The March of the Triffids
By Viv Forbes, Chairman,
Like Triffids, the invaders are stealthing out from every patch of bush, surrounding homes and towns, consuming grasslands and displacing grassland birds and animals, both native and domesticated.
This invasion started in neglected parks and conservation areas and was given a massive boost by the Kyoto inspired bans on controlling regrowth, even on freehold land. The final stupidity is the use of carbon credit finance to encourage the deliberate planting of woody weeds on land currently used to produce food and fibres.
For as long as humans have lived in Australia, woody weeds have been kept in check by their natural predator – bushfire. But more reckless policies, promoted by ill-advised urban tree lovers, have prevented the regular use of fire in many areas.
As wildfires in several areas have shown, the heavy fire load in this creeping bush becomes a lurking menace as dangerous to neighbours as an unexploded bomb. It must be kept in check by periodic small fires, well managed grazing animals or mechanical means. "Shutting it up" is an unacceptable and unnatural practice.
The explorers Leichhardt and Mitchell both reported the native use of fire to restore the grasslands and both remarked on the grassland and open forest they encountered. However, since their time, there has been an explosion of woody weeds into the Mitchell grass country, and into many other grasslands. It is like a cancer on the land.
These scrubby weeds and carbon credit plantations also harbour all the pests and predators that threaten native wildlife and domestic livestock – feral foxes, pigs, dogs and cats.
The global warming alarmists and others have led us into deadly delusion. Trees do not control the climate, and eucalypt plantations and infestations are not worthy of elevation to saintly status in the plant kingdom. Just like grasses, herbs and algae, they are part of the grand carbon cycle on which all life depends. If humans need to worship and protect any land plant species it should be not useless invasive woody weeds, but the valuable grasses and legumes including cereals such as wheat, oats, barley and rye, pastures such as Mitchell grass and buffell grass, legumes such as lucerne, clover, soya beans and siratro and giant grasses such as sugar cane, sorghum and maize.
It is strange that governments keen to protect farm land from coal mining are promoting policies that result in the destruction of grazing land by state protected weeds.
Viv Forbes
"By virtually ensuring that many grazing enterprises will become uneconomic, as unaddressed tree thickening continues, we are opening the door to unsustainable practices and severe damage to this State’s huge land and woodland resource base." - Dr Bill Burrows, 2005 "Fact and Fiction supporting the Vegetation Management Act."
In the above report Dr Burrows looks at the alleged scientific foundations of Queensland’s Vegetation Management Act. He shows that aboriginals used regular frequent fires to maintain the grasslands and grassy woodland that covered much of Australia when European settlers arrived. Since then the reduced burning has allowed dramatic growth in tree cover which displaces grassland birds and animals, increases the risk of fierce fires and reduces runoff into rivers and dams. 'Protection" of this invasive vegetation is a foolish policy.
"What a dumb legacy the so called ‘Smart State’ will pass on to its inheritors".
Comments from the Leichhardt expedition (1845), mainly from Gilbert's journal:
"on 28th February . . . emerged upon "beautifully undulating country covered with the most luxuriant grass". (Isaac River area).
"the most beautiful description of country . . well covered with grass and well adapted for sheep . . ". (Suttor River area).
"from a hill near our camp we can see to eastward a broad extent of valley with numerous fine lakes. Smoke from Natives' fires is seen in all directions around us." (Valley of Lagoons).
Expeditions by Major Thomas Mitchell, 1830-1845, mainly from "Journal of Mitchell into Qld".
"Across the mountains (in Victoria), Mitchell found excellent grazing land - land richer than any grazing land he had found in New South Wales and named this country "Australia Felix".
"We now had before us (central Queensland) water and grass in abundance to a distance as unlimited and indefinite as our hopes of discovery" (p. 94)
"…natives had disappeared having previously set fire to the grass" (p. 101)
"… travelling amongst very luxuriant grass" (p. 106).
See this also on how the aborigines created the grasslands of Australia:
Government + Bunny-Huggers = Shit
ReplyDeleteWe (Montana alone) have some 2 million acres of standing dead timber from a cyclic pine beetle infestation. Yet every time we tried to put up a salvage timber sale the Fern-Feelers throw a hissy fit and take it to court. One Flower-Sniffer group's head honcho was quoted in the paper as saying he knew they couldn't win the lawsuit, but they could keep it tied up in court so long the wood would be worthless. They're so adverse to ANY logging they even hug dead trees.
Someday a mountain covered entirely with jack-strawed dead timber is going to catch fire and when it does it'll go off like an atom bomb. Too bad it probably won't be next to the eco-kooks' homes.
Perhaps higher carbon taxes will make the tree rejuvenate.
I have seen reports on this before, maybe or maybe not Montana, but the images were shocking.
ReplyDeleteWe have similar idiocy over here. In 84/85 I was doing a job in Tasmania, (home of the Greens) and drove through thousands of acres of timber that had been killed in bush-fires earlier. The locals told me that the greenies had insisted that it should be left to fall and rot where it was.
In my home state of Queensland at that time, had it occurred on forestry ground, there would not have been another live tree fallen till all of it went through mills. Sadly we have become just as bloody stupid in recent years.
In the Northern Territory I drove through many miles of country that was classified as preserver from burning. Having a rural background I was shocked by the stupidity of miles of thick dry underbrush that was just waiting for a lightning strike to create an uncontrollable bushfire.
In NSW the same applied to the Sydney Waterboard area, where we were warned that if a fire occurred and we were told to get out we were not to try to salvage our gear but to get in the Toyota and go like hell.
Idiots rule everywhere.
It's been probably 15 years ago now, the bunny huggers spiked trees in a timber sale. Fortunately, the trees with the paint on them were the "leave trees", which weren't going to be harvested anyway but left for the critters.
ReplyDeleteThe site in question was called Mount Baldy. Looking at photos from the gold mining era, not much later than the dates of the explorations you mention, the foothills have absolutely NO trees on them. The trees were kept in check by period grass fires. After a century and a half of fire suppression, those same hills are now covered with mature stands of Douglas fir and lodgepole pine. If it weren't for man, those trees wouldn't even be there in the first place. Conifer encroachment is wiping out all the fine hillsides of forage and the mountain meadows. If the huggers want things all natural, then they ought to be happy about getting that timber cut out of there, right?
Our Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture. When it was formed, they realized trees were a CROP. After harvesting them...they grew back! The Service was mandated to manage the forests for three generations in the future, but now is just another for-shit do-nothing bureaucracy taken over by greens and squabbling government hacks who never get out of the office, let alone out in the forest.
Their motto is still "Caring for the land and serving the people." But that dates from 1910. They don't do a bit of either these days.
Its pretty much the same here with the forestry, although they were a seperate entity for a long time and were pretty easy to get along with. It was relatively easy for farmers to get access to timber to fall and purchase and timber getting was facilitated.
ReplyDeleteAt one stage the father gained access to get poles for building a shed. The forrest ranger pointed him to an area of suitable trees, and when checking them for pricing, was so happy with the way he had carried it out he showed him a massive fallen stringy bark tree that was ideal for fence posts. He cut nearly 300 split posts out of it.
Now the greenies are running the show.
The Cooloola and Frazer Island areas was logged selectively for well over a century on a hundred year cycle with quotas and a minimum size to be taken. Despite this they were full of massive trees. It is now national park and logging is banned.
Most of the country under their control is off limits for recreational use. For years the equestrian people worked to establish a national trail from Far North Queensland right down to victoria - over 5,000 Km, but within a few years the tree huggers were campaigning to have sections closed down. Its still open at this stage.