Nature Conservation in the Australian Alps
What do we mean by 'conservation'?
The succession of people who have made use of the Alps have shared an awareness of the area's natural beauty, unique value and need for protection.
'The Aborigines were the first discoverers of the Snowy Mountains, following the Bogong moths. European explorers, stockmen on horseback herding and mustering their cattle and sheep, botanists, geologists, meteorologists, foresters, horsemen, skiers, walkers ... all were 'discoverers' - many were discoverers of the haunting beauty and the ineffable delight. The south-east corner is a very small segment of Australia. It holds the source of our longest river, the foot of the highest waterfall and the snow-covered highest mountains, where the black cockatoos foretell the blizzard, and the fragrant alpine marsh marigolds flower, like stars, in an ice cave and at the fringe of the snowdrifts.' (Mitchell, E. (1985) Discoverers of the Snowy Mountains, Macmillan).
This appreciation and awareness of the need for conservation is not new. There has always been an understanding that we must use the land wisely for our own good. There has also been an awareness of the value of land for its own sake. From early times thoughtful men and women have been concerned about the natural condition of the world and the place of humans in it. The philosopher Plato in ancient Greece pondered the question of the destruction of the natural world and its effect on man. The current French Government Department of Eaux et Forets (Water and Forests) originated in the 17th century. In the 20th century in the Alps there is a growing awareness of the overlapping nature of the two concepts - that wise use may also necessitate protection of some areas with as little impact from human use as possible. Why then is there debate about uses, past, present and future in the Alps?
The reason is that nature conservation, or the protection of natural areas, has different meanings for different people. For the lover of 'wilderness' it is the reservation of large unspoilt tracts of land. For the scientist it is the preservation and understanding of intricately- connected ecosystems and the protection of the genetic diversity of the species found there. For bushwalkers and other outdoor recreationists, natural places provide opportunities and challenges: mountains to climb, rivers to raft or slopes to ski. For the utilitarian it is the protection of natural areas for practical reasons such as water catchment in the Australian Alps. Perhaps for all of us there is a need to conserve unspoilt nature as security for an uncertain future.
The future of the Australian Alps is no exception to the world-wide trend of a growing need for nature conservation. People have always had an impact on the environment, but for hundreds of thousands of years, humans, evolving slowly in close contact with the natural world of which they were an integral part, had a slow and minor impact. In the modern world, the speed of impact and the capacity for damage have become much greater.
The development of agriculture gave people a greater capacity to control and alter nature, and the natural world became a place to be battled and subdued in order to make the earth fit for human existence. The land was transformed, but as quickly as changes occurred, the need and demand for nature conservation grew.
Nature conservation is intricately linked with people and our impact on the environment. To recognise these impacts we need to draw from a store of knowledge about the environment. This knowledge, once an integral part of the traditions and spiritual relationships of ancient people, such as Aborigines before European settlement in Australia, was lost with the progression of civilization and the increasing alienation from the natural environment. In the modern world we have been rebuilding our wealth of knowledge about the environment in the name of science.
Nature conservation in the Australian Alps
Nature conservation begins with the accumulation of knowledge about the natural world. It is necessary to build a framework against which human impact can be measured. A stain on a carpet is only noticeable if one is familiar with the true pattern of the carpet.
In the Australian Alps, Lhotski, Strzelecki, von Mueller, Helms and Howitt were notable in a long list of explorers, field naturalists and scientists last century. Through their individual searches for knowledge, they contributed to a comprehensive picture. A further dimension in the appreciation of the natural values of the Australian Alps can be found in the paintings of Chevalier, von Guerard and other artists of the 19th century.
These people were the early nature conservationists of white Australia, taking stock of the natural fabric around them, but at the same time mapping and giving access to many of their contemporaries who often worked at changing and conquering the natural landscape.
It was from a position of acquired knowledge about the area that Strzelecki reported his concern on the state of the Australian Alps after a trip in the 1830s.
'The drought ... here in New South Wales seems to have an additional cause to ... those which elsewhere occasion extraordinary dryness of soil: namely the alteration which colonisation impresses on its surface; the herbaceous, high and thick plants; the continued forest; the underwood; the brush, which so well clothed the crust and sheltered the moisture, have disappeared under the innumerable flocks and axes which the settlers have introduced. The soil, thus bared, was and is, as it were, abandoned by a most prejudicial practice, to the constant and periodic wilful incendiarism, which, instead of producing the expected and former herbage and vigor of the soil, in fact only calcines its surface and eradicates even the principle of reproduction...' (Enclosed in a despatch from Gipps to the Secretary of State, 28 September 1840, and printed in House of Lords Sessional Papers, 1841(85), pp 12-19.)
Strzelecki describes the loss of vegetation and the consequential drying out of the soil caused by clearing, grazing and subsequent burning. This is only a decade after the first European settlers arrived in the Alps, illustrating the impact that European agricultural methods had on the Australian environment.
A degrading landscape
Nature conservation is a response to the impact of civilization on the natural world and to changing circumstances. Increasing populations and the search for wealth made, and are still making, greater demands on the land. Initially in the Alps much of the lower slopes and tablelands was misused because of ignorance of good pasture management '...they made one blade of grass grow where two had grown before.' (Hancock, W.K. in Discovering Monaro, 1972 p 65) Other uses were timber extraction for houses, fences and fuel, and summer grazing on the high pastures. There was economic pressure to squeeze from the land every pound of immediate income it would yield.
Another strong force against nature conservation as we now understand it was the advent of the Acclimatisation Societies established in Australia in the mid 19th Century to 'improve' the land. They aimed to do everything to make the new country look like the old, clearing the native forests and introducing animals and plants from Britain. Ironically these people probably believed themselves to be nature conservationists of a kind, recreating and conserving the 'old country'.
One staunch supporter was Frederick McCoy, Melbourne's first Professor of Natural Science. He introduced many exotic birds, including starlings and sparrows, which competed for food and habitat with the native birds and are still very much a problem today. It was at this time that von Mueller introduced the problematic blackberry - with every good intention. There are areas in the Alps today that are sadly overun with this noxious weed which manages to squeeze everything else out. Many farmers planted firs and pines in place of the native woodlands that once grew on the lower slopes and tablelands of the Alps, or cleared steep slopes of their protective vegetation cover.
At the turn of the century the combination of pastoral expansion, overuse of the land and the activites of the Acclimatisation Societies had brought the land to a dreadful state. One of the indicators was the large-scale erosion that in many areas still continues today. The following is an account of the changes observed over five years by the son of a pastoralist. The time is late last century.
'Jimenbuan in the early days was very different from what it was after the passing of the Sir John Robertson's Land Act, which gave selectors the privilege of taking the land selected before survey. Some of them would put on more stock than the area they selected would carry...
'Before the passing of the Land Act... Matong Creek for about five miles above and below its junction with the Jimenbuan Creek was a succession of deep waterholes, there being no high banks, and grass grew to the water's edge. Hundreds of wild ducks could be seen along the waterholes, and platypus and divers were plentiful. Five years after the passing of the Act the whole length, instead of being a line of deep waterholes, became a bed of sand, owing to soil erosion caused by sheep. The water only came to the surface in flood time, when it spread sand all over the flats.' (William Crisp, 1947, a manuscript held in the Mitchell Library.)
As the evidence of human impact became more obvious and the remaining natural areas became noticeably smaller, nature conservationists in the community began to voice their concerns. Richard Helms wrote in 1896 of his concern about the burning practised by the herdsmen or graziers in the High Country with the short-term objective of creating new palatable growth. He talks about an 'unsullied landscape' being destroyed by the activities of 'inconsiderate people...replacing fresh and fragrant growth by dead and half burned sticks.....That ignorance and maybe greed should be allowed to interfere so drastically in the economy of nature is pernicious, and should not be tolerated.' (R. Helms, in Report on the Grazing Leases, 1896)
An alternative view develops
Elsewhere in the world at this time, particularly in the United States, the importance of wilderness was being recognised. The American philosopher Henry David Thoreau enscapulated the thinking of many when he concluded 'In Wildness is the preservation of the World.' (Alps at the Crossroads, 1974). Thoreau's writings started a movement in which Americans began to develop an aesthetic and spiritual appreciation of their own tracts of wilderness. This movement led to the formation in 1892 of the Sierra Club by John Muir, whose aim was 'to be able to do something for wilderness and make the mountains glad'.
This movement spread to Australia. As early as 1906 politicians were aware of the wilderness concept. The first concern for nature conservation shown by the Lands Department in NSW was in the 1930s and it was then simply a concern about the degradation of the mountain water catchments. As a response, overstocking and burning were prohibited, but unfortunately not policed adequately.
Pressures for action were building up from scientists and recreationists. A forester, B.U. Byles, was appointed to conduct an investigation into soil erosion in mountain watersheds. Byles completed a report on the Murray River catchment in New South Wales. He studied the land of the Murray Catchment on foot, mile by mile for six months, recording in his notebooks the observations of each day. Byles concluded in his report 'Although the area of total destruction was not as yet very great, the destructive processes could be observed almost everywhere.' Unless these processes were checked, Byles gave warning, the consequences would be catastrophic. '...throughout the Murray Plateau, the country is, on the testimony of men who mustered cattle their all their lives, definitely drier now than it was 30 years ago. They point out again and again swamps and creeks which were formerly impassable but where now a man can ride without any danger of sinking.' (Byles, B.U., 1932, Bulletin No. 13 of the Commonwealth Forestry Bureau.)
Apart from field naturalists and scientists like Helms and Byles, the early conservationists in the Alps fell into two groups: bushwalkers, and a group concerned with the protection of water catchments. The bushwalkers were hardy young men and women from cities who spent their holidays exploring the High Country. It was these people who could see at first hand the changes being wrought on the natural environment and the decline of natural areas.
One such person, Myles Dunphy, called in 1933 for volunteers to establish a National Parks and Primitive Areas Council dedicated to the preservation of land in its primitive condition. In 1933, Dunphy drew up proposals for a Snowy-Indi Primitive Area, a million acres of mountainous country in NSW and Victoria. This proposal, endorsed by the NPPAC, publically exhibited in 1935 and strongly supported by groups of bushwalkers and other conservationists, aroused the interest of the Premier of NSW, William McKell. The proposal later became a move for a national park.
Meanwhile the water catchment conservationists were waging a campaign of their own. From a Royal Commission in 1902 to investigate the conservation and distribution of the waters of the River Murray and its tributaries came the Murray Development League, which gave strong regional support to the cause of catchment protection.
Academics began to see an urgent need for scientific study. In 1933 a Soil Erosion Committee was formed in NSW and began investigations into the state of the soil of the mountains. In 1938 it became the Soil Conservation Service and declared various parts of the Snowy Mountains as catchment areas, or areas of erosion hazard, under the Soil Conservation Act. In Victoria, botanist Maisie Fawcett was seconded in 1941 from Melbourne University by the Soil Conservation Board to investigate the effects of grazing on the catchments of some of the High Country in Victoria.
The Government of New South Wales took further action in 1944, passing a Bill establishing the Kosciuszko State Park. After 100 years of European occupation, nature conservation and the protection of water catchments were becoming recognised as priority land uses.
The principles of the Bill were 'the permanent preservation of all the water catchments, permanent reservation and development of the park for the recreation and enjoyment of the people and the continued controlled use of the park for pastoral purposes, insofar as they were consistent with the first and second principles.'(Minister of Lands, 1944, in Hancock, W.K., 1972, Discovering Monaro, Cambridge Univ. Press).
Nature conservation and protection of the land meant different things to different people. To the scientists it meant the reservation of the land completely closed to tourists, grazing and hydro-electric schemes. Bushwalkers saw it as the setting aside of a 'wilderness area', closed to grazing and hydro schemes but open for recreation. This led to disputes amongst the nature conservationists just after the declaration of the State Park.
Even though the Government supported the notion of nature conservation by reserving the land, it did not endorse its support financially. Land reserved for nature conservation needs to be adequately financed to be managed effectively. Initially Kosciuszko State Park was managed by a Trust that was almost completely financed by revenue raised from the sale of grazing leases. This put the Trust in the invidious postition of having to promote the continuation of a practice alien to nature conservation.
While conservation groups in NSW were bickering about the meaning of nature conservation, the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme was getting under way, strongly armed with a belief that what was being done was best for all. The 'hydro people', though they caused a great deal of damage and erosion of their own, were nevertheless very much against summer grazing, concerned as they were with the condition of the catchments for the water needed for the scheme.
A proposal by the hydro commission to develop a series of dams and aqueducts in the heart of the State Park, an area which had been proposed by the National Parks and Primitive Areas Council to be set aside as 'primitive', gave the Park Trust the motivation it had previously lacked. A primitive area within the park was declared in 1963, open to skiers and walkers but out of bounds for the extension of roads and engineering works, including works by the Hydro-electric Authority.
National parks
In 1965 the NSW Government drafted a National Parks and Wildlife Act, and in 1967 Kosciuszko State Park was renamed Kosciuszko National Park. The Minister for Lands of the day, a tough and energetic politician named Tom Lewis, said:
'I'm a rationalist about this. Man is an animal though we tend to forget it. He needs to survive and propagate and have a habitat like any other animal...I think man would always be clever enough to survive, but he should not take the risk of destroying too much of his environment. You can never put back what you have destroyed.' (in Tom Lewis MLA-a profile by Evan Williams, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1969.)
Management of Kosciuszko National Park for nature conservation became a priority task for the Government, and money was suddenly made available. After a long and passionate debate with the graziers, who continued to graze cattle illegally in the park, an investigation was begun into the issue. Its recommendation was to abolish grazing in the park. In 1969 the Government finally accepted the recommendations and 135 years of recorded grazing history came to an end.
In the Victorian Alps the urge to protect catchments through reservation of land was not as strong. In addition, there appeared to be no strong group with the vision or motivation to pressure the government. The first public proposals for reservation of land in the Alps for nature conservation came in 1898 with Mt Buffalo National Park. Half a century later, in 1949, the Town and Country Planning Association of Victoria recommended a number of national parks, including a 500,000 hectare Victorian Alpine National Park. Pressure from conservationists induced the Government to carry out an investigation in response to this recommendation. The subsequent report (1951-52) endorsed the recommendation of the Association, and also recommended the introduction of national parks legislation providing for a National Parks Authority.
The Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA), established in 1952 and still very active today, was to become the main body pressing for parks through lobbying of government and making submissions. In 1956 the National Parks Authority was established, becoming in 1970 a National Parks Service. The final steps which led to the declaration of a series of parks in the Victorian Alps arose from the establishment of the Land Conservation Council (LCC) in 1971, with the task of systematically assessing the best use of public land in Victoria.
It was not until December 1989, after a long and bitter debate over land uses in the Victorian Alps, that a single contiguous Alpine National Park was declared incorporating the existing three national parks, one state park and other surrounding land. The establishment of the park meant that there were now linking areas of national park throughout the Australian Alps from Canberra almost to Melbourne, paving the way for the co-operative management of the Alps as a single unit in the future.
Namadgi National Park in ACT, incorporating a significant part of the Cotter Catchment - the primary source of domestic water for Canberra and Queanbeyan - was declared in 1984. Declaration of the Namadgi National Park was the culmination of over 20 years of investigations, proposals and community concern for establishment of a major national park in the ACT.
Nature conservation today
Since European settlement in Australia, nature conservation has changed in popularity and status. There have been three motivating forces for nature conservation in the Australian Alps: conservation of soil and vegetation to protect water catchment for irrigation and hydro-electricity; conservation of pristine ecosystems and biodiversity such as is not found in much of the world; and conservation of bushland for people to enjoy in their own individual ways. These three forces have been led by water conservationists, scientists and recreationists respectively. More recently the conservation of cultural heritage has been important.
The concerns of all these groups have led to the reservation of land for nature conservation. Through legislation, governments have signified that the most important land use of the Australian Alps is nature conservation - although some of the expectations based on historic uses remain, such as summer grazing in the Victorian Alpine National Park.
The reservation and management of national parks in the Alps inevitably involves some compromise. Management plans are developed through consultation with all interested groups and individuals to reach a strategy for management which is acceptable to the majority.
Nature conservation is currently the most important land use in the Australian Alps, and national parks are currently the most accepted way to manage this land. Will this still be the case in 20, 50 or 100 years? The need for conservation will still be there but the circumstances will have changed. Population will have increased, natural areas will have diminished and worldwide resources will be precious. How will society want to use the Alps in the future, and what will they be like?
Resources
Hancock, W.K. (1972) Discovering Monaro - A study of man's impact on his environment. Cambridge Uni Press.
Johnson, D. (1974) The Alps at the Crossroads. VNPA
Frawley, K.J. (1986) Australia's Alpine Areas: Management for Conservation. National Parks Association of the Australian Capital Territory.
Land Conservation Council Victoria (1990) Wilderness, Special Investigation. Mosley, G. (1988) Australian Alps World Heritage Nomination Proposal, Victorian National Parks Association.
Department of Conservation and Environment (1992) Alpine National Park Management Plan. Dartmouth Unit. Cobberas-Tingaringy Unit. Wonnangatta-Moroka Unit. Bogong Unit.
National Parks and Wildlife Service, NSW (1988) Kosciusko National Park Plan of Management. ACT Parks and Conservation Service (1986) Namadgi National Park Management Plan.
Study directions
'You can never put back what you have destroyed.' Has this been an issue of concern for the Alps? Compare impacts of different users, past and present, on the alpine environment.
Examine what 'nature conservation' means to different people. Try to decide on a common definition which includes the points of view of different alpine 'users'.
Wilderness is a necessity....
Mountain parks and reservations
are useful not as
fountains of timber and
irrigating rivers,
but as fountains of life....
(John Muir)
Research 'wilderness' as a land use in the alpine area. How is it managed? Who uses it? Where is it?
The Australian Alps Education Kit
- The Australian Alps - An Introduction
- Geology and Geomorphology of the Australian Alps
- Soils of the Australian Alps
- Vegetation of the Australian Alps
- Fauna of the Australian Alps
- Who Owns the Australian Alps
- Seasonal Grazing in the Australian Alps
- Recreation in the Australian Alps
- Water catchment in the Australian Alps
- Nature Conservation in the Australian Alps
For more information please refer to the Australian Alps national parks list of references