The Stomping out Sediment in the Burdekin project - background
The Stomping out Sediment in the Burdekin project - background
The NQ Dry Tropics “ Building Resilience in the Burdekin Grazing Industry ” project worked with three demonstration properties in the Bowen , Broken , Bogie ( BBB ) catchment from July 2014 to June 2016 to trial the Holistic Management approach to their grazing businesses .
The Resilience in Grazing project created a great deal of interest from the grazing and scientific community with two major field days attracting more than 160 people in March 2015 and 110 people in April 2016 .
As part of the Resilience in Grazing project , cost-effective gully remediation techniques , easily resourced by graziers , were investigated .
They included planned rotational grazing techniques in the contributing catchments of gullies , short duration , ultra high density ( UHD ) cattle impact across gullies ( with long periods of pasture recovery ) and a process called ‘ biological carpeting ’.
The methods are used in other countries to jumpstart biological activity on mining sites and severely degraded land .
A biological carpeting trial was conducted on a black soil gully at Glenalpine Station , Bowen and the immediate contributing catchment was treated with UHD grazing practices .
The outcome of this trial was very successful and after several wet seasons , the gully was fully grassed and difficult to recognise .
Figure 1 : Glenalpine biological carpeting trial gully Aug 2014 ( left ), after treatment Nov 2014 ( centre ), May 2022 ( right ).
The Reef Trust IV Stomping out Sediment in the Burdekin project was a logical next step in the progression of the Resilience in Grazing project and other NQ Dry Tropics project activity that was undertaken in the BBB region from 2013 to 2017 ( including Reef Trust Phase I , II and III projects ).
The five year ( June 2017 to June 2022 ) project has taken an unconventional approach to gully management : testing and evaluating the use of livestock as a tool in the remediation of some gully types , as well as implementing more conventional gully remediation approaches .
The project offered an opportunity to build an increasing commitment , in an engaged group of graziers , to improving their landscapes to ensure long-term productivity , to restore historical and contemporary gully and streambank erosion sites , and to make a real contribution to a reduction in sediment loss from the region .
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