Conservation and the Australian Alps Factsheet

Long ago the Creator made the land, the CONSERVATION people and the natural resources for the people to use. Spirit IN THE AUSTRALIAN ancestors traveled the land and left behind AUSTRALIANALPS ALPS reminders of where they had been, whom they had met and what they had been doing in the form of plants, animals and landforms. There are stories, songs, dances and ceremonies as- sociated with these places, plants and animals. When we see the stars, mountains, rivers, hills, plants and animals we remember the stories of the journeys and we know how to live in this country. This is our culture. text: Rod Mason illustration: Jim Williams Conservation refers to the protection, preservation and careful management of the natural Conservation: or cultural environment. This includes the preservation of specific sites or works of art, as a definition well as specific species or areas of country. However, conservation has a different meaning for different people, thus making the management of conservation often complex and controversial. Many of the conservation issues of the Australian Alps reflect these difficulties. For the person who enjoys wilderness, conservation is the reservation of large, unspoilt tracts of land. For the scientist, it is the preservation and understanding of ecosystems and the protection of species found there. For bushwalkers and other outdoor recreationists it is conserving natural places that provide opportunities and challenges including mountains to climb, rivers to raft or slopes to ski. For the town planner, it is the protection of natural areas for practical reasons such as water catchment in the Australian Alps. EDUCATION RESOURCE CONSERVATION 1/18 CONSERVATION For others it may be the protection of cultural heritage such as mountain huts.From a cultural heritage perspective, the Alps hold many remnants of the past. These remnants include Aboriginal people’s campsites and art sites, early European settlers’ stockyards, homesteads, mines, machinery and fences. For all people there is a need to conserve areas of natural and cultural environments as security for the future but different groups of people do not always agree on how to best manage these sites and areas. However, with the Australian Alps identified as a significant area for all Australians to enjoy, management for conservation has become an important focus. The appreciation and awareness of the need for conservation is not new. There are exam- ples throughout history of people wanting to value land for its own sake. From early times individuals have been concerned about the natural condition of the world and the place of humans in it. The philosopher Plato in ancient Greece pondered the question of the destruction of the natural world and its effect on man. The French Government Department of Eaux et Forets (Water and Forests) originated in the 17th century indicating an awareness of the need for managing and conserving natural assets back then. In the United States, the importance of wilderness was being recognised by the late 1800s. The American philosopher Henry David Thoreau encapsulated the thinking of many when he concluded that, ‘In Wildness is the preservation of the World’. Thoreau’s writings started a movement in which Americans began to develop an aesthetic and spiritual appreciation of their tracts of wilderness. This movement led to the formation of the Sierra Club by John Muir in 1892. This movement spread to Australia. As early as 1906, politicians were aware of the wilderness concept. In Wildness is However, many Aboriginal people are concerned about the ongoing use of the term wilderness to parts of national parks. These people believe that the term denies any past Aboriginal the preservation association with the land so they also feel that the term does not give due recognition to of the World’ the Aboriginal peoples’ sustainable management of the land for thousands of years. Aboriginal people had a presence in the Australian Alps for thousands of years and are In the time highly likely to have influenced the development of present day ecosystems. The way that before Aboriginal people act and relate to the environment is integral to their traditions and spiritu- national al relationships. Campsites, stone arrangements, scarred trees, graves and rock art are still parks scattered throughout the Alps and provide information about the way in which Aboriginal people existed in the Alps. Once Europeans became involved in the Alps, the impact of practices became evident. Land degradation, for example, became noticeable by the late 1800s. The drought... in New South Wales seems to have an additional cause to... those which elsewhere occa- sion extraordinary dryness of soil: namely the alteration which colonisation impresses on its surface; the herbaceous, high and thick plants; the continued forest; the underwood; the brush, which so well clothed the crust and sheltered the moisture, have disappeared under the innumerable flocks and axes which the settlers have introduced. The soil, thus bared, was and is, as it were, abandoned by a most prejudicial practice, to the constant and periodic wilful incendiarism, which, instead of producing the expected and former herbage and vigour of the soil, in fact only calcines its surface and eradicates even the principle of reproduction. (House of Lords Sessional Papers, 1841, pp. 12-19) The explorer Strzelecki wrote this statement after a trip in the 1830s. Strzelecki describes the loss of vegetation and the consequential drying out of the soil caused by clearing, grazing EDUCATION RESOURCE CONSERVATION 2/18 CONSERVATION and subsequent burning. This was only ten years after the first European settlers arrived in the Alps, illustrating the impact that European agricultural methods had on the environment. Other land uses were timber extraction for houses, fences and fuel, and summer cattle grazing on the high pastures. Cattle grazing was a significant income earner and employer for many of the early settlers. There was economic pressure to squeeze from the land every pound of immediate income it would yield. Another strong force against nature conservation as we now understand it was the advent of the Acclimatisation Societies established in Australia in the mid 19th century to improve the land. They aimed to do everything to make the new country look like Britain by clearing the native forests and introducing animals and plants from Britain. Ironically these people probably believed themselves to be nature conservationists of a kind, recreating and conserving the old country. One main supporter was Frederick McCoy, Melbourne’s first Professor of Natural Science. He introduced many exotic birds, including the Common Starling and the House Sparrow, which competed for food and habitat with the native birds and are still very much a prob- lem today. It was at this time that von Mueller introduced the problematic Blackberry – with every good intention. There are areas in the Alps today that are sadly overrun with this nox- ious weed, which manages to squeeze everything else out. Many farmers planted firs and pines in place of the native woodlands that once grew on the lower slopes and tablelands of the Alps, or cleared steep slopes of their protective vegetation cover. By the 1900s there was early evidence that land use practices were having a negative impact on the natural environment. One of the indicators was large-scale erosion that in many areas continues today. The following is an account of the changes observed over five years by the son of a pastoralist. Jimenbuan in the early days was very different from what it was after the passing of the Sir John Roberston’s Land Act, which gave selectors the privilege of taking the land selected before surveys. Some of them would put on more stock than the area they selected would carry... Before the passing of the Land Act... Matong Creek for about five miles above and below its junction with the Jimenbuan Creek was a succession of deep waterholes, there being no high banks, and grass grew to the water’s edge. Hundreds of wild ducks could be seen along the waterholes, and platypus and divers were plentiful. Five years after the passing of the Act the whole length, instead of being a line of deep waterholes, became a bed of sand, owing to soil erosion caused by sheep. The water only came to the surface in flood time, when it spread sand all over the flats. (Crisp, 1947) Wallace’s hut is part of the cultural heritage of the Australian Alps. It is the oldest hut standing in the Alpine National Park and is classified under the National Trust. It was built from slabs of Snow Gum by the Wal- lace brothers in 1889, close to the Bogong High Plains Road just out of Fall Creek. EDUCATION RESOURCE CONSERVATION 3/18 CONSERVATION As the evidence of human impact became more obvious and the remaining natural areas Conservation became noticeably smaller, nature conservationists in the community began to voice their in the Alps: concerns. Richard Helms wrote in 1893 of his concern about the burning practiced by the the herdsmen or graziers in the High Country with the short-term objective of creating new beginnings palatable growth. He talks about an ‘unsullied landscape’ being destroyed by the activities of ... inconsiderate people... replacing fresh and fragrant growth by dead and half burned sticks ... That ignorance and maybe greed should be allowed to interfere so drastically in the economy of nature is pernicious, and should not be tolerated. (Helms 1893) Eugéne von Guérard, born European knowledge of the environment is linked to the development of scientific con- Austria 1811, worked in cepts and scientific ways of discovering how the environment works. Lhotski, Strzelecki, Australia 1852-81, died von Mueller, Helms and Howitt were notable in a long list of explorers, field naturalists and England 1901.

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