Attitudes, values and behaviour : pastoralists, land use and landscape art in western New South Wales

The proximate causes of many of the environmental issues facing residents of the Western Division are well known. Inappropriate land use practices (intensity, duration and timing of grazing), total grazing pressure, poor knowledge of ecosystem fragility and seasonal variation are some of the issues that contribute to an actual or perceived degradation of the landscape. Many of the current practices are seemingly at odds with the attitudes and values of the wider community and also those of the pastoralists who carry out these practices. This thesis seeks to explain this apparent contradiction. The thesis is composed of four elements. The first element reviews historical (mostly European) thinking about nature and the relationship between nature and society and traces how this thinking has changed through time. The second element is a review of the history of land settlement and land use in the division, and shows how the development of the division followed contemporary societal attitudes and values. The third element is an examination of the portrayal of landscape in a western visual art tradition and how this has the potential to be used to reflect contemporary social attitudes and values. The fourth element involves the use of three projects that used art and text as a basis for investigating the attitudes and values of people in the Western Division. The findings of the research indicate that visual landscape has the potential to become an aid in the identification of community attitudes and values about the landscape in which they live. Further, this technique allows for the emergence of other factors such as individual identity and its accommodation within the behavioural framework. In accommodating such factors as individual identity, individual and social attitudes and values toward the environment in any discussion of behaviour in relation to the landscape and its use, a better understanding of the motives underlying behaviour will be gained. In so doing better decisions can be made by both pastoralists and land administrators. Further research is needed to verify the usefulness of these findings in both opening up a positive dialogue with landholders and administrators and in aligning pastoralists’ behaviour towards a more sustainable land use ethic