Cattle Banned! Finally some protection for Victoria's High Plains

Victoria's high country is safe from cattle grazing in the national park. The Victorian Government says it is not ruling out a High Court challenge, but lets hope they don't waste their money. It's enough that they've reneged on other environmentally important issues, like restricting wind farms.

After the cattle were kicked out last time around, the plants grew profusely. I've been visiting the high plains for forty years and, until a couple of years after the cattle had left, I had never in my life seen such a density of growth with so many different plants growing together.

Here is the media release from Tony Burke MP, the Federal Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities:

A proposal by the Victorian Government to reintroduce cattle to the National Heritage listed Alpine National Park in Victoria has been determined to be clearly unacceptable under national environmental law and will not proceed.

Environment Minister Tony Burke said after careful consideration he had accepted the advice of the Environment Department that the proposal to reintroduce cattle to the Alpine National Park would have a clearly unacceptable impact on the national heritage values of the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves National Heritage Place.

In December, the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment submitted a proposal to the Federal Government for assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999 to reintroduce up to 400 cattle to graze in the state's Alpine National Park for up to five months a year for five years, as a research trial.

Nine out of the 10 sites selected by the Victorian Government are partly or entirely located within the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves which was included on the National Heritage List in 2008. The area contains a number of important ecological environments.

Last year, the Federal Government made regulatory changes that formally recognise the significant impact of livestock grazing on the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves National Heritage place under the EPBC Act.

The regulation specifies that grazing of domestic stock including cattle could have a significant impact on the heritage values of the Australian Alps Heritage Area and that any future new grazing activities proposed in the Australian Alps Heritage Area, including the Alpine National Park, need to be assessed under the EPBC Act.

"My decision is based on a thorough and rigorous assessment of the proposal, taking into account the advice of my department," Mr Burke said.

"I have accepted the advice of my department that the proposed action of reintroducing up to 400 cattle would have a clearly unacceptable impact on the listed national heritage values of the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves National Heritage Place.

"The assessment has shown there is irrefutable evidence that cattle grazing would damage the sensitive natural environment, disturb the remote and wild character of the area, detract from aesthetic values, and erode its heritage values.

"While my personal views on this matter are known, in determining this decision I have considered only whether or not the proposed action would be in breach of the EPBC Act.

The Alpine National Park forms part of the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves national heritage place that was listed on the National Heritage List to identify and protect the wide range of nationally significant natural and cultural values found within it. The parks and reserves extend over the Victorian, New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory borders and in total cover over 1.6 million hectares.

The ecology crisis and shrinking biodiversity in a warming world

I'm putting together a few links on ecology and biodiversity. Most nature lovers will have observed changes in their local flora and fauna in recent years. There will be many more changes over coming years as species are affected by the altered atmosphere and the warming earth, which will have multiple and cascading effects affecting food webs and local habitats. Here is some further reading on the subject.

Jeff Harvey responded to Eli Rabett's request for reading material and suggested places to start learning about the biodiversity crisis. Dr Harvey recommends the Millenium Assessment Reports as a starting point.

Bart has posted some useful links on the topic, and the thread includes some excellent posts by Jeff Harvey and Bernard J, though the thread got hijacked further along the way. There is discussion of the Amazon, on inter-relationships and how broken links will have a cascading effect; and the notion of 'extinction debt' and the lingering inevitable death of species.

My attention was drawn to this observation by Bernard J., because it relates to the mountains I love and look on every day from my window, (although I am not aware of any Gondwanan Nothofagus within walking distance of our place):

In Australia one good example is the remnant Gondwanan Nothofagus forest associations clinging to the tops of the highest mountain peaks along the Great Dividing Range. Whilst they might be able to persist in warm temperatures, they do not thrive as well as the pyrophilic eucalptus associations at lower altitude. Even slight warming increases the frequency of fire, and the capacity for eucalypts to regenerate more quickly than the Nothofagus will see the latter continue to retreat to the apices in the face of advancing eucalyptus forest, and then blink out when there is no more mountain left. This will remove thousands of species unque to the Nothofagus associations, simply because of the vulnerability of one foundation species.

This post on climate change and extinction, from Kate at ClimateSight, is worth reading and reading again. In it she looks at how past extinction events provide ample warning of the disaster we face.

SkepticalScience.com has a post about extinctions, written by Barry Brook.

Some biodiversity blogs are listed on the Pimm Group website.

And for those of us who have recently experienced extreme heat, and wondered if we and other species would survive very high temperatures and humidity if it lasted for more than a few days, the answer is probably not, as discussed here.

An illustration of what happens when one part of the food chain is seriously diminished in numbers, is discussed in this recent article about the current reduction in the number of larger fish in the ocean.

Some scientists are proposing intervention by eliminating specific threatened species for the greater good of many more species. A topic that would be highly controversial in the public arena, one imagines.