More Grass for Less Salt

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.