CATTLE have come to the rescue of Australia's most important bird habitats.
In a sit-up and take notice moment for the extreme green movement, cattle producer and former NQ Dry Tropics chairman Mark Stoneman told the Reef, Range and Red Dust conference at Caloundra how cattle had helped bring invasive weeds under control in the Wongaloo Regional Park between Townsville and Ayr.
However, significant areas of the adjoining 50,0000-hectare Bowling Green National Park remain choked with weeds including para grass, hymenachne and aleman grass and incapable of providing an appropriate habitat for breeding and nesting birdlife, he said.
"This location has the largest ever accredited brolga congregation in Australia and continues to be a significant breeding and congregation ground for brolgas and many other species," Mr Stoneman said.
"On Wongaloo the habitat is always the primary focus for the estimated 12,000-plus brolgas and the thousands of other species of birds.
"We use cattle because they provide the only practical alternative for controlling weeds.
"It's possibly a unique circumstance, but in this instance it is only cattle that can practically maintain a viable habitat across the whole areas for the birds.
"Without them, we simply would not have the abundance of birdlife that is found on this property."
Wongaloo covers some 1700ha and had been grazed for the past 150 years. It was bought with the Commonwealth, State and local funding in 2010 and is now managed the community group, the Wetlands and Grasslands Foundation.
About two-thirds of the property is subject to flooding and it is dissected by both the Bruce Highway and the railway.
Mr Stoneman said 17km of fencing had been erected to best utilise the 400 cattle kept as a weed control tool.
"We say where the cattle can and can't go and how long they can graze a given area," Mr Stoneman said.
Mr Stoneman said an area of about 400ha within the Bowling Green National Park would benefit if cattle were used as a weed control mechanism.
"This significant shallow tidal and fresh water habitat area has become primarily a protected exotic weed park devoid of vital sedges and open freshwater wading and feeding areas for want of a continuation of appropriate and controlled management," he said.
"There is an urgent need to create a genuine dialogue between interested, regulatory and operational parties so that the needs of the community can be balanced with a desire to sustain as much of the landscape and its attributes as possible within practical and financially viable structures that recognise the variations within that landscape.
"Claims such as 'national parks are only for wildlife, not cattle' ignores the fact that in some instances that cattle are the only mechanism of weed control.
"What needs to be recognised is that by default, these groups are arguing for the preservation of weeds not the maintenance of vital habitat."
