The Dreyfus Files - The Age
On Easter Saturday I'm looking forward to walking in Victoria's Alpine National Park, around Mount Beauty. The park is a national treasure, with well deserved National Heritage listing.
Every time I go to the high country I'm struck by its beauty and the rich diversity of vegetation, ranging from rainshadow woodlands to montane forests and snowgum forests, and in higher elevations heath lands, herb fields and moss beds. Happily the enjoyment I will share with many other visitors to the park will not be spoiled by commercial cattle operations.
The high country is again free of cattle, the short-lived reintroduction of grazing by the Baillieu government having been brought to an end, not with a bang but with a whimper.
Cattle were banned by the Victorian Labor government from the Alpine National Park in 2005. It is well established that cattle damage water catchment, soil and conservation values; they trample stream banks and soaks, destroy fragile alpine moss beds, cause erosion, pollute water, threaten rare and endangered plant communities, spread weeds, reduce wildflower displays and cover the landscape in cowpats.
Anyone wanting more detail on these conclusions could look at the 2005 Victorian Parliament's Alpine Grazing Taskforce Report, which led to the Victorian ban. That report meticulously details the scientific work that supports their conclusions.
Victoria was actually a bit slow off the mark – on the New South Wales side of the border, in the Kosciuszko National Park, cattle have been banned since 1967.
The reintroduction of cattle to the high country was almost the first clear policy announcement of the new Baillieu government, apparently keeping a little publicised promise made in East Gippsland, but not elsewhere in Victoria, in early 2010.
In a media release earlier this year the Baillieu government announced that cattle were to be reintroduced at six sites in the national park, as part of a six-year ''research trial'' to look at cattle grazing ''as a tool to mitigate bushfire risk in Victoria's high country''.
Scientists immediately called for details of the research program, including obvious steps such as establishing pre-grazing data sites, and tracking collars on the cattle to monitor their movements. It soon became apparent that the ''research program'' had not yet been established.
All that happened was that 400 cattle were trucked into the national park, with the scientist nominated to conduct the research saying that he would not start work on the research until later in the year. Then, in a letter dated April 5, the Vice-Chancellor of Sydney University confirmed that the nominated scientist, Professor Mark Adams, had actually turned down the Victorian government's invitation to conduct the research.
Without even the fig leaf of a research program, the cattle have now been removed.
Let's hope that's the end of this unscientific approach to the management of our national parks.
The reintroduction of cattle seemed to be based on the glib slogan ''alpine grazing reduces blazing'' – a claim that commercial cattle business in national parks might reduce bush fire damage. It's about time the Victorian Government paid attention to the large body of existing, peer reviewed, scientific research, which establishes that, as summarised by both the 2003 Esplin inquiry and the Council of Australian Governments inquiry reports into the 2002/2003 fires, that there is no scientific support for the notion that alpine grazing reduces blazing.
When it comes to slogans, the ones I prefer are ''It's a national park, not a farm'' and ''it's a park, not a paddock''. Or, and more pointedly, as put by Victorian Labor MP Matt Viney some years ago, ''the mountain cattlemen might care for the high country, but their cattle don't''. Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke has rightly condemned the Victorian government for its actions.
Let's hope the Victorian government does not attempt to repeat this mercifully short-lived and non-scientific experiment again next summer.
