Get reliable science

As part of a larger project to determine "the production and biodiversity costs and benefits of woodland thickening and mechanical thinning in the Qld Desert Uplands ", data was gathered from four properties around Torrens Creek and Prairie in Flinders Shire, north-west Qld.

The study properties were all less than a "living area" as per NRM &M standards (1998). Individual property owners have addressed inadequate property size, and hence inadequate income, through a variety of strategies including off -property employment, buying or agisting additional land, improved husbandry practices, and property development, including clearing and thinning trees.

Of the clearing and thinning strategies considered, clearing of gidgea scrub to establish buffel grass pastures proved highly profitable. Thinning undergrowth from eucalypt woodlands was in one instance financially successful and in another unsuccessful.