Latest news with #landholders
ABC News
25-06-2025
- General
- ABC News
SA landscape boards crack down on illegal dams in Mount Lofty Ranges
Aerial imagery has found hundreds of illegal dams have been built or enlarged in the Mount Lofty Ranges in the past 10 years. About 400 new dams have been built and about 300 have been significantly enlarged in the past 10 years without approval. This has occurred despite a moratorium on building new dams in the Mount Lofty Ranges since 2013. Hills and Fleurieu Landscape Board general manager Michael Garrod said the organisation was aware of some illegal dams, but he was surprised by the scale of the problem. "Many of the catchments in the Mount Lofty Ranges were already over-allocated and under some stress, so these new dams that have been built without authorisation will deny water getting to those legitimate dam owners," Mr Garrod said. There are 22,000 legitimate dams in the Mount Lofty Ranges. Mr Garrod said, despite the drought putting pressure on water in the Adelaide Hills, there had not been a particular uptick in illegal dams in the last two years. The landscape board has been working with landholders to either reduce the total volume of water being captured on a property to the amount before the illegal dam was built or require them to remove it. Mr Garrod said with drier and more variable conditions, fair and responsible water management was more important than ever. "We have to find new and better ways of storing and using water, building more dams and losing more to evaporation is just a recipe to less water for everybody," he said. Given the need for landholders to be resilient to the changing climate, Mr Garrod said using groundwater more might be an option. "Our groundwater resources are in much better shape than our surface water resources, so that would be a logical change," he said. Kangaroo Island (KI) was the other hotspot with about 350 unauthorised dams also detected, after changes were made to dam building in 2017 when the current water plan came into force. AgKI chair Peter Cooper said the organisation was aware of the issue. Mr Cooper said before 2017, dams on Kangaroo Island that held less than 5 megalitres did not require approval, so some people had built dams not realising that rule had changed. "So this process has been a lot about the education about how the regulations work and what needs to happen into the future," Mr Cooper said. Mr Cooper said given the lack of groundwater, dams were vital for primary production on the island. The Kangaroo Island Landscape Board has written to landholders who built dams that were not authorised but would have been if they had sought approval to explain what they should have done. However, the 10 landholders who built dams that would not have been approved have not yet been contacted. "We (AgKI) have asked that that be delayed until we have an opening to the season to reduce the stress farmers need to have upon them in the season that we've had," Mr Cooper. Sustainable landscapes manager Jo Sullivan said the landscape board had never intended to start any compliance work until the season had broken. She said the main motivation for the work was to improve the understanding of the rules. "We really encourage the community to contact us if they have questions or concerns about construction of dams or water availability on their property," Mr Sullivan said. Compliance officers are continuing to review dams, and an automated change detection system is being developed to allow the landscape boards to identify new and enlarged dams more easily than in the past.
ABC News
08-06-2025
- General
- ABC News
Going Rogue: The practice of rewilding native animals
Some landholders are reintroducing native animals to their properties without approval to cerate private sanctuaries.
ABC News
21-05-2025
- Science
- ABC News
Camels help eradicate invasive prickly acacia in outback Queensland trial
Dozens of giant creatures with stomachs of steel have proved a powerful enemy to one of the most invasive plants in the Queensland outback. Over four years, camels have been introduced to prime grazing paddocks to eat a thorny weed called prickly acacia. The invasive plant, introduced to Queensland in the early 1900s, is estimated to cost landholders $27.5 million yearly in lost production. The acacia's prolific spread means eradication is no longer considered an option. The trial began in Muttaburra in Western Queensland, and the results are in — the humped mammals have beaten, and eaten, the weed. More than 30 camels have been dining on a 40,000-hectare property as part of the trial, and while they failed to kill the plant, they did keep it at bay. Desert Channels Queensland (DCQ) operations manager Geoff Penton said the trial proved how effective the camels could be in slowing the weed's spread. "It's an effective method." Unlike cattle or sheep, when a camel eats the prickly acacia's flowers, the seeds do not pass through into their faeces. It means the weed's spread is stopped in its tracks. Mr Penton said one camel for every 1,000 prickly acacia plants was an ideal ratio. "We found that grass makes up roughly only a third of their diet, so they predominantly will eat the prickly acacia," he said. According to DCQ, prickly acacia is one of Australia's worst weeds, and under good conditions can produce more than 170,000 seeds per tree in a year, completely taking over landscapes. Left uncontrolled, it is estimated that within five years, the weed could dominate 95 per cent of Mitchell Grass Downs, which spans more than 470,000 square kilometres across Queensland and into the Northern Territory. Mr Penton said the second stage of the DCQ trial was underway, evaluating the camel's impact during seasonal changes, and more landholders wanted to join the program. Paul Keegan has been a cameleer for 40 years at his property near Mount Isa in North West Queensland. Mr Keegan supplied some of his 300 camels to the DCQ trial and said the results were exactly what he expected. "Unless you implement something to take the flower and seed out, landholders are going to keep going around spraying and spraying [herbicides]," he said. Camels have had a bad reputation in some parts of rural Australia, with feral populations stealing feed, destroying fences and drinking water meant for cattle. But Mr Keegan said if landholders wanted to get on top of prickly acacia, they should swap out herbicides for the herbivores. "Inside the fence at the trial site there was no [prickly acacia] grass thanks to the camels, and outside the fence the grass is up around your knees," he said. For 25 years, camels have eaten prickly acacia across David Batt's 80,000-hectare cattle and sheep station, west of Winton. Mr Batt said he could not quantify how much money he had saved on herbicides by using camels, but it would be substantial. "It's well worth it," he said. While camels may "get a bit of a bad rap" as pests in Australia, Mr Batt said he had no problem with them mingling with his stock.
