Great Barrier Reef: Qld Government's cattle station purchase 'makes agriculture sector scapegoat'

Let's be clear:  This is NOT agricultural runoff being discussed.  It is pastoral runoff.  A cattle station and an arable farm are not the same.  There are virtually no arable farms in the Northern half of Cape York peninsula and yet that is where coral bleaching is greatest -- providing an excellent natural experiment that proves Greenie claims about agricultural runoff to be false.

Pastoral runoff may however be a different thing.  The property discussed below does appear to have been badly managed, if managed at all.  Producing anything in such a remote area must encounter a lot of high costs so cutting costs on management might be expected.  In the circumstances, the steps being taken by the Queensland government are well-advised.

There is however no reason why one property must be taken as proving a generality.  For all we know, there may be no other pastoral properties in the far North that are producing massive runoff.  No-one has made that case -- Greenie hand-waving aside


The agricultural sector says it is being unfairly targeted by the Queensland Government after it purchased a cattle station to reduce sediment flowing into the Great Barrier Reef.

Queensland Environment Minister Steven Miles announced on Wednesday the Government had bought Springvale Station in the state's north for $7 million.

Mr Miles said the reason for the purchase was to stem the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of sediment pollution flowing from the property into the Great Barrier Reef each year.

Generations of cattle grazing has caused massive gullies, etched deep into Springvale Station's 56,000 hectares.

These gullies carry 500,000 tonnes of sediment per year into the Normanby catchment, explained Australian Rivers Institute's Dr Andrew Brooks.

"The Normanby catchment represents about 50 per cent of the total run off to the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef," Dr Brooks told PM.

Because of this Dr Brooks supported the Queensland Government's purchase, as well as plans to rehabilitate the land and prevent further sediment from damaging the reef.

"The relationship between sediment run off and impact on coral has been well established," he said.

"What we know is that these volumes of sediment coming from this property, just to put it in perspective, that's 50,000 tipper trucks worth of sediment. "These gullies don't just deliver sediment. They also deliver nutrients. So per unit area these gullies are contributing twice the level of nutrients as a cane paddock in the wet tropics."

Mr Miles said smoothing out the gullies and replanting grass will begin as soon as possible but it is too early to tell how long the whole remediation process will take.

In the meantime, former station owners have until late next year to remove the several thousand head of cattle from the land.

While a loud chorus has praised the Queensland Government's purchase as a major step forward in remediation of the Great Barrier Reef, the agricultural sector has some reservations about the $7 million sale.

Reef Alliance chair Ruth Wade said the Queensland Government needed to ensure other industries near the reef also pull their weight. "There are areas like mines, ports, tourism, a number of areas where there are impacts of varying points," Ms Wade said.  "The obvious and easy one is the impact agriculture has in terms of sediment run off.

"We're working very hard through a number of schemes funded by Federal and State Governments to improve water quality and minimise impacts of agriculture."

But Mr Miles insisted that while all industries have a role to play in reef protection, the Government was targeting agriculture for the right reasons. "We know that a clear driver of problems for the reef is run off pollution and a great deal is cause by agricultural land," he said.

"If we can substantially reduce the amount of sediment run off from just this one property we can move ourselves forward toward the targets we have set for the entire catchment and that's a huge opportunity."

Agforce Queensland general president Graham Mosley is concerned the Government will not follow through on proper land management of the station.  "It's a challenge. There's services associated with servicing that property ... ongoing maintenance," Mr Mosley said.

"What is the long-term plan here for acquisition of land in Queensland? Government needs to be clear of the path its embarking on when spending taxpayer money.

Mr Miles concedes the land management details have not yet been determined, while not ruling out a partnership with graziers. "In terms of the ongoing wider management, beyond the rivers and gullies and streams, that's where we're interested in working with partners to determine the best way to manage it going forward," he said.

"The idea is those areas which are currently grazed could well continue to be so under some kind of partnership arrangement, while those areas that are pristine could be protected as National Park, or nature refuges, while we get about the important work of repairing the riparian zones."

SOURCE