The beginnings of an ‘old carbon sink’ in a Lang Lang cove By Neil Daly
IN MY article “You too can be a carbon farmer” (The Waterline News, February 2020), I proposed that blue and green carbon farming be approached holistically rather than as competing entities and thus become the Cyan Way.
To some, this may be a pipe dream.
Then again, at Queensferry, the Bass Coast Landcare Network (BCLN) is undertaking a project to plant mangroves along the foreshore and trees on an adjoining property. This now ties in with another BCLN project to “Offset your car emissions in local planting projects” by planting “indigenous plants”.
IN MY article “You too can be a carbon farmer” (The Waterline News, February 2020), I proposed that blue and green carbon farming be approached holistically rather than as competing entities and thus become the Cyan Way.
To some, this may be a pipe dream.
Then again, at Queensferry, the Bass Coast Landcare Network (BCLN) is undertaking a project to plant mangroves along the foreshore and trees on an adjoining property. This now ties in with another BCLN project to “Offset your car emissions in local planting projects” by planting “indigenous plants”.
If you consider these two projects as one concept, this is an example of the holistic approach I am proposing, for seagrass and mangroves sequester carbon and in turn help mitigate foreshore erosion, which in turn protects and helps natural and planted foreshore vegetation survive and capture carbon. In turn, this flow-on effect links to farmland and the countryside thus completing the regenerative model coined the Cyan Way.
If there was a need to enshrine this concept in legislation as part of Australia’s formal contribution to reducing our global emissions, it could be known as the Cyan Convention.
I was prompted to return to this proposal following a recent Bass Valley Historical Society meeting.
Heather Arnold, president of the Koo Wee Rup Historical Society, spoke of a time 170 years ago when work first started on draining the Koo Wee Rup Swamp. It was completed in 1893 under the guidance of Carlo Catani, the consulting engineer.
Today, this area is an integral part of the Western Port Green Wedge and while “subject to intense pressures for urban development and change”, it continues to produce a variety of food crops including about 90 per cent of the asparagus grown in Victoria.
The original swamp area was approximately 40,000 hectares, but the thought of now draining such a “huge carbon sink” would probably create an environmental quandary and one not so easily solved as it once was.
One of the consequences of draining the inland swamp was that some of the water, via channels and the rivers, drained through a coastal swamp known as the Tobin-Yallock Swamp – basically between the Yallock Creek Drain and the Lang Lang River. This swamp was drained in the late 19th century and opened up for livestock grazing. A “coastal levee” was built in an attempt to protect the land from high spring tides and storm surges. This area is on the west side of the Bass Highway.
For the last 15 years or so, there have been attempts by, for example, Melbourne Water, the Western Port Seagrass Partnership, and now the University of Melbourne to grow mangroves to try and reduce erosion of the foreshore protecting the levee. So far, it would be fair to say, this venture has not been successful, apart from some mangroves growing near the Lang Lang River and in coves cutting into the levee. As a consequence, the land behind the levee is still susceptible to flooding and foreshore erosion continues at approximately half a metre per year.
This situation is spoken about in an article from The Citizen, titled “At Lang Lang, a glimpse into the future challenges of rising seas”. Rosalee Kiely writes: “When Peter Rogers and Cheryl Bass arrived at their Lang Lang farm, on the eastern shore of Western Port, one weekend in late autumn 2016, they were surprised to find that their lower paddock was underwater.
“The flood, though shallow, spread across their neighbour’s property and to the sea, about two kilometres distant. Flocks of sea birds had descended, gorging on dead insects, and cattle milled around on patches of higher ground. Peter tasted the water: it was salty.
“The couple had never seen anything like that inundation, then or since, in their almost 29 years on the property. A king tide had dumped seawater through gaps eroded in the earth levees on the nearby coast, and up the adjacent Lang Lang River, spreading salty water and turning into a “mud flat” about 40 hectares of some of Victoria’s prime agricultural land. Two years on, the pasture is still recovering.
“It could be a glimpse of the future.”
Picking up on the “glimpse of the future”, it could follow that if predicted sea level rise associated with climate change is correct, this area will become less workable as conventional farming land unless the levee is strengthened and maintained. However, the long-term survival of this levee will probably be dependent on the successful propagation of mangroves in sufficient numbers to protect the foreshore.
On the other hand, if the land is allowed to return to something akin to its original status, the landowners could use this situation to explore new options for agricultural production and carbon farming projects. For example, carbon sequestration projects could supplement their income and help offset any loss incurred from changes to their current farming practices.
In The Citizen’s closing remarks it says “There are no easy answers.”
However, there may be an answer.
For while the sea is seen as an intruder, I am suggesting it can be harnessed in the area described and along other sections of the eastern arm of Western Port. For as the vegetation patterns change and return to their natural wetland and salt marsh environments, carbon farming will start at the sea on the owner’s property and move inland from there as part of a regenerative and environmentally friendly process.
Carbon farming, in all its forms, is the future. If so, now is the time to take a holistic approach and work as one, for as the late John Clarke said of Western Port, “The problems are quite easily identifiable. They’re not going to be easy to fix, but we have to do it. We caused them; it’s up to us now.”
If there was a need to enshrine this concept in legislation as part of Australia’s formal contribution to reducing our global emissions, it could be known as the Cyan Convention.
I was prompted to return to this proposal following a recent Bass Valley Historical Society meeting.
Heather Arnold, president of the Koo Wee Rup Historical Society, spoke of a time 170 years ago when work first started on draining the Koo Wee Rup Swamp. It was completed in 1893 under the guidance of Carlo Catani, the consulting engineer.
Today, this area is an integral part of the Western Port Green Wedge and while “subject to intense pressures for urban development and change”, it continues to produce a variety of food crops including about 90 per cent of the asparagus grown in Victoria.
The original swamp area was approximately 40,000 hectares, but the thought of now draining such a “huge carbon sink” would probably create an environmental quandary and one not so easily solved as it once was.
One of the consequences of draining the inland swamp was that some of the water, via channels and the rivers, drained through a coastal swamp known as the Tobin-Yallock Swamp – basically between the Yallock Creek Drain and the Lang Lang River. This swamp was drained in the late 19th century and opened up for livestock grazing. A “coastal levee” was built in an attempt to protect the land from high spring tides and storm surges. This area is on the west side of the Bass Highway.
For the last 15 years or so, there have been attempts by, for example, Melbourne Water, the Western Port Seagrass Partnership, and now the University of Melbourne to grow mangroves to try and reduce erosion of the foreshore protecting the levee. So far, it would be fair to say, this venture has not been successful, apart from some mangroves growing near the Lang Lang River and in coves cutting into the levee. As a consequence, the land behind the levee is still susceptible to flooding and foreshore erosion continues at approximately half a metre per year.
This situation is spoken about in an article from The Citizen, titled “At Lang Lang, a glimpse into the future challenges of rising seas”. Rosalee Kiely writes: “When Peter Rogers and Cheryl Bass arrived at their Lang Lang farm, on the eastern shore of Western Port, one weekend in late autumn 2016, they were surprised to find that their lower paddock was underwater.
“The flood, though shallow, spread across their neighbour’s property and to the sea, about two kilometres distant. Flocks of sea birds had descended, gorging on dead insects, and cattle milled around on patches of higher ground. Peter tasted the water: it was salty.
“The couple had never seen anything like that inundation, then or since, in their almost 29 years on the property. A king tide had dumped seawater through gaps eroded in the earth levees on the nearby coast, and up the adjacent Lang Lang River, spreading salty water and turning into a “mud flat” about 40 hectares of some of Victoria’s prime agricultural land. Two years on, the pasture is still recovering.
“It could be a glimpse of the future.”
Picking up on the “glimpse of the future”, it could follow that if predicted sea level rise associated with climate change is correct, this area will become less workable as conventional farming land unless the levee is strengthened and maintained. However, the long-term survival of this levee will probably be dependent on the successful propagation of mangroves in sufficient numbers to protect the foreshore.
On the other hand, if the land is allowed to return to something akin to its original status, the landowners could use this situation to explore new options for agricultural production and carbon farming projects. For example, carbon sequestration projects could supplement their income and help offset any loss incurred from changes to their current farming practices.
In The Citizen’s closing remarks it says “There are no easy answers.”
However, there may be an answer.
For while the sea is seen as an intruder, I am suggesting it can be harnessed in the area described and along other sections of the eastern arm of Western Port. For as the vegetation patterns change and return to their natural wetland and salt marsh environments, carbon farming will start at the sea on the owner’s property and move inland from there as part of a regenerative and environmentally friendly process.
Carbon farming, in all its forms, is the future. If so, now is the time to take a holistic approach and work as one, for as the late John Clarke said of Western Port, “The problems are quite easily identifiable. They’re not going to be easy to fix, but we have to do it. We caused them; it’s up to us now.”