the States banning land clearing. Keogh argues that a misguided effort to meet those inaccurate targets has led to the current highly restrictive Native Vegetation laws.

Also, current land clearing estimates don’t take into account the extent of regrowth and replanting of trees. When this is taken into account, reafforestation far exceeds even the official, exaggerated, estimates of land clearing.”

“Last week the Auditor-General stated that farmers have escaped land clearing prosecutions because the State Government had ‘problems with meeting the evidence requirements’ under NSW native vegetation laws,” said a spokesperson for the NSW Regional Community Survival Group, Doug Menzies.

A media release from the group issued earlier today began:

“Farming families are demanding an official apology from the NSW Auditor-General who last week implied that farmers should have been prosecuted for clearing 30,000 hectares of land in 2005.

… The Regional Community Survival Group is made up of farmers from western NSW who are fed up with bureaucratic and nonsensical laws that are preventing farmers from controlling infestations of woody weeds that have invaded up to 20 million hectares (an area three times the size of Tasmania) in western NSW.

“The Auditor-General implies that farming families have carried out illegal land clearing yet in his own report he clearly states that no prosecutions in relation to land clearing were successful when contested in court between 1998 and 2005.

“I was led to believe that a foundation stone of the Australian legal system was the benefit of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty by evidence presented in a court of law?

“By implying that farmers have escaped prosecution the Auditor-General has effectively branded farming families as having engaged in illegal land clearing activities – an outrageous suggestion,” said Mr Menzies.

The Regional Community Survival Group is concerned that the comments of the Auditor-General could prejudice land clearing cases currently before the NSW Land and Environment Court.

“We demand an apology from the Auditor-General and seek clarification from the NSW Attorney-General on how the comments of the Auditor-General could potentially prejudice land clearing cases currently before the courts.

“We also have serious concerns on how diligently the Auditor-General investigated the issue of land clearing in NSW.

“The Auditor-General obtained the vast majority of his information from government agencies that are pandering to Sydney-based green groups,” said Mr Menzies.

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Read the full report — which does seem to ignore the concept of ‘presumption of innocence’ — published by the NSW Auditor-General and titled ‘Regulating the Clearing of Native Vegetation: Follow-up of 2002 Performance Audit’ by clicking here.