How New South Wales farmers are making money from improving biodiversity

October 5, 2024 8:24 AM

How New South Wales farmers are making money from improving biodiversity. Farmers are protecting corridors of land to improve biodiversity for annual payments and to attract premium prices.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (1 comment total)

The whole point of pastoralism is that you can get calories out of marginal land that can't support much more than grasses without irrigation. If you're clearing forest or scrublands to turn it into savanna or steppes for livestock you've lost the fucking plot. Plus when the trees get removed the water speeds up. The snow pack melts and leaves the area faster. Without the snow gums keeping everything in place for longer the Murray-Darling would go from perennial to ephemeral which would be an ecological catastrophe the likes of which the Eastern States have never seen.

There's also a huge problem with snow gum forests in that bushfires are happening in them more frequently and killing off huge areas of them. And because these are areas with regular frosts it's the only native tree species that can survive at higher altitudes. You lose those trees you lose the birds, you lose the biomass, you lose the soil, you lose the whole area and it becomes yet another desert that is evidence of how fucking bad humanity is at being the stewards of this planet.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:40 AM on October 5, 2024