Grazing

Stock grazing has a huge negative impact on the ecology and cultural values of the Barmah-Millewa. Grazing is responsible for:

• reducing native vegetation cover and diversity,
• decimating Cumbungi and Phragmites reedbeds in wetter areas,
• compacting soil
• eroding riverbanks and
• polluting waterways with sediment and feacal matter,
• introducing and spreading invasive weeds, and
• desecrating Yorta Yorta cultural sites

Grazing also has an impact on the endangered Superb Parrot. The management plan for the Superb parrot, written in the early 1990s, suggested that grazing degrades the integrity of box woodlands, which is where superb parrots forage, and that cattle may directly compete with superb parrots for food (Webster et al, 1992).

Current Management of Cattle Grazing

Management of cattle in the Barmah forest has been very poor in recent times, and has not followed the protocols laid down in the current Victorian state government’s Barmah Management Plan. Ineffective fencing has allowed cattle to enter protected reference areas, cultural sites and special protection zones. In addition, the Management Plan places restrictions on grazing during winter, when large numbers of cattle are supposed to be removed from the forest to protect the box ridges, which are the only refuges available for native land animals to escape winter floods (DCE, 1992). However, it is rare for cattle to be removed at all. Instead, they are usually given supplemental food (Leslie, 2000).

Lower depressions of the floodplain that experience longer inundation have developed as Moira grasslands. Cattle grazing, combined with inadequate flooding, has reduced the extent of these grasslands to 55% over the past 50 years, a trend likely to lead to their extinction by 2050 without major intervention (Bren, 1999). Once vast rushlands, important as breeding habitat for waterfowl and frogs, have also retreated due to cattle grazing.

Fire Management

A common justification for grazing Barmah-Millewa is that it reduces the risk of fire. The only scientific study into this disagreed - finding that kangaroos did a better job of reducing fuel loads than cattle in all but two vegetation types, neither of which provided significant fire risk in the first place (Silvers, 1993).

On the other hand, thousands of years of Yorta Yorta fire management has shaped the ecological diversity of Barmah-Millewa. This complex patchwork-burning regime maintained an open and diverse forest structure. Recent experimental reintroduction of burning regimes by Parks Victoria and Yorta Yorta Nation to control weeds in Barmah State Park has shown good results. Such a combination of good science and Yorta Yorta traditional knowledge is the only way forward for holistic ecological management of the forest.

Friends of the Earth recommends the following:

• That cattle be removed from the proposed Barmah-Millewa National Park.
• That the Yorta Yorta Nation and Parks Victoria continue to work on the reintroduction of traditional burning regimes in the proposed Barmah-Millewa National Park.
• That an appropriate weed control program be developed for the proposed Barmah-Millewa National Park, involving traditional fire regimes, appropriate and extensive flooding of all vegetation types except box woodlands, and manual removal of weed species.

Further information, and details on the more specific recommendations made by Friends of the Earth, go to our Submission to the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council’s River Red Gum Investigation, December 2006.

References:

Webster, R & Ahern L. 1992. Management for conservation of the Superb Parrot (Polytelis swainsonii) in New South Wales and Victoria. Melbourne: Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

DCE. 1992. Barmah Management Plan. Melbourne: Department of Conservation and Environment.

Leslie, D. 2000. A grazing strategy for State forests in Riverina Region. State Forests NSW, Riverina Region.

Bren, L. 1999. River red gum: the tree and the forests as a riparian icon. Paper given at Red Gum River Guardians: A seminar to promote better understanding of the ecology, conservation and management of Red Gum Ecosystems in Northern Victoria, Echuca, 13th October 1999.

Silvers, L. (1993). The effects of grazing on fuel loads and vegetation in the Barmah forest, Victoria. Honours Thesis