Abstract
Sustainable use of Australia’s northern grazing lands is a long-standing issue for management and policy, heightened by projections of increased climatic variability, uncertainty of forage supplies, vegetation complexes and weeds and diseases. Meat & Livestock Australia has supported a large study to explore sustainable grazing management strategies and increase the capacity of the sector to address climate change. Potential options were explored by bio-economic modeling of ‘representative’ beef enterprises defined by pastoralists and supported by regional research and extension specialists. Typical options include diversification, infrastructure, flexible stocking rates, wet season resting and prescribed fire. Concurrent activities by another team included regional impact assessments and surveys of pastoralists’ understanding of and attitudes towards climate change and adaptive capacity. The results have been widely canvassed and a program of on-ground demonstrations of various options implemented. The paper describes the structure of this program and highlights key results indicating considerable scope to address sustainability challenges.
Highlights
The north Australian grazing lands span ~2.3 Mkm2 and carry ~14 M cattle
The Northern Grazing Systems (NGS) strategy incorporated the following aspects: (1) Formally review past research conducted across northern Australia to identify central themes and underlying principles that might be applied to management in the regions (McIvor et al 2010); (2) Present strategies built around these themes at workshops of pastoralists, research and extension specialists in 9 agro-ecological regions, and those of interest listed for further exploration by simulation modeling of a representative beef enterprise defined for each region; (3) Application of bio-economic modeling to the selected strategies of interest; (4) Canvass modeling results at a second series of regional workshops and refine the scenarios where appropriate
Projected liveweight gain and stocking rate for each paddock are input to the ENTERPRISE herd economic model (MacLeod and Ash 2001), that allocates the herd across the paddocks
Summary
The north Australian grazing lands span ~2.3 Mkm and carry ~14 M cattle. Resource heterogeneity, climatic ___________Correspondence: Neil D. The north Australian grazing lands span ~2.3 Mkm and carry ~14 M cattle. MacLeod, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Brisbane, Qld 4001, Australia. (Tothill and Gillies 1993) and much research has been invested in exploring sustainable management practices. In 2009 Meat & Livestock Australia initiated the Northern Grazing Systems (NGS) project, to identify and extend sustainable herd and land management strategies for 9 major bio-regions, involving: (1) scientific reviews www.tropicalgrasslands.info.
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