soil-conservation-people-religion-and-land.pdf - South West NRM

sufficiently to meet the criteria and a drought declaration
may be obtained. This practice leads to considerable
overutilisation of the pasture and effectively imposes a
financial penalty on those managers who adopt the desired
approach of destocking before the pasture is exhausted and
before rapid loss of condition of the animals takes place."
Pressland and McKeonts paper to this workshop makes a
significant contribution to the important national debate on
drought assistance. Their use of the GRASP model and
predictions based on climatic phenomena, notably the Southern
Oscillation Index (SOI) is of particular significance in
forming a scientific basis for policy decisions worth millions
of dollars.
FUTURE PRIORITIES
Clearly there is a role for short and long term monitoring -
the former for management, the latter for research and
administration. In the meantime the pressing need is for
acceptance and implementation of paddock assessment as the
basis for animal management decisions. Pastoral extension
workers must ensure-that their monitoring sites do not become
irrelevant to landholders in the same way that farm plans were
disregarded in earlier years. To achieve acceptance
monitoring will have to be kept simple and relevant to
practical seasonal decisions by the manager. The WARMS
monitoring frequency of five years, segmented by managerst
notes on a simple checklist in the interim is a useful
approach that warrants serious consideration of how these
complimentary records can most effectively be implemented for
short and long term benefits.
Equally important for sound land administration is the
acceptance of stocking and drought policies based on reliable
pasture yield information as a basis for realistic stocking
rates (including kangaroos). Such pasture yield information
may well be reliably obtained from albedo patterns on
satellite imagery which reflect reduced vegetation cover
clearly in many soil situations. Such techniques can
contribute substantially to the effective choice of
representative sampling sites within "albedo beltstt which
reflect zones of differential grazing intensity or plant
density, Whether such remote sensing can replace the proven
ground truth of basal cover and botanical composition awaits
further research.
Lastly, more effective use needs to be made of the tgsuccess
storiestt of commercial operators who have applied monitoring
principles, so that more landholders can see the benefits and
reap the rewards of good land stewardship. As Tidwell (1987)
said, "Monitoring is Managementt1.