A former Alpine National Park ranger says he is heartbroken at renewed attempts to allow cattle grazing in Victoria's High Country.

After several failed attempts in recent years, the Victorian High Country Cattlemen's Association is confident it will achieve its goal of re-opening cattle grazing in the national park.

But several groups of scientists have recently written to the Federal Government expressing concern over the lack of scientific rigour in the application.

Grazing in the nearby Alpine National Park has been banned since 2005.

President of the Mountain Cattlemen's Association of Victoria (MCAV), Charlie Lovick, is dedicated to overturning that ban, saying the environmental damage cited by scientists and conservationists is overstated.

"A lot of this purported science has been done on the Bogong high tops, 200 kilometres from here," he said.

"There's never been a scientific study done on any of this country out here from Mansfield, and our family's been running cattle here since the 1800s.

Charlie Lovick is behind the application to re-establish a grazing trial in the Wonangatta Valley. ( ABC News: Rachel Carbonell )

"The damage is not there. If you really want to look at the change of the country, you look across the valley and see 7,000 beds on Mt Buller, and sewerage and all the infrastructure, but that's OK. Two hundred head of cattle on the other side is not OK."

Mr Lovick is behind the Victorian Government's application to the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act to re-establish a grazing trial in the Wonangatta Valley.

He says cattle grazing would reduce fuel loads which have built up in the area in recent years.

"We see that as the jewel in the crown," he said.

"We've seen it go backwards for so long now, and it's just a disgraceful mess of blackberries, weeds, long grass. It's a fire box, it attracts a lot of visitors in there, and we've been saying for years unless something's done, especially in those places, somebody's going to end up in serious trouble.

"We can go in there and we can make a big difference, and maybe we can show the world that cattle actually do reduce fuel."

Researchers say trial application lacks scientific integrity

But many scientists say they are frustrated that the cattlemen are ignoring evidence that grazing causes serious environmental damage in the Alpine National Park.

A former CSIRO ecologist and scientists from LaTrobe University's Research Centre for Applied Alpine Ecology are among several groups that have written to the Federal Government expressing their concern about the trial application.

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They say it lacks scientific integrity and threatens the natural heritage of the park.

Their views are supported by Peter Lawrence, a retired ranger who spent more than a decade in charge of the area now being considered for the trial.

"The Wonnangatta unit is over 300,000 hectares of wonderful mountain country which basically occupies most of the southern fall of the mountains below Mt Hotham, and it's magnificent country: steep ranges up to 1,700 metres or a bit more, wonderful river valleys, and of course Wonnangatta Valley is one of those," he says.

Mr Lawrence was previously unable to speak his mind publicly about the issue during his career as a ranger.

"I don't believe that there needs to be any more debate about the science," he says now.

"The science is there. It's quite understandable and readable, and it's quite clear in its evidence that alpine grazing doesn't reduce blazing and it doesn't perform any valuable service to the management of a national park, and it shouldn't be allowed. To argue that case is just a fallacy.

"This is all about politics, and this is all about appeasing a small minority group in rural Victoria."

He says he was deeply saddened when he heard of the new application.

"I guess shock, dismay, anger - all the things that you might expect a ranger with a concern about our natural environment, and particularly about the mountains, would feel," he said.

"Myself and many others felt the same way - betrayed, perhaps."

Mr Lawrence says the damage done by cattle when grazing was allowed in the park was clear.

"The impact of cattle on the ecosystems in the Alpine National Park was extensive and quite profound," he said.

"What has been fascinating and what we've found and the science supports, is since the removal of grazing, the recovery of all the various different ecosystems that were impacted has been quite remarkable.

"If you remove the impact from some of our native and natural areas, they can recover if they're given a chance to do that."

The Wonnangatta Valley area is also one of only two Victorian sites where there is a known population of the rare pale golden moths orchid, and it is the only population on public land.

State and national orchid societies have also written to the Federal Government expressing dismay at the proposal to reintroduce cattle to the site.