Australian Farmers Bulldoze Bush to Beat the Law
10/5/99
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Title: Australian Farmers Bulldoze Bush to Beat the Law
Source: Queensland Courier-Mail
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 5, 1999
QUEENSLAND farmers are cutting down record swathes of virgin native
bush ahead of looming State Government controls on freehold land
clearing.
The latest Government satellite data for 1995 to 1997 shows
Queensland's average clearing rate has reached a 10-year high of
340,000 hectares a year - at least 18percent higher that the previous
five years.
That translates to almost a football field a minute, 24 hours a day.
The Courier-Mail yesterday also obtained alarming Department of
Natural Resources figures showing an explosion in the number of
Government-issued clearing permits for leasehold land this year.
They show a three- fold increase to 225,564 hectares in the amount of
virgin vegetation approved for clearing in the first seven months of
the year, compared with last year's total of 68,917 hectares.
Green groups, the farming lobby and Government sources fear the
alarming jump has been caused by a perception among farmers that
mandatory freehold tree clearing regulations are about to limit their
livelihoods.
Natural Resources Minister Rod Welford said yesterday he would seek
Cabinet approval for an "incentives package" - including new
guidelines on freehold clearing - in the coming weeks.
Mr Welford said broad scale removal of virgin native vegetation was
out of control and in need of an urgent solution.
"As a state and a community we've got to make a choice about whether
we're going to go the way of Victoria, New South Wales and Western
Australia and incur billions of dollars of environmental
degradation," Mr Welford said.
Grazier Verne Gibson yesterday described the push for greater
regulation as a disgrace.
Mr Gibson, who farms 486,000ha of leasehold land in central and
north-western Queensland, said he had turned desert country into
fattening pastures for his cattle by "knocking down the rotten
timber".
"(Farmers) are the ones that work and try and keep the country going,
and (conservationists) are stopping any development of any kind to do
with the land and that's wrong," Mr Gibson said.
Queensland Conservation Council co- ordinator Imogen Zethoven said
the findings were shocking.
She said indiscriminate land clearing ignored the long-term costs to
society, such as the loss of wildlife and agricultural productivity.
"No other country in the western world clears as much as our own
state of Queensland," Ms Zethoven said.
She called on the Government to legislate immediately or face the
consequences of further losses.
Agforce representative on the Government's vegetation committee, Gus
McGown, said only government action would end uncertainty.
Mr McGown said that until Mr Welford set aside compensation for farms
left unviable by the controls, he would have to share the blame for
any pre-emptive bulldozing of the bush.
"We don't know how big the bill will be but if you put the bar in
terms of restrictions a long way up, the bill will get bigger and
more landholders will have to leave the land," Mr McGown said.
The Government's Statewide Landcover and Trees Study - based on
satellite imagery - reveals about 40percent of clearing between 1995-
97 occurred on leasehold land, 57percent on freehold and the
remainder on Crown land. While clearing on leasehold land was down
12percent on the previous 1991-95 survey, freehold clearing was up
54percent.
Most of the clearing took place in the Murray-Darling basin and
brigalow region.
Mr Welford said Queenslanders could no longer ignore the dangers.
"The only excuse the southern states have is that this was all done
decades ago when no one knew better," he said. "We now do know better
and we know what causes dry land salinity and the increasing spread
of pests.
"My view is that no future Government should provide any subsidy or
support of any kind to any land holder who continues to degrade their
land. Simple as that."
Deputy National Party leader Lawrence Springborg said the Coalition
was opposed to mandatory tree clearing regulations on freehold land.
"It's very easy to distort this issue," he said.