THE state government is refusing to say if it collected any evidence from its controversial alpine cattle grazing trial, despite being advised at the outset that the fire reduction experiment must be run in accordance with ''good science''.
More than five months after the federal government likened the trial to Japan's scientific whaling program and ordered the state government to remove the cattle from the park, the Department of Sustainability and Environment has declined to say if any results from the trial had been collected, or which scientists, if any, had been selected to run the study.Documents obtained by The Age show that in January the department told the government that the trial must focus on gathering ''credible scientific evidence'' to determine whether grazing effectively reduced the risk and intensity of bushfires.
''It is important that measures taken to reduce the risk of fire - whether it's grazing, fuel reduction or a combination of the two - are informed by good science,'' the briefing warns.
The departmental media strategy also recommends that the trial's results be released to the public, with progress reports made available throughout the duration of the research.
The Age revealed in April that the scientist hand-picked by the state government to lead the trial, University of Sydney professor Mark Adams, refused to take part, apparently because the government had failed to consult him about the design.
It remains unclear which scientists, if any, were subsequently selected to conduct the trial.
It follows a freedom of information request lodged by the Environment Defenders Office for the Victorian National Parks Association in May asking for any documents containing results from the trial.
In response to the request, the department said it had conducted ''thorough and diligent'' searches and could locate no documents containing results.
A spokesman for the department said the government had ''committed to making results of the research trial available to the public'' and would be releasing them ''in the near future''. But neither the spokesman nor Environment Minister Ryan Smith's office would clarify whether this meant results from the summer trial had emerged since the association's request.
Victorian National Parks Association spokesman Philip Ingamells said it was ''high time'' the Victorian government revealed what scientific information, if any, had come out of last summer's cattle grazing trial, and who did the information gathering, if anyone.
''The whole exercise remains a mystery,'' Mr Ingamells said. ''Importantly
the government is not being frank with the broader Victorian community about the Alpine National Park
… They should, and could, do much better than this.''