PARK WATCH Article September 2024 |

Grassy Plains Network Facilitator, Adrian Marshall, reports grasslands might be getting the attention they deserve

In a sign of the times, our recently published A People’s Audit of the 36 MSA Conservation Areas gained some important traction in the media, getting a front page of The Age. But behind every silver lining there’s a dark cloud.

The People’s Audit assessed the health of 36 grassy conservation areas in Melbourne’s growth corridors and the results were not good. Decline, mismanagement, their promised size cut down, weeds spreading, no monitoring of condition, and little oversight from the authorities that allows bad things to happen like clearing and dumping.

The public airing of such failures to actually protect, rather than to blithely promise, is important. Emails came in from many, from across the state, including from within the Environment Department itself, comments saying ‘good work’, ‘about time’, ’I wished I could have said that myself, I’m glad you could’.

The government departments responsible for the protection of these 36 conservation areas were audited by the Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability in 2022. Two years later, their minimal response has just slipped onto their website.

Often the state just thinks it knows best. Sometimes bureaucrats channel their political masters and simply avoid risk, perversely creating additional risks in the process, or they like to keep their brief too tight. Sometimes teams full of hard-working and well-intentioned staff are constrained by the legacies of previous bad decisions, or political winds blow them off course. Sometimes the resourcing is just not there, ask anyone from Parks Victoria and they’ll tell you that’s no joke.

Nature is often at the bottom of the pile for decision-makers. So, holding to account those tasked with looking after our web of life is a big part of what we do at VNPA. This happens in small steps with the occasional great leap forward.

Grasslands are copping it from every direction, and it’s often a game of whack-a-mole. For example, a report just came in from the Wimmera where 10 km of great roadside grassland has been ploughed up by Big Agriculture just for shareholder profit. It’s far from being an isolated case. Business as usual destruction of the environment – on public land – and irreversible.

Will the ‘responsible authority’ actually respond? Often these go into the too hard basket, allowing bad actors to think they are above the law. When crimes do get successfully prosecuted, often the fines are so small they become just the cost of doing business.

In a recent court case about the burying of Conservation Area 9 under asbestos-contaminated fill, a contractor was fined a pathetic $160,000 plus costs. Conservation Area 9 is one of those 36 Conservation Areas that our People’s Audit focused on.

There is no statewide plan for protecting our grasslands. We need to resource councils to be better able to do the right thing by grasslands. And we need reform to create a legal system better structured to protect the environment. Grasslands need love. They need dedicated attention.

With community action, the generous support of members and donors, and our message that our environment is too important to ignore, perhaps we can change the narrative.

Precious grasslands. An important headline.