Grasslands

Regenerative grazing methods don’t restore native grasslands

~ Ben Courtice ~ Leave a comment

I was recently at a seminar where a number of people presented ideas on large-scale native grassland management on the Victorian Volcanic Plain. After the seminar, something that struck me was how many of these presentations (including my own) were influenced by various concepts from agriculture, especially the trend for “regenerative agriculture” or “holistic grazing”.

I’ve previously critiqued some of the claims of “regenerative agriculture” in reviewing Charles Massy’s book Call of the Reed Warbler. I examined Massy’s key supporting reference, a 1996 paper that contrasted set-stock grazing with cell grazing on three properties in the NSW Northern Tablelands. The paper indicated that pulse/cell grazing (the key ingredient of what’s now called “regenerative agriculture”) probably is a good innovation to create a more diverse and resilient pasture, or “grassland” to some people. But the paper did not show a particular benefit for native grassland, even if it is perhaps good for some native grass species (where they are present).

At the seminar, a colleague asserted the need to prevent bare ground occurring, which he argued would help to keep weeds out of the grassland. His presentation was written in collaboration with a proponent of regenerative agriculture (he finished with a slide promoting Alan Savory’s book Holistic management that is very influential in regenerative agriculture).

Preventing bare ground is the opposite of our aims in native grassland management (but exactly what regenerative grazers aim for).

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One small step for ecological restoration

~ Ben Courtice ~ Leave a comment

I was privileged recently to plan and execute an indigenous plants feature for a public sculpture in Darley. The artist designed the sculpture for local council – some beautiful bronze casts of traditional baskets woven by a Wurundjeri elder, mounted on basalt boulders on an artificial hill in the renovated Telford Park.

I was initially asked if I could source some locally indigenous species that were endangered, to complement the art installation. This is not always easy, if seed of endangered species is available it’s not necessarily given to anyone for gardening purposes. Nevertheless, I did manage to get some endangered plants and complemented them with a selection of the dominant native grassland species.

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Quantity before quality? Working with time in grasslands

~ Ben Courtice ~ Leave a comment

Recently I read some excellent material about old-growth grasslands. Sejarah Poaceae published an excellent blog challenging the “climax ecosystem” view that ecosystems build to forest inevitably. And then Science Magazine published a paper “Ancient grasslands guide ambitious goals in grassland restoration” (paywalled, sorry, but the authors have posted a link to a pre-print version for free).

One of the points made well is that restored grasslands are not, how shall I say, hastily assembled like a flatpack furniture item. The wry joke that rainforest restoration is great but you don’t see the results because it takes several lifetimes – unlike grasslands – is probably incorrect. Grasslands take a long time too. Individual plants in grasslands can live for many decades, despite their diminutive stature. Kangaroo Grass tussocks have been estimated to have survived over 100 years in a mown lawn at the Geelong botanic gardens, only to re-emerge and seed when the mowers were kept off the lawn for some works. The endangered Spiny Rice-flower can live for over 50 years, with a taproot as thick as a carrot and descending half a metre into the heavy basalt clay. More than individual plants though, it takes time for all the elements of a grassland to assemble. Any restorationist will know the pain of planting and seed sowing the desired native species only to have the same old cosmopolitan weeds emerge yet again. Even when the weeds are under control, some planted and sown species just fail to thrive – perhaps lacking crucial microbial symbionts, or suffering from altered soil fertility, lacking their most effective pollinators, or something else I haven’t thought of yet.

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What is the Button Wrinklewort?

Button Wrinklewort in grassy woodland near Ararat, with native bee visitor (Lasioglossum species)
~ Ben Courtice ~ 2 Comments

I spent the Honours year of my science degree researching the ecology of an endangered plant called the Button Wrinklewort. The what??? you may well ask. It’s OK, not many people have heard of it.

It’s a button daisy, that is, one without the large ray-petals on the outside of the flower-disk, so it has a button-like flowerhead. It’s native to southeastern Australia, and was perhaps quite common about 200 years ago in grasslands and grassy woodlands. It is now restricted to a few small and isolated populations in western Victoria, is locally extinct in Gippsland, and still has a few larger remnant populations in and around Canberra. I studied it in the old Truganina cemetery, where it has been fortuitously preserved since the 1800s, in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Continue reading →

Where are the grassland remnants?

~ Ben Courtice ~ Leave a comment

Just down the road, how about that.

Victorian Volcanic Plains Conservation Management News

We usually think to look for grassland remnants along roadsides and on rail reserves on the Victorian Volcanic Plain  Cemeteries are another good place to check out, but have you thought about going to church yard? At St George’s Church Balliang, there is tiny grassland treasure.

I was there on Wednesday chatting with a few people about what to look for and how to manage a remnant such as this one. As with most grassy remnants we need to manage the density of grass cover and this one needs a burn to open it up. Perhaps that will happen this autumn. You never know who has a little patch of grassland out the back. It is lovely to know this patch is in good hands.

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Dismantling feral ecosystems

Basalt escarpent, overrun with serrated tussock
~ Ben Courtice ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been privileged to work for a few weeks on a basalt escarpment in Melbourne’s western suburbs. The area is spectacular; I love the views and geology and flora of the escarpments. Even this one, which is seriously infested with invasive exotic species.

The section I’m working on is overrun with serrated tussock (Nasella trichotoma), a South American native that causes big problems in agriculture and native grasslands. It’s an attractive species, but tends to smother everything around it – and its seeding panicles (seedheads) break off and blow in the wind, spreading it far and wide. Native animals, stock, and even rabbits barely touch it, preferring to eat almost anything else including all the native species. So it has a great competitive advantage, and easily takes over (especially under heavy grazing). It sets thousands of seed per plant, building up a huge reservoir in the soil seed bank. Continue reading →

Autumn burning

~ Ben Courtice ~ 1 Comment

Here’s a few photos of an ecological burn I was privileged to be on for work. Hopefully I can explain a bit of the why and how as far as burning native grasslands goes.

The grasses here were forming a thick thatch of dead matter, which can smother out all the smaller plants, annuals, and even the grasses themselves eventually. I arrived early so I had a bit of a walk around and although it was a great patch of Themeda triandra (kangaroo grass), it was getting a bit rank. You couldn’t see a single square centimetre of bare ground.

Autumn burns remove all that mostly dead biomass so that the winter growing C3 grasses have a chance, and many of the herbaceous plants (think: wildflowers). Come next summer, the Themeda will also take off again. It may be choking everything out again within a couple of years, needing another burn; if the local climate is dry, it might take a bit longer. Continue reading →

Grasslands: every bit counts

Dumbarton St grassland
~ Ben Courtice ~ 2 Comments

I visited the Dumbarton St grassland in Reservoir the other day. It was brought to my attention via an online petition asking the government not to sell it off for housing (please go there and sign!). It’s a large vacant block in a residential street, backing onto a linear reserve for a pipeline/aqueduct.

It doesn’t look much from the street, although grasslands often have that problem. The front half is mown and the back half is dominated by rank exotic grasses of the kind that tend to infest wasteland everywhere.

But in the centre is a small Eucalyptus tree (I think it was a River Red Gum), and in a halo around it, a spread of native grassland plants with few weeds among them. The Eucalypt probably takes enough moisture from the soil that the fast-living exotic invaders don’t bother with that area. So here there’s some mat-rush (Lomandra species), Bindweed (Convolvulus angustissimus), Nodding Saltbush (Einadia nutans), native tussock-grass (Poa species) and quite a lot of the once-ubiquitous Kangaroo Grass (Themeda triandra). And even among the weedy grasses, closer inspection reveals patches of Themeda are scattered here and there, and Convolvulus twining around the grass stems. Continue reading →

It is the silly season already!

~ Ben Courtice ~ Leave a comment

Just because you can, doesn’t mean it’s OK. Reblogged from VVP CMN

Victorian Volcanic Plains Conservation Management News

I always think of Christmas as the silly season and that has started already with Christmas trees and other decorations  in the larger stores and we haven’t even had the Grand Final.

The other ‘silly season’ is when contractors think it is OK to drive on wet #VVP grassland roadsides and that it won’t cause any damage. I took these photos yesterday on a roadside in Moorabool Shire. Lucky for them it is not a high conservation value roadside, but still no excuse to drive off road or through a small wetland area.

                                                 small seasonal roadside wetland

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The lilies of the valley

Blue Squill Chamaescilla corymbosa and others
~ Ben Courtice ~ 1 Comment

I recently was blessed to visit a remnant grassland in a little valley on the plains of western Victoria during a mass spring blooming of various lilies, orchids and other wildflowers. This site was once a sheoak and banksia woodland/savannah (I’m told) but most of them are gone, having been cleared. The derived grassland is, nevertheless, spectacular in its own right. This mass flowering is something not many people in modern Australia would have seen, although it would have once been typical of our temperate plains and grassy woodlands. A few photos might at least start rectifying the sad state of public appreciation. Continue reading →