DOCSLIB.ORG

Drought Mitigation in Australia Reducing the Losses but Not Removing the Hazard

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Drought Mitigation in Australia Reducing the Losses but Not Removing the Hazard University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 1986 DROUGHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA REDUCING THE LOSSES BUT NOT REMOVING THE HAZARD R. L. Heathcote Flinders University of South Australia Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Heathcote, R. L., "DROUGHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA REDUCING THE LOSSES BUT NOT REMOVING THE HAZARD" (1986). Great Plains Quarterly. 979. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/979 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. DROUGHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA REDUCING THE LOSSES BUT NOT REMOVING THE HAZARD R. L. HEATHCOTE In Australia technology has reduced but not eliminated the impact of drought and seems set DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA: CHRONOLOGIES AND IMPACTS to do the same for the foreseeable CO2-in­ duced climate change. To document this Periods of unseasonally low rainfall caused claim, I wish here to consider first a brief considerable distress to the Australian aborig­ history of drought in Australia-pointing up ines prior to European settlement, and it is some parallels and contrasts with the North possible to provide a reasonably precise chron­ American experience; second, to outline the ology of droughts in Australia from the mid­ various strategies (technological and nontech­ nineteenth century onward (Foley 1957; Gibbs nological) that have been adopted to try to and Maher 1967). The high variability of the mitigate drought; third, to review the current Australian rainfall and the frequency with thinking on the effect of increasing levels of which annual totals fall below the average has atmospheric CO2 on the Australian climate had significant impact upon the pastoral and and their releva9ce to agricultural and pastoral agricultural activities in Australia. activities through possible modification of the Droughts retarded land settlement in three incidence and intensity of drought; and finally periods. After a decade of relatively good to evaluate the history of technological adjust­ rainfalls and settlement expansion in the ments to drought stresses and to try to forecast 1870s, South Australia and to a lesser extent the success or failure of such adjustments to New South Wales and Victoria suffered foreseeable climate change. droughts in the 1880s (Meinig 1962). A further widespread drought at the turn of the century A native of England, R. L. Heathcote is reader in affected the main pastoral areas of New South geography at the Flinders University of South Wales and Queensland, and the combination Australia. He is the author of Australia (1975), of economic depression and drought in the The Arid Lands (1985), and editor of Percep­ 1930s and early 1940s forced considerable tions of Desertification (1980). restructuring of the southwestern and south­ eastern Australia cereal producing areas (Proc­ [GPQ 6 (Summer 1986): 225-237.) tor 1940). 225 226 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1986 The worst droughts in Australia have economic impacts that the technological de­ brought about losses to pastoralists and farm­ fenses have mainly been marshaled. ers. (Bates 1976; Lovett 1973; Scott 1983; Waring 1976). In fact, the economic losses TECHNOLOGICAL DEFENSES AGAINST from drought make it the most expensive DROUGHT IMPACTS natural hazard facing Australia. Although no one has been killed, the economic cost from In the North American Great Plains and in 1945 to 1975 averaged over $100 million a Australia the patterns and processes of land year, roughly four times the cost of any other settlement, along with innovative technologies hazard (Heathcote 1979, Table 1.3). to reduce the production costs of land clear­ The 1982-83 drought shows not only the ance, tillage, harvesting and communications, continuing significance of the economic losses have been remarkably similar since the mid­ but the variety of ways in which they are made nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, there­ manifest (table 1). Hidden behind this array of fore, the social and technological responses to national impacts are the regional, community, drought have also been similar. and personal hardships that no official statis­ Whether the Australians have ever fully tics can adequately measure, but that occa­ accepted drought as endemic to the continent sionally come to light through journalistic is debatable (Heathcote 1969), but there is no activity (see, for instance, "Special Report: doubt that as settlement spread down the Australia's 'Great Dry'," Time, 28 March rainfall gradient into the interior, settlers 1983). That droughts in Australia have had evolved pragmatic, often technologically and continue to have other significant impacts based, strategies to cope with agricultural we shall see later, but it has been toward these drought. TABLE 1 THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THE 1982-83 DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA 1. 67% of the national pastoral and agricultural properties were officially recognized to be drought affected (67,000 properties). 2. Wheat crop failures led to an average 45% decrease in the quantity of wheat sold per farm, and wheat receipts per farm declined 58%. 3. The 1982-83 wheat harvest (7.8 M tonnes) was 47.6% of the 1981-82 harvest, and average yield (0.76 tonnes per hectare) was down 40% from the previous five year average. 4. National employment reduced by 2% (100,000 persons). 5. Overall rural output declined by 18% leading to a 1.1 % decline in national output. 6. 1982-83 decrease in industrial production: Chemical fertilizer production 11% Flour and cereal production 10% Railway transport receipts 6% 7. Disaster relief paid by Commonwealth and state governments: 1980-81 loans $ 60 million 1982-83 loans $120 million 1982 freight subsidy $ 47 million 1982 fodder subsidy $100 million SOURCES: Campbell, et al. 1983, and estimates by Commonwealth Bureau of Agricultural Economics DROUQHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA 227 Pastoral strategies. Conscious spatial diversi­ Machinery to harvest drought-stunted crops­ fication of their properties reduced the notably Ridley's "Stripper" of 1843-was drought losses of pastoralists like Sidney developed also in South Australia before Kidman (1857-1935), James Tyson becoming available in Victoria and New South (1819-1898), and others with similar capital Wales. South Australian farmers also were and ingenuity. But for the majority-the experimenting with drought-resistant wheat smaller capitalists-the strategies were limited varieties (Williams 1974) before William J. to increasing surface water storage by dams Farrer began to cross drought-resistant Indian and tanks and then, when oil-drilling technol­ wheats with good quality Canadian baking ogy became available from the United States wheats and with the well-established, high­ in the 1870s and 1880s, to seeking for water yielding but vulnerable Purple Straw wheats. deeper down: "If the Lord won't send us water, The results, especially "Federation," produced oh, we'll get it from the devil; Yes, we'll get it during the last years of the 1895-1902 drought, from the devil deeper down" (A. B. Paterson, were to push the wheat fields further down the "Song of the Artesian Water," quoted in rainfall gradient over the next 25 years (Wrig­ Lovett 1973, 193). ley 1981). Fencing of the range from the 1870s The apparent success of highly mechanized onward helped some to rotate the stock broad acre grain farming using scientifically grazing pressure, but droughts always forced applied fertilizers and legume pastures in the stock back upon the few permanent watering semiarid portions of South Australia from the points from where the feed had been long 1950s onward led to the formation of a gone. Evacuation of stock to rented drought­ specialized agency in the 1970s (SAGRIC free pastures or (illegally) to the public travel­ International Pty. Ltd.). It has been invited to ing stock reserves depended upon their com­ develop dry farming systems in north Africa mercial value; often it was cheaper to let and southwest Asia (SAGRIC n.d.). The animals take their chance in the drought­ emphasis is upon adapting successful technolo­ ridden home paddocks. gies developed in South Australia to areas of Storage of drought fodder has rarely been similar climate around the world. Although a economically viable except on mixed crop and water management strategy to conserve all the livestock enterprises and even then only for a rainfall on farm and spread it evenly over the small core of breeding stock (Dillon and Lloyd land surface had been developed privately in 1962; Powell 1963). Breeding of drought­ New South Wales in the late 1940s (Yeomans tolerant livestock has been generally limited to 1954) and had received strong support from cattle, using Indian Zebu and Texan Santa the professor of geography at Sydney Universi­ Gertrudis lines to cross with traditional British ty (Macdonald Holmes 1960), it appears to beef breeds for the northern tropical ranges. In have been forgotten in favor of simple contour some cases, as with the "Droughtmaster" line, banks for soil conservation. the goal is obvious. On the Australian farms, however, when the crop starts to wilt there is nothing really to Dry farming strategies. For the farmers the be done if irrigation is impossible. And when march out into the droughty plains has been the crop has died and the soil begins to blow hard-fought. The optimal time for seeding was there is only emergency tillage to stave off learned by trial and error; fallowing of land to disaster, and that only as long as the subsoil is save moisture from one season to the next moist enough to hold the clods together. began privately in South Australia in the 1880s before the technique received the bles­ Irrigated farming. Irrigation is not the tech­ sing that followed official contacts with the nological solution to drought stress in Austra­ Campbell system of the Great Plains in 1906.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission Report
    Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission Report 29 January 2019 Commissioner Bret Walker SC 29 January 2019 His Excellency the Honourable Hieu Van Le AC Governor of South Australia Government House GPO Box 2373 ADELAIDE SA 5001 Your Excellency In accordance with the letters patent issued to me on 23 January 2018, I enclose my report. I note that I have been able to take account of materials available as at 11 January 2019. Yours sincerely Bret Walker Commissioner Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission Report Bret Walker SC Commissioner 29 January 2019 © Government of South Australia ISBN 978-0-6484670-1-4 (paperback) 978-0-6484670-2-1 (online resource) Creative Commons Licence With the exception of the South Australian Coat of Arms, any logos and any images, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. Suggested attribution: South Australia, Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, Report (2019). Contents Acknowledgments 1 Terms of Reference 5 Overview 9 Responses to Terms of Reference, Key Findings & Recommendations 45 1. History 77 2. Constitutional Basis of the Water Act 99 3. ESLT Interpretation 127 4. Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan 163 5. ESLT Process 185 6. Climate Change 241 7. The SDL Adjustment Mechanism 285 8. Constraints 347 9. Efficiency Measures & the 450 GL 381 10. Northern Basin Review 427 11. Aboriginal Engagement 465 12. Water Resource Plans 509 13.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Impacts of Drought
    Social Impacts of Drought A report to NSW Agriculture Margaret Alston Jenny Kent Centre for Rural Social Research Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga Copyright 2004 Published February 2004 for the Centre for Rural Social Research Charles Sturt University Locked Bag 678 Wagga Wagga NSW 2678 AUSTRALIA phone: 02 6933 2778 fax: 02 6933 2293 email: [email protected] By Margaret Alston and Jenny Kent Coordinated by Kate Roberts Cover design by Tony O’Neill Printed by Active Print National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication data Alson, Margaret. Social impacts of drought : a report to NSW Agriculture. ISBN 1 86467 149 1. 1. Droughts - New South Wales. 2. Droughts - Australia. 3. Rural population - New South Wales. 4. Drought relief - New South Wales. I. Kent, Jenny, 1953- . II. Charles Sturt University. Centre for Rural Social Research. III. Title. 363.3492909944 Contents Page Acknowledgements x Terms of Reference xi Executive Summary xii 1. Background 1 1.1 Economic Impacts 1 1.2 Social Impacts 3 1.3 Definitions 4 1.4 Structure of the Report 6 2. Drought 7 2.1 What Is It? 7 2.2 Commonwealth Government Policy on Drought 7 2.3 Drought Declared Areas of Australia 11 2.4 Drought Declared Areas of New South Wales 12 3. Exceptional Circumstances 15 3.1 EC Declaration 17 3.2 Assistance Following an EC Declaration 18 3.3 Interim Assistance in prima facie Areas 19 3.4 Small Business Interest Rate Relief Program 20 4. Services and Programs for Drought Affected Families, Communities and Businesses 21 i 4.1 Commonwealth Assistance Measures 21 4.2 NSW Provisions 21 5.
    [Show full text]
  • The Settlement of Blackwood Township, Hayes County, Nebraska, 1878-1907
    Nebraska History posts materials online for your personal use. Please remember that the contents of Nebraska History are copyrighted by the Nebraska State Historical Society (except for materials credited to other institutions). The NSHS retains its copyrights even to materials it posts on the web. For permission to re-use materials or for photo ordering information, please see: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/magazine/permission.htm Nebraska State Historical Society members receive four issues of Nebraska History and four issues of Nebraska History News annually. For membership information, see: http://nebraskahistory.org/admin/members/index.htm Article Title: The Settlement of Blackwood Township, Hayes County, Nebraska, 1878-1907 Full Citation: Robert D Clark. “The Settlement of Blackwood Township, Hayes County, Nebraska, 1878-1907,” Nebraska History 66 (1985): 74-110 URL of article: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/NH1985Blackwood.pdf Date: 12/05/2013 Article Summary: The first settlers of Blackwood Township mistakenly believed that “the rain follows the plow.” Drought caused them to mortgage and subsequently lose their property. By 1985 descendents of only two of the original Blackwood families still lived in the township. Cataloging Information: Early Settlers: Miles J Abbott, Michael Brennan, Warren Clark, Charley Coburger, Joab Copeland, Angus Crucklaw, Charles Deuter, David Fuller, Oscar Gruver, Dock Gruver, Franklin Hanks, John Heitkamp, John S and Mary Hughes, Ellsworth and Maggie Jeffries, William
    [Show full text]
  • Rangelands the Worst Hard Time
    BOOK REVIEW The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. By Timothy Egan. 2006. Mariner Books, Houghton Miffl in Co., Boston, MA, USA. 340 p. US $14.95. paper. ISBN-13 978-0-618-77347-3. Those discussing future rangeland climates would do well to consider the challenges of the past. For Americans, the drought disaster that most haunts our national imagination is the “Dust Bowl,” encom- passing over 100 million acres of the American heartland just over 75 years ago. A coinage of a clever newspaper reporter, the Dust Bowl was an unprecedented economic, social, and ecological catastrophe that followed close upon one of the most rapid transformations of resilient native rangeland into intensive dry-land agriculture that shortly sowed the seeds of its own destruction. What had once been a vast shortgrass steppe, teeming with huge herds of migratory buffalo, and, for a short interval following, an “open range” (often overstocked with Texas Longhorn), became, with the arrival of the railroads, open to settlement and the sod-busting plow of determined, land-hungry immigrants. “Rain follows the plow!” was the clarion call of the day, and for a couple of remarkable decades of “the Great Plow-up,” precipitation was indeed reasonably reliable; the farms took root, and the com- munities grew and prospered, producing “the biggest wheat crop the world had ever seen” that para- doxically contributed to the market’s collapse. When the inevitable multi-year drought inexorably arrived, much of this dryland domain was bare and exposed without perennial cover; the stage was set for it all to just blow away.
    [Show full text]
  • Redeeming the West Colleagues
    Thoughts on “Redeeming the West” Redeeming the West: A History of the Scientific Approach Richard Kohler April 1st, 2013 Dixie State University Colleagues Presentation Albert Bierstadt, On the Oregon Trail, 1867 Albert Bierstadt, Surveyors Wagon in the Rockies, 1859 The pioneers of science in the American West were more often than not those trained in the “art” of surveying. Exploration surveys were funded by Congress, led by military officers (King, Hayden, Wheeler, Ives, Powell), and necessarily included surveyors, photographers and artists many of whom achieved fame in their own right. Thoughts on “Redeeming the West” 1870!! William Hooper before Congress opposing Anti-Mormon bill Thoughts on “Redeeming the West” 1873!! Elizabeth Wood Kane’s Journal!! Elizabeth Wood Kane kept a journal during her stay in St. George, Utah during the winter of 1872 - 1873. ! “She noted that she often felt she was living in an old Syrian world among pastoral folk fulfilling Isaiah’s promise of making a fertile land of the desert plains.” Thoughts on “Redeeming the West” 1879!! Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, JW Powell Thirty years of data concerning climate change were analyzed by the J. W. Powell Survey in 1877. Powell and other government scientists were aware of claims by Mormon settlers that the increased precipitation was a result of their prayerful requests to the Almighty. G. K. Gilbert provided this explanation of the rise of the level of Great Salt Lake over the thirty year period following the Mormon’s arrival. John W. Powell believed that the phenomena was a result of the actions of man.
    [Show full text]
  • Research Connects Soil Moisture to Next-Day Rainfall
    Research connects soil moisture to next- day rainfall 9 August 2016, by Barbara Moran western United States indicates a higher probability of rain the next day. But surprisingly, the opposite is true in the eastern United States, where dry soil today means more likely rain tomorrow. People have looked at this link between soil moisture and rainfall for a long time," says Guido Salvucci, Boston University professor of earth and environment and co-author of the Science paper. "But we felt like scientists didn't necessarily use the right statistical techniques, and they also didn't have as high quality and long a data set as we had. So we revisited it." Samuel Tuttle (GRS'11, '15), now a postdoctoral Are soil and rain somehow linked? New research in research scientist in civil and environmental Science shows that they are—in a surprising way. Credit: engineering at the University of New Hampshire, cgouin/iStock began the work as a PhD candidate under Salvucci. After completing a project examining soil moisture data from NASA's Aqua satellite, Tuttle decided to take the work one step further. In 1881, a land speculator named Charles Dana Wilber wrote a book called The Great Valleys and "We had this nice satellite data set of soil moisture, Prairies of Nebraska and the Northwest, in which nine years long, every day from 2002 to 2011," he, stumping for western settlement, coined a says Tuttle. He decided to use the data in a new phrase: "rain follows the plow." way, "to diagnose the relationship between soil moisture on one day and rainfall on the next day." The phrase captured a popular theory of climatology—that homesteading and farming could permanently change the climate of the arid West, increasing rainfall and turning the Great American Desert, as it was known, into a verdant paradise.
    [Show full text]
  • Managing and Sharing the Risks of Drought in Australia
    Managing and Sharing the Risks of Drought in Australia By Greg Hertzler The University of Western Australia Ross Kingwell Department of Agriculture & Food, Western Australia and The University of Western Australia Jason Crean The University of Sydney and Chris Carter Department of Agriculture & Food, Western Australia and The University of Western Australia Corresponding author: [email protected] ___________________________________________________________________________ Invited paper presented to the 26th Conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, “Contributions of Agricultural Economics to Critical Policy Issues,” Gold Coast, Queensland Australia, 12-18 August, 2006. Risks of Drought in Australia Introduction Australia is a large, dry and often hot continent. Australian farmers and agribusiness managers must be very adaptable to survive. Climate researchers are steadily improving the skill of their forecasts. Agricultural researchers are improving our knowledge of how systems respond to climate change and drought. Economists continue to improve our understanding of decisions under risk, including weather and climate risks. In this paper we review the nature and extent of climate change and risks for Australia. Then we review the research and practice in adapting farm businesses. Sharing of financial risks is fairly easy, but sharing of climate risks is very difficult. We review the lessons of the past and the possibilities for the future. We believe that researchers, farmers and agribusiness must all work together to manage climate change and risks in the future. Communicating about such complex issues among diverse groups of people is not easy. Finally we propose a framework, based upon real options, for thinking about an d solving problems in adapting to climate change and sharing of climate risks.
    [Show full text]
  • 2019 Citizens' Inquiry Into the Health of the Barka/Darling River And
    Australian Peoples’ Tribunal for Community and Nature’s Rights 2019 Citizens’ Inquiry into the Health of the Barka/Darling River and Menindee Lakes REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS 30 SEPTEMBER 2020 Michelle Maloney, Gill Boehringer, Gwynn MacCarrick, Manav Satija, Mary Graham and Ross Williams Australian Peoples’ Tribunal for Community and Nature’s Rights an initiative of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance Michelle Maloney • Gill Boehringer Gwynn MacCarrick • Manav Satija Report Editor Michelle Maloney Mary Graham • Ross Williams Layout, Cover Design and uncredited photos: James K. Lee Cover image: Wilcannia Bridge over the Barka / Darling River. 24 March 2019. 2019 Citizens’ Inquiry © 2020 Australian Peoples’ Tribunal for Community and Nature’s Rights (APT) into the Health of the Barka / Darling River All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this report may be reproduced, and Menindee Lakes stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. The Australian Peoples’ Tribunal for Community and Nature’s Rights (APT) is an initiative of the Australian Report and Earth Laws Alliance. All inquiries should be directed to the Australian Earth Laws Alliance (AELA). Recommendations https://www.earthlaws.org.au [email protected] Suggested citation: Maloney, M., Boehringer, G., MacCarrick, G., Satija, M., Graham, M. & Williams, R. (2020) 2019 Citizens’ Inquiry into the Health of the Barka / Darling River and Menindee Lakes: Report and Recommendations. Australian Peoples’ Tribunal for Community and Nature’s Rights (APT).
    [Show full text]
  • Examining the Repercussions of the 1876-78 El Niño in Australia and New Zealand
    History of Meteorology 4 (2008) 1 El Niño, Irrigation Dams and Stopbanks: Examining the repercussions of the 1876-78 El Niño in Australia and New Zealand Don Garden Australian Centre for the Study of Science, Innovation and Society and School of Historical Studies University of Melbourne Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Our telegrams to-day still inform us of drought in the South [Island of New Zealand], of inconvenience and suffering to the people from want of water, and of imminent danger that there will be a considerable falling off in the harvest… In the North, though under a hotter sun than shines in Otago or Canterbury, we have as yet felt but little inconvenience from the drought, which has, indeed, been not so prolonged as in the South. The rainfall has, however, been considerably less than for the average of years. Last night, there were symptoms that wet weather was approaching, but it may be some days distant. It is somewhat singular that of late a great part of the world has been tormented by drought. The famine in India was caused by the failure of the periodical rains; the suffering and loss in Australia has been great; Egypt is threatened with scarcity, owing to the scanty overflow of the Nile; and we observe by the papers received last mail that the people of New York were alarmed that the Croton supply was about to fail.1 The famine in Southern India continues to be very severe, and it is much feared that the July and August crops will be a comparative failure, in which case the pressure on the Indian Government and food resources of Bengal and Burmah [sic] will be immense.
    [Show full text]
  • Drought - Its Definition, Delineation and Effects, by W
    UJMO ~E~, S ~03 WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION SPECIAL ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT No.5 " Dron~" Lectures presented at t",~i twenty -sixth session of the WMO Executive Committee 1975 I WMO-No.403 I . Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization - Geneva - Switzerland 'S r? ~ f', 0 IS (: I) 1; _________ .. __ ____________________________________ .. ______________________________ ~ ________________________ .. ____ -- -------.. --------------------.. -----------------------~------ .. - -- ------.. _--------------------- © 1975, World Meteorological Organization ISBN 92 - 63 - 00403 - X NOTE The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization concerning the legal status of any country or territory or of its 'authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers. r=_-==~______ ___ ________________________ _ CON TEN T S Page Foreword ......•••............................................................. V Drought - its definition, delineation and effects, by W. J. Gibbs ..•. .•....... 1 Drought, a recurrent element of climate, by H. E. Landsberg ..........•........ 41 Aper~u sur les donnees hydrologiques de la secheresse de la periode 1970-1973 en Afrique tropicale, par J. A. Rodier .••••...•...•.•........•............ 91 (Summaries in English, French, Russian and Spanish are provided with each lecture) FOREWORD At each session of the WMO Executive Committee a theme is chosen
    [Show full text]
  • Chalk Bluff Line Camp, Constructed in 1867 by J.W. Iliff. Perspective and Primary Views
    History of the Pawnee National Grassland During the early stages of American expansion, the high plains of northeastern Colorado were prime grazing land for large populations of deer, antelope, elk and buffalo. The human population consisted of Indians and a few fur trappers. Before 1850, a fur trader named Elbridge Gerry settled where Crow Creek joined the South Platte River east of present-day Greeley. In 1861, John Wesley Iliff started his first cow camp on Crow Creek. The next year, Iliff established a cow camp approximately five miles down Crow Creek from above the Uhl Homestead to provide beef to the railroad crews and also establish a shipping point to the East. Chalk Bluff Line Camp, constructed in 1867 by J.W. Iliff. Perspective and Primary views. In 1868, he bought $40,000 worth of cattle from Charles Goodnight, who trailed them north from Texas. This established the Goodnight-Loving trail through this area. Goodnight continued trailing herds for Iliff through 1876. By 1877, Iliff's domain stretched from the South Platte River north to the Chalk Bluffs by the Colorado- Wyoming border, and from the mountains east to the present Kansas border. He was the biggest cattleman in Colorado. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed only 160 acres per homestead, and at least one-quarter (40 acres) of that had to be tilled. Later Acts allowed a total of 320 acres. One of these was the Timber Culture Act, en- acted in 1873, allowing the settler to pick up an additional 160 acres by agreeing to plant 2,700 seedlings on 10 acres, of which 675 should be alive and healthy at the time of final proving, five years later.
    [Show full text]
  • HEALTHY, WORKING MURRAY–DARLING BASIN Basin Plan Annual Report 2015–16
    TOWARDS A HEALTHY, WORKING MURRAY–DARLING BASIN Basin Plan annual report 2015–16 i Basin Plan annual report 2015–16 Acknowledgement of the Traditional Owners In the spirit of respecting and strengthening partnerships with Australia’s First Peoples, the Murray–Darling Basin Authority would like to acknowledge all Traditional Owners of this land. The MDBA pays its respects to the Nations and their Elders past and present who hold the authority, memories, knowledge and traditions of a living Aboriginal culture. The MDBA offers its deepest appreciation and respect for the First Peoples continued connection and responsibility to the land and waters of the Murray– Darling Basin, including their unique role in the life of the Basin. The past year has provided many opportunities to work with the First Peoples of the Basin to make sure Aboriginal scientific and cultural knowledge is included in water management. The MDBA thanks the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN), the Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations (NBAN) and all the Basin Nations for their willingness to be involved in the implementation of the Basin Plan. ii BasinMLDRIN Plan and annual NBAN report delegates 2015–16 with friends in Canberra, August 2016 Contents 02 About this report 37 A healthy Basin environment 07 The year in review 38 Basin-wide environmental watering 10 Working together 40 Delivering water to priorities 11 Implementing the Basin Plan 47 Looking ahead 13 Recovering water 48 Towards 2026 14 Adapting the sustainable diversion limits 18 Water resource planning 22 Maintaining water quality 25 Basin communities and industries 26 Water recovery and communities 26 Water recovery and infrastructure 32 Water markets Socio-economic benefits of 36 environmental watering Basin Plan annual report 2015–16 1 About this report This is the third annual report on how implementation The report draws from information provided by Basin of the Basin Plan and associated reforms are tracking state governments, the Commonwealth Environmental against social, economic and environmental outcomes.
    [Show full text]