LANDliteracy Links


‘Landliteracy’ succinctly describes the ability to read the land. Clearly, if more people could detect the early signs of land degradation this would foster more affective holistic approaches to designing landliteracy strategies in both urban and rural areas. Also, social and political responses to land custodianship would be enhanced if there were a higher level of landliteracy – particularly in urban areas.

Landliteracy can be understood as one's ability to read and appreciate the signs of health in a landscape and by implication, this definition also implies the ability to read the signs of ill-health in a landscape. Being 'land literate' is a reason for including ‘art’ in the 'landliteracy equation'.




The REDreadTREE since 1996 has won the attention of many travellers along the Midlands Highway in Tasmania. All have different understandings and different stories to tell. There has been a network of people watching this place and the ways it has changed over time. The REDreadTREE Network would like to hear your stories.



The original REDreadTREE initiated by me and the project came about as a result of a confluence of ideas. The Landcare organisation was seeking a means to draw attention to 'Rural Tree Decline' in the Midlands as a part of the Decade of Landcare initiative. Coinciding with this a group of artists were looking for opportunities to install 'ecoLANDMARKS' along the Midlands Highway. The REDreadTREE was to be the precursor for that and simultaneously serve a Landcare purpose.


The Midlands in the Decade of Landcare [1990 >2000] the E. viminalis succumb first to 'Rural Tree Decline' given that, as I recall, they were most sensitive to changes to the water table and when under stress for this reason, more susceptible to insect and possum predation. That’s not to mention the soil compaction around trees as a consequence of stocking levels. 

Many farmers then still held a belief that to get ‘fine wool’ sheep needed to run at the limit of the land’s carrying capacity. AND “we are farming sheep not trees” was/is(?) heard too often.

As I recall around Woodbury there was something over 30 possums per hectare and farmers were bending over backwards to maintain stocking levels (proactively encouraged by ‘the banks’). If my memory serves me well enough, about 4 to 5 possums forage about the same amount as a sheep except for tree leaves, so the competition sent them up the trees especially after rain when the trees were trying to recover…. AND it happened over and over. 

The loss of tree cover (25% approx. 1990 >2000) was further magnified by land clearing for chipping logs again typically initiated by, indeed often insisted upon by ‘the banks’ to cover interest on borrowings etc. Indeed, I know of one case where a bank ‘totally funded’ an illegal(?) mass clearing of stressed land but lets not go there.

The evidence in the end seemed to me to point pretty clearly to ‘rural tree decline’ being due to inappropriate land use practices (insensitive sometimes) exacerbated by drought, the ‘money game’ and governance at all levels. Its easier to blame drought to your bank manager than it is to seek funding for better land management practices etc. they are disinterested in … but there you go.

In any event somewhere in the ‘dieback scenario’ humanity’s mismanagement of ‘cultural landscapes’, or put another way ‘poor placescaping’, is at the root of the issue – often via remote actions/aspirations/expectations. It is hard to see and even harder when there’s a disinclination modify expectations and aspirations …. or even to look. 

UTas’s Dr Richard Doyle did a lot of the work in the Midlands






LINKS & REFERENCES
  • COOLABAH Vol 11 2013 – Placescape, placemaking, placemarking, placedness … geography and cultural production ... CLICK HERE
  • COOLABAHplacedness – IMAGES – Online images in support of papers & essays in Vol 11 ... CLICK HERE 
  • Community of Ownership & Interest: Landscapes ... CLICK HERE
  • MUSEUMS: Stakes Shares & Ownerships ... CLICK HERE
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If Tasmanians were really serious about sustainable environmental management the might consider tackling the 'feral cat' problem. With trees dying at various times and in various bio-regions it is very clear that something is out of kilter in the natural environment. And most of all the 'problem' will ultimately come back in large measure to humanity's impact upon the current and evolving ecosystem. ............... Given that the 'blame game' has to begin somewhere and typically as far away from 'human impacts' as possible, one can pick almost any point in the spectrum to start doing some research. The fashionable thing to do these days is to call out 'climate change'. Usefully it comes with a convenient amount of 'political cargo' that all too often can be claimed to originate 'somewhere else' and/or with 'someone else'. ............... Speculatively, let's throw the feral cat issue into the ring in regard to the current tree decline events being experienced in Tasmania. It's unlikely to be the whole problem but its equally unlikely that feral cats are playing no part at all. ............... There has been speculation that insect predation on 'White Gums (E. viminalus)' and feasibly that could be a factor. Indeed it was in the Tasmanian Midlands but there possums were also predating the trees and the trees were under drought stress. However, after a somewhat wet winter it's feasible to exclude insects and drought working together. Nonetheless. the consequent flourishes of new growth plus a relatively warm summer might turn out to be good for the insects but in ecosystems there is always something waiting opportunistically in the wings. Here that might well be 'the birds' and it has been noted by some that the numbers are down. So which birds are missing? How many compared to some known number in the past? What factors are impacting upon what populations? What are the knock-on effects of any perceived change? What landscapes are the birds being lost from? And there will be even more questions arising from these. ............... If feral cats are thrown into the equation, what do we know, that's actually know, about their population level? Is there a correlation between 'cat numbers' and 'bird numbers'? If so why so? If so what action to be taken if any? ............... Indeed, who is asking such questions and in what context? It is speculated upon, based upon anecdotal evidence, that feral cats are having an enormously negative impact upon 'cultural landscapes'. Just what are the impacts and on what evidence? ............... The research task here is non-trivial and 'citizen scientists' with a modicum of literacy and numeracy might well play a role IF they weren't sidelined by 'the professionals'. The Southern Indian State of Kerela is an exemplar where 'citizen science' was employed for such a purpose. In fact Kerela can lay claim to being the home of LANDliteracy and mainly so because of the region's very high literacy levels that has facilitated the region's high levels of 'social activism'. ............... All that aside it is well known that if there is a lot of something in a cultural landscape it is possible to remove it, often extinguish it, via the mechanism of 'unsustainable harvesting/exploitation'. It's a tried and proven methodology and should feral cats be implicated in 'TREE DECINE' harvesting them for a profit is a potential way forward. ............... Forget any notion of a subsidised eradication program and especially so in Tasmania. It was tried with foxes in Tasmania and not a fox was found until the program looked like it might be abandoned. More to the point there was a parallel refusal to address the feral cat issue as, according to some, "that'd kick-in when the fox thing is over". That's possibly a bit cynical but there may be some truth in it?

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