Woodlands: A Disappearing Landscape

WOODLANDS

A DISAPPEARING LANDSCAPE

Dedication

Glen Greaney was a student of the bush. His eyes were always open to the natural world in which he lived and worked. With his many friends, Glen shared his amazement in the recovery of the fenced woodland on his property at Adjungbilly. He had a tremendous appreciation of native grasses as pasture, particularly weeping grass (Microlaena stipoides). He strongly believed that nature conservation could be integrated into farm management and demonstrated this on his own property.

Glen Greaney was a devoted and loving father to his three children Laura, Sam and Jack and an integral part of the Adjungbilly community. As an environmental educator he would share his knowledge with anyone who would ask. As a volunteer he was always the first one there. As a worker he was a perfectionist and all rounder. He was a good mate to everyone who lived at Adjungbilly.

Glen’s life was tragically cut short in a house fire on 27 November 2004. This book is dedicated to him.

WOODLANDS

A DISAPPEARING LANDSCAPE

David Lindenmayer, Mason Crane and Damian Michael

With contributions from Christopher MacGregor and Ross Cunningham

Photographs by Esther Beaton

Text © 2005 David Lindenmayer, Mason Crane and Damian Michael

Photographs © 2005 Esther Beaton

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Lindenmayer, David.

Woodlands: a disappearing landscape.

Bibliography.

ISBN 0 643 09026 6.

1. Forests and forestry – Australia. 2. Forest health -

Australia. I. Crane, Mason. II. Michael, Damian. III.

MacGregor, Christopher. IV. Cunningham, Ross B. V. Beaton,

Esther. VI. Title.

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Foreword

Brush-tailed phascogale.

The woodlands of Australia have an important place in the economic and social development of Australia: they are the source of many images which have become popular and enduring national emblems. Woodland landscapes of gum and box trees which were embraced and painted by the likes of Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Hans Heysen – painters whose work shaped the way Australians viewed the landscape. For a largely urban population, these landscapes became the quintessential image of the Australian bush.

Our woodlands are also the birthplace of the Australian pastoral industry. Following European settlement the relatively fertile woodland soils quickly attracted attention and large areas were cleared for cropland and towns, or were grazed and converted to exotic pasture. The conversion of temperate eucalypt woodlands to agricultural land represents one of the most significant vegetation changes in Australian history.

Despite their iconic status, temperate eucalypt woodlands are among the most poorly conserved and threatened ecosystems in Australia, having borne the brunt of agricultural development and land degradation for well over 150 years. Australia’s remaining temperate eucalypt woodlands are undoubtedly under threat across much of their range. Considering the magnitude of the problems which face many of the remaining eucalypt woodlands in temperate Australia, it is only recently that we have begun to understand how these woodlands work and how they might be conserved and restored.

Most of the big conservation efforts in Australia seem to centre on either tall forests or coral reefs. Woodlands seem to attract less attention despite their place in the national psyche. And yet the woodlands are probably more in need of urgent conservation action than either forests or reefs.

This book is a wonderful window into the world of Australia’s woodlands. I hope it will inspire a generation of Australians to rediscover this world, recognise its value, and invest effort in ensuring its persistence.

Richard Hobbs,

Murdoch University

Acknowledgements

Common fringe-lilly.

This book was made possible through the generous support of Jim Atkinson and Di Stockbridge who maintain a tremendous passion for the conservation of Australian wildlife. Land and Water Australia, Environment ACT, Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, and the Australian Research Council have assisted several of our major research projects on woodlands in the past decade. Nicki Munro provided tireless assistance with many of the tasks associated with this book such as collecting literature and preparing figures and tables. Anne Findlay and Karen Viggers assisted with editing.

Nick Alexander from CSIRO Publishing championed this work through his keen support of the idea when it was first proposed. Interactions with many of our colleagues at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies provided much of the stimulus for this book, in particular we would like to thank Joern Fischer and Adrian Manning. Some of the ideas in this book have been influenced by a joint publication on farm forestry with David Salt and Richard Hobbs – we feel privileged to have shared research with them. We are fortunate to have worked with many remarkable private landholders in the Tumut, Nanangroe and South West Slopes regions of southern New South Wales, each of whom have a deep and long-standing appreciation of woodland environments and the need to conserve them. We are also most indebted to the staff at Environment ACT, particularly David Shorthouse, for collaborative research and study support in the woodland ecosystems of the Australian Capital Territory. Finally, many of our detailed bird surveys of woodland birds in the past ten years could not have been completed without the dedicated support of exceptional amateur ornithologists from the Canberra Ornithologists Group.

Much of this book is based on the first-rate research work completed by colleagues. We have tried to summarise as much of the ecology of temperate woodlands as possible in a limited space, but we have had to omit much material to keep the book within page limits. A text ten times as long would be required to do justice to the work of the outstanding scientists in this field. We apologise to any colleagues who feel we have short-changed their work – this was not intentional.

Parts of this book were based on earlier work we completed in the book Wildlife on Farms. Major contributors to that book were Andrew Claridge, Donna Hazell and Jann Williams. We are most grateful to them for their earlier efforts.

Preface

Green and golden bell frog.

This book is a celebration of Australia’s temperate lowland woodlands, in particular those of the South West Slopes and adjacent regions of southern New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.

While Australians have had some 30–40 years of ‘environmental awakening,’ it is probably true to say that there are some types of vegetation rich in beautiful flora and fauna that have remained largely unknown to most people. Woodlands are a classic example.

Woodlands are home to many extraordinary plants and animals and they sometimes support more species of groups (birds, for example) than better-known forest habitats. In this book we highlight some of the diverse plants and animals that characterise these subtle but fascinating environments. We first describe where woodlands have come from; the various components of the vegetation that together make a woodland; and explore future management challenges. The middle chapters deal more fully with each component of the woodland, working from the canopy (the tree crowns) down, through the understorey, and the ground layers, to the lowest lying parts of a landscape – wetlands, rivers and creeks. The final chapters discuss how wider landscape perspectives are important in shaping our approaches to woodland management and conservation. In each chapter we illustrate many key topics in woodland biology with spectacular images. The photo captions explain important aspects of woodland ecology as well as elements of woodland management and conservation.

We hope that this book may foster a greater appreciation and understanding of the importance of Australia’s temperate woodlands. There is an urgent need to better manage and conserve what we still have as a key part of the nation’s natural heritage. We aim to communicate the beauty and diversity of woodlands in words and images to a wide audience of scientific colleagues, people on the land and others with interests in managing country. It is vital that woodlands are managed sustainably and conserved. Through better understanding and better land practices, as well as further research, we can ensure that not only the production of commodities such as wool, meat and wheat can continue, but also that country can maintain the range of native plants and animals that has existed there for millions of years. Although temperate woodlands suffer major problems, there are many positive things that can be done and these are summarised on page 132.

David Lindenmayer, Esther Beaton, Mason Crane, Damian Michael,

Christopher MacGregor, and Ross Cunningham

June 2005

Woodlands dominated by white box once extended from north-eastern Victoria to southern Queensland. They also occurred in western Victoria and the southern Flinders Ranges. White box woodlands most often occurred on the flatter, more productive parts of landscape and have been extensively cleared. Less than one per cent of their former cover remains. Most of the few remaining patches are tiny – less than one hectare.

Chapter 1

Australia’s woodland heritage

It was once possible to walk from Melbourne to Sydney through almost continuous woodland. A traveller in the early nineteenth century passing through this part of south-eastern Australia would have encountered an astonishing diversity of woodland types including: grey box woodlands, black box woodlands, white box woodlands, and woodlands with mixtures of tree species such as yellow box and Blakely’s red gum. In the wetter areas along creeks and streams, our traveller would have encountered magnificent stands of river red gum.

Grassy woodlands – a once typical scene in temperate Australia. The large, relatively open spaces between trees are one of the classic features that helps distinguish woodlands from forests.

Blakely’s red gum typically flowers between August and December and, like most eucalypts, larger older trees flower more intensively and for longer than smaller regrowth stems and saplings. Different species of woodland eucalypts flower at different times – enabling wildlife that feed on pollen and nectar to harvest food resources across much of the year.

Not all woodlands are dominated by eucalypts. Dominating this woodland is currawang, a species of wattle that often occurs on welldrained rocky ridges and hillslopes.

Today most of these woodlands have gone. Of those that remain, most have been extensively altered by land use practices adopted since European settlement. As an example, 85 per cent of the original cover of native vegetation – much of it woodland – has been removed from the South West Slopes of New South Wales, making the area the most disturbed of the 13 botanical regions of that State. Huge tracts of woodland also have been lost from the Australian Capital Territory and northern Victoria and the remaining temperate woodlands in these regions are often highly degraded.

What are woodlands?

Woodlands are a broad category of vegetation in which stands of dominant trees are distinguished from those in forest and rainforest by their height, spacing and crown cover. Perhaps the most workable definition of woodland is that of Richard Hobbs: ‘ecosystems that contain widely spaced trees with their crowns not touching’.

Mallee red gum typically occurs on ridges and stony rises. This stand is at the foothills of Table Top Mountain, near Albury in southern New South Wales.

Brittle gum is a distinctive fine-leaved, white-barked woodland tree that grows in association with other eucalypts such