THE biggest challenge for amalgamated Rural Lands Protection Boards (RLPB) will be if the centralisation of administration will ensure reduced rates for the landowner, Martin Sims, chairman of the South Coast RLPB has said.
Next January the South Coast, Bombala, Cooma and Braidwood boards will amalgamate.
The offices in each area will remain, as will all the field officers, such as the vets and the rangers, but with administration functions centralised some jobs would disappear.
The amalgamated board will have only six directors and two appointees, compared to the present eight directors from each board, so some ratepayers will find the nearest director lives some distance away.
RLPBs have been around for more than 100 years and were originally set up to deal with sheep disease and have evolved into what they are today.
“Animal health is still one of the main responsibilities, with the vet setting our programs on dealing with exotic diseases and also working on production issues such as herd fertility,” Mr Sims said.
“And a major part of RLPB’s work is now dealing with animal pests.
“Historically, of course, it was the rabbit, but now rabbits are not the issue they used to be, however should a landowner need them, their animal control officers still have rabbit control methods.”
Mr Sims said that with so many Bega Valley and South Coast farmers turning to sheep and goats to help combat fireweed, lambing times attract fox predators, so the South Coast RLPB provides free baits against the foxes during those times of the year.
Pigs are also a problem, as are deer that have escaped from deer farms.
Deer compete for grazing with the domestic animals and also destroy a lot of trees.
“The RLPB do a lot of contract word for National Parks and Wildlife on the control of foxes, deer, pigs and feral dogs,” Mr Sims said.
“The Board has a wild dog management that has proved very successful from the Victorian border to Sussex Inlet and inland to the top of the escarpment,” he said.
“That hasn’t been a problem for the local board, but is an issue out west, on the travelling stock routes.”
There are just a few paddocks actually in the South Coast board’s area, and they may be turned back to the Crown.
“They are another responsibility in expense in maintaining them and the upkeep is always far more than any moneys made on stock fees, so you are using rate money to benefit just a few people,” Mr Sims said.
In the present climate, one of the major responsibilities of RLPB is to report to the NSW Minister for Primary Industries Agriculture every month on the pastoral conditions in their area.
On the basis of these figures the Minister and his officers determine which areas in NSW are in drought, marginal or drought free.
Mr Sims said that since the heavy rains in mid-February, a lot of the Board’s area has received low rainfall and from Brogo to the border is now back in drought.
One area that would seem a natural land protection board matter is weeds, but historically weeds have always been a council matter.
Which, according to Mr Sims, was just as well as if they were transferred to the boards, its ratepayers would have to pay where as now the money comes from all ratepayers.
“This is only right as the weeds usually have escaped from town nurseries and gardens,” said Mr Sims.
It will be a new era for RLPBS in 2009 but it is just one more change in the 100-year history of the boards.
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