Big Ted Gets One Right

THREE TARDY but absolutely sincere cheers for Ted Baillieu, of whom this blog previously has found precious little good to say. What has prompted this change of heart? An article in this morning’s Phage which details the Victorian government’s plans to cut funding for the green bureaucracy that, ever since the election, has white-anted the government with lies and leaks while simultaneously pushing policies and theories that do nothing but degrade the bush. Defunding the left is long overdue and this announcement may indicate that the awaited day is finally at hand.

We can expect lots of whining, and five-star ventriloquism, over the weeks to come, which will see those with empires under threat turn to reporters whose understanding of environmental matters extends no further than believing whatever it is the Victoria National Parks Association and sister organisations choose to tell them. The Phage’s Tom Arup – the nitwit-lite version of Adam Morton – has already received the first call, as today’s report makes clear,

Budget cuts and layoffs, Arup reports, mean that professional organisers will no longer be available to summon volunteers to beaches, where they do the worthy work of picking up rubbish. It seems the environmentally aware are absolutely unaware that a discarded can, paper plate or item of washed-up flotsam needs to be picked up unless and until an expert on the government payroll issues that instruction. This deficiency must come as a surprise to Lions clubs and Rotary, which have been doing good works for quite some time without benefit of official instruction.

That is one cheerful aspect of the cutbacks, but it is a relatively minor one. Of greater note is this splendid news: 

Six scientists at the state's biodiversity research agency - the Arthur Rylah Institute - working on vegetation mapping, threatened species and the health of the Murray-Darling, were also told this week their contracts would not be renewed. 

One of the many green lights burning bright at the Rylah Institute is Melbourne University researcher Libby Rumpff, who is memorable for more than her euphonious patronym. Over the course of the past 18 months or so, the Baillieu government has sought to initiate the experimental introduction of 400 cows and steers into the Alpine National Park. Those beasts, whose movements were to be restricted by fences to just a few small plots, were to have been allowed to graze within the test areas’ boundaries as taste and inclination took them, the object being to determine if animals that eat grass and other fire-prone materials might reduce the fuel load and, thus, the risk of catastrophic “hot” bushfires.

The reaction to that modest proposal was screaming outrage, and Ms Rumpff’s green shriek could often be heard above the choir. In April of last year she addressed a nakedly political public meeting in Box Hill Town Hall, where hundreds of city-dwelling bush buffs howled for Baillieu’s head. She also co-authored a strident denunciation of the cattle trial for Andrew Jaspan’s six-million dollar blog, and has been a frequent source of the deep green orthodoxy espoused to the exclusion of any other viewpoint in the pages of The Age. So active has Rumpff been in voicing a distaste for cows one can only wonder if Adam Morton and colleague Melissa Fyfe have her telephone number tattooed on their arms.

What to make of the official wisdom Ms Rumpff represents? Or, of greater practical relevance, what to make of the projects that emanate from it? Let one example serve:

The Victorian National Parks Association is very keen to get rid of willow trees, which are buggers of things and do a good deal of harm to High Country bogs. This crusade is backed by Ms Rumpff’s Rylah Institute which, remember, is also opposed to cattle.

This where everything gets tangled and topsy turvy, because one of the more effective ways of reducing willow growth is to point hungry cows at their shoots, as at least one study in the US has demonstrated beyond doubt. In the US, where willows are quite normal and natural, this is a bad thing. In the High Country, where willows are one of the many invasive species wreaking havoc, it would be a lot more efficient than rounding up a mob of urban volunteers every so often. Mind you, the volunteers’ self-esteem will soar after their current long weekend in the mountains, and this cannot be said of hungry cows.

As for the willows, they will be happier still. The most effective way of tackling them has been ruled out for nothing but reasons of ideology and doctrine, so they will be flinging their windborne seeds next summer and draining with their thirsty roots more alpine bogs.

Laying off half a dozen peddlers of ecological abstractions is a good start. There are, however, legions more who need to be nudged into other lines of work.

A NOTE: To get a glimpse of how complicated modern science has made the business of uprooting weeds, those with a particular interest might find the full versions of this and this enlightening – or scary, depending on how much the reader accepts that man has long been a major influence on the bush, that it can never, ever be returned to some arcadian ideal, and that the paramount goal of professional ecologists should be to stablise the human-bush relationship. If that accord cannot be struck, the High Country will be a very sad and different place 50 years from now.