Eradicating introduced species of animals and plants entirely from National Parks – and all other publicly owned land, including Travelling Stock Routes – is a great theory. These areas belong to all future Australians, so everything possible should be done to ensure that they are kept in as good a condition as possible, for future generations.
So has the Federal or State governments decided to finally pour the necessary money and willpower into tackling unfashionable issues such as the destruction of weeds and feral animals (rabbits, foxes, cats and introduced birds such as sparrows, blackbirds and Indian mynahs) on publicly owned land? Of course not! That would be far too difficult and cost far too much. Besides, furry little animals are cute, too many people might complain. Apart from cane toads, which have the misfortune to not be cute and cuddly, and fashionable to eradicate, let’s just tackle an easy option so we look like we’re doing something useful. Let’s get rid of a historically significant part of Australian culture, and damage the livelihood of some food producers. Let’s stop people grazing cattle – or even walking a small mob through – Kosciuszko National Park.
Check out the story in The Land Newspaper and read Daniel Lewis’s Sydney Morning Herald article.
The SMH article carries the implied view of ‘why should the general public subsidise stockroutes’. Well I guess it could equally be argued why should all Australian taxpayers fund National Parks, when only a small percentage of the population visit them? And why should residents of western NSW subsidise Sydney? Their taxes contribute to everything from festivals, museums, freeways and public transport to childcare services, though many of them have never been to Sydney and have no intentions of ever doing so. Residents of western NSW are paying for government funded services and facilities that they do not have on their own doorstep.
It could also be argued that moving cattle by walking them through regions with sufficient grass and water to support them, is far more environmentally sustainable than putting them onto trucks. Or is this not a consideration? Have these twits forgotten that without tucker, we will die – we are all completely and utterly dependent on those who grow our food. Farmers and graziers are not dispensable. The survival of urban residents depends on the survival of food producers.
National Parks are either already severely underfunded/over-stretched, or if they are adequately funded, they’re exceedingly wasteful. Noxious weeds and feral animals flourish in most Australian National Parks. By far the most cost efficient and successful way of managing these very important public regions, is to fund locals to maintain them – not a distant, centralised bureaucracy. Locking areas up simply allows weeds and feral animals to flourish and bushfire fuel to proliferate, eventuating in a thorough barbeque of every living thing.
If governments were truly serious about doing everything possible to prevent the incursion of weeds into areas of national significance, they would be acting on other far more obvious issues – for example the clearing of rainforest to allow high voltage powerlines to pass through, in north Queensland.
The future of the NSW Travelling Stock Routes, currently managed by the Rural Lands Protection Board, isn’t looking good. I can’t help wondering how much the animal liberation extremists have been pushing this barrow, using the arguments that suit their ultimate, but rarely publicly stated, aims. Anyone who believes that the closing of the Broken Cart travelling stock route that Janet Webb and her cattle have been traversing twice a year (to and from Adelong and her property in the High Country near Youk) is really is about preserving native bush, is naive.
Tags: Australian Beef Industry, Conservation and the environment, Image of the bush