Alpine National Park - Agriculture

Agriculture

Unusually for an Australian national park, for much of its history agricultural activity was conducted in the park, with quotas of cattle allowed to graze on the High Plains during summer. Australia’s alpine area was first used for grazing around the 1840s. Concerns about the environmental effects led various governments to remove grazing from parts of the alps over the next century. Grazing was temporarily halted in Mount Buffalo National Park in the 1920s and stopped altogether in 1952. Cattle were taken out of Kosciuszko National Park in NSW during the 1950s and 1960s due to concerns about the effect of grazing on water quality for the Snowy River Scheme. Grazing was also removed from Mounts Feathertop, Hotham and Bogong around this time, from around Mount Howitt in the 1980s, and from the northern Bogong High Plains, the Bluff and part of Davies Plains in the early 1990s, leaving about one third of the Alpine National Park – over 200,000 hectares – available for grazing. In 2004, the Victorian State Government made the decision that cattle grazing would no longer be permitted in this remaining area of the Alpine National Park. Grazing is still permitted in alpine State Forest areas.

When the Victorian state government (controlled by the Australian Labor Party) announced plans to end this grazing, the then federal government, controlled by a coalition of conservative parties who are the ALP's traditional opponents, floated the idea of using national cultural heritage powers (on the basis of the cultural place given to the mountain cattleman, notably through The Man from Snowy River) to override the state decision.

For a period of over five years cattle were banned from the park, a decision which angered representative bodies of the graziers

As of 12 January 2011 a group of cattlemen was permitted by Parks Victoria to return small numbers of cattle to fenced areas in the Alpine National Park.