Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The brilliant green in the photo below is Funaria hygrometrica, a moss which flourishes in fire ash. If you look closely you can see it’s growing in the ashes of a fallen tree. Harder to see, but still there, are dozens of small mushrooms, as well as a patch of fire fungus, Pyronema omphalodes ,also confined only to this ash rich line. That brilliant green patch is an intriguing sign of nature’s complex response to fire, still not properly understood.

Funaria hygrometrica on the ash of a tree trunk, Fryers Ridge May 25: the moss flourishes in post fire situations.

The rest of the scene is pretty desolate: it’s the margins of the Fryers Ridge Road, scene of a DELWP management burn last year [Cypress Drive, fire number CAS 066]. The severity of the burn on the steep slope below the ridge has scorched almost all trees to the crown, and most now look in crisis, with epicormic growth on nearly all of them. The slope is practically bare of ground cover.

Not all of the burn area is as bad as this: but enough of it is so severely burned that we have to ask the question, again: if it’s not the Department’s intention to destroy big trees, why does it inevitably do so?

The steep slope below Fryers Ridge road, near Timmins Track: fire managers aim to burn the bark off the Stringybarks. When the fire gets too high up the trunk, the tree is at risk.

Mount Alexander Shire decided last week to continue using Glyphosate as part of its weed killing programs. The chemical is a constituent of the widely used weedkiller Roundup. There is evidence that, at least in some usages, it may cause serious health problems, including cancer: courts in the US have recently awarded huge damages against producer Bayer Montsanto because of the health impacts on workers heavily involved in using the chemical; and legal and political wrangles in Europe have increased pressure on agricultural producers to come up with an alternative.

Stinkwort on a Castlemaine roadside: it’s a pity Council is controlling weeds and apparently spreading them at the same time.

Glyphosate is, however, still authorised for use in Australia, and research is not conclusive about the level at which it becomes harmful not only to people, but to soil fertility.

In the mean time, here’s a simpler weed control challenge for the shire: how about we stop spreading weeds around on our machines?

A very large proportion of local roads which have undergone works of some kind in recent years have been infested with Stinkwort. It’s very clear that the weed has been spread on council machinery.

According to the late Ern Perkins’s Castlemaine Plant List, Stinkwort ‘ is a noxious weed and listed Restricted in central Victoria.  It grows strongly during the dry late summer months when most other vegetation is dormant. The plant taints dairy products and meat, can cause stock death by poisoning and bowel damage by the fluffy seed heads, and can cause dermatitis in humans.’

FOBIF has been hammering this drum for nearly ten years now. Protocols for cleaning machinery are pretty accessible. We’ve written to Council to suggest they be acted on.

Readers will remember our irritation at the plethora of Television commercials for recreational vehicles, encouraging irresponsible and environmentally damaging driving practices. We’ve decided to see if we can get an opinion on this matter from responsible authorities, and have written the  enquiry below to the Minister Road Safety, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries and others. We’re not optimistic about a response. The gist of the letter follows [we’ll print responses if any as they come]:

We draw your attention to the current Television advertising campaign for Suzuki with the slogan ‘for fun’s sake’. The video can be found at https://www.bestadsontv.com/ad/102250/Suzuki-For-Funs-Sake . It has run frequently on broadcasts of AFL football. The film features a car careering through water and mud, and mindlessly circling a suburban roundabout.

Continue reading →

FOBIF has supported an objection by the Muckleford Forest Friends group to a mining exploration application for the forest by Kalamazoo resources.

Our objection is based on extreme caution about such exploration, mixed with bad experience with exploration and sampling exercises in the past. If you want an example, have a look at Dunn’s Reef in the adjoining Maldon Historic Reserve: the surrounding bush still hasn’t recovered from reckless bulldozing dating back 15 years.

The relevant parts of the Friends’ objection are set out below:

Continue reading →