By Lisa Macdonald

The outgoing chairperson of the national State of the Environment Advisory Committee, Ian Lowe, has warned that any strengthening of pastoral leases in response to the National Farmers Federation's anti-Wik campaign would rapidly increase range land degradation.

Lowe's warning follows a statement issued last month by a broad alliance of environment groups (including Friends of the Earth, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Conservation Councils of WA, SA Queensland and NSW, and the NT Arid Lands Environment Centre). This opposed the upgrading of pastoral leases to freehold title, saying the environmental impact would be disastrous.

ACF executive director Jim Downey points out that pastoralists are a very small percentage of all farmers, but control more than 40% of Australia. The pastoral industry, he says, "has a record of environmental degradation and mismanagement, harming the environment by overgrazing, bad burning practices and weed invasion".

The environment alliance says that the if the NFF's demands for the upgrading of grazing leases and further tax relief to allow non-pastoral uses of the land are acceded to, it would:

• <~>allow unsustainable land uses such as broad scale land clearing, intensive irrigated agriculture, native forest logging and unregulated tourism;

• <~>curtail existing controls on land use (e.g., tree clearing controls in Queensland) that apply only to leasehold land;

• <~>pre-empt and prevent the development of a comprehensive and adequate national reserve system as promised in federal government policy;

• <~>remove government controls such as periodic review and lease renewal, which currently provide mechanisms to promote ecologically sustainable land management on leasehold pastoral land;

• <~>allow non-pastoral uses which introduce new kinds and levels of threats to biological diversity;

• <~>reduce flexibility of decision making in the event of climate change and further declines in biodiversity;

• <~>reduce public access to information about the environmental value of lands and increase land speculation;

• <~>remove the capacity of governments to adjust stocking rates, set logging rates, require land rehabilitation and re-establish or conserve wildlife corridors.

This article was posted on the Green Left Weekly Home Page.
For further details regarding subscriptions and
correspondence please contact glw@greenleft.org.au

Tools

• Bookmark This Page
• Print This Page