Download protecting our wonderful woodland remnants

Chapter 3
protecting our wonderful
woodland remnants
Ian Lunt
The Johnstone Centre, Charles Sturt University,
Albury, NSW.
W
Woodland remnants on public and
private land serve many important
functions, including soil and water
conservation, habitat for plants and
animals, sources of native seeds for future
revegetation, and to provide a model to guide
revegetation efforts. These remnants are also important
for our local history and heritage, as they are the only
places where our children can see what the region
looked like when the Aboriginals roamed the plains,
and when the first white explorers and settlers entered,
and how we have altered the landscape since then.
So where can such sites be found on the plains? Most
of the best woodland remnants are small, hidden
between the extensive crops and grazed paddocks. Not
surprisingly, most native plants tend to survive in
places which have escaped development, and which
have not been ploughed, fertilised or continuously
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grazed. Typical sites include small cemeteries, along
railway lines and little-used travelling stock reserves,
and on some stream frontages. Often the grassy areas
within country airports and race tracks contain many
plants which have vanished from the surrounding
region.
(F. Stelling)
hen planning to revegetate an area, it is worth
visiting patches of remnant bush to get an idea
of how the trees, shrubs and ground plants have
changed on your land over the past 150 years. In the
mountains and foothills in the east of the area covered
by the Guide, one can easily find patches of bush
which contain lots of native plants. We
can then develop a mental picture of
what reasonably ‘natural’ bush looks
like. On the plains and lower slopes,
however, it can be hard to find a
natural-looking remnant, and it can
sometimes be almost impossible to
determine how much the land has
changed over the past 150 years, as
very little is left to indicate changes in
the past.
Figure 1. A remnant Grey Box woodland, with
shrubby understorey and a mix of native and exotic
grasses. Such sites are extremely important refuges
for wildlife and native plants.
A number of botanists have studied the plains and have
described general changes in the landscape. They have
found that the most important activities which have
caused losses of native plants are continual grazing or
grazing at high stocking rates, soil disturbance,
fertilisation and water run-on, all of which deplete
native species and promote exotics, including many
weeds (see Chapter 6. Environmental weeds).
Chapter 3
When an area which has rarely been grazed by stock is
grazed more intensively, the first species to disappear
are those which the stock prefer to eat (the palatable
species), and which cannot survive being continuously
grazed down. Gradually, other species decline and
disappear, and at the same time many introduced
species become more abundant. As most native
woodland plants are perennials and many exotics are
annual, the overall effect of increasing grazing is to
change a woodland remnant dominated by perennial
species to a degraded site dominated by introduced
annuals. Many palatable native shrubs also disappear,
removing habitat for nesting birds. Most people are so
used to seeing roadsides and neglected paddocks
dominated by tall weeds that it is a surprise to discover
that many small, undisturbed patches of bush actually
are very good at resisting weed invasion until the
remnants get disturbed.
Because of the magnitude of the landscape changes
over the past two centuries, it is often difficult to be
confident about which native species originally grew
in a particular place. Over most of the White Box
woodlands, the landscape appears to have been
relatively open originally, with scattered shrubs and a
grassy understorey. The original grasses were not the
Oats and Phalaris which now dominate most roadsides
in the region, but the native Kangaroo Grass and
Tussock-grass. Kangaroo Grass is rapidly eaten out
under moderate stocking levels, and has disappeared
from all but small areas. Many of the native grasses
which are most often observed nowadays, such as
Red-leg Grass/Red-grass and Purple Wire-grass,
probably became more common as Kangaroo Grass
and Tussock grass were eliminated.
To many people, the simplest way to identify a high
quality woodland remnant is the wealth of native
wildflowers which, in a good season, can cover the
ground in a carpet of colour. It is a pity such species
have disappeared from our roadsides as they would
make a colourful display, far preferable to the bands of
Paterson’s Curse and Capeweed. In spring, many small
cemeteries are bejeweled with the yellow Everlastings
and Scaly Buttons, erect spikes of Creamy Candles,
Purple Donkey-orchids, nodding yellow Yam-daisies,
and sprays of Native Bluebells. Not surprisingly, many
gardeners and local councils are using many of these
plants in colourful garden beds (see Chapter 15.
Landscaping with native plants).
As pointed out in Chapter 4. Threatened flora of the
South West Slopes, the South West Slopes region does
not contain a large number of species which are
nationally rare or threatened. Instead, the extensive
foothill and plains land systems contain many
widespread species. Nowadays, it is important not to
focus too much on nationally rare or threatened
species, simply because (by definition) these plants
occur in very few places and are absent from many
otherwise important remnants. In most places, a more
important focus is the large group of species which
tenuously survive in many cemeteries, railway
easements, stock routes and the odd, lightly grazed
paddock, because these species represent the core
natural heritage of the woodlands of the South West
Slopes region. Regrettably, many of these species are
still slowly declining throughout the region (and in
many other regions as well), as many small remnants
are unwittingly degraded or destroyed.
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Chapter 3
By appreciating and protecting the small remnants
which survive in the region, we can save our own local
history and natural heritage, important seed supplies,
and nature’s models for future revegetation efforts.
Fortunately, most remnants can be protected very
simply, by ensuring that the soil is not disturbed or
dug, that fertiliser and water run-on are excluded, and
that grazing levels are not increased. No doubt, future
revegetators will doubly respect our efforts to conserve
these natural seed sources now.
Native species mentioned above:
Creamy Candles
Stackhousia monogyna
Common Everlasting
Chrysocephalum apiculatum
Grey Box
Eucalyptus microcarpa
Kangaroo Grass
Themeda triandra
Native Bluebells
Wahlenbergia species
Purple Donkey-orchid Diuris dendrobioides
Purple Wire-grass
Aristida ramosa
Red-leg Grass/Red-grass Bothriochloa macra
Scaly Buttons
Leptorhynchos squamatus
Tussock-grass
Poa sieberiana
White Box
Eucalyptus albens
Yam-daisy
Microseris scapigera
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REFERENCES AND
FURTHER READING
McBarron, E. J. 1955, ‘An enumeration of plants in the
Albury, Holbrook, and Tumbarumba districts of New
South Wales’, Contributions from the New South
Wales National Herbarium, vol. 2, pp. 89-247.
Moore, C. W. E. 1953, ‘The vegetation of the southeastern Riverina, New South Wales. I. The climax
communities’, Australian Journal of Botany, vol. 1,
pp. 485-547.
Prober, S. M. & Thiele, K. R. 1995, ‘Conservation of
the grassy white box woodlands: relative contributions
of size and disturbance to floristic composition and
diversity of remnants’, Australian Journal of Botany,
vol. 43, pp. 349-66.