Snow gums are the quintessential alpine tree on mainland Australia, generally growing at heights between 1,300 and 1,800 metres asl. Forests and woodlands of Eucalyptus pauciflora can look quite uniform from a distance, but up close they have such character.
But wildfire has been devastating large swathes of snow gum habitat, with significant fires in the Victorian High Country in 1998, 2002/3, 2006/7 and 2013 and in the Snowy Mountains in 2003.
Research is showing that if we want to allow snow gum forests the chance to recover from these fires, we need to keep the cattle out and do our best to stop any future fire activity.
The following comes from Rob Harris at The Weekly Times. It is interesting to note that this trial is ostensibly about whether cattle grazing can reduce fuel load, yet the Mountain Cattleman rep keeps talking about invasive species in the valley.
Given that cattle introduced most of the invasive species in the first place it seems to be an ‘own goal’ type argument to run if you want to see cattle brought back.
As with the earlier attempt to get cattle into the Alpine Park, it would appear that the Victorian government has done a poor job of compiling the information that the federal minister needs to make an informed decision on the trial. Given that the Wonnangatta trial has been a concept endorsed by the environment minister for at least a year, it is hard to fathom why this second application has been managed so badly.
Fears for native orchid put high country cattle trial on hold
A THREATENED native orchid could prove the latest hurdle to returning cattle to the high country.
The Victorian Government’s push to begin a three-year trial in the Wonnangatta Valley this month has been put on hold after the Commonwealth sought more information about the habitat.
The Australasian Native Orchid Society of Victoria is the latest conservation group to raise concerns about a return to alpine grazing, after it was reported a survey of rare and threatened plants in the area was not included in Victoria’s application to the Commonwealth.
The Wonnangatta Valley is home to one of two known populations of the native orchid diuris ochroma, or pale golden moth.
Society member Richard Thomson said the group had written to federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt seeking protection for the native flower.
“Having chosen this venue virtually in the middle of the park – where there is plenty of state forest which would have been equally as suitable and wouldn’t run the same risks to the environment – just seems totally weird to me,” Mr Thomson said.
Mr Thomson said it was “ridiculous” the Victorian Government would put the native flower at risk.
If the trial is approved by the Commonwealth, 60 cattle will be released into the Valley for a three-year trial.
A spokesman said Mr Hunt was awaiting information from his Victorian counterpart that would allow the department to make a “fully-informed decision”.
A spokeswoman for Victorian Environment Minister Ryan Smith said an updated survey of the native habitat would be provided to the Commonwealth. She said the “experience and expertise gathered over 170 years” should be included in land management.
The mountain cattlemen, removed from the park in 2005 by the Bracks Labor Government, will this weekend hold their annual high country “get together” on the Omeo High Plains.
Mountain Cattlemen’s Association of Victoria president Charlie Lovick said the decision to stop grazing Wonnangatta had grown into a fire trap “infested with invasive species”.
The political rumour mill is suggesting that federal environment minister Greg Hunt won’t give approval to the Victorian government’s grazing trial before Christmas. The Victorian government proposes putting cattle back into a section of the Alpine National Park to see if it can reduce fuel loads in the Wonnangatta valley.
However, the proposal has been undermined by the fact that only limited information has been presented about how the trial would be managed. In a worrying development, it would seem that the state government has also withheld significant information from the federal environment department, about possible impacts of the project.
Refusing to fast-track approval of this project would be prudent for a minister who is already under fire for signing off on a growing number of environmentally destructive projects.
Lets hope common sense prevails and the federal government requires considerably more information than a desk top study to decide if this is actually a scientifically robust proposal.
Or will he do the reasonable thing and allow additional time for his department to consider the information that the state government withheld from him?
Recently, Mr Hunt approved major coal and gas facilities adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef. Refusing a poorly developed ‘scientific whaling’ (sorry, ‘scientific’ grazing project) would help re-build some of his reputation as the minister for the environment.
Victoria’s leading scientific society has called on the state and federal governments to abandon plans for a cattle grazing trial in the Alpine National Park, saying peer-reviewed evidence shows it would fail to cut fire risk.
In a letter to state Environment Minister Ryan Smith, the normally conservative Royal Society of Victoria has questioned the merits and scientific basis of a trial to test whether cattle grazing decreases the risk of bushfires by reducing fuel loads. About 60 cattle would be released into the Wonnangatta Valley for three years if the trial is approved by the Commonwealth.
In the letter, society president Dr Bill Birch says the trial ignores published evidence that cattle grazing has no measurable effect on fuel reduction, but has serious impacts on the diversity of species in the local area.
”The plan for the proposed trial is not clear and shows little evidence of sound scientific structure,” Dr Birch writes.
Dr Birch says among the trial’s failings are that the vegetation in the Wonnangatta Valley represents only a proportion of that found throughout the Alpine park, meaning the results could not automatically be applied to the entire region. He also said wildfires burn more intensely and move differently to controlled burns, which would be used in the trial, meaning any effect on fuel reduction by cattle would not be measurable.
”The Royal Society considers the proposed trial as another example of so-called scientific study, undertaken without adequate appreciation or even demonstrated knowledge of the literature and which is characterised by inadequate planning and inadequate scientific rigor,” Dr Birch writes. ”We suggest that the trial be abandoned.”
Executive officer of the Mountain Cattlemen’s Association, Graeme Stoney said: ”There is no doubt grazing reduces fuel in the grazing areas.”
The following information comes from the Victorian National Parks Association. A number of significant environmental decisions will be made by the federal environment minister before Christmas, with the danger that they will slip through relatively unnoticed and unreported.
If approved, it can be expected that cattle will be introduced over summer. Last time the Victorian Coalition government introduced cattle to the Alpine Park, they did so without setting in place adequate scientific frameworks to the trial. They had been clearly told that grazing would not be useful in reducing fire risk, yet proceeded to implement their policy.
The fact that the government has withheld information from the federal minister in their current attempt to reintroduce cattle is hardly the basis for assuming this trial will be any more scientifically robust.
Over the next few days Australia’s environment minister Greg Hunt must decide whether or not he will let the Victorian Government put cattle back into the Alpine National Park.
After failing to return cattle to the Alps in both 2010 and 2011 the Napthine Government is again asking the federal government to approve a new cattle grazing trial in the Alpine National Park.
They plan to bring 60 cattle into the remote Wonnangatta Valley, a beautiful river flat that sits below the Howitt High Plains and has been ungrazed by cattle since 1988.
We need your help. Please take action today or as soon as possible:
We cannot allow this grazing trial to go ahead.
The Victorian Government wants to put cattle into the park simply because of a promise it made to some graziers that once held privileged grazing licences.
Their new attempt comes on the back of repeated attacks by the Napthine Government on the integrity of national parks including changing legislation to allow 99 year leases for private development, expanding areas for fossicking and prospecting and making significant cuts to park budgets.
We have also uncovered many serious flaws in the proposed trial:
There is no scientific design for the trial, and apparently no scientists are involved.
There has been no consideration of a location outside of the national park, even though there are many areas where such a trial could be conducted.
The application ignores the considerable evidence that cattle grazing does not significantly reduce alpine fires. There are far more important bushfire research projects on which to spend scarce research funds.
More than 60 years of research shows cattle damage alpine wetlands and the headwaters of many rivers, threaten nationally-listed rare plants and animals, and bring weeds into the National Heritage-listed Alpine National Park.
National parks are the cornerstone of our efforts to protect nature – not cow paddocks or private resorts.
When I went through the paperwork attached to the state government’s proposal to put cattle back into the Alpine National Park, one of the things that struck me was the fact that there was no data from the field about possible threatened plants or animals that may be impacted by the proposal.
in the Wonnangatta, looking north
The Wonnangatta is not the easiest place to get to in Victoria. Yet the Environment Minister has visited there on at least two occasions. Clearly this project is important to the minister. So it would be reasonable to assume that he would have ensured that some staff were sent to the Valley to investigate possible impacts on endangered species.
Yet in their proposal, the government relies only on desk top data searches of federal government information. Given that the government was roundly criticised for its poorly framed research methodology last time they attempted to put cattle back into the park, you would think they would at least make an effort to make the scientific case more robust this time.
But now, according to The Age, this lack of firsthand data isn’t just because of sloppy project design. It would appear that the government has deliberately withheld key information.
The state government has withheld from the Commonwealth a survey of rare and threatened plants of an area of the Alpine National Park earmarked for a cattle grazing trial.
It is believed scientists at the state’s biodiversity research body – the Arthur Rylah Institute – were asked to look for rare and threatened plants in different parts of the alpine park as part of research for the high country grazing project. Their results were outlined in an unreleased report from May 2012. But the survey was not included in a recent application by Victoria to the federal government for environmental approval of a grazing trial.
Instead an older desktop study – drawing on previously recorded data – was used to identify the extent of endangered species in the low-lying Wonnangatta Valley, where the latest trial is planned.
The unreleased 2012 plant survey found one nationally protected species of orchid known as pale golden moths and a small patch of endangered alpine bog and wetland in the valley. A large area of rare grassland and a rare plant known as spreading knawel were also found across the trial region.
The report suggests that fencing to protect the orchids, grassland and spreading knawel would be impractical and would not mitigate against the impacts of grazing.
No government is perfect. But deliberately withholding information in order to get an outcome you want is incredibly bad form. It begs the question: if this has happened in this case, how do we know it doesn’t happen routinely in attempts to introduce other aspects of environmental policy in Victoria?
In January 2013, it was reported that the Mountain Cattlemen’s Association (MCAV) was lobbying the state environment minister Ryan Smith to seek permission to reintroduce cattle to the area around the Wonnangatta station.
While spokespeople for the minister have been quoted in the media, there has been no formal statement by Ryan Smith and details on the trial have not been released to the public by the Victorian government.
“But it was the state of the park, the threat of high intensity fires from high fuel loads and the impact this could have on its ecology – particularly snow gums – and the infestation of weeds and feral animals that were most pressing on the minds of the cattlemen”.
Media reports have mentioned the ability of cattle grazing to reduce weeds in the Wonnangatta, however, the application only talks about the possibility of it reducing fuel loads. There is no mention of any strategies to ensure the reintroduction of cattle doesn’t bring a new set of weeds into the Wonnangatta. Does this shift from dealing with weeds and fire to just fuel reduction show that there is an admission that cattle make weed infestation worse?
The application says that the traditional owner group was consulted, and of course the MCAV was. What is strange is the claim that environment groups were consulted. Really?
Some observations about the proposed trial
Given that the government has identified fuel loads as a problem, it has not sought to find other ways to reduce fuel loads without a grazing trial.
The impact of weed spread due to grazing (one of the reasons cattle were excluded from the national park in the first case) is not specifically addressed in the proposal.
There is not yet an Environmental Management Plan (EMP) for the project. Given the experience in early 2011, when the Coalition secretly let cattle back into the High Country without a proper framework for how the trial would be managed, one has to wonder if the same thing will happen this time. The documentation says that the EMP will consider issues such as ‘pest plant and animal controls’: so let’s hope the EMP is produced before the cattle are introduced.
The study area covers around 2,200 hectares of land, with 4 ‘treatments’ to be carried out over different parcels of land: a control area, some areas being grazed, some areas grazed and burned, and some areas just burned. The documentation identified 10 ecological vegetation classes (EVCs) within the research trial area. It is not yet clear whether the 4 treatments will be carried out in each EVC.
Lack of consultation. Given that this proposal has been foisted onto the community without any attempt to explain the project beyond a couple of media grabs, it hasn’t got off to a great start if the government hopes to generate widespread support for the trial. The documentation says a ‘communications strategy’ will be created, with the development of ‘key messages’ that will inform the community on the progress of the trial. Note that consultation is a very different thing to communication.
Threats to nationally listed species. The application says the government only carried out desk top assessments of possible federally listed species in the research area. As is widely noted, animal and plant data for the region is not huge, but the government was happy to rely on what information was currently held by the federal government rather than sending a team to check the actual site. Mitigation measures, aimed to deal with any impacts on federally listed species that may be subsequently identified, will be dealt with via the EMP.
Traditional Owner (TO) attitudes to fire. One valuable aspect of the project documentation was a consultant’s report and ‘conceptual model’ of TO understandings of the role of fire in managing land in the High Country. The government is to be congratulated for commissioning this research.
So, we are a little bit closer to gaining an understanding of what is planned with the trial, although there are a significant number of areas where there is no clarity about what the government intentions are and big gaps in understanding how the project will be managed.
The federal minister is currently considering the application and will probably make a decision shortly.
Grazing advocates argue that cattle will reduce the impacts of bushfires when they do occur
Since at least 2006, a number of people have called for fuel reduction burns and a re-introduction of grazing to the river flats around Wonnangatta station. This has variously been claimed as being important for protection of visitors should a wild fire break out, for weed control, and ecological recovery.
Weeds are an acknowledged problem in the valley, with St Johns Wort, blackberry, Cape Broom, sweet briar and Hawthorn all being significant. In many places, the remnant Themeda (Kangaroo grass) flats are being encroached on by weeds.
It has been reported several times that ‘the poor state of the park is strong evidence of State Government underfunding of Parks Victoria’. So, one option to tackle weeds would be to increase PV’s budget. The current state government is cutting staff at present.
The call for a re-introduction of grazing has been promoted largely by people with connections to grazing.
It is interesting to learn that the current attempt to get cattle back into the Alpine national park by the mountain cattlemen is for a relatively low lying area, the flats around the Wonnangatta station. Previous attempts have been for high country grazing. In contrast, the Wonnangatta station sits at about 500 metres above sea level, in very different vegetation to the high country.
So. Could a grazing operation at this elevation be good for weed management and to reduce fuel loads?
cane toad. Would grazing bring more problems then it solves?
Lets leave aside the fact that many of the problematic weeds in the alpine area were introduced by cattle (hopefully any re-introduction of cattle does not become a solution like the ‘cane toad’ syndrome – where unintended new problems are created in trying to resolve an existing problem).
Lets instead take the cattlemen at face value: that they believe that in this particular location, grazing will reduce fire risk and weed infestation.
Is there a place for grazing by hard hooved and heavy non-indigenous animals in our national parks? And would the proposed grazing trial actually prove if this is the case?
The problem is, we just don’t know. This is because – for whatever reason – the state government has not released any meaningful information about how the grazing trial would work. Given the high level of politics involved in previous attempts to get cattle back into the park, it is hard to trust their motivations unless we have this information.
Media reports say that the trial will be ‘part of a scientific investigation of bushfire prevention options across 2,200 hectares.’ Lets recall that this idea has been discussed with the Environment Minister for at least 10 months before his recent announcement, so its not unreasonable to assume the methodology for the trial is well advanced.
The government could start to resolve the mistrust about their intentions by releasing the outline of their grazing plan. To make an informed decision about whether this is a ‘fair dinkum’ trial, the community needs to know:
Who has created the methodology?
Who will be responsible for managing it?
What scientific evidence is there that grazing will control weeds and fire risk in the way it is claimed?
What is the budget for the program, and where does it come from. Does it just draw from existing Parks Vic budget?
What assessment will be done of current weed infestation and fuel loads prior to the introduction of cattle?
What targets will be set to reduce weed coverage and fuel loads. Different weeds respond in different ways to grazing – what are the strategies for each of the key weeds? And what is the strategy for weeds that are not normally grazed by cattle?
Will the 2,200 ha in the project be fenced? Who will pay for it? Would meaningful results be able to be gained from running the trial on a smaller parcel of land?
Will the adjacent waterways be fenced to keep cattle out of the river? If not why not. What are the likely public health implications of this? (many thousands of people visit and camp in the Wonnangatta each year).
What strategy will be developed to ensure the cattle do not re introduce weeds?
Have the relevant traditional owner groups been consulted and involved in the project?
What will the cattlemen by paying in agistment fees?
Once this information is in the public domain we can start to have an informed discussion about the merits of such a trial. Until then, we have to assume this is just another attempt to get some benefits for political mates. Hardly the basis for forming good policy over how we manage public lands.
The following excerts come from a piece by Grant Williamson, Brett Murphy, and David Bowman published in The Conversation. It seems pertinent given the current proposal to re-introduce cattle into a section of the Alpine national park.
This was not an on-ground research project into how grazing might be used as a fuel management tool. Rather, it was based on an assessment of satellite images of the Victorian Alps. They looked at vegetation maps from the past, and compared them with areas after the cessation of grazing, and also the impacts of extensive areas burnt by fires.
“We overlaid maps of crown scorch derived from satellite imagery following large bushfires in 2002/03 and 2006/07 with the location of pastoral leases. Crown scorch is a measure of fire intensity, based on the degree to which flames have reached a height which enables them to burn the forest canopy”.
They summarise their findings in this way:
“Using geospatial statistics we found that cattle grazing had no effect on the likelihood of crown scorch in eucalypt forests and woodlands.
This result is biologically plausible given that cattle are grazing animals, not browsing animals – they do not extensively feed on woody vegetation focusing on grasses instead. Our study is also consistent with previous ground-based studies that have demonstrated the cattle prefer to graze in grassy areas”.
Four days after The Australian newspaper announced that the Victorian government intends to ask the federal government to approve a new grazing trial within the Alpine national park, there is still no statement from the government about its intentions. The environment minister has had the time to issue a media release on the birth of a baby hippo at Werribee zoo, but apparently not to let the Victorian community know what is happening with this controversial proposal.
The grazing announcement has been a long time coming. In January 2013, The Weekly Times reported that the mountain cattlemen had toured Mr Smith to the Wonnangatta Station, specifically to talk about the re introduction of grazing.
Then last week, it was reported that the mountain cattlemen had again toured the Wonnangatta Valley with Mr Smith and also the Upper House MP Philip Davis.
The Weekly Times is reporting that a referral for the trial had been sent to the Federal Government on monday November 25.
Any attempt to re-introduce cattle gazing will be highly controversial. It seems strange that the Minister appears to be making announcements via the media, and not communicating directly with the people of Victoria about his intentions by making a detailed statement on the trial.
In a nicely orchestrated media piece, it has been announced via The Australian newspaper that the Victorian government will propose a three year cattle grazing trial in the Wonnangatta Valley, within the Alpine national park.
The paper reports that the government is supporting a three-year trial of cattle grazing in the Wonnangatta Valley, one of the main south flowing river systems in the central Alps.
“Victorian Environment Minister Ryan Smith will refer the issue to the Abbott government on Monday, backing a scientific study during the summer months of about 60 head of hereford and angus cattle”. The Victorian government has not yet issued a statement on the trials.
While previous attempts by the Coalition have been soundly attacked by scientists for the poor basis of the research framework, apparently this new trial will be “part of a scientific investigation of bushfire prevention options across 2200 hectares.”
Mountain cattleman Charlie Lovick is reported as saying he hopes this trial will re open access for grazing to a broader area.
The report says that the “preservation of Australian bush heritage will be crucial to the application” that will go to the federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, for approval.
The Wonnangatta was settled by Europeans in the 1860’s and incorporated into the national park in 1988. It is a lowland area compared with the previous attempt by the Victorian government to re-introduce grazing. One has to assume that should this trial be a success at reducing fuel load and weeds, then there would be an attempt to introduce it at higher elevations, where the science clearly shows that ‘grazing does not reduce blazing’.
The Victorian environment minister Ryan Smith (who is a member of the far right Institute of Public Affairs, well known for its anti –environment agenda) said “it’s not an ideological position, it’s a land-management issue.”
Assuming Greg Hunt approves the ‘scientific survey’, grazing could start as early as January 2014.
A spokesman for Mr Hunt said yesterday the government would assess the referral when it was received in accordance with Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
take action
If the prospect of grazing in the park troubles you, please contact the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, making it clear you would not support such a move.
Images of mountain grazing tend to be positive, often evoking the frontier ethos
From my earliest days of walking in the Alps, cattle were a prominent feature of many places I visited. I would often meet cattlemen (almost invariably men), who would assure me the cattle were a benign influence on the environment.
But what I saw was trampled wetlands and stream beds. I saw cattle standing in the headwaters of crystal clear streams, crapping and stomping the stream banks. I saw them spreading weeds. And I saw them selectively eating the succulent low lying vegetation in meadows rather than the flammable shrubs on the edges of those systems. More than once I was chased by a herd, and a scarey and heart thumping run and scramble up a tree got me out of a few situations. At Mt Stirling I saw that the ‘exclusion zone’ around the alpine summit was somewhat aspirational – the fence was normally damaged and there were almost always cows wandering around up on the summit. I drank from streams that had been polluted by huge animals with damaging hard hooves. At Macalister Springs we were warned of intestinal worms that had been introduced by cattle years before.
But my experience of alpine grazing was more like this.
At 16, I wanted a sticker that said ‘cattle grazing increases blazing’.
Cattle were finally removed from the Alpine National Park in 2005 by the Bracks Government after a thorough investigation by the Alpine Grazing Parliamentary Taskforce. Cattle continued to graze in state forest next to the park.
In recent years I have witnessed the recovery of alpine systems as cattle caused erosion slowly healed.
That should have been the end of the matter. But we all know that it was plain old politics that saw the newly elected Coalition government try to fulfil a promise to the mountain cattlemen for their support in ousting East Gippsland independent MP Craig Ingram at the 2010 state election. They allowed the cattlemen to return cattle to the Alpine national park in a sneaky operation under the guise of ‘scientific grazing’. Thankfully that was thwarted by the federal government.
As has been noted on this site, the election of the Coalition to federal Coalition to power has changed the dynamic, and the president of the Mountain Cattleman’s Association, Charlie Lovick, says alpine grazing is ‘back on the agenda’.
He says there is no other way to effectively control fire fuel loads above an elevation of 1,200 metres.
“How else do you reduce the fuel load because grass and scrub grows,” he said.
“We’re saying that cattle are a perfect balance to manage the higher stuff, to chew it down and keep it nice and green and you can more confidently burn the other areas.”
Mr Lovick red tape is the only thing stopping the federal and state governments from moving ahead with the plan.
If you’ve never been to the high country, it might seem sensible to argue that there will be less fire where cattle graze. But the idea doesn’t actually stack up when you look at the science.
The most significant research on alpine grazing and fire was carried out shortly after the 2003 fires swept across Victoria’s Alpine National Park, and was published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The conclusion was that grazing is not scientifically justified as a tool for fire abatement.
Many earlier studies have shown the damage cattle cause in the Alps.
Alpine grazing was not recommended by the Bushfires Royal Commission.
Victoria’s 2009 Bushfires Royal Commission was an inquiry of unparalleled thoroughness. It had no limits to the subjects it could address, was granted a $40 million budget, and sat for 155 days between May 2009 and May 2010.
The Commission made ten recommendations for research into fire related matters. The effectiveness of alpine grazing on reducing fire was not one of them.
The Commission recommended, as a high priority, extensive research into the monitoring of the effectiveness of fuel reduction burning programs across Victoria, and monitoring of the impacts of bushfires and fuel reduction burning on biodiversity.
The Department of Sustainability and Environment’s own Code of Fire practice says that ‘(domestic stock) grazing is appropriate only for significantly modified habitats’, such as roadsides.
There is compelling peer-reviewed evidence showing that alpine cattle grazing has no significant effect on mitigating bushfires.
So, as Mr Abbott works his way through his top order list, like ‘stopping the boats’ and winding back the price on carbon, cutting ‘green tape’ and so on, will he eventually get to the wish list of the mountain cattlemen?
It seems to me that alpine grazing would be entirely consistent with the world view of Tony Abbott and the mountain cattlemen: if you don’t like what the science is telling you, ignore it and do what you wanted to do in the first case.
If you’re not a huge fan of this world view, you may want to send a message to the federal environment minister, Greg Hunt.
Snow gums are the quintessential alpine tree on mainland Australia, generally growing at heights between 1,300 and 1,800 metres asl. Forests and woodlands of Eucalyptus pauciflora can look quite uniform from a distance, but up close they have such character.
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