ENVIRONMENTALISTS in the alternative-thinking mecca of Nimbin on the State’s Far North Coast are pushing to have cattle farming declared a “key threatening process” under the NSW Fisheries Act.
Their intent is to force producers to fence off all river frontages on cattle properties, saying other commercial business ventures are already subject to strict controls about what they allow into the water.
If successful, cattle access to waterways would be officially included alongside broadscale vegetation clearing, weeds such as lantana, and pest animals such as foxes and rabbits which are categorised as key threatening processes.
The campaigners say protecting the health of waterways needs to be considered a start-up and ongoing cost of doing business in the livestock sector.
However, the Nimbin Environment Centre’s (NEC) move has been labelled impractical and potentially counterproductive to the extensive voluntary work already underway on grazing properties across NSW.
The NEC is collecting evidence of damage caused by cattle walking into rivers.
The details will go to a Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water expert panel which makes recommendations to the State Government on what should be declared key threatening processes.
Key threatening processes are anything that threatens the survival of ecosystems and fish covered under the Act, and once a declaration is made, a threat abatement plan is generally developed, and may have legislative clout.
Farmers argue laws making it mandatory that all waterways on cattle properties be fenced would render many operations unviable, especially considering the number of big river events and floods that occur in areas such as the North Coast for which no fencing protection would be effective.
The NEC’s Peace Freeborn agreed the practicalities of such legislation made it a “somewhat quixotic solution to the serious issue of waterway health” and said ideally best practice environmental standards would be voluntarily embraced by the entire livestock industry.
He said installing troughs, restricting drinking points and off river shade could reduce the impact of cattle on water health significantly.
Northern Rivers Catchment Management Authority chairman, Judy Henderson, said in the past four years $1.4 million in government money had been delivered to dairy farmers alone on the North Coast for that type of work.
“We work closely with farmers and in our experience they are well aware of water quality issues. We’d prefer to use the carrot approach than the big stick.”
NSW Farmers Association cattle committee chairman, Richard Chamen, Tamworth, said this type of work was “very expensive” with little opportunity for producers to pass the costs onto consumers.
“It’s only sensible that if the community benefits from good environmental outcomes then the community should assist with the cost,” he said.
Mr Freeborn said paying for food to be produced in an environmentally sustainable manner should not be a choice consumers had.
He wants the cattle industry to “take the first steps in a re-branding of sorts, to help the national psyche evolve past not caring about the health of the land and its waterways, take control of the issue by willingly embracing best environmental practice, then use that as a selling point – create a new line of sustainable, earth friendly beef ... lead by example”.
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