needs to be based on forage budgeting and pasture “ rest ” ( or recovery ) periods tend to be much longer than a 1-2 month wet season spell .
o Retaining sufficient ground cover and pasture integrity to allow triggering of ongoing growth cycles e . g . through repeated short duration grazes .
• Exclusion of cattle and grazing management , using the above principles , were shown to be effective in improving land condition across all project sites visited , as well as slowing or stopping gully head progression .
o Graziers prefer the latter ( grazing management ), as it allows for some pasture utilisation .
o There was some indication that using cattle to improve land condition can achieve improvements more rapidly than excluding cattle over long periods .
o No firm consensus was achieved on how quickly land condition D or C could be improved with cattle management , with suggestions that the duration to improvement ranges from 1 to 10 years or more .
• There was consensus that species composition is of secondary importance to achieving ground cover . The main game is to achieve an increase in ( green ) biomass , irrespective of pasture species - ‘ Indian Couch is better than bare ground ’. There was also a general consensus that plant diversity was beneficial and desirable .
• Enhancing soil health or soil biological activity through the provision of manure , urine and mulch were seen as critical to re-establishing pastures and achieving remediation of degraded areas .
• Irrespective of whether mulching , trampling , grazing or cattle exclusion were used , there was consensus that vegetated patches could , in time , also recover residual bare patches . The key was seen to be the injection of organic matter into the system to enable hostile soil surfaces to support germination . There were specific comments made about focusing on the areas that were growing grass , not the areas that weren ’ t . Once they improved a little and started to grow something , grazing would come into play to improve them .
• Re-establishing biomass on degraded areas or on scalds upstream of gullies was effective in slowing or stopping gully head progression in small gullies . This was often also accompanied with revegetation of gully floors .
• Using cattle trampling to knock down steep gully walls and create better surfaces for germination was generally effective , obviating the need for mechanical flattening of gully walls , which was deemed to be more costly than using electric fencing to temporarily constrain cattle for remediation areas on gully heads .
• Water diversion bunds upstream of larger gully heads were also accepted as effective , but more costly . Not all graziers will have the necessary machinery or inclination to do earthworks . Consequently , there was a divergence in views on whether diversion bunds were required , when runoff reduction could also be achieved through appropriate grazing management . Risk of failure in major events or because of poor design were also seen as an issue .
• There was consensus that small engineering interventions , mainly in the form of rock chutes , have a place in the gully remediation toolbox to arrest gully head progression during the period it takes to re-establish ground biomass and hydrological recovery of the upstream catchment areas of the gully .
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