In our opinion such programs are not only ecologically sounder than broad area burning of remoter forests but also have better safety outcomes: and this view seems to have been confirmed by documentation widely aired in January [see our posts here and here].

In particular, however, we believe that a detailed plan needs to be devised and carefully implemented for the management of the section of Kalimna Park west of the tourist road and running up to housing on the town edge.

African boneseed collected by Friends of Kalimna Park: FOBIF believes that fuel reduction programs should be concentrated close to settlement, and be combined with weed clearance.

A section of this area has been marked for burning by DSE for weed clearance, but we believe that a much more comprehensive approach needs to be devised for the whole of this important area. It is heavily infested with flammable [gorse, pines] or potentially flammable weeds, but sections of it are botanically very rich: it can’t be simply ‘swept clean’ in a simple operation, but needs detailed understanding and a careful implementation strategy involving a range of fuel reduction techniques.

Obviously such an approach would be more labour intensive than, for example, the proposed burning of Tarilta Gorge. In our opinion, however, it would be far more useful from the point of view of public safety.

Moreover, an effort by Parks Victoria to come to grips with the detailed management of Kalimna and other areas close to townships offers opportunities to engage Park neighbours and Friends groups in actively attacking the problem of weeds as well as getting a better understanding of fire safety issues.

Parks Victoria has been developing a weeds strategy for this region for some time. We’ve made enquiries as to what stage this is up to, and whether it considers the fire dimensions of environmental weeds. Watch this space

If you would like to know more about this curious kingdom, workshops include interactive displays, illustrated seminars and exciting forest forays deep into our local forests.

Full details are listed at www.alisonpouliot.com

Workshops book up fast so perhaps don’t delay making a reservation if you’d like to attend.

The little booklet isn’t only informative, it’s very readable as well. Each frog has a double page of info, including notes on habitat, breeding habits, conservation, and an ‘interesting facts’ section. It can be obtained from the Connecting Country office at the Hub, on the corner of Templeton and Barker Streets in Castlemaine–and it’s free.

Peron's Tree Frog in a household garden at Golden Point. Photo: John Ellis, February 2012

The program explores the idea that efficient production and care for nature go hand in hand. It includes workshops, lectures, discussions and field trips, and will throw some interesting questions at participants: can farmers get paid to look after nature? How can conservation measures help long term farm efficiency? Does revegetation really make farmland more resilient? How does the farmer’s perspective on biodiversity differ from that of a conservationist?

Field of Kangaroo Grass near Guildford: One of the sessions of the CC education program explores the benefits of native grasses in farming systems.

Sessions include bread and butter practicalities like management of nesting boxes and ways to identify exactly what native vegetation there is on any given block of land.

The program runs from February 29 to May 8 and is open to members of the public. Evening sessions are free, and the workshop and field days are ridiculously cheap at $10 per person. Full details are on the Connecting Country website. For more information and to RSVP please contact bryan@connectingcountry.org.au or call the Connecting Country office on 5472 1594

St John’s Wort was introduced to Australia as an ornamental plant and for medicinal reasons in the 19^th century, and is a perfect example of a plant which is virtuous in its native situation and a raging menace when exported: when it becomes dominant it radically alters the vegetation community and destroys important habitat. It currently infests over 200,000 hectares of land in Victoria and NSW, particularly open woodland. It is a noxious weed: if ingested by stock at the wrong time of the year it can weaken the animals and even result in death. About 80% of the infested area is in native woodlands.

A single St John’s Wort plant can produce 30,000 seeds annually, and these can last in the soil for 12 years—so it’s obvious that control is difficult. Even fire, if not used correctly, can increase infestations. The only serious possibility of control is by biological means, and a mite [Aculus hyperici] was released on the Mount some 20 years ago, with initially very encouraging results. It seems however  that this weed, like many others, is having a boom year.

]]> http://www.fobif.org.au/2012/02/right-plant-wrong-place/feed/ 0 http://www.fobif.org.au/2012/01/government-under-fire-over-fire/ http://www.fobif.org.au/2012/01/government-under-fire-over-fire/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:26:37 +0000 fobif http://www.fobif.org.au/?p=1581 Continue reading →]]> Following the release of ANU research showing that current fuel reduction practices are not improving public safety [see our post below], the press has reported that DSE has been burning widely in remote bushland, but has neglected to effectively reduce fuel loads close to settlements identified by the CFA as being at risk from major fire.

The Age reported on January 23 that ‘both Labor and the Coalition adopted the royal commission’s recommendation to burn 5 per cent of public land, or 415,412 hectares annually, by 2013-2014, tripling planned burning across Victoria. But one of Australia’s leading fire experts has told The Age the target has little to do with protecting human life and assets and he would like to see it ”disappear in due course”.

Tarilta Creek, in the Upper Loddon State Forest. DSE is preparing to burn this remote area as part of its current fire operations plan. FOBIF believes that the Department should concentrate its resources on using a variety of methods to reduce fire risk closer to settlements.

‘Melbourne University’s Kevin Tolhurst, one of the commission’s expert panelists, told The Age that while the government’s planned burning program factored in the most fire-prone parts of the state, the target itself was not directly linked to protecting communities.

“The unintended consequences of [the target] will be that prescribed burning is done with minimal benefit to the protection of human life and property. It may reduce the extent and severity of major wildfires, but it may not directly reduce the impact on human life and property,” Dr Tolhurst said.’

The Age report points out that  ‘A leaked document has revealed the government’s multimillion-dollar planned burning program – designed to burn off bushland to curb damaging fires – achieved only 16 per cent of its target in the densely populated central region, which includes 54 towns and suburbs assessed by the Country Fire Authority as facing extreme risk this summer…

‘[DSE] burnt only 1818 hectares of the 11,400 hectares it was aiming for in the central region, which covers Melbourne and its urban fringes, including the fire-prone Dandenongs and Yarra Ranges. But in the less-populated north-east, where 20 towns are at extreme risk, the department burnt 64,969 hectares, or 150 per cent of its goal.’

Although there has been some political crossfire on this issue, it is worth bearing in mind that both sides of the political spectrum have supported the 5% burning target, which, as we have pointed out, inevitably pushes DSE to aim at burning widely regardless of the usefulness of the exercise.

It is quite likely that DSE has very good reasons for its failure to reach its target in the Central region: wet weather being an obvious one. We believe that within the limits of its resources the Department has been trying to do its job: this is evident in the various examples we have seen of grass mowing and fuel clearing close to Castlemaine. This is not really the point at issue: what is important is to focus on the policy that is driving our land managers to mindlessly chew up the country with little benefit to safety and probably lots of damage to the environment.

FOBIF’s experience with DSE burning practices in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park and on Mount Alexander has convinced us that the Department does not have the resources to pay close attention to what happens in broadscale remote burning.

Interestingly, Dr Tolhurst told the Royal Commission last year that ‘the proportion of the landscape burnt also depends on how it is applied across the landscape in terms of its strategic location. …A study done by Dr Karen King [found that] strategically located prescribed burning on 5 per cent of the landscape achieved similar to what 10 or 15 per cent achieved where it was randomly located.’

FOBIF used this opinion to argue [futilely, as it happened] that the Royal Commission should not recommend a global percentage target for reduction burning. Our submission to the Commission said, in part:

‘We are at a loss to understand how it has become a priority to burn widely [and often, in our view, indiscriminately] in bushland, when waste lands closer to settlements are crying out for fuel management by a variety of means. We refer here in particular to the Bracewell Street fire in Bendigo in February 2009, which gained its force in pampas grass infested gullies, and burned largely through wasteland.’

This view was similar to that expressed by Bendigo environment organisations. The revelations of this week seem to have confirmed it.

Most conservation organisations, including FOBIF, questioned the value of this policy, accurately predicting that it would force land managers to mindlessly burn vast tracts of country causing significant environmental damage with no improvement to public safety.

Now new research by the Australian National University seems to back up most of this case. Researchers looked at the homes destroyed on Black Saturday and assessed what had been the main factors contributing to their destruction.

The research showed that prescribed burning was only half as effective at protecting houses as clearing vegetation around buildings.

On ABC radio on January 19 ANU’s Dr Philip Gibbons said: ‘Prescribed burning is not the silver bullet that some people suggest it is… When the weather gets up to the extremes that we experienced on Black Saturday then we know that…the effect of prescribed burning becomes diminished…Prescribed burning is typically done distant from houses…The average distance from a house of prescribed burning on Black Saturday was eight kilometres. But we found that at that distance from houses prescribed burning had virtually no effect in terms of protecting houses.’

The researchers also looked at the effects of logging in making forests less flammable.

In Dr Gibbons’ words:   ‘We found that indeed a house that is close to forest is at greater risk. But it didn’t matter if that forest was national park or state forest that was managed for logging. In other words logging had no effect in terms of protecting houses on Black Saturday. They take out all the really big logs. They take out the trunks of trees and they leave the leaves on the ground. They leave the fine fuels, okay. So they’re the ones that contribute to the intensity of the fire.

‘And also if you log an area heavily you end up with a young forest that’s very dense and that can also add to the fuel in a forest. It’s like having a big thick layer of shrubs in the forest and the crowns are all connected. ‘

The full ANU research report, ‘Land Management Practices Associated with House Loss in Wildfires’, can be found here.

These articles are remembered with great affection and interest by readers of the Chat, and the publication of the collection is welcome. It’s a series of photos, paintings and drawings showing selected sites around Chewton, usually about 100 years apart. As such, it is a set of snapshots in time, and is a poignant and instructive illustration of how things have changed in our district since white settlement. Though of course centred on the Chewton area, it will be of interest to anyone keen to look at how things have been happening in the whole goldfields area over the last hundred plus years.

Although most of the interest in the book is in the areas of work, and social observation, there are some remarkable images of the natural environment, the most striking of which is the photo of the Expedition Pass reservoir taken in 1878. The stripped hills around the reservoir are a reminder of the reckless exploitation of timber in that era, and show just how dramatic the recovery has been.

Expedition Pass reservoir, 1878: the stripped hillside provides a striking contrast to the regrowth vegetation we can see today. Illustration from Chewton then and now.

Red box, Spring Gully: this tree is a living refutation of the idea that mistletoe infestation is necessarily deadly to the host tree.

A few years ago FOBIF and local field naturalists had to fend off a move by a local councillor to get mistletoe removed from eucalypts in Campbell’s Creek and along the highway at Wesley Hill. The logic was that the trees were being killed by the parasite. Our reasoning was that the mistletoe infestations were not the main cause of tree distress, and that in any case mistletoe has an important role to play in bushland ecology. For a good account of this role, have a look at a recent post on the Natural Newstead site.

The idea of attacking the mistletoe died quietly, and the trees in question continue to flourish, despite carrying healthy mistletoe populations. Although unhealthy trees may be at risk from mistletoe, in reasonable conditions they are perfectly capable of carrying the plant without obvious problem. A feature of the bush at the moment is the dramatic colour contrast of olive green mistletoe plants against the grey green of eucalypt foliage.

Now new research has underlined the importance of mistletoe to bushland biodiversity. The research, by ecologists at Charles Sturt University, dispenses with a few myths about mistletoe’s supposed deadliness, but also has some surprising revelations: it concludes, for example, that mistletoe is vitally important for the survival of up to a third of our woodland birds. [A photo from our gallery of the wonderful mistletoe bird can be seen here].

Steering Committee for the Landcare Facilitator
Connecting Country is also seeking people who are interested in participating on a voluntary basis on a Steering Committee which is being established to provide guidance for the Landcare Facilitator. For more information click here.

Report on the First Two Years
Connecting Country has produced a report on its achievements for the first two years of funding for the Yellow Box Woodland project. The report describes the Connecting Country Project and gives a summary of achievements in the three project areas: On-Ground Works, the Monitoring Program and Community Engagement. It covers the period from October 2009 to September 2011 and can be downloaded here.