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SPECIAL FEATURE: OUTBACK WA
majority of their living from cattle
or sheep.
The pastoralists who work
the land don’t own it – they lease
it from the government and
therefore have to abide by laws
that are demonstrably ruining the
environment through enforcing
unsustainable land usage
practices. In the early 1900s,
Australia’s sheep population
of around 112,217,000 was
the largest of any country. We
produced as much as 27% of the
world’s wool; probably why they
said: “Australia rides upon the
sheep’s back”.
But when drought struck,
animal numbers began to drop
alarmingly. The 840,000-strong
flock in the Murchison area was
diminished to 250,000 in only
five years as nature enforced
a harsh balance - as surface
water decreases so must the
number of animals grazing upon
the withered vegetation. While
man-made wells can ensure
continued drinking water for the
stock; without sufficient rainfall
to hydrate vegetation the flocks
starve – and in the process of
desperately seeking feed they
remove the vegetation preserving
the very structure of the land.
This is not a newly recognised
problem. By the early 1940s, a
Royal Commission investigation
reported, in some locations,
75% of saltbush and 25% of
acacias were gone, 90% of all
vegetation in other areas had
been eliminated leaving the land
barren, useless and vulnerable to
water and wind erosion.
With each passing drought
period, stocks have declined. All
evidence shows the land is under
stress and can no longer sustain
the volumes of pioneering years.
In the late 70s, the State and
Federal government conducted
a soil conservation study that