WHILE fuel loads in National Parks have been blamed for kicking along some serious fires in recent months, a former ranger has detailed how a grazing program in Central Queensland took the heat out of a serious problem.

Neal Gathercole was the former ranger-in-charge for the Clermont area of the Qld Parks and Wildlife service and was part of the formation of a grazing program in the Nairana and Mazeppa National Parks and the Belmah Conservation area.

The parks were purchased in the early 1990s to preserve brigalow, blackwood and gidgee woodlands.

Mr Gathercole said fires were a regular occurrence in the national parks, which was mostly from buffel grass building up without grazing pressure on it.

“The brigalow, blackwood and gidgee don’t tolerate fires very well, they can do small fires but not big fires,” Mr Gathercole said.

“After the parks were destocked, we found the buffel grass loads were way too high and when you had a fire it was devastating the key values of that brigalow scrub community. You could have 10-12t/ha of buffel grass under that scrub and nothing can survive under that intense fire.

“Anyone who has sat around gidgee or brigalow before knows those coals can get very hot – talking to some long-term rangers they say those big fires in the gidgee/brigalow scrub can be bloody scary.”

Fires take off in Nairana and Mazeppa

While all three parks had routinely hosted bushfires over the years, two big fire events in the Nairana National Park were the catalyst for the reintroducing grazing.

Mr Gathercole said another ranger and a researcher started putting the case together to change State Government legislation and reintroduce grazing back into National Parks – a practice he said was used in Nairana and Mazeppa and in other National Park areas.

“As is usually the case with these organisations, the people on the ground can see the problem – in this case the rangers. But it is a pretty hard sell to get someone in Brisbane to sign off on reintroducing cattle to National Parks,” he said.

“When you think about it, you have a National Park set aside for native trees and native wildlife, so to introduce cattle you need to have a good case to do it and be able to back your decision. Some people involved in National Parks are just not comfortable with the idea.

“The cattle were introduced to the parks about six-years-ago and I think some of department bosses have only just started to become comfortable with it in the past couple of years because they are seeing the results.”

Success with grazing the parks

Since the cattle were introduced to the National Parks, Mr Gathercole said the improvement in fire management and ecosystem health were noticeable.

“We have not had a big fire event in these National Parks since introducing the cattle,” he said.

“Some of the parks have other areas, like eucalyptus woodland, which are not grazed, and we still had to do controlled burns through those areas.”

“You only have to drive past Mazeppa National Park on the highway and see the difference in the brigalow. The cattle get under there, graze the buffel down, their hoofs scuff the brigalow routes which brings more suckers on. We have soon a huge bounce back from the brigalow and a lack of wildfires.”

“It is a changed environment with the buffel grass, it is not native anymore so you can’t manage it the way it used to be managed before grazing was introduced.”

How the grazing permit works

Mr Gathercole said grazing National Parks needed to be entirely focused on the outcome and work towards the goals of the specific park.

“The whole idea of the cattle in these Nairana and Mazeppa National Parks was to reduce fuel loads,” he said.

“We grazed the buffel grass down to 1.8t/ha before pulling the cattle out, which is a similar fuel load to native grasses and the brigalow scrub can handle that.

“National Parks are not under any misconception that there will never be a fire again. But there is peace of mind knowing that if a fire comes through or you do a planned burn, it is not going to get out of control when it hits the brigalow.”

Mr Gathercole said there was no money exchanged in agisting the cattle on the National Parks because the department gets one of the main benefit.

“In most cases, we go to all the neighbouring properties and see who is interested in using the park,” he said.

“The idea being that their weeds are our weeds, we share a boundary fence already and they can react quickly – we can say ‘another month and we need them off’.

“Some people see it like they are getting free agistment, I see it as the National Park getting the main benefit because they getting the fuel load down and the neighbour has a stake in the park –they are more likely to take pride in the park and it puts another person on site.”

Could we see more grazing National Parks

Asked if there could be more National Parks take up grazing as a form of management, Mr Gathercole said other producers in Central Qld had been asking him for cattle.

“While I was in the Department I was pushing the barrow on getting another park grazed, which should come online soon,” he said.

“There are definitely people in the Department who are always watching what others are doing and some National Parks outside the Clermont unit use grazing.”

Mr Gathercole said it was not a solution for all National Parks.

“You might have a park with wetland habitats and you might not necessarily want hard-hoofed animals walking through it,” he said.