Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Rangelands

Farmers Challenge Minister to Explain Tree Laws

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A new group has formed in western New South Wales (Australia) out of frustration with the states vegetation management regulations. Vegetation management is code for restrictions on tree clearing, and trees tend to include what that the locals refer to as “invasive scrub”. Following is the groups second ever media release:

“Farming families and business people from western NSW are challenging the Minister for Natural Resources and Primary Industries, Ian Macdonald, to explain the laws that govern the control of invasive scrub.

“The regulations for controlling invasive scrub are a bureaucratic nightmare that will result in more country being invaded and destroyed by weeds and farmers being forced off the land,” said a spokesman for the NSW Regional Community Survival Group, Doug Menzies.

The Regional Community Survival Group is made up of farmers and local business people from western NSW who are fed up with bureaucratic red tape that is preventing farmers from rehabilitating land infested with invasive scrub.

Invasive scrub is the term used to describe native shrubs and woody weeds that have infested formerly open woodlands and grasslands of western NSW. Infestations of woody weeds are smothering out native grasslands leaving a desert-like landscape devoid of natural grass cover.

“If the Minister can make any practical sense of his own regulations I would be bloody surprised. Farming communities of western NSW are demanding that the Minister answer the following simple questions about the regulations,” Mr Menzies said:

1. Why aren’t farmers allowed to rehabilitate 100 per cent of an area that has been degraded by infestations of woody weeds? In environmental terms, what’s the rationale in leaving 20 per cent of an area that is being degraded by woody weeds?

Under the regulations, land rehabilitation is ‘capped’ at 80 per cent of the degraded area. This is analogous to a surgeon only removing 80 per cent of a tumour!

2. How can farmers practically clear a paddock with large machinery if they are forced to leave woody weeds of varying stem/trunk diameters?

Ridiculously, for western NSW alone, there are over 70 ‘rules’ that govern the retention of scrub species at various stem/trunk diameters. For example, in the Western Catchment Management Authority area farmers have to retain: 6 Wilga plants per hectare that have a trunk diameter (at breast height) of between 0 to 5cm, 7 Wilga plants per hectare that have a trunk diameter of between 5 to 10cm, and 7 Wilga plants per hectare that have a trunk diameter of between 10 and 20cm. Finally, Wilga plants with a trunk diameter of over 20cm must be retained.

3. It is estimated that 20 million hectares (an area the size of Nebraska) of western NSW is either already infested or highly susceptible to woody weeds. How does the Minister envisage the measurement of millions of woody weeds over this area? Will he redeploy accountants from NSW Treasury to do the job?

4. How does the Minister expect farmers to clear woody weeds and control future regrowth when the regulations are so complex and prescriptive that cultivation and short-term cropping becomes impractical and uneconomical?

5. If a farmer wants to clear woody weeds, then this can only be done 20 per cent at a time (and only up to a maximum of 80 per cent of the degraded area!). To make matters worse, you can’t start the next 20 per cent until the cleared area is ¾ covered in native grasses. This could take years to achieve. Cultivation and short-term cropping are crucial steps in restoring native grasslands to a degraded landscape because these activities suppress woody weed regrowth. Does the Minister understand that cultivation and cropping play a vital role in the rehabilitation process?

“This is bureaucracy running rampant in an area that they know nothing about; that is, farming.

“Rural communities of western NSW look forward to the Minister’s answers to these simple questions,” concluded Mr Menzies.”

A similiar group formed in Queensland a few years ago also out of frustration with restrictions on tree clearing. This group called Property Rights Australia has championed the cause of Ashley McKay a softly spoken cattleman who has refused to plead guilty to illegally clearing cypress pine. I’ve written about Ashley at this blog, you can find a copy of the post here https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000971.html .

More Grass for Less Salt

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About 75 percent of the landmass of Australia could be classified as ‘rangeland’ and about 60 percent of this area is under pastoral lease. Many pastoral leases are not well managed and campaigning by the Wilderness Society and others tends to miss the point.

Contrary to popular perception created by misleading environmental campaigns there is no general shortage of trees across Australia’s rangelands, but there are soil health issues that need to be addressed.

I’ve previously quoted from Christine Jones and her important document titled ‘Recognise, Relate and Innovate” and I’m going to quote from it again.

This might be the first of a series of blog posts on soil health, as I’ve received a few emails on this issue since Channel Nine’s Sunday Program titled ‘Australia’s Salinity Crisis, What Crisis?’.

On page 8 of ‘Recoginse, Relate and Innovate’, Jones writes:

“Areas currently experiencing salinisation in south-eastern, southern and south-western Australia were mostly grasslands and grassy woodlands at the time of European settlement, as recorded in explorers journals, settlers diaries and original survey reports from the early to mid 1800s. It is intriguing therefore, that tree clearing in the early 1900s, or later, continues to be cited as the ‘cause’ of dryland salinity.

There is no doubt that the removal of any kind of perennial vegetation will have an effect on water balance. However, to insist that dryland salinity is the result of tree clearing is a misrepresentation of the facts, particularly when twisted in the current form “if we put the trees back, we can solve the problem.” Some parts of Australia did not have any trees at the time of settlement. In some regions trees and shrubs have become woody weeds, in
others the environment would be healthier today with more trees. However, these issues have very little to do with dryland salinity.

We need to address the lack or perenniality across the entire landscape, not just in parts of it, and not just with one type of vegetation. Woody vegetation, or crops such as lucerne, can pump accumulated groundwater. This represents a biological form of an engineering solution and treats symptoms not causes. In order to move forward and find some real solutions to the salinity crisis, it is important to view the ‘transient tree phase’ in perspective. It is the overlooked understorey, or more particularly, the groundcover and soils, which have undergone the most dramatic changes since settlement.”

Graham Finlayson recently emailed me with the comment that:

“You are too quick to dismiss native perennial [grasses]* and miss two vital points. They don’t have to be expensively “planted” as they just need to be allowed to grow, and the amount of land needed is not an issue.

Most of the worlds rangelands are performing far below their capacity, and the vast majority of agricultural land is taken up by growing crops that are used to fatten cattle in feedlots.

This is expensive, unnecessary and with huge detrimental health costs to us all.

…Typically, we in Australia are just jumping onto the feedlotting bandwagon while in the US there is a big premium for cattle that are bred smaller with finishing ability on grass!

Anyway, my point would be that if we get our land systems “healthy” then there is no limit to the amount of way we can profit from it.”

Graham recommended the following two websites for information on soil health, grasslands and grazing:

http://managingwholes.com/–environmental-restoration.htm

http://www.stockmangrassfarmer.com .
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* Not sure that I’ve been too dismissive of native perennial grasses, but there hasn’t been much at this blog about rangeland management and soil health perhaps because I’ve been distracted with other issues.

New Bans on Tree Clearing in NSW: How Many Trees Saved for How Many Dollars?

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Yesterday NSW Natural Resources Minister Ian Macdonald unveiled the new regulations for the state’s Native Vegetation Act 2003. The regulations will come into effect on December 1.

The story goes that the NSW Farmers Association ‘capitulated’ on the Act on the promise that the regulations would be more reasonable.

Now it looks like the regulations transfer responsibilities to local ‘Catchment Management Authorities’ with farmers developing and getting their ‘Property Vegetation Plans’ endorsed by these boards that I understand include local ‘wise men’, greens and bureacrats.

According to yesterday’s press release there will be no more broadscale tree clearing, there are offset provisions (farmers can cut down trees in one area if it is absolutely necessary, if they agree to plant more somewhere else), and it all comes with $436 million for those disadvantaged, download file with media release and ‘details of package’.

The ‘compensation packages’ could be seen as very generous. At least relative to Quensland where landholders have got not much more than a ‘poke in the eye’ by way of ‘compensation’ for the latest round of restrictions.

Landholders’ Institute Secretary Ian Mott puts the legislative agenda in a ‘so how many trees will really be saved for how many dollars’ context with a piece he wrote today titled, NSW Virtual Vegetation Policy, download file .

Mott makes some good points including that:

Sparks & wildfires lost 770,000ha to hot (habitat destroying) fires in 2003 while State Forests NSW only lost 70,000ha. …

But what has this got to do with clearing controls? Well, it is all about character, scale and intensity of impacts and the capacity of wildlife to recover from those impacts.

Landsat tells us that over the past two decades, total clearing in NSW has only been about 16,000ha of which about half is regrowth clearing that will still take place. Another 25% is clearing for power lines, roads and infrastructure so this leaves a net 4000ha of annual ‘habitat destruction’ that will be covered by the new legislation. Note that no attempt has been made to quantify forest expansion to derive a net figure.

Dr John Benson, of the Botanic Gardens, has provided most of the key factoids on which the NSW policy process has relied on from SEPP 46 to the more recent changes. It was he who provided the notorious 150,000ha annual clearing estimate to the NSW Vegetation Forum. He used data from the Moree Plain and extrapolated for the entire State. It was he who, in “Setting the Scene”, his backgrounder for the 2003 legislation, advised the government that there had been 35 million ha of clearing prior to the mid 1930’s. But he then failed to include a total on a table showing cleared area in each bioregion. This missing total of 28 million hectares would have made it clear that there had been an increase in forested area, net of clearing, of 7 million hectares over the past 7 decades. That is, 1 million hectares of expansion per decade or 100,000ha of extra forest a year.

In my own district (Byron Shire) the aerial photos confirm that private forest has trebled in area (net of clearing) since 1954 and the annual clearing rate is less than 2% of the average annual expansion rate for the past half century.

But “don’t you worry about that”, the new legislation comes with a $460 million budget over 5 years (essentially a reallocation of the old DLWC budget) and this works out to about $23,000 per hectare of ‘saved’ private forest.

And if $23,000/ha is an appropriate, cost effective and responsible public outlay for protecting habitat then what is the Premier, the Minister and the policy doing about the 700,000 hectares lost to government exacerbated wildfires? At those costings it came to $16.1 billion in damage to publicly owned habitat?

Tree Clearing in Queensland: One Man’s Battle Against Bureaucracy

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About six years ago Ashley McKay a softly spoken cattleman from south western Queensland was prosecuted by the Queensland Government for clearing cypress pine on his property. McKay had a permit to clear trees from the Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNRM), but not a permit from the Department of Primary Industries (QDPI) Forestry Division. The second permit was apparently necessary to clear the pine trees scattered amongst the other trees.

It is now folklore in western Queensland that the decision by government bureacrats to prosecute the local hero was taken because McKay appeared on national television program Sixty Minutes speaking out against the government and then new Queensland Vegetation Management Act 1999.

Thousands of cattleman are being investigatged for illegal clearing under the legislation which many claim is unworkable.

The advice has been if your prosecuted, plead guilty because government and the courts will show no mercy if you take a stand.

Ashley McKay was proof of that. He has fought six court cases over the original charge of illegally clearing cypress pine. A central issue, continually disputed, is whether or not the original tree clearing permit permitted the clearing of the cypress pine trees.

I waded through the 77 page Decision handed down in August last year following ’round five’. It seemed to me that McKay had lost big time as he was found guilty and fined $270,000 and by the Chief Magistrate.

Some weeks later Property Rights Australia, an organisation founded in part to help McKay fight government, announced he would appeal the decision.

Last Friday the District Court in Queensland upheld the Appeal and reduced the charge from $270,000 to $10,000. I was amazed.

The Queensland Government could yet appeal this decision.

While Ashley fights on. The odd Constitutional law expert is starting to take an interest in the Vegetation Mangement Act 1999 and consider whether indeed it is constitutional, click here for a review by Prof Suri Ratnapala.
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Campaigns by the Wilderness Society have given the impression that western Queensland has been turned into wasteland as a consequence of tree clearing. But according to the State Government report Land Cover Change in Queensland 1999-2001 (Department of Natural Resources and Mines, published January 2003) even during the height of clearing, the annual clearing rate was 0.71 per cent of the 81 million hectares of woodland, forest and shrub cover across Queensland. According to page 14 of the same report, there has been a 5 million hectares increase in the area classified as woody vegetation over the period 1992 to 2001.

In other words, while large areas have been cleared, larger areas have regrowth.

Official statistics from the Queensland Herbarium (a part of the government’s Environment Protection Agency) show 81 percent of Queensland is covered in remnant vegetation – a figure that has remained constant over the last decade.

The dictionary definition of ‘remnant’ is ‘little or few that remains, a fragment or scrap’. Interestingly in Queensland ‘remnant’ is the dominant vegetation classification. Use of the word ‘remnant’ is deceptive as it suggests only a small amount of natural vegetation remains when in reality over 80 per cent remains.

The current legislative definition of ‘remnant’ is vegetation with 50 percent of its original cover and 70 per cent of its original height. Trees re-grow, so the relatively high level of remnant vegetation cover in Queensland is at least in part achieved by ‘re-growth’ turning into ‘remnant’ over a period of time.
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I’ve written about how hard it can be to understand the ABS tree clearing statistics here, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2098

To Burn or Graze

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There has been a bit written at this site about the importance of burning landscapes including comment from David Ward in WA that:

“I have recently developed geometric evidence that frequent burning is the only (repeat only), way to maintain a reasonably fine grained fire mosaic, with small, mild, and controllable fires; a rich diversity of habitat for plants and animals; and protection of small fire refuges for that minority of plants and animals which are not adapted to frequent fire. Aborigines clearly knew, and still, in some parts, know this. Anyone who does not understand should go and talk to an Aboriginal Elder.

“It can be demonstrated, with geometric certainty, that any deliberate long fire exclusion over large areas, such as a National Park, will lead inevitably (repeat inevitably) to large fierce fires, and a coarser mosaic, with little diversity of food and shelter for animals. Small refuges, important for some rare plants and animals, will be destroyed by the ferocity of the fires.”

I have just discovered Christine Jones’ website at http://www.amazingcarbon.com/ courtesy of Graham Finlayson.

Jones suggests that regular burning is extremely detrimental to soft forms of native ground cover and encourages a dominance of relatively unpalatable grasses, removes surface litter leaving the soil unprotected, reduces potential for nutrient cycling, reduce water-holding capacity and degrade soil structure. … concluding that “fire is a tool which should be used cautiously and infrequently”.

Jones suggests that the recruitment of productive native legumes and grasses is favoured by mulching which is destroyed by regular burning.

Jones promotes grazing on the basis that “The open, park-like appearance of many areas at the time of European settlement has often been attributed to indigenous burning regimes. More recent evidence suggests that the healthy grasslands and friable soils described by the first settlers were more likely to have reflected the high abundance of small native mammals, such as bettongs and potoroos most of which are now locally extinct … with the loss of the regenerative effects of small native mammals in Australia since European settlement, managed grazing is now arguably the only natural means by which grasslands can be ‘improved’ in a holitistic way.”

The above is my summary of page 7 and 8 of http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/general_doc/46_sti1%20final%20report.pdf, titled ‘Recognise, Relate, Innovate’ by Jones – at the same website.

Are Jones and Ward talking about different landscapes?

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.
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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’.