Big & Little Desert National Parks
1973 - 1989
The message from the images of Stirling National Park is that this is
a Park under siege. Unfortunately that message also emerges from the next
location, the Big and Little Desert areas in western Victoria.
Use your browser to open
each image in a new window to compare them.
The obvious areas of native vegetation in the images are not deserts. They
are the last extensive remnants of open eucalypt woodlands that carry the
Aboriginal name of Mallee. In the 1973 and 1989 images, the term wasteland
seems more applicable to the surrounding croplands. This is a cereal growing
area and the patterns of landuse are obviously intense. Very little remnant
mallee vegetation exists outside the two very distinctively shaped areas
in the centre of the image.
The border between South Australia and Victoria runs north - south through
the LHS of the image. In a rare example of interstate cooperation in Conservation
landuse, there is land allocated to Conservation landuse on both sides of
the border. In Victoria, the largest area of mallee in the image comprises
the Big Desert Wilderness in the west and the Wyperfield National Park and
Lake Albacutya Park in the east, with unallocated land in between. Across
the border in South Australia the Scorpion Springs, Ngarkat and Mount Rescue
Conservation Parks form a continuous adjoining expanse of mallee.
In the south, the smaller tongue of mallee comprises a fragmented Little
Desert National Park. Lying between the two tongues of mallee is the cereal
cropping surrounding the large country towns of Dimboola, Nhill and Kaniva,
connected by the Western Highway.
The landcover change that can be detected for the 16 year period is substantial.
The most striking is that associated with wildfires. Fire footprints of
several ages are obvious, as is the trend for them to spread driven by the
prevailing southwest winds.
The landcover change associated with landuse is much smaller in total area,
but of much greater significance than that resulting from wildfire. In all
three images, loss of small remnant patches of mallee scattered throughout
the cultivated areas has occurred. Also there has been nibbling by (presumably
legal) clearing of the margins of the large tongues of mallee.
My own feelings as I look at these images are of a besieged area of natural
Australia. The last remnants cannot be left in peace by Agricultural landuse.
I hope that I am wrong, and that the loss of landcover that we can detect
and interpret is the end: that no more landcover loss will be found if we
use satellite data to look back at the end of this century. I really doubt
it.
