Negotiating Olives in the Hills Face Zone: Pest or Product

Broadcast: 07/05/2004

Reporter: Rebecca Morse, Drew Radford

(Laughs) IAN HENSCHKE: And if youd like to see more of Ali and his flexible friends, they'll be holding a fundraiser next month at Skate FX at Pooraka.

For the last six years, olives have been declared a proclaimed pest plant throughout SA, an unusual irony, considering the succulent little fruit has also been the basis of a booming agricultural industry in the State.

This complex situation has resulted in some unusual conflicts.

In Brown Hill Creek, one resident has spent $70,000 removing feral olives from his property, while one of his neighbours has spent $75,000 successfully fighting the local council so he could plant 300 olives.

The government is looking at changing legislation to resolve such situations but not everyone is convinced the problems will be resolved.

Rebbeca Morse has the story.

LUKE FRANKHAM, BROWN HILL CREEK RESIDENT: I've actually managed to clear all the olives from my place.

There is still a lot of follow-up work, but at least I've broken the back of it for the time being.

REBECCA MORSE: Since moving to Brown Hill Creek eight years ago, Luke Frankham has devoted himself to ridding his 14 acres of feral olives.

In the process he's spent $70,000.

He's replanting the land with natives, but for the moment it's an island of clear land hemmed in by feral olives.

LUKE FRANKHAM: You can actually see where I've cleared, and it's fairly obvious, you can see the boundary of my property and the boundaries of the other properties.

Mine's the nice clear bit, and all around it is just surrounded with dense olives, virtually on all sides.

NEVILLE CROSSMAN, UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE RESEARCH FELLOW: Feral olives extend all the way from Tea Tree Gully all the way the down to McLaren Vale and all across the Hills face zone.

REBECCA MORSE: Neville Crossman has just completed a doctorate examining the spread of feral olives.

He found that infestations of olives had caused up to an 80 per cent reduction in native species.

He says as well as the threat to biodiversity, the olives pose a considerable fire risk and are difficult to control because of the way the seeds are spread.

NEVILLE CROSSMAN: We know that they can travel quite wide distances in one hit.

A fox will over the course of an evening travel several kilometres, a starling will also travel up to several kilometres between roosting sites.

Now, they consume olive, and therefore it is very likely that they will spread them those distances as well.

REBECCA MORSE: Given the seed is spread so easily, people like Luke Frankham are astonished permission is given for olive orchards to be planted so close to areas where others have been trying to clear them.

LUKE FRANKHAM: It's pretty absurd, but just over on the hill, on the other side of the valley from me, there's two new olive groves that have just gone in.

The Mitcham Council actually tried to oppose those, but unfortunately, in the Environment, Resources and Development Court, the judges actually found that the planning laws didn't support the City of Mitcham, and now we have new olive groves sprouting up just on the other side of the valley and yet at the same time the Mitcham Council is issuing notices to the land owners in this area to remove their feral olives.

REBECCA MORSE: Even though olives are a proclaimed weed, and new plantings are prohibited in the Adelaide Hills face zone, there's a loophole allowing orchards to go in.

If an owner can show the land has been used for fruits trees before, even in a minimal way, they can undertake further plantings.

Mark Ramsey is the executive officer of the Animal and Plant Control Commission.

He also recently headed up the Olive Task Force, a body that looked at dealing with the loopholes.

MARK RAMSEY, ANIMAL AND PLANT CONTROL COMMISSION: Within the current session of parliament, the Government is considering the Natural Resource Management Bill, which brings all of these sorts of things together, and some of those things will be addressed through that bill, if and when it passes the house.

REBECCA MORSE: Lisa Rowntree is the president of Olives SA.

She has an orchard of over 7,000 olive trees in mallee country near Coonalpyn.

She's concerned about the findings of Mark Ramsey's task force, saying the industry wasn't properly consulted.

LISA ROWNTREE, OLIVES SA PRESIDENT: We had requested that we would like someone to be on the task force and nominated someone from our committee, but really never got -- weren't able to get involved.

They certainly never spoke to me or consulted the industry as to what our points of view were on the whole thing.

REBECCA MORSE: While Lisa Rowntree admits many planning anomalies exist, she says the industry has concerns about imposing legislation to resolve them.

LISA ROWNTREE: It is very hard to write a code of practice for the olive industry as it stands, because we can write codes of practice for harvesting and processing, safe food handling and all of those things, but you can't write a code of practice for putting in an orchard because that really depends on the councils.

REBECCA MORSE: Some environmentalists say there needs to better use of netting as well the baiting of foxes.

MARK RAMSEY: The risk posed by commercial plantings is relatively small.

We are very concerned about the fact that we have a lot of smallholdings through the Mount Lofty Ranges in particular, which probably, in the long term, won't be viable, but those areas are planted and they now need to be managed.

REBECCA MORSE: Even if the legal loopholes are closed, the feral olive problem is still massive.

Clearing olives can cost up to $20,000 a hectare and if property owners fail to clear them when they're told to, they can be fined, although no-one has ever been fined in the Adelaide Hills face zone.

MARK RAMSEY: A lot of the people in this area, they just don't have the money that it requires to get rid of the olives on their properties -- I mean, like the property behind me, we are looking at a lady who is over 90 living in the property.

She's got $150,000 worth of weed removal.

Where is she going to come up with the money?

IAN HENSCHKE: The issue of refugees has been back in the headlines this week as the debate continues over the fate of Adelaide's Bakhtiyari children.