Farmers slash tree clearing rates in Queensland

WITH the release of the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) report on Land cover change in Queensland 2008-2009 – Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) Report, farmers can reflect on the positives that tree clearing legislation has made on Queensland and their hard work getting to this point.
Farmers have generally been reluctant to have an outside authority (particularly the State Government) dictate to them how to manage their land, when they have been successfully doing so for generations.
However, farmers also are well aware that government and the community attitudes have shifted over time and that farmers are continually being looked upon to deliver improved environmental outcomes, while also continuing to improve their own productivity and profitability.
Nonetheless, the farming community is also aware of past mistakes and the fact that over-clearing or clearing in the wrong places has resulted in some disastrous implications down the line, such as erosion, salinity, loss of top-soil and pollution of water-bodies.
Similarly, governments of past eras often overlooked vegetation as a resource (timber production) or as an obstruction to be felled to make room for farming and grazing.
Previous governments created incentives to tear it down and to hasten the expansion of regional economies and bring more revenue for the state.
In places, this added to environmental problems.
Most farmers will admit that clearing had to be slowed for the viability of the land that remained, and that work had to be done to restore (where possible) degraded landscapes and the protection of biodiversity and future environmental outcomes.
Readers of this newspaper are well aware of the raft of legislation that was brought in to assist in the protection and rehabilitation of landscapes nationwide, including in Queensland, and the problematic genesis of this policy.
However, since the introduction of the Vegetation Management Act (1999) the rates of woody vegetation clearing has been reduced substantially.
The SLATS report tells us that vegetation clearing rates reduced from 729,000ha per year from 1988 to 1991 to 99,940ha per year in 2008/009 (or about 0.05pc of the land area of Queensland).
That number shows the vast improvements and concessions that landholders have made, especially considering the vast size of Queensland.
These figures show that the rate of clearing has been reduced significantly, reducing the loss of the States’ biodiversity and the amount of carbon dioxide emissions though the clearing of native vegetation.
The rates of vegetation clearing is reducing each year. Current figures of 99,940 ha/year, is 19 percent less than the previous year, about 15pc of current clearing is on land that has been cleared four times, showing a lot of the clearing now is about sustainable vegetation management.
While it has not come without costs and challenges getting to this point and there have been some flaws in the government policy over the last decade, clearly farmers have a positive message to tell explaining the outcomes they have delivered with environmental management.
We have been shaping the landscape for many years to bring us to this point.
Mistakes have been made in relation to conservation measures by politicians of all political parties and also by farmers who in prescribing to the best practice of their day didn’t always make decisions that achieved good environmental stewardship.
Some of these actions were often required of them by the governments of the time (such as land clearing), and they have now been called upon to reverse these measures.
However, it is generally acknowledged by both rural and city people that although some mistakes have been made, that the rural farming community has, in the main, been the best custodians of the land over time.
Farmers depend on the land for their livelihood and care for it for future generations, so it is in their best interests to sustainably manage the land; and with a few exceptions, this has proven to be the case.