The greenies have flexed their muscle over the Bracks Government in Victoria, which will be to Labor’s detriment at the ballot box next year.
The alpine grazing ban is a slap in the face for country Victoria and a symbol that Labor has gone to the wild dogs. John Cain and Joan Kirner created an Alpine National Park in the 1980s, largely against the wishes of mountain cattlemen.
The parties reached a compromise however, with the introduction of seven-year renewable grazing leases. It seemed that everyone was happy. So what’s changed?
More scientific studies have been completed and the results are much the same. Yes, cattle tread on wildflowers and damage habitat for some bugs and beetles.
But is the high country spoiled beyond recognition or tarnished in such a way that the eco-system is collapsing? Of course not.
Cattlemen and others who work in the high country help to reduce weeds and maintain fences. Parks Victoria is stretched to the limit and simply doesn’t have the resources to adequately care for the land under its control.
The cattlemen have a heritage that’s worth preserving. Their economic viability is important to the small communities where they live.
I can’t understand why it was good enough for two previous Labor Governments (Cain and Kirner) to support the cattlemen, while Steve Bracks says they must go. I can only assume that Bracks has given up on country Victoria and wants to solidify his position with the greens in Melbourne.
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Regardless of whether the environmental studies concluding that cattle damage the alpine national parks are right or wrong (and they seem to be right) the cattlemen don’t have a strong argument to continue to use land that belongs to someone else.
The fact is they are leaseholders. Anyone who has ever leased a property knows full well that a landlord has the right to decide whether or not to renew the lease once it has expired.
It is romantic nonsensene to suggest that this decision will destroy the heritage of the cattlemen and/or “The man from Snowy River”. Should we also allow dredging of the Ovens River so that the gold heritage is not destroyed?
I don’t know if it will effect the economic viability of small communities but somehow I think not.
Not all of Cain’s & Kirner’s decisions were right – look at the gambling problems created by pokies. Do you seriously believe that Bracks should run his government by their principles?
Not everyone in country Victoria regards the decision as a slap in the face. I’d say it’s about 50/50.
The whole issue has been blown out of proportion mainly by those wanting to make political mileage. I doubt that Doyle (if he’s ever elected) would reverse it. It simply doesn’t affect a lot of graziers.
In the face of emotive opposition, the decision is bold and shows strong leadership for sustainability. This decision is neither intended to be, nor should be seen to be, an attack on cattlemen, but is a clear statement on the environmental and economic unsustainability of cattle grazing in the High Country, and for these reasons I commend the government’s decision.
I am sure that you will be aware of the following status of grazing in Alpine regions:
Cattle had already been removed from Kosciuszko National Park in the 1960s – largely for water quality reasons – and from some parts of the Victorian high country, such as Mount Buffalo, in the mid 1950s.
Thirty years on, the ecological impact of cattle grazing in the Victorian Alps is one of the most thoroughly and systematically studied natural resource management issues in Australia. That cattle are damaging the Alps is a well-established fact.
In short, licensed cattle grazing in Victoria’s Alpine National Park is an anomaly that makes effective management of the park impossible and increasingly expensive, and that has for some time now compromised the pursuit of World Heritage nomination for the alpine region.
Essentially, cattle in the park:
? trample, drain and eventually destroy streamsides, ancient peat beds and other alpine wetlands, compromising the headwaters of many major rivers in Victoria,
? threaten the survival of a number of unique native plant and animal species in the region,
? cause considerable changes to vegetation communities across the High Plains (primarily through a great decrease in alpine wildflowers, and the spread of flammable shrubs),
? help the spread of many environmental weeds.
In addition, the cost to the Victorian Government of managing grazing in the park (over $500,000 a year and growing) is in no way recovered by income from licence fees (around $30,000 a year) (Sherwin, 2004, p.2).
As such, removal of cattle from the Park will not only enhance the qualities of the Alpine National Park, but will provide consistency in terms of management regimes across all National Parks in the state. This in turn will provide robustness to the status of all parks, and strengthen the culture of care and biodiversity conservation; the raison detre of National Parks.
In addition to those points raised above I would also like to make reference to the extensive anecdotal experience of Mr. Mark Reeves, principal of the Alpine School at Dinner Plain. His personal experience was that;
Cattle tend to be indiscriminate in their search for feed and selective in their ultimate diet. Their cloven hooves tend to be incompatible with the fragile alpine soils, and they may not have sufficient benefits as a fire management technique to overcome their inherent environmental impact. They seem to be there purely for commercial reasons. However, to suggest that ‘grazing reduces blazing’ is not my experience. Omeo for example, a region of significant grassland grazing, was severely affected by fire despite the areas of significant grazing surrounding the township (italics added) (Reeves, 2004, p. 87).
Those that claim that this decision will destroy the Mountain Cattleman culture also fail to mention the vast amounts of land outside the National Parks that their herds will be able to continue to use.
References
Reeves, M. (2004). Under the terms and conditions of the natural environment; it burnt where it snows. The Victorian Naturalist; Fire Symposium Special Edition, 121, 84 – 89.
Sherwin, C (2004). Proposed National Heritage emergency listing of alpine grazing licences. Letter from the VNPA to The Commonwealth Minister for the Environment and Heritage. Melbourne, VNPA.
Coming from a long line of Pendergasts that have, over the last 170 years mustered their cattle along these same tracks, I have to be honest and tell you that I am heartbroken by the thought that these leases may not be re-issued. This is much more than the story of “The Man From Snowy River”. This is something that these families share with the new generations coming through. This is a blood line that is passed on from father to son and is treasured by both.
My father is a hard man who has lived a hard life. He has worked the land and like his father before him knows it only to well and trusts that if he is good to it, it in turn will be good to him, and just like his fathers before him he is a closed book. There is no open emotion, but that does not mean that he doesn’t feel the pain of the loss of a story shared between him and his father. These stories are tradition. Give him a couple of glasses of scotch and you can see the tears welling in his eyes as he in turn shares those stories with me, one who may not get the chance to follow those same paths as my father’s father’s. This too makes me sad.
If you want to look at it in the eyes of a conservationist, make sure that you look at the whole picture. Don’t forget the fires of a few years ago, fires that destroyed livlihoods and much more. What happens when the national forest, currently used by the cattlemen, becomes over-run by blackberries and rabbits (also forgien but alot more damaging than cattle). Are the greenies, currently pushing Bracks, going to come in and clean up these new environmental messes? Will they be there alongside the farmers, young and old, fighting the fires that will spread more easily with this new found fuel? Of course not! By then they will have moved on to “more important issues”.
But these generations will be left with loss, and instead of showing their son’s their history, these boys will be left to learn about them in books. I know where the more important issuses lie!
In 170 years there has been some damage done to the forest, but take a closer look around you, cars, factories and ignorant people have done a lot more damage over a larger mass of ground in a lot less time. Why do we have drought? I know it isn’t the cattle. The Greenies tell us it’s the hole in the ozone layer, the hole constantly made bigger by the use of harmful gases entering the atmosephere, cars are one cause of this. Tell me how many of those big wig greenies whispering into Bracksies ear are walking to work?
Please take a look at the whole picture, not just what we are being fed by the media, and if you don’t know the whole side of the story travel down to somewhere like The Golden Age Hotel in Omeo or the Benambra pub and ask a local. I promise you, their stories will certainly make you think twice!
I’d also like to point out that over quite a few years now, the farmers in the High Plains have not been allowed to manage overgrown areas in the manner in which they used to. Back burning is now considered a big “no-no” and many surrounding areas have become quite overgrown. It is also a fact that the fires that occured a few years back could have been stopped from spreading so far if the locals were allowed to get on with the task of actually fighting the fires. Melbourne officials sat twiddling their thumbs for days. Crews sent out, Only worked from 8am to 5pm leaving the locals and the CFA to fight the fires at night because they weren’t clocked on and nor were the pilots permitted to use the agricultural aircrafts to dump water, that is until Steve Bracks turned up for a photo op! Locals were also threatened with heafty fines or jail time if the were to light backfires(Commonwealth of Australia, Official Committee Hansard, House of Representatives, select committee on the recent Aust. bushfires, 28/7/03). To blame the graziers for the outcome of these fires is just not right. These lands are their livelihood and they would do anything within their power to protect it.
Despite Mr Reeves obsevations, I have to disagree.
Michael, there’s a very good editorial in today’s Sunday Herald-Sun that just about sums it all up.
I wouldn’t acuse the Herald-Sun of being pro-green or pro-Bracks either, which makes their summary of the issue all the more credible.
Basically what they say is much along the same lines as my earlier comments. Too much fuss being made over just 61 leases. In reality the farming families will probably not be adversely effected at all.
The Herald-Sun editorial surprised me a little. Brad Worrall had a balanced overview in the Border Mail yesterday. Brad leans to the left and knows the mountains well. He was fence sitting, but I respect his intuition, which was basically that the cattlemen speak logic from practical experience.
The arguments haven’t changed in 25 years. I remember writing a submission on a Land Conservation Council recommendation to create the Alpine National Park. That was part of a year 11 geography project in 1983.
If you keep saying the same things long enough it seems a government can shift public opinion sufficiently to make decisions that previously would have been totally unapalatable.
I think support for the cattlemen runs about 80-20 in country Victoria, but people don’t feel as strongly about it as they did in the early 80s. A TV news poll showed 90 percent support across Victoria, but I know they’re not the most reliable indicators.
The comments from Mr Pendgerast above show it will affect the families involved. As Brad mentioned in his article, most of the families are not wealthy.
I could accept this change more easily if I had confidence in Parks Victoria to manage the land properly, but I don’t.
There is something romantic about the heritage, and although policy shouldn’t be determined by sentiment, it’s sad to see traditions die.
I’ve been lucky enough to observe the cattle being driven through Porepunkah a couple of times enroute to or from Falls Creek. It was a great site, and one that will now be consigned to memory alone.
Concerning Ray’s comments. I am a mountain cattleman and I don’t think I own the high country. But as my family have had runs on The Bogongs contiguous with the home property since 1851 I think that gives us at least some proprietorship. The State Government doesn’t own the high country either. Don’t forget that. Victorians do and as 90 per cent of them have consistently supported our heritage and our right to graze the land your argument is nonsense.
The 90 per cent support is a reliable indicator. It was repeated in a Radio 3 AW poll and a Herald Sun poll as well as the channel 10 poll. Our own polling gives the same result.
As far as conservation is concerned less than 10 per cent of the park is open to grazing so even if the environmental arguments were valid, which they are not, the impact of grazing would not be great. The push for banning cattlemen has come from a small bunch of jealous exclusionists at the Victorian National Parks Association. These people seem to think that by drawing lines on a map and calling the country within it a national park some kind of miraculous transformation has taken place. It becomes a mystical, magical, mythical environment where one might find fairies in a moss bed.
Unfortunately, this is the real world and calling the bush a national park doesn’t change it. What does change it, however, is poor management practices which result in devastating events such as the fires of January 2003, which changed much of the high country forever.
Yes, the Mountain Cattlemen are an easy target for green crusdaders, are they not? After all, there are only 45 families, so it’s no big deal. Unless, of course, you take seriously the claim that our society takes care of minorities.
Honestly, evicting the cattlemen has less to do with the environment and more to do with envy than anything else. How often have I read the statement that it’s time “this privileged minority” was told its time is up.
From a personal point of view I know one mountain cattle family whose licence area extends over 50,000 acres, but the surface area would be at least twice that. Their licence permits them to graze 150 head. That works out at around one cow per 400 acres for four months each year. No legitimate scientist could make an authentic case that this level of grazing is causing irreparable harm, if indeed any harm at all.
When I consider the contribution this minority has made to Australian culture in terms of the arts – in music, film, painting, literature and when I consider the vast store of knowledge they have of the area in which they live and work, when I consider their services to search and rescue and to firefighting I have to admit they have a value above and beyond any minor impact their cattle may have.
Mountain Cattlemen do represent an Australian heritage which many of us hold dear. When you look at the issue in a balanced way you have to wonder why some groups are so determined to remove them.
You bunch of stupid hicks. get a life and leave the environment alone you uneducated monkeys. stop pillaging the land and finaly give it a rest.
I’m not usually one to respond to nasty remarks that are left by others, however I will make an exception to the rule just for today. As a Melbourne uni graduate and apparently a stupid hick, if you are going to be so rude to others and result to name calling, maybe you should proof read your work first because a spelling mistake makes you look like the uneducated monkey.
Well said CSP. I edited a more distasteful part of that post, but left the grammatical errors
Perhaps Priopist might do us all a favour, lead by example and remove his burdensome and abusive presence from the environment and the world.
Geoff, give us a break. The Alpine School at Dinner Plain is a newcomer to the high country as is the principal, Mark Reeves. To tout him as some kind of expert is laughable.
Furthermore, every accusation you level at cattle grazing is wrong in the context of grazing in the Victorian Alps. The grazing density is nowhere heavy enough to to inflict the kind of damage you allege.
We’re talking about a grazing pressure of one cow per 100 ha over a time span of 16 week a year.
You’re alleging that 8000 cows are causing damage that would require more like 80,000 cows.
No species of wildflower, nor any oter species, has become extinct due to grazing and they are still as prevalent as they ever were. It’s just that in grazed areas you don’t see them for the very reason that they get eaten, just like grass, which is not threatened either.
Nor do cattle cause an increase in heathland at the expense of grasslands. That very phenomenon can be observed, however, on non-grazed areas, particularly those that are burnt by wildfire.
In addition to all of this is the fact that less than 15 per cent of the Alpine National Park was being grazed when the Bracks Government decided not to renew the licences.
All in all you’re selling the green line on an issue that you personally know nothing about.
If you knew anything at all you’d have commented on the feral deer problem.
A population of 200,000 and rising in the high country, wallowing in moss beds, browsing on native plants, inhibiting bushfire recovery, fouling streams, dropping parasites all absolutely acceptable to the Victorian Government which continues to protect them in water catchments and plans to improve their habitat as part of a concordat with the Australian Deer Shooters Association.
You need to acquaint yourself with a few facts.
As for Ray Dixon, and I should have said this in my earlier post, the land might not belong to us but we have a right of prior occupation over you and those like you.
People who make their lives in regions like the high country are sick and tired of being dictated to by urban based big mouths who can’t stand the fact that they’re not man enough to live anywhere else but in a suburban street.
Hang on Phillip, I live in the “High Country” region too, I earn my living here and I’m not an “urban based big mouth” as you so impolitely suggest.
You have no “right of occupation” of the Alpine Parks and nor do I. The difference is I don’t claim such a right.
Your argument is self-defeating. If only 15% of the parks were being grazed, then what’s the loss to you?
Not much from what I’ve noticed – there’s still plenty of room in the State Parks, which start at Dinner Plain and run all the way through to Cobungra and beyond.
Why don’t you put this behind you and move on? The Alpine Parks are off-limits – end of story.
So stop complaining.
My argument is self defeating and what is the loss to me? Fair dinkum, do you wear blinkers, mate?
So, you live in the “region.” I notice you were careful not to place yourself in the thick of it.
You don’t know a great deal about the mountains or the alpine plains, Ray. You don’t have an affinity with them that anywhere near approaches that of those who live in them, work in them and love them all their lives.
Who says I don’t have a right of occupation? You? And on whose authority? I have as much as much right as anyone else and my right extends back to a time when National Parks were unheard of.
Rights are not handed out and extinguished by governments. They can be suppressed but they can never be extinguished and I will go on asserting my right to graze my traditional lands every day for the rest of my life. At the same time I also demand the recognition of commensurate rights for indigenous people with whom I am delighted to co-exist.
Your comment about state parks which start at Dinner Plain and run all the way through to Cobungra also displays gross ignorance of the country. All the way to Cobungra, you say? That, in fact is a very short distance, Ray, and most of the land in between is in freehold ownership.
Cobungra Station’s freehold traditionally extended to beyond Dinner Plain to areas like Precipice Plain until BCR Asset Management, then the owners of Mt Hotham Skiing Company and Cobungra Station, decide to slice the station up.
You don’t claim a right to “occupy” the park, you say. You just claim a right to deny access to traditional land users. I have as much right to claim grazing rights over the land as you have to lobby against me. In fact, I’d suggest I have more right by virtue of prior occupation.
Your post exposes you for what you are – just another green tinged lobbyist who asserts knowledge he doesn’t possess and I’d back it in that you live in town in a house on a suburban sized block and that you rarely ever set foot in the country you profess to know all about.
The days of people like you pushing exclusionist land management policies that result in the devastation of vast areas of public land are numbered. That’s something the rest of us can be thankful for.
In the meantime I will be back on my runs next summer as I have been this year and I don’t expect that you, Ray Dixon, will be able to do anything about it.
Gee Philip calm down, take a Bex. It’s all over mate and you’ll give yourself high blood pressure if you keep carrying on like that. I’ve got nothing more to say to you because it seems anyone who sees this issue differently to you is fair game for your insults. Bye.
I’m pleased to hear that your uninformed commentary has ended. I’d prefer not to have to keep refuting the drivel people like you trot out consistently.
Likewise.
Hi,
My dad used to be the president of the Mountain Cattlemen’s Association and my parents have a state forest licence. My dad fought very hard for everything only to lose a hard battle. Come and join the cattlemen and other country groups at the rally in Melbourne to show your support-vist http://www.pushforthebush.org for more info.
Thanks for supporting our cause.
G’day Lauren. Yes, your Dad did fight very hard and he should be proud. And yes, we did lose the battle to prevent the legislation evicting us being passed. But that was one only battle, not the war.
We all know it’s not over yet. This government, if it survives this election, won’t be around after the next one. But we will be, and we’ll keep on fighting until we win.
It is nice to see you being so tame here Phil. Ray was lucky he didn’t get shot down in flames, and then trampled on. You have a history of being rather “passionate” on internet forums. Especially when opinions differ from yours. You must almost be grown up?
No matter what evidence people present you to the contrary, you deny it, ignore it and then become abusive.
The point raised re: 1 cow/ 400 acres is an interesting one. The cows are not spread out like that in distance. In fact, they group together, graze together and move together in a herd and create a path of fairly brutal localised destruction.
And then there is the issue of native title. That is one to ignore isn’t it Phil? Especially because mountain graziers have been in the high country for almost 200 years. Australia is no longer considered to have been terra nullius, so what about previous occupancy?
It is a good thing mountain grazing is being questioned and removed from these beautiful area’s.
Go Bracks.
Alexandra, you have a history of your own. Following people around the web from forum to forum merely so that you can lecture them on their behaviour is hardly a productive occupation.
Why lie by accusing me of ignoring evidence? I answer every point raised against my arguments and you know it. Essentially, that’s what gripes people like you who waste their own time and everyone else’s in vain attempts to justify the unjustifiable.
You’ve tried to pose as someone knowledgable, attempting to lecturing me on the habits of cattle on the high plains when it’s plain you know nothing about the subject.
Your claim that mobs of cattle group together, move together in a herd and create a “path of brutalised local destruction” is laughable for its sheer ignorance. It is the product of an overly vivid imagination.
Mountain cattle in Victoria’s high country are not buffalo on the prairie. You must have watched too many westerns as a child. Cattle move around singly with their calves or in small groups of two or three. You don’t see them gathered in big mobs . If that was the case we wouldn’t have to spend so much time mustering them – they’d all walk home together when the weather got too chilly.
You mention native title? I respect indigenous Australians and their culture. I feel sad that the Jaimathong no longer gather on The Bogongs for the summer moth feast. I’d have loved to have experienced it myself and I would also welcome an Aboriginal presence in the mountains. In fact I was instrumental in obtaining the Gunai Kurnai freehold land near Dinner Plain. The evidence for that can be found in the files of The Sunday Herald Sun.
You’re strong on mythology and short on facts, Alexandra.
I agree with your final comment, though….”Go Bracks……and never come back!”
Alexandra, c’mon and admit that you have never seen cattle grazing in the Alps.
It is so exasperating to encounter people who simply cannot distinguish between the imaginery pictures that litter their confused small minds and the picture that exists in the real world.
Cattle do not “graze together and move together in a herd and create a path of fairly brutal localised destruction.”
To whom do you think you are preaching? In the real world of alpine grazing cattle are spread out widely across the licence areas, some prefer the open plains and some the wooded and sheltered sides that run down to the surrounding river valleys.
Cows are vastly more independent than you think. There are no bulls grazing in the high country to keep mobs together and the cows tend to go it alone, or with their calves if they have any. Occasionally they can be found in small groups of four or five but even these groups tend to leave a lot of space between individual beasts.
Your knowledge of this issue is non-existent. What a ridiculous claim. It succeeded only in making you look silly. I have forwarded your post to the VFF so they can use it as a classic example of green lies based on a primary school understanding of grazing.
Twitter: mgorey
says:
I’ve always supported the mountain cattlemen and their traditions. When I was in form two (year eight) at St Paul’s College, Traralgon, we started school camps on the Benison Plain near Mount Tamboritha, north-east of Licola.
The Marist Brothers had (have?) a terrific hut there. I think it was on land leased to the Higgins family. There was certainly a Higgins Hut nearby. Anyhow, we came to think of the cattle, the stockyards and the cattlemen as a natural part of the terrain. Certainly they didn’t seem intrusive.
In year 11 (1983) I wrote a submission to the then Land Conservation Council as part of a geography project. I supported the rights of the cattlemen and opposed recommendations to extend national parks and create wilderness areas.
I’ve got significant doubts about the capacity of the National Parks officers to control weeds and vermin. It was in the commercial interests of the cattlemen to do so.
During our time living at Porepunkah we were lucky enough to see cattle being driven through the town several times on their way to or from the high country. It was a great sight!
I’m sorry the cattlemen no longer have access to that country.
I now live in Western Australia and I’m not across the issue as well as I used to be, but welcome comments on this topic.
*MAYBE* if they let the cattle graze the high-country [as they have for generations] the recent savage fires would have been less?
*MAYBE* we can doze in a greenie, THE greatest wilderness area is between there ears….
Cheers