Deep in cattle country, graziers go against the flow to help the Great Barrier Reef

Deep in cattle country, graziers go against the flow to help the Great Barrier Reef

Strathalbyn station is cattle country, about 34,000 hectares of north Queensland grazing land, and the site of a pilot program that has demonstrated the potential to drastically improve water quality flowing towards the Great Barrier Reef.

At Strathalbyn, which is more than 200km from the coast, bulldozers and graders work to remediate sunken gullies where sediment flows into the Burdekin river catchment. It looks more like a construction site than an environmental program.

The project has recorded a remarkable reduction – from tonnes to grams – in the amount of soil washed away annually from the test site, which covers about 64 hectares.

The reef aid program, run by Greening Australia, aims to eventually work through more than 1,000 hectares of similar sites by 2030, an amount it says will ultimately have a measurable impact on reef water quality.

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Damon Telfer, the program adviser for Greening Australia, said soil along the Burdekin river and other parts of north Queensland had a high salt content, and was particularly susceptible to erosion. Rainfall over many years badly degraded about 64 hectares of land at Strathalbyn.

“The research shows the Burdekin produces 47% of the sediment coming into the reef,” Telfer said.

“We know that 90% of that material is subsurface erosion, so it’s gully erosion. If we address that we’ll be getting up in the range of measurable result. If we only did 10 hectares, you’d never know the difference.”

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Work started at Strathalbyn in October last year. One 1.2 hectare gully was fully remediated before the wet season, monitored and compared to a control site. At the control site, testing recorded 60g to 180g of soil per litre running into the nearby creek, a tributary of the Burdekin. At the remediated site, the same test measured 0.1 grams of sediment per litre of runoff.

Rainfall causes “tunnel erosion” in the gullies, stripping out large sections of subsoil. Remediating the gullies is not as simple as adding additional soil – they have to be dug out to remove the tunnels and then refilled.

Telfer said different remediation methods will be trialled and evaluated at future work sites at Strathalbyn.



“To be quite frank, with it there’s a lot for everyone to learn with this. We want to demonstrate every time we do something that it’s going to be effective. That’s what this trial is about. What can we do, what’s the cheapest way to do it, and what kinds of designs achieve the best results.

“These guys have all been involved in soil conservation for some time and they all consistently say they’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.



The program, which was launched by the Virgin chief executive, Richard Branson, two years ago, is partly backed by government funding, and partly by corporate and private donors.

The Greening Australia chief executive, Brendan Foran, said work on just the gullies at Strathalbyn alone could take 30,000 tonnes of sediment out of the reef catchment.

“After climate change, water quality is the single biggest issue facing the barrier reef,” Foran said. “And it’s something we can do something about. This is a tangible project that shows you can do something about water quality.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Greening Australia chief executive Brendan Foran (left) and Strathalbyn station owner Bristow Hughes at the site of the restored gully. Photograph: Annette Ruzicka

A challenging climate

The successful results were announced just weeks after the federal government committed a $500m assistance package to the reef, and in the months after a landmark study that showed mass mortality of corals due to a climate change-induced marine heatwave.

It also comes amid debate in the scientific community about a way forward. A Guardian Australia investigation this year found millions of dollars was being spent on projects against official advice and scientific recommendations.

Ken Anthony, the principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, showed a group involved with the reef aid program two projections.

The first, in which global warming was contained within bounds of the Paris targets, demonstrated the value of what he described as “healthcare” programs for the reef. In the Paris scenario, he said measures to deal with water quality and crown-of-thorns starfish made a measurable difference to coral survival rates.



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“The reef needs healthcare,” Anthony said.

In a second projection, in which the impacts of climate change are not contained to the Paris targets, reef programs ultimately made little difference.

“Even by 2050 (in an extreme climate change scenario) you see a really sad story.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A ranger inspects the Great Barrier Reef’s condition near Lady Elliot Island in Queensland. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters

Jon Brodie, a professorial research fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said for water quality programs to be effective they needed to be run on a massive scale.

“You’re talking billions needed, billions with a b.”

Call for farmers to get involved

One of the biggest remaining challenges for the reef aid program is engaging landowners; going on to properties to identify erosion sites, and securing their permission to undertake remediation.

There is little direct benefit to pastoralists from the programs. The owner of Strathalbyn station, Bristow Hughes, who runs 5,000 to 6,000 head of cattle, said he hoped more farmers would become involved.

“They’ve already achieved a lot more than I hoped would come out of the work,” Hughes said.

“We do everything we can to look after the land, we do everything in our power to keep the grass on the ground to reduce overland flow.”

