Through our festive season I have been involved in many conversations and meetings concerning camphor laurel clearing, its interesting to me that the debate of whether to clear or not to clear gets people ‘hot under the collar’ as they say. But when I thought about it the more I realised that it’s not about the camphor’s but our approach to the natural world, which in some respects hasn’t changed since Cro-Magnon man arrived?

Interestingly we give more money to conservation projects and spend more time watching wildlife films than we have ever done however as soon as we see that our economic interests are threatened, our war against nature resumes. It’s never been clearer than farmers standing up at meetings exclaiming that it is their democratic right to clear their land for whatever they wish to do with it. Now, as a farmer I have no problem with this notion – if it’s logical. Some farmers are clearing for clearings or their real estate agents sake, we know that it is rated as a noxious weed and in their view should be cleared; the problem is of course what is going in its place? Does the clearing benefit their environment or not? Can the farmer afford to replant, how long will it takes to regenerate nature; what biodiversity will suffer?

Many highly qualified scientists say its better to leave it for the soil and habitat but in a true exercise in willful stupidity our government has said that camphor’s are not good for the environment and should be rendered extinct, a blanket and highly divisive view. It’s a human quandary that we still act as if we have been granted dominion over our environment—some of those with an economic interest seem to regard any species that might compete or conflict with us as a threat not only to our income but also to their power over nature. At no point do we stop and take a strong look at these ‘blanket’ decisions for what they are. Badly applied reasoning that only identifies humans as dominant on the food chain. Do we ever stop and say well maybe there is another way rather than treating this as part of nature as nothing which is not too precious, too great a source of conflict with man and nature, but easy to eradicate. Why are we still thinking of the environment as monocultures joined together in our environment to financially please us?

It’s also interesting to note that much of our research and development flows along these lines also. Take for example the huge problem of fruit spotting bug in our crops down the eastern seaboard. For years our R&D has tried to eradicate it with ‘chemical’ solutions, much money spent and not one project has involved IPM (integrated pest management). Although IPM has been very successfully applied with nut borer in macadamias. This of course is only acknowledged by a small group of scientists and farmers who did not believe in the extermination of fruit spotting through chemicals, but as a problem to be dealt with on a wider more holistic viewpoint. Whilst the interested peak bodies claim it to be their research, it was clearly research that was not ‘main stream’ in their thinking.

Industry, as George Orwell reasoned, if left unchecked tolerates no deviance. Like the camphor, maybe we would be wise to also think outside the box, lose the chest thumping rhetoric and adopt a more logical realistic way to benefit our environment.

All the best, Cath

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