Page 413 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 15 February 2005
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topography dictates the primacy of native vegetation with minimal disturbance of the land to facilitate water supply and quality outcomes. This is, of course, assured because the land is part of our Namadgi National Park and also links with the Kosziusko National Park and the extended Australian Alps National Park system.
ActewAGL and Environment ACT have carried out significant remediation works in the upper Cotter above the Bendora Dam. In 2002-03 over $1 million was spent on the construction of silt curtains and booms, aerial photography, fire intensity mapping, GIS data collection, water quality and quantity monitoring, bathometric surveys and consultants. I am advised that we are seeing very good rates of regeneration of native vegetation in that particular area and that Environment ACT is working in a low impact way to augment the natural regrowth.
The second part, and I think it is the second part of the catchment to which Dr Foskey referred and refers, does, of course, present a different landscape. The lower Cotter has been catastrophically altered with the destruction of the pine forests. This has occurred in a way totally at odds with good forestry management, which would have seen small parcels of land cleared and an overall balance maintained. The January 2003 fires have therefore created a major management challenge, indeed a challenge unlike any seen before in the management of our forests or catchments. We are meeting that challenge by cooperation between our land management agencies and the use of expert advice. Our approach recognises that in water supply catchments it is possible to have other land uses, such as softwood forestry, and to protect those ecosystem services by putting appropriate management in place.
The ACT government has initiated significant research and consultation processes to inform its actions in the rehabilitation of the Cotter catchment. In the absence of a proven model to take account of the large range of issues faced by the government in making decisions about rehabilitation of the catchment, a very comprehensive consultation process was put in place, which incorporated very significant scientific inputs. That consultation was undertaken at the outset and, as I say, was detailed and extensive. It included inputs from a broad range, almost exhaustive range, of academic, community, scientific and academic organisations including, for instance, the cooperative research centres for freshwater ecology and hydrology, Greening Australia, the ANU Centre for Research and Environmental Studies and ActewAGL.
The approach taken in relation to the replanting in the Cotter area is quite sophisticated and is consistent with the recommendations of November 2003 Shaping our territory report. The approach also accords with the design principles developed by ACT Forests and a group of experts that were engaged for the purpose, including Professor Peter Kanowski, Professor David Lindenmayer and Professor Bob Wasson, all from the ANU. Much of the work that is being pursued at this stage by ACT Forests is pursuant to those principles designed in concert with those experts.
Under the strategy native vegetation is being planted in the riparian zones and on steep slopes and pines are being planted in the intermediate areas. The areas being reviewed for reafforestation with pines are being assessed on a micro-catchment basis to ensure riparian protection with buffer zones to pine forest activity, native reafforestation on overly steep slopes and minimal hard engineering solutions in road formation to reduce scope for erosion. Hard engineering contributes to accelerated water flow and diversion
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