Australia's open spaces and grasslands are being invaded by aggressive woody weeds of the eucalypt family and the feral plants they shelter such as lantana and rubber vine. This invasion is assisted by a fifth column of misguided tree lovers and climate alarmists who demand that these environmental weeds be protected and their expansion subsidised by the taxpayer!
Like Triffids, the invaders are stealthing out from every patch of bush, surrounding homes and towns, consuming grasslands and displacing grassland birds and animals, both native and domesticated.
This invasion started in neglected parks and conservation areas, and was given a massive boost by the Kyoto-inspired bans on controlling regrowth, even on freehold land. The final stupidity is the use of carbon credit finance to encourage the deliberate planting of woody weeds on land currently used to produce food and fibres.
For as long as humans have lived in Australia, woody weeds have been kept in check by their natural predator – bushfire. But more reckless policies, promoted by misguided urban tree lovers, have prevented the regular use of fire in many areas.
As wildfires in several areas have shown, the heavy fire load in this creeping bush becomes a lurking menace as dangerous to neighbours as an unexploded bomb. It must be kept in check by periodic small fires, well managed grazing animals or mechanical means. "Shutting it up" is an unacceptable and unnatural practice.
The explorers Leichhardt and Mitchell both reported the native use of fire to restore the grasslands and both remarked on the grassland and open forest they encountered. However, since their time, there has been an explosion of woody weeds into the Mitchell grass country, and into many other grasslands. It is like a cancer on the land.
These scrubby weeds and carbon credit plantations also harbour all the pests and predators that threaten native wildlife and domestic livestock – feral foxes, pigs, dogs and cats.
The global warming alarmists and others have led us into deadly delusion. Trees do not control the climate, and eucalypt plantations and infestations are not worthy of elevation to saintly status in the plant kingdom. Just like grasses, herbs and algae, they are part of the grand carbon cycle on which all life depends. If humans need to worship and protect any land plant species it should be not useless invasive woody weeds, but the valuable grasses and legumes including cereals such as wheat, oats, barley and rye, pastures such as Mitchell grass and buffell grass, legumes such as lucerne, clover, soya beans and siratro and giant grasses such as sugar cane, sorghum and maize.
It is strange that governments keen to protect farm land from coal mining are promoting policies that result in the destruction of grazing land by state-protected weeds.
Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.
Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.
