you ignorant wanker, when you have lived on a farm all your life then you have the right to say that its time to bring grazing practices up to the 21st century. If something works you stick with it.
Why don't you do something more constructive with your time rather than attacking you heritage. You need to understand other people live around you too, your opinions aren't always the right ones.

Also, if you lived in the Alpine region where we graze our cattle, you would realise that the vegetation in Park are known for their rejuvenation abilities. As for the water pollution, it doesn't stop me from drinking it. The grazing in the high plains prevents the threat of massive bushfires invading our town.
I can imagine you being one of those bush walkers right? Why aren't you attacking the tourist populus? Our herds don't drop plastic packaging.
Go and have another herbal tea. Bloody hippy.

Melissa, lead paint worked, yep we should have stuck with that. Slavery also worked for quite some time, I suppose you think we should have stuck with that too, along with the practice poisoning of the indigenous Taungurung aborigines with cynanide that your ancestors participated in. (Unlike your ancestors I have never participated in these practices but I still think I am entitled to believe they are wrong.)

My heritage is being destroyed by alpine grazing and it is time it was stopped. Melissa is of farming stock that is quite happy to trample on the heritage of the rest of us in a similar manner to that in which the cattle trample on the vegitation in the high country to pursue her own selfish ends.

Excuse me Melissa if I don't weep at the sessation of your rape of our natural environment. Personally I think the farmers should be sued for the damage that they have caused but sessation of damage is probably the best that can be hoped for.

Green Man you really are an idiot. Your heritage is being destroyed by alpine grazing, you say. Since when do you have a heritage in the mountains? You don't, you know it, but you claim one anyway. You're only a part-time interloper, a blow-in with a big mouth.

Two other points - where's your proof that the bog in your picture was destroyed by cattle? Doesn't look like it. Your picture shows widespread damage such as is seen in a deer wallow. You're pointing your ignorant finger in the wrong direction. Cattle rarely enter bogs for the simple reason that they tend to get bogged.

Your second picture also displays an effect that is not attributable to cattle. The pattern of cattle is to range widely over a given area, not to walk in straight lines with some intersecting patterns as your picture demonstrates. Any grazing expert, or anyone who has experience with cattle in the high country or anywhere else will tell you that. That's why the picture you post hasn't been widely seized upon by the opponents of alpine grazing - it's too easily rebutted.

You fell for it and in doing so you've made a fool of yourself.

Also, since when are heathlands delicate? Heath is robust and increases where there is bare ground to colonise. This is one of the arguments your green minded chums levy against cattle - they are alleged to create bare ground which increases the area inhabited by shrubs such as heath.

All in all Green Man you don't have much going for you, you poor silly ignoramus.

Hi Green Man. I am sooo impressed with your knowledge.

The Man From Snowy River wasn't a stockman or a cattleman, he didn't ride with stockmen, their stock horses never snuffed the battle with delight and stockmen have never told the story of his ride. That is a matter of real old regret.

Oh, did I hear you say, "Duh, the green man is sooo dumb!" Don't be so hard on yourself. Write boldly lad, and never fear the spills.

And now that your equanimity is restored please tell us all about the fagility of the Alpine National Park, please do. Tell us how you are so expert that you could look at a bucket of soil from The Howitt High Plains and distinguish it from another bucket of soil from the Andes.

Tell us that alpine grazing doesn't reduce blazing by keeping snowgrasses short and removing the dry tips, stopping the transport of fire to really flammable plant communities.

Hey, and even better tell us all what splendid condition the ungrazed areas of the Victorian Alps are in. They weren't burnt out three years ago were they? There's no real damage is there? Gosh, I mean there weren't huge areas of snowgum and woollybutt forest burnt were there? Tell me it isn't true, tell me, I implore you.

There weren't hundreds of sensitive sphagnum moss beds burnt out which will take 50 years and more to recover were there? The heathlands on steeper sides weren't touched either, were there, so there will be no erosion. Phew, what a relief.

And of course those awful mountain cattlemen with their archaic farming practices. Now that they've lost their leases they will have to come into the 21st century and start employing high fertiliser inputs on their properties, increasing the nutrient content in mountain rivers which didn't receive sufficient enrichment from the fires that didn't burn anything.

Letting cattle free range through sub-alpine bushland and open plains at an average of one cow per 100 ha on about 15 per cent of the Alpine National Park, thus avoiding the need to intensify production practices in their home paddocks is too old fashioned for words isn't it?

Oh yes, Green Man you are so wise. You are an oracle. You are an Archimedes.

Well, actually no.....you're an archenemy and a dickhead!

Please excuse silly typos attributable to feral children.

Para 4 fagility should be fragility.

Para 7, second line. First use of there should be they.

Now all is as it should be.

The picture with the flowers is not a herbfield. LOL. Melissa is right, what a wanker. ROFL.

Anyhow, go and have a look at the same spot now and see how many flowers you'll find growing in the washout where rain and snow have swept away the topsoil since the fires burnt the plants and grasses.

How to Vote!!!!! Put Labor and The Greens second last and last.

So you would like to sue Mountain Cattlemen would you?

Guess what, maybe the Mountain Cattlemen might you sue for your deliberate and nasty, not to mention defamatory misquote of former MCAV president, Simon Turner.

"The decision to remove cattle grazing from the Alpine National Park has devastated mountain cattlemen, consigned a 170 year-old widely loved tradition of destroying delicate alpine flora and undermining the sensitive alpine ecosystem to the dusty shelves of history*"

You see matey, Simon didn't say that. You did. And you attributed it to him.

What if you did get sued? Wouldn't that be chickens coming home to roost. I hope you get your day in court.

By the way mate, you spell cessation like this, not sessation. You got it wrong twice so you're obviously not particularly well educated.

What a loser!

There is plenty of room in the Alpine National Park for a grazing zone.

The philosophy of National Parks is create representative areas, not to incarcerate massive tracts of lands into useless and badly managed firetraps.

If it has to be so big create heritage zones, wilderness zones etc so that all values, environmental and cultural can be accommodated.

Ahh Tom reasoned comment! How unusual in the comments section. Congratulations.

I agree a grazing zone may be able to be sustained and managed.

Cattle grazing is about more than you'll never know. So keep your mouth shut!

Would just like to use this space to commend the heroic abilities of our local CFA volunteers, who have taken time off work without pay to fight our current bushfire. Maybe some of the 27 million newly appointed funds for the bushfire effort should head in that 'general' direction.

Surely by now, Greenman, you can see the effects of not grazing in the high country.

Melissa,

I too wish to express my sincere thanks to the CFA firefighters for their efforts in the recent fires. Of course the area you are referring to is national park and as such much of thanks goes to the firefighters of the Department of Sustainability and Environment. The very Department you are demonising.

As far as alpine grazing goes, most of the fuel that caused the intensity of these burns was fallen timber and leaf matter. My animal husbandry may be rudamentary but last time I looked these weren't popular foodstuffs for cows.

Wow, what a reasoned, informed debate!

You all should be congratulated on your outstanding contributions to spelling and grammar.

Green man, i was referring to volunteers because as you may be too ignorant to realise that unlike the DSE, the volunteers take unpaid time off work in order to save their homes. Perhaps you should volunteer in the bush somewhere, you may even have your first encounter with a cow.