"Hands off" Gets Fiery Results

What is best for the environment?  What should our environmental priorities be?  How interventionist an approach should we take, for example, to the management of weeds in national parks?

Before the federal election, it was thought that the Australian Greens led by Bob Brown would hold the balance of power in the Senate.

Public policies would reflect their view on what was best for the environment, including that an additional three thousand gigalitres (six Sydney Harbour equivalents) of environmental water be flushed down the Murray River.

The election, however, threw up something altogether different.  The Australian Greens are unlikely to have much influence in the new Parliament.

This perhaps represents an opportunity for us to reflect on alternatives and consider what is really best for the environment, while balancing economic and social considerations.

Early conservationists subscribed to a "Garden of Eden" type model with man having a management role tending and looking after the landscape.  Remember Noah built the ark to save the animals from the flood.

More recently a "hands off, leave it to nature" philosophy has developed and become embedded in many government policies.

This approach, which underpins much of the recent native vegetation management legislation across Australia, seems to almost deny the dynamic nature of our landscapes and excludes man from an active management role.

Last year, the Queensland Government went to great trouble to suppress the findings of a report prepared by its own officers that explained how uncontrolled woodland thickening associated with bans on tree clearing would likely result in a reduction in ground flora biodiversity and increased erosion.

At the same time, and while the NSW Government was focused on banning tree-clearing to protect perhaps 20,000 hectares of native vegetation, close to three million hectares of forest and native vegetation was incinerated in bushfires.

The extent and intensity of the bushfires was at least in part a consequence of the "hands off, leave it to nature" philosophy that had prevented adequate controlled burning.

It is a fact of life that if you don't have your own plan, your own vision, you will likely be recruited into implementing someone else's plan.

Organisations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Australian Conservation Foundation don't undertake much tree planting or grow any organic food themselves -- they are about recruiting others to implement their plans, their vision of what is best for the environment.

The Australian landscape and our own beliefs and values, are not things that have always existed in their current form.  They have been, and are being, evolved.

ADVERTISEMENT