soil-conservation-people-religion-and-land.pdf - South West NRM
soil-conservation-people-religion-and-land.pdf - South West NRM
soil-conservation-people-religion-and-land.pdf - South West NRM
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Range Monitoring Workshop<br />
Nat. S.C. Conf., W.A.<br />
11 September 1989<br />
INTRODUCTION<br />
MANAGING THE UNMANAGEABLE - BUILDING ENVIRONMENTAL<br />
FEEDBACK INTO PASTORAL SYSTEMS<br />
B R Roberts<br />
Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education<br />
Toowoomba Qld 4350<br />
This overview aims to give a critical analysis of why feedback<br />
through rangel<strong>and</strong> monitoring is necessary, what purposes it is<br />
required for, how it is used in practice <strong>and</strong> what the role of<br />
short <strong>and</strong> long term monitoring is in the overall system of<br />
feedback.<br />
In the pastoral zone we are attempting to manage a dynamic<br />
resource within a climatic framework which is not only beyond<br />
our control but for which we have poor predictive ability -<br />
thus the title of this paper. In this age of high technology<br />
<strong>and</strong> remote sensing we have powerful tools for measuring<br />
changes in our pastoral ecosystem <strong>and</strong> there may be a danger of<br />
our infatuation with the technology overriding certain of the<br />
ecological concepts on which reliable.interpretation of our<br />
field data depends. In his paper to this workshop, Wilcox<br />
contends that we as scientists have let the community down by<br />
not attaining sound management of the nation's rangel<strong>and</strong><br />
resources, despite the funds <strong>and</strong> expensive technology made<br />
available to us for 20 years.<br />
To the initiated it would seem unnecessary to explain why we<br />
need monitoring systems for our rangel<strong>and</strong>s, but it needs to be<br />
realized that a major proportion of Australia's rangel<strong>and</strong>s<br />
showed signs of deterioration when the national suwey was<br />
made in 1975. There is a .clear need to recognize that as far<br />
as Australia's national l<strong>and</strong> degradation is concerned, the<br />
amount of <strong>soil</strong> loss, in absolute terms, is much greater in the<br />
pastoral zone than in the cropping zone. While the hard<br />
evidence for reduction of carrying capacity in the pastoral<br />
zone is limited, there is little doubt that the pastoral zone<br />
has suffered from a combination of overstocking, drought,<br />
small property size <strong>and</strong> poor distribution of fences <strong>and</strong><br />
waters. The national situation is reflected in the tables<br />
below (Anon, 1978):<br />
J