Paper No. 12 



STRATEGIES AVAILABLE FOR MANAGING MULTISPECIFIC 

 COMMUNITIES IN AUSTRALIA 



By R. A. Perry 1 



Abstract 



Possible strategies for managing multispecific 

 plant communities are discussed in the context 

 of the geographic, climatic, social, political, eco- 

 nomic, and biological environments of Aus- 

 tralian rangelands. 



Additional key words : Rangeland types, range 

 management, range ecology. 



Introduction 



In the long term, the prime purpose of range 

 management is the maintenance of the biological 

 and physical environments— the renewable nat- 

 ural resources — on which the future viability of 

 the ecosystem depend. It follows that the long 

 term needs of the land and vegetation are of 

 paramount importance, and should overshadow 

 any conflicting shorter term needs of animals. 

 Grazing industries must be financially viable, 

 but maintenance of the resource must be the first 

 consideration. Lands on which the resource can- 

 not be maintained economically, under long term 

 grazing, should not be used for this purpose. 



The object of managing multispecific com- 

 munities is to increase desirable species and de- 

 crease undesirable species by using strategies 

 which manipulate the population dynamics of 

 the species in the particular communities. These 

 strategies exploit the inherent strengths and 

 weaknesses in the life histories of the component 

 species, and should be derived from a knowledge 

 of the phenologies of those species. 



The definition and application of manage- 

 ment strategies for maintaining a desirable spe- 



1 Leader, C.S.I.R.O. Rangelands Research Unit, Can- 

 berra, A.C.T., Australia. 



124 



cies mix is difficult enough for any one multi- 

 specific community managed as a separate en- 

 tity. The problems are much greater when sev- 

 eral multispecific communities occur in a single 

 grazing area. In most such situations, the prefer- 

 ence of animals for a particular community and 

 the conflicting management needs of the various 

 communities make it difficult, or even impossible. 

 to define or apply suitable management stra- 

 tegies for the whole complex. This, in itself, 

 raises an important management principle; as 

 far as possible, rangelands should be subdivided 

 into reasonably homogeneous grazing units so 

 that appropriate management strategies can be 

 applied to each plant community separately. 

 This ideal situation is commonly unattainable 

 in practice and the real-world manager is con- 

 cerned mostly with mixtures or mosaics of com- 

 munities. He is faced constantly with the alter- 

 natives of managing for conservation of the 

 most susceptible communities or of sacrificing 

 their condition in the interests of greater produc- 

 tion from the complex. 



At a broad general level, the principles of 

 range management are world wide. HoweA'er, 

 the strategies available for, appropriate to, or 

 which can be devised for, the management of 

 particular communities in a particular country 

 depend on a host of local and national factors. 

 The most obvious are biological ; the species in 

 the community, their characteristics and reac- 

 tion to management practices, and possibly the 

 availability of complementary communities to 

 either absorb stock, or from which stock can 

 be drawn, to implement the particular practice. 

 Less obvious are the geographic, climatic, eco- 

 nomic, social, and political environments within 

 which the grazing enterprise operates and which 

 all impose constraints on possible management 

 practices {27). 



