Farmers angry over soil claims

The president of the Western Australian Farmer's Federation, Winston Crane said there was a misconception that farmers had little concern for the environment or for conserving natural or developed resources in Western Australia and called on critics to get off farmers' backs and be constructive in helping them battle the problem of soil salinity. The Minister for Conservation, Barry Hodge said soil salinity and phosphate pollution of estuaries could be significantly reduced as the basic cause of both problems is the disturbance of the natural environment by the removal of trees, and putting trees back into the landscape will considerably these problems. The Department of Conservation and Land Management had set up a pilot programme of 2200 hectares of eucalyptus trees on cleared agricultural land in the Peel, Harvey and Wellington catchments this year. PLEASE NOTE: We are unable to provide a public view of this newspaper article as the copyright is held by the publisher of The West Australian. If you would like to obtain a copy of this newspaper article for research purposes, please ‘request a copy'. This article is part of the WISALTS (Whittington Interceptor Sustainable Agriculture Land Treatment Society Incorporated) Collection