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Issue 52 | May 2009
CLI's Mike Carthew locks the Yalanbee
gate for the last time
Last month, Livestock Industries' (CLI) Mike Carthew loaded up the ute, turned off the power and locked up Yalanbee Research Station, closing the gate on some rich CSIRO history in research.
CSIRO's Yalanbee Research Station is located at Bakers Hill, 70 kilometres east of Perth. It was purchased in 1962 as an experimental station for Plant Industry, following the sale of Glen Lossie Research Station at Kojonup, Western Australia. In 1973, it became the field station for CSIRO's Land Resources Management unit and when it closed nine years later, Yalanbee was transferred to the Animal Production. In 2000, when Animal Production, Animal Health and Tropical Agriculture merged to form Livestock Industries, Yalanbee became CLI's research station in the west.
The 1150 ha property has played a key role in pioneering work in many areas of importance in dryland farming systems – salinity, new pasture varieties, mineral supplementation of livestock, wool quality, methane emissions, and omega 3 enhancement.
According to Rob Kelly, who is the Officer-in-Charge of CLI's Livestock Research group in Perth, the livestock work in Western Australia has shifted from production issues to increasingly focus on improving the environmental footprint, as well as productivity of livestock farming systems, the application of new sensor technologies, and producing clean, green and healthy food.
'This has meant moving much of the field-based research at Yalanbee to regions where climate and landscape changes are having a bigger impact', Rob says.
'Our work is now spread across Australia and internationally, with the support of local landholders, agri-business and natural resource management groups. This shift meant that Yalanbee had become significantly underutilised.'
And so, for the time being at least, Yalanbee is being leased to a local farmer for cropping and grazing while CSIRO undertakes final clean up work and marketing for sale.
