photo: livestock grazing of Box Gum Woodland
Why post-graduate research?
As a botanist I am often asked to evaluate the recovery potential of degraded grassy box woodlands, usually in the form on 'biodiversity offsets'.
What's a biodiversity offset ('offset' for short)? An offset is a compensation measure for adverse impacts on biodiversity from a development, usually caused by the direct removal of native vegetation. It is a parcel of land that should contain like-for-like vegetation (magnitudes greater) to that being impacted on the development site. An offset should be the last step in a hierarchy of development mitigation measures to avoid a 'net loss' of biodiversity. However sadly, in the current climate, it seems like it's often the first step. But that's another story!
Offsetting has become a common place for major projects in NSW. A good example is the acquisition of commercial farming enterprises by the mining industry for conversion to conservation. A large majority of coal mines in NSW occur within the natural distribution of Box Gum Woodland (as if clearing for farming since European settlement wasn't enough!).
Box Gum Woodland is the name given to the Endangered Ecological Community (EEC) White Box, Yellow Box and Blakely's Red Gum Grassy Woodland. This EEC once occupied an almost continuous band covering millions of hectares on the slopes and tablelands of south-eastern Australia, from Victoria to Southern Queensland. Consequently, Box Gum Woodland is usually a target community when searching for mining offsets, which brings me to my research problem.
Box gum woodland has a long history of livestock grazing and fertiliser application from framing (since European settlement). A common first-management-step in many offset management plans and restoration projects of degraded farming ecosystems, is the removal of livestock grazing. However, ecological outcomes of livestock exclusion have not been widely evaluated. Furthermore, the findings of such studies are equivocal and many sites do not perform as expected (i.e. sites do no reach performance criteria) and remain in a stable degraded state. Why is this? How does one know if a site will respond positively to livestock exclusion with so little empirical data?
I contacted Professor David Keith at UNSW asking if he was interested in taking me on. Subsequent to our conversations, David and I developed a study aimed to determine: a) whether livestock exclusion initiates woodland restoration; b) if so, how rapidly the responses occur; and c) whether responses are conditional on management history and/or environmental factors.
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