29 November 2010

Getting the stock onto the long grass

| johnboy
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The ABC explains that ACT Parks and Conservation Service have taken the sensible step of using livestock to control long grass:

Last year, cattle grazed more than 4,000 hectares in 48 separate areas as part of the Bushfire Operations Plan.

This year, it has been boosted to more than 7,000 hectares across 79 areas.

Neil Cooper from the ACT Parks and Conservation Service says cattle are being used in addition to the usual slashing and burning.

“There are other areas where because of terrain, slope, too much rock or other reasons, that we can’t get machinery in there, so cattle just become just another mechanism by which we can remove fuel,” he said.

“They are very, very effective.”

But who’s trousering the agistment fees?

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Mr Lubberlubber8:06 pm 30 Nov 10

But then they poo on it and it grows faster.

Even with the cows, TaMS still need to manage the suburban green spaces vastly better.
Sure, they mowed a single 2m wide stretch along the back fences, getting rid of some man-height grass from off the boundary, but not the massive patches of tallest stuff which is now over 2.5m high (and home to snakes).
Even then, the patch they previously mowed has regrown to about 1m.

What did the annual maintenance budgets from the last ten years get spent on, or were TaMS planning on Canberra’s climate changing to neverending drought?

That sort of (but not really) explains the two (non-metaphorical)cows I saw wondering through Dunlop the other day.

I’m just curious about where the cattle are coming from? It’s not like in previous years, where farmers would jump at the chance to put their stock somewhere with some grass – at the moment, if they move them, then their own paddocks would end up overgrown and a fire hazard!

Use of cattle to graze out unmowable areas is to be commended – what would we prefer – an extreme bushfire season in January Feb and March when all the wild oats dry out – or a minimal cost to increase the hazard reduction program in the ACT…. Yeah its wet now but this huge fuel load will dry out and then all the wingers will come out saying the government are not doing enough to prevent bushfires…….

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