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Remaining paddock trees in peril
Australia’s south-east temperate grazing region could be virtually treeless within decades, according to ANU research recently published in the US-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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Paddock tree in the Lachlan River Catchment, NSW. Credit: Kate Sherren
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The research team concluded that most of the trees scattered across millions of hectares of temperate grazing land in New South Wales and Victoria are old and close to death. Existing land management practices have prevented regeneration of young trees to replace them.
The study pointed out that disappearance of paddock trees would lead to loss of shelter for livestock, loss of habitat for birds and other wildlife, decreasing water infiltration and other detrimental flow-on effects over the entire ecosystem.
‘The good news is that management practices exist that can reverse the tree regeneration crisis,’ said the ANU’s Dr Joern Fischer. ‘We found that trees are more likely to regenerate in unfertilised pastures [and] under high-intensity rotational grazing than under conventional, continuous grazing.’
