Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Destocking vs managing stock differently

Temporary destocking for deep regeneration before careful reintroduction sounds like a sound strategy and well worth funding by a temporary stewardship provision. Unfortunately this Government does not believe in the European practice of paying farmers not to grow produce. Witness what happened to the RM Williams Company's attempt to get carbon credits by locking up Henbury Station. There may be some money for it available in the $1bn Biodiversity Fund introduced under The Carbon Farming Initiative. There may be some money available for research under the Action On The Ground program run by DAFF. David Pollock might even be able to use grazing management intensively on a small area of Wooleen to generate revenue while saving the rest... Evan Pensini of Cheela Plains Station in the Pilbara has been trying to perfect the formula for capturing carbon in the rangelands for more than 10 years. Across a small section of his 133,000 hectare property west of Paraburdoo, he manages a mob of cattle by cell grazing. He says the paddocks are closely monitored to ensure ground cover is restored. "We've basically tripled our carrying capacity since we've been implementing the system and we've had some extremely dry years in amongst it as well, but the whole object of is the point that you're only grazing when you've got that food on offer."

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