Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 7.4.
An audit of environmental assets on a farm
It is hard to plan unless you know what you've got. Some farmers may be unaware
of the environmental assets on a farm, how important they are, and how to best
manage them. A map of the location and extent of key assets like rocky outcrops,
patches of woodland remnants, areas of native pasture and scattered paddock trees
can assist greatly with the process of farm planning and then developing priorities
for management action. Regional bodies like Catchment Management Authorities
can help landholders create a map of the environmental assets on their farm that
will, in turn, form the basis for a good farm plan. We believe there is a need for
governments and agencies involved in natural resource management not to penalise
landholders for good management, for example, by increasing regulatory obliga-
tions should a property be improved for a threatened species and populations of
that species increase as a result.
areas will often be best for promoting post-fire ecological recovery of many species.
It is therefore best to plan in advance where fire will be excluded (e.g. wetlands and
riparian areas), as well as which parts of paddocks and remnants will be burned
- after giving careful consideration to factors like the time elapsed since those
areas were last burned and the severity of past fires.
The application of fertiliser is yet another activity on farms that might be best
managed at the farm level. In various parts of this topic, we have discussed how
large amounts of fertiliser have negative effects on the diversity of native plants,
increase exotic plant species, contribute to dieback in paddock trees, and contribute
to the demise of the integrity of the soil layer. There also appear to be negative
effects of fertiliser on bird diversity. Given these effects, we suggest there should be
parts of farms where there is no application of artificial fertiliser.
Beyond the farm - the landscape scale
Some important ecological processes in agricultural areas are landscape-scale or
regional-scale processes. (Here, we refer to landscape-scale as the scale larger than
the single farm-level.) For example, recent work is suggesting that large-scale tree
clearing in the Murray-Darling Basin has contributed to the depth and extent of
recent drought events.
16
Notably, during the early 1800s, many landholders in
districts like the Monaro on the New South Wales Southern Tablelands believed
that trees brought rain and so clearing was not extensive.
17
Unfortunately, this did
not deter subsequent widespread land clearing.
Many species of plants and animals respond to the characteristics of the
environment at several different spatial scales. As an example, the Brown
Treecreeper is often found in woodland patches with large amounts of fallen
