A FORMER Rural Fires officer has been able to use exemptions under the vegetation management laws to double the carrying capacity of an Injune property.
Ray Klein, previously a Rural Fire Service district inspector in Roma, has spent the last eight years working on the 16,100 hectare property, Glendonell, belonging to Grant and Kay Warrian, using thinning and fire techniques to improve the land.
Mr Klein linked his work with QMDC’s fire project, which saw the fire use and outcomes of 70 farming entities across 413,000ha formally documented for the first time in the Maranoa.
His work on Glendonell began by dividing the property into areas and under proposed Natural Resource Managment departmental guidelines he thinned cypress pine with a brush cutter and chainsaw.
The area was then burnt using different types of fire severity to manage vegetation.
The gradual success of the thinning and burning method has seen the property’s breeder carrying capacity increase from 700 to 1400 breeders.
“After thinning we burn that as per the National Parks and Wildlife burning plans to bring back the biodiversity where pine has become a monoculture,” he said.
“The land, which is under the thick pine, the grass has collapsed and there is no ground-feeding animals. Once we burn it, it brings them all back.”
The Department of Natural Resources and Mines declined to comment on the individual case study, referring to the government’s online vegetation management guidelines where a clearing exemption exists “where the clearing complies with a self-assessable vegetation clearing code for thinning”.
The self-assessable thinning guidelines meant Mr Klein could have 8000 stems per hectare and reduce that number to 260.
“We are taking it from a dense cypress ‘locked’ stand to a stand which produces timber and grass good for cattle production,” he said.
Burns on Glendonell occur every five to six years progressively in different areas, with the river and roads established as vital protection systems and fire breaks.
QMDC climate change officer Rhonda Toms-Morgan said Col Paton of EcoRich Grazing had been recording the land condition with positive results.
“In terms of having a biodiversity, it had choked itself out,” she said.
“The way Ray has done it, the results take time. Post fire it’s about three to five years before you are looking at what that change has been.”
Lucy Kinbacher
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
