“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.
———————-
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.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Sad to see high public officers in NSW going down the guilty-till-proven innocent path. South Australia is already there, and it is not pretty.
SA was the first State to pass specific native vegetation laws, in 1985. That Act provided that a deciding body, the Native Vegetation Authority, could set clearance conditions as it saw fit, with no appeal against a clearance refusal or a condition attached to a consent.
The only avenue of appeal for landowners was administratve appeal, to the High Court – to test whether the decision was actually legal (within powers). A VERY expensive business,and few farmers had the money for this. There was no way to challenge if a decision was against the rules of natural justice, let alone if it was legal to start with.
In contrast, if the NVA chose to presecute, they used the district courts. Much cheaper. But as the onus of proof was on the prosecution, they lost quite a few cases. That was not good enough.
Further, the penalties under the criminal (district) Courts were specified by the Act, and limited.
In the meantime, some people, like myself, had been campaigning for an effective and affordable appeal mechanism, to keep that administration within the law that they were entrusted with adminstering.
So in about 2000, the legislation was changed to provide that decisions could be appealed to the Land and Environment Court. a Civil Court. Here the criteria of judgement is if the decision was reasonable on environmental grounds. As far as I can see, there is still no provision for determining whether a clearance decision, or the conditions attached, is within powers.
Landowners can also now be prosecuted in the L&E Court too. This was presented as a benefit, as a conviction under the L&E court would not list as a criminal record. However, in the L&E Court, the onus is on the landowner to prove himself not guilty, so he is guilty till proven innocent. this is a huge disadvantage. It is much harder for a defendant to prove innocence than for a prosecutor to prove guilt. (EG, as in the presumption that damage to native vegetation was executed by the landowner). On top of that, the L&E Court can order restitution of damage, which can be pretty open ended on costs.
So it is now much easier for the Native Vegetation administration in South Australia to obtain convictions, and have much greater penalties and costs imposed.
The law-abiding in South Australia have good reason to fear (and mistrust) administrators with such powers, legal advantage, and non-accountability.
So Get stuck into the NSW Auditor General. For someone in a paid position of high public trust, to appear to support ‘guilty until proven innocent’ is unprofessional and unacceptable. Don’t go down the South Australian path and actually legislate prosecutions into a ‘guilty till proven innocent’ court.
In my view the Auditor General is guilty of official misconduct in that he has acted negligently by making statements that could cause foreseeable detriment to people currently in the court system, made misstatements of fact and has acted in contempt of court. The group should lodge a formal complaint with reference to the relevant sections of the criminal code.
The idea of innocent until proved guilty is a concept in criminal law, and is intended to ensure, as far as possible, that people are not punished for crimes they did not commit, even at the cost of not punishing people who did in fact commit crimes.
If an area has been cleared, and no authorisation has been given for that, then it must have been cleared unlawfully. Given the amount of effort involved, it’s a fair bet that the person who cleared it, or caused it to be cleared, is the person who benefits from the fact that it has been cleared.
A person cannot be convicted on the strength of “a fair bet” because it does not constitute proof beyond reasonable doubt. This does not mean farmers as a group should be assumed to be innocent of unlawful land clearing.
It certainly does not mean that the Auditor General should be barred from discussing the problem.
Wrong, Sylvia. For a start, clearing is defined as narrowly as the destruction of a single tree and trees die all the time, especially in drought when large areas can die.
Furthermore, there are numerous exemptions and clearing as part of an existing use like forestry with a continuous cycle of growth and harvesting. Clearing may also form part of a system of fallowing where the, entirely sustainable, and age old practice spelling of a paddock over a number of years results in the growth of trees that interfere with the rotation.
There are also innocent mistakes of fact, such as whether the trees are regrowth, or mistakes as to where the boundary of a buffer is actually located. Mistakes can also be made in respect of the composition of the vegetation and the quality of government mapping.
For example, the official mapping is so bad that it routinely mistakes gullies full of Lantana as Rainforest and the entirely innocent, and commendable act of removing this weed can land a farmer in court because some departmental moron arrives on the scene to ask, “where’s the rainforest that used to be here”? Using your logic, if it is no longer there then it must have been cleared, and the farmer is up for $100,000 to try and prove that the missing rainforest was never there.
Furthermore, native species may be growing within and under the Lantana but one cannot tell it is there until the Lantana, and the native plant, has been pushed away. It isn’t funny, people all over the bush have been prosecuted for less.
At other times there may be only 20 regrowth stems in a hectare of weeds with a total canopy of just over 10% (ie, 20x50m2 crowns @ 7m diameter) and this would be classed as forest under the National Forest Inventory’s threshold 10% level (the point when woodland becomes arid grassland) even though the forest concerned normally has a closed canopy of 85%+ cover.
This “potential illegal clearing” bull$hit was used in Queensland to pass measures that have removed from farmers a raft of fundamental protections of rights and liberties that are still enjoyed by every other Australian.
The initial satellite scans detected some 2400 “potential illegal clearing” cases involving more than 60,000 hectares. And these were used to generate suffient mock outrage to push the changes through parliament while bypassing even the statutory obligations of the Parliamentary Counsel.
But twelve months later after the measures were through and the vegetation Jackbooters had trashed any semblance of “Aussie fair go”, ONLY 5 OR 6 CASES HAD ENOUGH SUBSTANCE TO GO TO COURT.
Those who ignore injustice condone it. So kindly take your ignorant suburbanite simplicitudes and give them a level of time and place utility that can only be achieved in an appropriate bodily orfice.
Sylvia,
A lot depends upon the defintion of ‘clearance’. In SA, ‘clearance’ of native vegetation includes stock grazing, seed collecting, breaking off any part of a native veg species, brush cutting or collecting firewood. We have people come onto our property, which is too large to monitor, and we certainly do not benefit from some of the things a few can, and have done.
Our ‘guilty until proven innocent’ system makes it much easier for prosecutors to obtain convictions, as the landowner has to prove innocence. And if he does not know who did what? Then no proof of innocence available.
And if a landowner clears some box thorns? the missing bushes show up in sat surveys. Please explain.
But back to the NSW Auditor General. His conduct is unacceptable. In this I agree with Ian Mott.
Public officers are employed to administer the laws of the State, and they are required to perform their dutues in a lawful manner. Public officers expressing private opinions in a manner that could influence the courts – are behaving improperly. The Courts are as bound by law in their duties, as are public officers like the Auditor General.
Dont like it? Then change the law. But don’t try to pressure the Courts to lower the evidence standards they require. That would undermine the courts and bring them into disrepute.
Ian,
Is it not possible for you to express your views without being obnoxious?
Sylvia.
And then there is fire, remember the blog post by Jim Hoggett: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001206.html .
Helen,
My reading of the relevant law is that in civil proceedings, the court must be “satisfied on the balance of probabilities” that the accused engaged in unlawful clearing.
This is certainly a lesser test than that of “proof beyond reasonable doubt” used in criminal proceedings, but it is a long way from “guilty until proven innocent”.
Sylvia.
Sylvia,
You are correct in your reading. But that lesser test enables a significantly higher conviction rate for the prosecution, and much higher financial penalties for the defendant if found guilty ‘on the balance of probabilities’. Don’t discount the (dis)advantage of the much lesser test. In practice it comes close to ‘guilty till proven innocent’, and in the hands of zealous conservation administrators can be a weapon of intimidation, if not terror.
And I still cannot see where South Australians can affordably appeal the LEGALITY of a clearance decision, or conditions attached. This is not an idle, acacemic concern. I have had my skin in this game, and I now know that the conditions attached to a proposed clearance consent for us were outside (exceeding) the powers of the Native Vegetation Act of the time. They were also economically exhorbitant. We had to object to these conditions, so clearance consent – over regrowth – was refused.
Furthermore, Sylvia, if we had been able to obtain that clearance consent, our property would still have been more than 80% native vegetation. That would have suited us fine. But no appeal lay against a clearance refusal, or a condition attached to a consent.
So we accepted a Department invitation to negotiate for a compromise deal. But after five years of negotiation run around, we found ourselves conceding, under pressure, part of the conditions originally demanded, without any clearance consent. The experience was shattering, and as I picked up the pieces I began to ask questions.
The law abiding have reason to distrust activist conservation administrators. Even more reason if landowner civil and legal powers have been diminished by legislation.
Without the right, in practice, to the protection of rule of law and of due process, we are second class citizens.
For real conservation gains, the willing co-operation of the people on the ground, the landowners, is critical. Australia needs a first class conservation effort from second class citizens.
And I have had skin in that game too. Good way to burn out.
There is a disturbing, actually sinister assumption underlying this discussion. That is, that it is appropriate for the government to tell a man what he can do on his land.
Have we succumbed to post-modernism so completely that notions of ownership have become obsolete or irrelevant?
No man intentionally destroys his land, except through ignorance. In which case, the answer is education, not regulation.
The USSR attempted a “planned economy,” which is an instructive failure. Now, in this post-modern age, we have the same thing emerging in a different guise; the “planned environment.” There are rules for trees, rules for CO2 emissions, rules for cow and sheep farting.
Quibble all you want about the burden of proof in civil, criminal and administrative proceedings. Those quibbles are only relevant if you’ve given up on the notion of owning property. Indeed, that you’ve given up on the notion of personal ownership so completely that it’s acceptable to have strangers come unbidden and tell you your business.
I would call it trespass. *Sigh*. Has the notion of trespass also become an antiquated heresy?
Schiller.
Helen,
It appears to me that the LEGALITY of a clearance decision, or condictions attached, is exactly what can be appealed to the ERD court. The appeal is in the nature of a judicial review, and the legality of a decision is certainly within scope.
What cannot be appealed are the merits of the decision. If the decision is lawful, then it will stand, and a court will not overturn it merely because a different decision, one presumably preferred by the appellant, could have been made.
However, I agree that this does not make the scheme entirely satisfactory. There should be a body, independent of the Native Vegetation Council (as it appears to be named now) that can perform a merits review.
Sylvia.
If you want to be legal about things, in the Anglo tradition, the court “of first instance” is given “deference.” That is, the first legally-constituted body to make a decision is considered to be closest to the situation, nearer the facts, most able to judge the demeanor and veracity of witnesses, etc.
Thereafter, legally-constituted review bodies, such as courts of appeal, look for legal errors. They resolve ambiguities in laws, if those can be found.
Accordingly, if a legally-constituted body, such as a corpulent bureaucrat, reaches a decision of “guilty,” then the presumption of “factual” guilt attaches. The only remaining questions for an appellate body are those of law, absent extenuating circumstances such as bribery, etc.
The same applies backwards; if a legally-constituted body reaches a decision of “innocent,” then an appellate body works on an assumption of “factual” innocence and works from there. But in most cases, factual innocence is enough to close the entire ordeal.
This is quite common practice in Anglo jurisprudence and journalists are not likely to appreciate the fundamentals of the legal system.
They are even less likely to wonder why bureaucrats and courts have any jurisdiction whatsoever regarding what a man does on his land.
Likely, house-swapping, apartment-dwelling, rootless urbanites will see no sense in any argument involving ownership and stewardship and responsibility.
They’re just outsiders looking in. They have no notion. They might as well be foreigners, but they’re trespassers at best. Jurisdiction? Bah!
Schiller.
Sylvia, I have not seen the slightest evidence that mild mannered discussion based solely on reason has any influence on enlightening the ignorant. Indeed, we are now at a point where any sanitising of the message to ensure that it doesn’t clash with the urban curtains amounts to a serious misrepresentation of the character and intensity of the offense that has been heaped on the rural community.
I make no apologies for the odd bucket as my phone is always available to people being persecuted by the state. And there is rarely a week passes by without some new variation on the squalid misuse and abuse of power.
If the Auditor General were true to his creed he would investigate the veracity of the justification provided to government by the committee that investigated the ‘justification’ for the removal of the ‘minimal clearing exemptions’ under the NSW Vegetation Legislation.
Their report on the matter was full of extrapolations of threats, to absurd extremes, that had no basis in reality and had no assessment, even by statistical sampling, of the actual abuse of the exemptions.
And despite DL&WC being unable to provide evidence of systematic use of exemtions to their maximum extent, the measures were removed anyway.
So we have a situation where rights, powers and priviledges over land are acquired by the state via legislation that has relied on gross misrepresentation of fact for it’s justification.
That is, misrepresentations, that are of fact not opinion, made with a knowledge of their untruth, made with an intention that they be acted upon to the detriment of persons, and from which detriment has taken place. They are fraudulent misrepresentations.
But instead of investigating these very serious issues, the Auditor General is taking part in a conspiracy to enable the conviction of people in circumstances where the rules and principles of justice and equity will not allow.
And you have the gall to suggest that my statements are at fault for failing to be characterised by what Christopher Isherwood called “annihilation by blandness”.
Ian,
You do your position no favours by resorting to abuse. Had your posting not ended with a suggestion related to bodily function, I might have been inclined to read your comments again (despite the arrogant “Wrong” at the beginning), and to have considered them on their merits. As it is, well, I’m not strongly motivated. How many other readers would have had the same reaction?
Sylvia.
Schiller
While it is true that no sane man would knowingly destroy his property, and that destruction through ignorance should be addressed by education, that still leaves open the issue of value judgement.
A person clearing land for the purpose of growing crops or running cattle is unlikely to consider that they are destroying their land. Indeed, their motivation for doing so would be to increase their income. They would attach greater value to the cleared land than to the native vegetation.
If society as a whole has a different priority, and if that priority is to prevail, there need to be ways of preventing the land owners from substituting their own view.
Whether it is reasonable for society to impose its value judgement on the land owner is another matter. It could conceivably amount to confiscation of that property without fair compensation, contrary to the Constitution, but I don’t know whether that’s been tested.
Sylvia.
Sylvia, I live out of town, a bit.
For years we had power failures at least every second day. Many of us lost the contents of our frig & freezers, 3 or 4 times each year.
This was mostly due to a reduced budget for vegetation management. Most of us live on tank water, therefore, no power means no pump, & no water.
After years of complaintsn from us, the power co, sent its area manager, from the city, to one of our community meetings.
Under attack from frustrated residents, he lost his temper & stated “I’m not going to destroy the area, with avenues of cleared trees, just so you don’t loose power”. He was transferred 5 days later, but not soon enough for us.
Because of this one greenie activist, 1500 people had suffered great inconvenience, & considerable financial loss, over 5 years.
After years of this, we know we are second class citizens, but we are starting to get riled. Be careful we don’t start fighting back.
Hasbeen – “After years of this, we know we are second class citizens, but we are starting to get riled. Be careful we don’t start fighting back.”
I do mean this seriously but if the power system is so bad where you are why don’t you and the residents fight back and group buy solar/wind/battery installations and tell the power company to bugger off. A group of 20 Kw wind turbines from Westwind or even a second hand 100Kw Vestas turbine would probably be enough for you all with PVs on your roofs and batteries.
Vote with your feet.
To Ian Mott!
Do you mind if I borrow the last two lines of one of your posts?
I wish I had your turn of words.
Left the bush (Malmsbury Vic.) some time ago, but even then we had to put up with rules and regulations that made no sense. We just put it all down to living too close to Melbourne and being easy prey to people with a different mindset.
Now I can see, that there is no escape from them anywhere.
I wish you good luck.
Cheers
Many people seem to assume that the system designed by Parliament will be implemented by the bureaucracy.
The following comments relate to the South Australian experience.
In 1991 the SA Parliament passed the Native Vegetation Act, replacing the previous vegetation management legislation that was proving problematic and costly to implement as it provided for compensation to be paid to landholders who were prevented from clearing. As some may remember at the time SA was a financial basket case and any methods of reining in expenditure was deemed acceptable by the Government of the day.
However in consideration of the legislation there was a last minute amendmend to the act (Section 25) which required the Native Vegetation Council to prepare guidelines for the management of Native vegetation (which includes everything from a single celled amoeba to giant trees) and in addition an application to clear vegetation could only be made in accordance with those guidelines.
These guidelines were required to be subject to extensive public consultation, formally adopted by the Native Vegetation Council (NVC) and then gazetted. They are also required to be freely available.
Now here’s the rub! To this day the guidelines have never been put up for public consultation (except for some recent specific situations such as mining) let alone formally adopted by the NVC or gazetted.
In a nutshell:
1. no application for clearance has been properly made and thus any application considered by the NVC has been done so in manner which in the very least means that the applicant is unaware of the standards by which the application has been judged – surely a denial of natural justice.
2. Without the guidelines individuals in the employ of the NVC are able to, in effect, exercise power in relation actual or potential applications that does not reflect anything other than their personal opinion
3. Many of the regulations to the Act are inoperable as the guidelines on which they rest do not exist.
4. One practical effect of this lack of guidelines and subsequent absence of public input into them has been illustrated in the abandonment of care by local government (but prevention of maintainance by landholders) of roadside vegetation under the guise of “guidelines” issued by the NVC (There is a pamphlet so titled issued by the NVC but it has not been through the proper processes but claims it has the force of law). As a result the substantial build up of fuel for bushfires on roadsides over the last 15 years is concerning and recent events have demonstrated the potential for these ribbons of bushfire fuel to propagate bushfires at an unimaginable rate.
Given the very practical effect of this state of affairs on the livelihoods of many people and the grief of prosecutions where well paid solicitors have not gone back to first principles (did they have the power?) I would have thought that public airing of these matters would bring to heel an unaccountable few but how wrong I have been.
I first spoke to the South Australian Farmers Federation who despite “in house” legal advice in relation to the matter preferred to do nothing.
I then raised the issue in public hearings of the Productivity Commission in its enquiry into the Native Vegetation and Biodiversity Regulations. Not a mention in any report.
I then raised it with Graham Gunn MHA a vociferous campaigner against the administration of Native Veg laws. Not a squeak designed to correct this outrage.
It was then raised with Mark Brindal MHA, a person with a reputation for taking up issues outside the political mainstream, who seemed think that a public airing of this maladministration would result in an avalanche of legal action that “bankrupt the State”.
I have since raised it in submissions to a parliamentary committee enquiring into the Eyre Peninsula fires. Whilst my evidence was published in Hansard the final report did not mention one word of my evidence in this regard.
At this stage you may form the opinion that I may be wrong but this very issue was raised in person with Mr Tim Dendy the senior executive of the Native Vegetation Branch of the Department of Land Water and Biodiversity in two personal meetings and on both occassions he confirmed my position.
Similarly two experienced lawyers have independently confirmed my views. They will not act without a client to foot the bill.
As the right to clear vegetation is not a mainstream political issue (distinct from the populist movement to prevent clearance) and the potential for considerable damages claims politicians seem unable to address this issue.
Maybe the only way to redress 15 years of injustice in South Australia is to put together a class action. Any thoughts?
The problem for you, Sylvia, is that your majority mandate is based on nothing more than idle whimsy, unfounded perceptions and a total absence of any test of relevance or significance. And these figments of your imagination will remain no matter what sort and how many facts are presented by the rural minority to try and restore even a partial balance to the picture.
Your post above got no deeper into the clearing issue than the most rudimentary level. You equated clearing with destroying the environment and then justified the imposition of a majority will on the basis of avoiding complete environmental destruction.
Yet, the only examples of complete collapse of environmental services can be found in cities. Farmers merely modify their environment and in many cases clearing actually increases the populations of many species and extends the range of others. There are wildlife winners and losers in the real world. Other threads on this blog deal with how clearing improves the volume and frequency of stream flows. That is not to say that all clearing is good, far from it.
But it is the very simplicity of your ignorance, in the literal sense, combined with the breathtaking arrogance of people willing to impose their will on others based on that ignorance, that is so deeply offensive to rural folk.
For what it means is that we are subject to the will of unreasonable men and women. It is the essence of a reasonable person that they be capable of distinguishing fact from illusion, that they be capable of applying a test of relevance to both fact and opinion, that they be capable of weighing the significance of actions and impacts, and that they be capable of foreseeing the realistic consequences of their own actions in respect of others. And none of these attributes have been demonstrated by the urban majority in its treatment of the rural minority.
You and your kind have it all worked out. It is all so simple and clear, why don’t those silly farmers see the obvious? You ask. But in reality you don’t want to know.
The only hope for the bush is to put as much distance between them and their persecutors as possible. And then be patient, watch as the urban controlled and directed environment collapses on itself, minimise your losses, and then be ready to restore it all, but only on your own terms.
If only a fraction of the climate projections come true over the next century there will be few ecosystems anywhere that will survive without the goodwill of the landowners. But if these bozos think they know whats best, then the cruelest thing you can do to them is to let them go for it. Water always finds its own level. Pitty about the wildlife.
Go for it John.
Ian
Thank the lord! hallelujah .. praise be to the bulldozer.
There’s some pretty ordinary practices out there.
How much of central Queensland ecosystems are left e.g. brigalow, softwood scrubs
Or SEQ or lowland coastal systems for that matter. Or the Big Scrub.
How many Qld land clearing prosecutions have been thrown out?
Why do we have reports of northern Australian land condition saying 20% degraded and 40% deteriorated.
Now it is obvious why landholders clear land – I’m sure it’s not just recreational tillage – to grow crops – if you like to eat you’re involved in agriculture. Or to grow much more grass and perhaps 2x to 3x your beef yield per hectare.
But how did the bush survive and evolve all these millenia without the bulldozer. Why have the western streams such as through Charleville silted up. Why do we have 10x sediment going out the Burdekin mouth since Euopean settlement ?
When is enough enough. What is a fair compromise.
And how come your rural leadership has totally lost this debate with government and now caved in?
And how good is the bush’s management of land it clears anyway. How about some substantive information.
Where’s a future vision to vote for and to get on board. Where’s the new leadership. Something beyond “it’s my God given right to clear from horizon to horizon, from dawn till dark”. Otherwise be voted down until you’re all extinct. The city won’t care. All your kids are now working in town anyway enjoying their cafe lattes and hosing their driveways.
I still don’t understand. How is it that city-dwellers get to tell others how to manage their property? It doesn’t belong to them, it’s not their business. All city dwellers know about private property is “screw the landlord” or “screw the bank,” and the favor is returned.
Goethe famously observed that the gods themselves strive in vain against ignorance. But ignorant city dwellers should do us a favor and at least keep their ignorance to themselves and their cities. And bother each other about how the streets they drive on don’t result from trees and brush cruelly uprooted and the remainder left to bake in the sun, meanwhile pounded to inorganic oblivion by CO2-blasting monsters.
City folks can mind their business, we don’t mind, and they can return the favor.
What a breathtaking demonstration of ignorance, Luke. Lets go through them.
1 Q how much CQld ecosystems left?
A according to SLATS 2003/4 (NRM Regions)
Burdekin 66.7% woody veg (9.7 million ha)
Fitzroy 44.0% woody veg (7.5 million ha)
Burnett Mary 49.4% woody veg (3.1 million ha)
South West 49.6% woody veg (9.3 million ha)
Maranoa Balonne 40.2% woody veg (2.6 million ha)
Condamine 29.9% woody veg (0.7 million ha)
SEQ 44.6% woody veg (1.2 million ha)
Wet Tropics 64.3% woody veg (1.8 million ha)
But bear in mind that this does not include grassland ecosystems that remain as grassland ecosystems. The Condamine, for example, is often held up as a seriously altered landscape on the basis of the 29.9% woody veg cover but the original landscape was 60% grassland ecosystems. So woody veg has only dropped from 40% down to 30%. And 50 % of all clearing is of non-forest and grassland ecosystems where woody veg removal actually restores the original ecosystem.
Your claim of ten times more sediment going out the Burdekin since settlement is pure bull$hit. NAME YOUR SOURCE. According to the coral core samples, the highest and lowest sediment loads took place in the 1940’s. The lowest sediment took place when there was zero flow in drought and the highest came in a following flood. BUT SERIOUS CLEARING AND SETTLEMENT HAD NOT EVEN STARTED THEN.
And by what perversion of logic do you believe that a freshly burned grassland under the 40,000 years of firestick management has less exposed soil than a chained paddock? Or less than a grazed pasture or a harvested crop?
You and your ignorant kind raise your hands in outrage at the stats that show 500,000ha of clearing (mostly regrowth) but seem to assume that black fellas never burned any where near the same area, over 170 million hectares of Queensland in a given year. In fact, they would have burned closer to 40 million hectares each year for the same purpose. To manage regrowth in grassy woodland ecosystems.
Nice try Ian – Naming regions and not ecosystems. It’s the old how many trees in Qld trick. Take out Cape York, National Parks and other areas that will never be cleared.
What’s the defn of a SEQ National Park or Nat Pk elsewhere – a mountain that nobody else wants. Find some SEQ tea tree remnants for me !! And more than 1-2 bushes.
And some softwood scrubs, and some Wallum and some coastal north Qld rainforest. Or some substantial areas of brigalow. There’s about one chunk left of any size. Or South Brissy vine forest for that matter too.
Condamine – only find bluegrass on railway sidings if you’re lucky. But who cares about native grasslands. Only eco-tossers. What’s left of trees is on the ridges and on shit soils that agriculture doesn’t want.
Your claim that Burdekin under the cow is not flowing out to sea is pure uninformed dog-sheet actually.
Nature 421, 727-730 (13 February 2003) | doi: 10.1038/nature01361
Coral record of increased sediment flux to the inner Great Barrier Reef since European settlement
Malcolm McCulloch1, Stewart Fallon1,2, Timothy Wyndham1, Erica Hendy1, Janice Lough3 and David Barnes3
The effect of European settlement on water quality in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia is a long-standing and controversial issue1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Erosion and sediment transport in river catchments in this region have increased substantially since European settlement6, 7, 8, 9, 10, but the magnitude of these changes remains uncertain1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Here we report analyses of Ba/Ca ratios in long-lived Porites coral from Havannah Reef—a site on the inner Great Barrier Reef that is influenced by flood plumes from the Burdekin river—to establish a record of sediment fluxes from about 1750 to 1998. We find that, in the early part of the record, suspended sediment from river floods reached the inner reef area only occasionally, whereas after about 1870—following the beginning of European settlement—a five- to tenfold increase in the delivery of sediments is recorded with the highest fluxes occurring during the drought-breaking floods. We conclude that, since European settlement, land-use practices such as clearing and overstocking have led to major degradation of the semi-arid river catchments, resulting in substantially increased sediment loads entering the inner Great Barrier Reef.
Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra 0200, Australia
Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Queensland 4810, Australia
Present address: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, USA.
But anyway that was to protect Sylvia who is probably a very nice lady now mauled by blog-thugs.
Yes Yes Yes – we know your core arguments – but what are you going to do about your leadership who has pinged off and left you with it. Give me a vision for an incoming non-Labor goverment to implement – convince me. Let’s cut the b/s and come up with a totally new system that demonstrates some proper resource management while making a few bucks.
Ian,
My, what a tirade!
I don’t know why you’ve chosen me as your target, though. You cannot conclude that I equate clearance with distruction merely from the fact that I have used both words in the same posting, or even in the same sentence.
If you look back, and read what I’ve actually written, you’ll find that I have not expressed any view about the merits and demerits of clearance. This is for the simple reason that I do not have enough information on which to form such a view.
Sylvia.
“But bear in mind that this does not include grassland ecosystems that remain as grassland ecosystems. The Condamine, for example, is often held up as a seriously altered landscape on the basis of the 29.9% woody veg cover but the original landscape was 60% grassland ecosystems. So woody veg has only dropped from 40% down to 30%. And 50 % of all clearing is of non-forest and grassland ecosystems where woody veg removal actually restores the original ecosystem.”
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Ian is this the restoration of the ecosystems that were dominated by Buffel Grass that you are talking about?
Chaining and ploughing destroys all native vegetation communties, natural grassland ecosystems don’t come back any better than woody ecosystems.
I think your level of knowledge of the complexity of remnant ecosystems is seriously lacking. There is much more to a native grassland ecosystem than an absense of woody vegetation.
It’s always puzzled me Schiller. Someone buys a property defined by survey pegs but then seeks to influence or control activity on all property within their sight, and beyond.
“You are spoiling my view” cries the axe wielding homedweller.
“You are spoiling my idea of natural life” cries the conservationist
“You are spoiling my perception of time” cry the anti progress association.
“You are spoiling my concept of community” cry the Greens.
Well that’s because man doesn’t live by survey pegs alone.
As the chemical haze wafts across your front drive. And the noise drives you insane.
As your creek dries up and silts.
And as those birds and critters don’t come anymore.
Some call this progress.
Ian,
You have made my day with the turn of phrase “annihilation by blandness”. I had been somewhat at a loss for words over the following:
Several years ago I complained to the appropriate authority that a public officer had altered an application without noting the alteration or providing any authority for making it. Then badged the altered application as a copy of the original. I did not accuse the officer of fraud because I thought that it just might be poor photocopying. I further complained that in background briefings to decision makers, etc, (which we did not know about for four years) that officer had factually misrepresented events and thus undermined process. Evidence provided.
After about a year I was informed that my cpmplaints had been investigated. It was concluded that there had been some “communications problems”, and the officer concerned would consulted about ways of ensuring that they did not happen again.
Annihilation by blandness – gorgeous.
Sylvia, you said, “A person clearing land for the purpose of growing crops or running cattle is unlikely to consider that they are DESTROYING (my emphasis)their land”. And you then went on to suggest that if the majority urban community took the contrary view, ie, that they are destroying the land, then measures would be needed to ensure that the majority view prevails.
So you have clearly indicated that no matter what minority arguments may be put to establish that some or even most clearing merely “modifies” land rather than destroys land, the views of the majority must prevail.
You have used a very simplistic line of logic to justify what is, in reality, a very blunt instrument, weilded without discretion, by both the illinformed and the outright malicious.
And as for poor old Luke. I am aware of the inner reef surveys and they also confirm that all of the more recent data is within the historical range of variation in sediment loads. But, again, where is the reference for the ten fold increase that you claimed was fact. Admit it, you plucked it out of your bum.
And when supplied with regional data he tries to sidestep the issue by reference to specific ecosystems. I have seen plenty of wallum and if you had a rudimentary grasp of your surroundings you would also know that most clearing of wallum in SEQ was done by the Queensland Government for the establishment of Pine Plantations to supply house frames for the majority urban community.
Indeed, the only conspicous examples of broadscale clearing one is likely to find within three hours drive of Brisbane is the clear felling of government owned pine plantations and clearing for housing development. That is, for the two ends of a mostly urban need.
The same for your inability to find regrowth at Wyarralong. You appear to have been looking at the actual dam site for evidence of regrowth in the catchment. Do you seriously expect us to take your word that there is no regrowth in the scenic rim and foothills? Helps if you take the paper bag off your head.
Your suggestion that bluegrass is only found on railway sidings is strong evidence that railway sidings are the only part of the Condamine that you are familiar with.
And as for Michael’s “Chaining and ploughing destroys all native vegetation communties, natural grassland ecosystems don’t come back any better than woody ecosystems”, again, a partial factoid without context. The shere volume of regrowth in the annual clearing stats makes it very clear that woody ecosystems do ‘come back’ and with vigour.
And close to half of all clearing is the pulling of mulga and other tree species for drought fodder. There is no ploughing, the trees are merely bent over to give stock access to the leaves. And only the few large stems are actually broken off. The rest are still very much alive within a rotation of 15 to 20 years.
And, surprise, surprise, it will return to remnant height and extent before it is pulled again. Mulga pulling has been going on since the 1880s so this remnant that is supposedly being destroyed has already been ‘destroyed’ five or six times.
And if you had even a partial understanding of woodland ecology you would know that most of the tree species regenerate by lignotubers rather than by seed. And these bulbs remain viable in the soil and are very quick to regenerate and will do so many, many times.
In fact, only regular cropping will prevent the re-establishment of native trees, shrubs and grasses. And we crop less than 2% of our land area.
“And as for Michael’s “Chaining and ploughing destroys all native vegetation communties, natural grassland ecosystems don’t come back any better than woody ecosystems”, again, a partial factoid without context. The shere volume of regrowth in the annual clearing stats makes it very clear that woody ecosystems do ‘come back’ and with vigour.”
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You are just proving my point Ian. I said the natural ecosystems do not come back (ie. diverse productive grassy woodlands) and you claim the woody regrowth comes back with vigour. I don’t dispute that the clearing of natural grassy woodlands in many areas along with innappropriate grazing is the cause of the regrowth of dense woody weeds..
Doing more of the same (broadscale destructive chain clearing, cultivation and overgrazing) will only result in more of the same “dense woody weed regrowth”. This explains your re-growth statisitics just fine.
Use some brains and practice some better grazing managent and selective thinning and TIME and the natural productive grassy woodlands will return.
I think the government intervention is a great thing to force the farmers to stop chasing their own tails and will encourage some logical solutions to the woody weed problems in the rangelands.
Ian – you’re desperate and bleating – admit it you’re utterly buggered on the reef paper (LOOK ABOVE AND READ ) and all the CSIRO grazing trial work if we added that in too. Grazing makes a HUGE difference to sediment. Like 2.5 X today grazed vs ungrazed.
So you are the one talking out of your bum.
You’ve totally wussed out on specific ecosystems which is where your ecological bankruptcy rests. It’s the old total trees in Qld routine.
And have you ground truthed Wyarralong yourself ! Bet not. Take a drive.
Factoids in space again, Luke. When does a pasture become ‘grazed’ when it has formerly been ungrazed. You have taken single point surveys comparing over grazed paddocks with ungrazed paddocks but have neglected to put them in a broader context of distribution and time.
It may surprise you to learn that grazing takes place by degrees and this is distributed over a mosaic of paddocks over a range of time intervals between rainfall events. So even on a single farm there will be completely ungrazed paddocks waiting their turn in the rotation. There will be fully grazed paddocks, partially grazed paddocks and partially recovered paddocks where a rainfall event has not been sufficient to enable re-establishment of a full pasture mix.
And this variation is compounded on other farms and tenures all over the landscape which will yield even more varied sediment loads depending on the timing, intensity and sequence of the next rainfall events.
So at the moment you have only been able to come up with a outcome from specific spot points rather than the full range of actual outcomes and even then, with this cherry picking, you can still only substantiate 25% of your claimed ten fold increase in sedimentation.
And I bet your quoted sample didn’t include a portion of the ungrazed control group with a firestick mosaic of burned pasture, a la the past 40,000 years.
And as for the claimed impact of all this on the Great Barrier Reef, it is funny how only the one or two high impact sites are ever quoted. These inshore sites are always up the coast from a major river mouth where the fresher water in the current has always restricted coral growth.
Funny how we never get a full sample of sites, don’t you think?
Important to note it’s not just the volume of sediments on the reef but the composition & viscosity of the sediment that matters. The reef is more likely to cope with heavy loads of sediment that aren’t ‘sticky’ with certain ag chems. Sticky sediment chokes and tires juvenile molluscs, corals etc.
Ian – sigh
I’m not claiming ANY reef impacts – simply that the coral research shows a major increase in sedimentation over time. The coral cores integrates over the whole catchment. I’m talking land management.
And no – I can give you a whole range of outcomes for different grazing intensities. Whether or not there is appropriate fire stick farming – is up to you guys. We’re talking grazed vs ungrazed. Makes for huge differences in cover.
Anyway be that as it may – the Burdekin is a very heavily utilised catchment. Fenceline contrasts are very apparent. We should not be surprised at the results.
The only problem with that sort of stuff, Luke, is that it depends where, in the catchment, the plot is taken. Floodplains generally accumulate sediment, not lose it. So a grazed plot on a flood plain will merely collect less sediment than an ungrazed plot.
And if this important distinction is not noted then the extra sediment that is captured in runoff from the grazed plot will be recorded as a loss from that plot when it is no such thing.
This is certainly the case with sugar cane land which has been subject to some plain silly claims about sediment loss when the simple fact of the matter is that entire fence lines have been found buried under cane land that has been cultivated for a century.
The important issue is, again, the test of relevance and significance. For plainly, all the much lamented soil loss from the heavily cropped Darling Downs should have completely silted up the Beardmore Dam at St George by now. But it has done no such thing. Clearly the mainstream view on soil loss has some serious holes in it.
And for all the complaints about the Burdekin Dam, I just can’t wait to see the next 20 years of coral core data now that half the total silt load in our second bigest catchment will be settling in paradise, not the GBR.
Or will this be another source of good news that strangely runs short of funding and bites the dust?
It would appear Ian that you are full of contradictions.
First you claim:
“…. the highest and lowest sediment loads took place in the 1940’s. The lowest sediment took place when there was zero flow in drought and the highest came in a following flood. BUT SERIOUS CLEARING AND SETTLEMENT HAD NOT EVEN STARTED THEN. ”
Then you claim:
“Mulga pulling has been going on since the 1880s so this remnant that is supposedly being destroyed has already been ‘destroyed’ five or six times.”
And in the process of pulling mulga etc, there was significant breaking up of the soil surface and overgrazing which undoubtedly increased the sediment loads on the coral in the 1940’s.
Well yes most of the sediment does just move downhill a bit, but alas for the Burdekin most of the suspended sediment comes from BELOW the dam. Oh dear !
And do dams cause settling or maintain the sediment in suspension through release agitation?
Michael, would you please tell me, where mulga could have been pulled, in catchment that had any flow to the reef.
Just a minor oversight there, Hasbeen, but whats a thousand km and a great dividing range to people like Michael. If urban majority perception must prevail then, damn it, the Burdekin will just have to flow via St George on its way to the reef.
And Luke, claiming most sediment comes from below the Paradise Dam smells like a long dead dead porker to me. Again, name your source and please explain why.
But it is no surprise that the only coral cores we ever hear about are the ones in the discharge from our biggest catchment. But even that carefully chosen data needs a relevance check. Because even if turbidity doubled it still tells us nothing about where this sits in relation to the point at which coral will die from excess turbidity.
That was my point in mentioning the historical high points in the 1940’s. That silt load clearly did not kill the coral concerned as it is still there. And even though the Burdekin may be the largest catchment flowing into the reef this is by no means matched by its influence on the reef itself. The cores that register the changes are within a few km of the coast and the current remains inshore for many km along the coast with minimal fusion with the rest of the reef.
But thats enough for you to grasp in one go fellas. It is national tree day on Sunday and I can’t think of a more appropriate activity than to spend the weekend spraying all the young eucalypt seedlings that we used to encourage and tend, back in the days when our rights were respected.
Ian,
You really should read things in context. My comment “A person clearing land for the purpose of growing crops or running cattle is unlikely to consider that they are destroying their land” was addressed to Schiller, and was part of a line of reasoning. It cannot be taken to indicate that I consider clearing land to consitute destruction.
My second referenced comment “If society as a whole has a different priority, and if that priority is to prevail, there need to be ways of preventing the land owners from substituting their own view” is a syllogism. The conclusion follows if the two premises are true. However, I offered no opionion on whether the premises are indeed true.
People like you who take a hollistic approach to reading come up with responses that are as irritating as they are uninformative. I will not respond to you further on this.
Sylvia.
You’ve had too many chardonnays. They have yet to build Paradise – it’s the Burdekin Falls Dam holding back Lake Dalrymple. The most erosive soils are below the dam. Have a look at all the sediment work over the last 5 years including Catchment Hydrology and CSIRO.
Dead porkers baloney – the coral records match the previous flood history for the known part of the record. It’s a great match and a classic bit of work.
Don’t worry about the reef for now – think what a degraded shit land condition this great grazing resource is becoming. Been documented and ongoing since the 1960s. And any tree clearing varmits are only going to degrade what they clear anyway.
So if you are going to clear land – do they look after it. Answer no. This isn’t sustainable forestry Ian – this is resource mining.
I hope you will be wearing appropriate safety gear and practice chemcical safety when spraying. Have you recently calibrated your rig ? 🙂
“Michael, would you please tell me, where mulga could have been pulled, in catchment that had any flow to the reef.”
“Just a minor oversight there, Hasbeen, but whats a thousand km and a great dividing range to people like Michael. If urban majority perception must prevail then, damn it, the Burdekin will just have to flow via St George on its way to the reef.”
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Lol, oops, point taken. I’m not a Queenslander.. I didn’t think Mulga, Burdekin and Reef should be used in the same sentence, but I did a quick search and found the words used together in dozens of documents, so I thought I’ll give it a go.
However the Mulga pulling would have caused excessive turbidity and soil loss in the inland catchments too.
Oh and maybe the dust storms encouraged by overgrazing and Mulga pulling also influenced the high turbidity in the waterways on the other side of the dividing range too.
Michael, its just as well we’ve had some clearing, so farmers can produce some straw. Otherwise you’d be in trouble, ’cause, boy, you’re sure clutching at some there.
Michael, Luke and pals should take shares in google – their credibilty depends on it.