A $60 000 Australian Research Council project, titled Historical changes in Woodlands, will help answer just that - providing an insight and scientific analysis into NSW’s South West and Central Slopes before European settlement.

Dr Ian Lunt from Charles Sturt University’s Johnstone Centre for Research in Natural Resources and Society said that there has been much public debate on the area and density of native woodlands before land was cleared for agriculture. 

“This has major implications for salinity, vegetation clearing legislation, and forest and National Park management in NSW,” Dr Lunt said.

Rather than base the research on oral history and archival information, which Dr Lunt said was based “on generalised statements, such as ‘the country was very open, or sparse, or dense’, where interpretation of these terms has changed”, his project will be based on current data.

“The only way of knowing accurately what has been going on is looking at what remains,” said Dr Lunt, who, with research assistant Nigel Jones, has been collecting information in the field from 20 sites stretching from Albury in southern NSW, through to the Central West and Dubbo in western NSW.

The researchers are looking for visible remains of old trees in State Forests, measuring old stumps from trees cut down during the last century. These woodlands mainly comprise of box eucalypts and Callitris – or native white cypress pine – which are termite resistant. 

“The sites chosen are as representative as possible,” Dr Lunt said. “State Forests are used because their history is well-known and there has been controlled management, which increases the accuracy of our estimates.”

The researchers work out when the trees were cut down by the style of the cut – whether it was by axe, handsaw, or chainsaw – and the degree of decomposition of the stump. Much ringbarking was done in the 1870s and this can still be identified.

“Using this data we can estimate the numbers and size of trees that were on these sites before 1870, which is before the major clearing began,” Dr Lunt said.

The 12-month project aims to provide estimates of total amounts and patterns of tree densities before European settlement across central NSW, “the first time this has been done in this way and on this scale,” Dr Lunt added.

“Not only will it give us a much better historical picture of this country, it will also help show how much vegetation has changed since European settlement and provide more accurate information for developing land use policies including vegetation clearing legislation and forest and National Parks management.”