Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

This year Golden Point Landcare has been coordinating a project involving weed control, site preparation and revegetation works being undertaken by 7 Landcare and Friends Of groups along Forest Creek and its catchments, through funding from the Australian Government’s Caring for Our Country. The works are based on the Forest Creek Action Plan, and through a Community Action Grant, aim to enhance the natural regeneration of endangered Creekline Grassy Woodlands and create habitat connectivity.

Some planting events have happened…

Victoria Gully has had two exclusion plots constructed  and these have already been planted out with part of their plant order. Chewton Landcare is doing ongoing planting. Contact Rod Willaton if you’d like to join them on Whitehorse Gully at Chewton. (Ph 5472 3025)

POHAG‘splanting took place last Sunday on the northern side of the old tip site and similarly Castlemaine Landcare planted last Sunday, coinciding with National Tree planting Day.

Friends of Kalimna Park used funds to do weed control works earlier in the year.

But one great morning of planting is on this Sunday!!! Join us…

Golden Point Landcare  and FOBIF are planting THIS Sunday August 4th, on Forest Creek, south of the Welsh Street bridge (opposite ‘The Terraces’, Golden Point Road approximately 3kms from the Pyrennees Hwy turnoff, Chewton). 9.30am starting time until noon, bring morning tea. We will have the trailer so no equipment required.

We have 800 shrubs, sedges and grasses to put along the Forest creek streamside so we would love you to join us. This is a very child friendly event (if you don’t mind getting wet!!)

For more info: Jennifer Pryce Golden Point Landcare 0423 900 590

 FOBIF was told at the July 15 briefing in Bendigo that if a development of fifty houses or more is placed within 300 metres of public bushland, that bush will be rezoned to Zone 1, Asset Protection.

This information is relevant for a proposed 39 lot development in Happy Valley, near the eastern side of Kalimna Park. This section of the Park is currently zoned 2. An additional 39 houses could well lift the number of houses in this area to 50.

Spring wildflowers, east side of Kalimna Park: a more severe burning regime would have serious implications for this section of the park.

The township side of Kalimna Park is already classed Zone 1, Asset Protection. DEPI is faced with a serious and complicated challenge here: to manage the fuel load in an area close to houses, without destroying a precious and much used public resource.

A rezoning of the rest of the Park to Asset Protection would have severe environmental consequences: managers have more or less conceded that the frequency and severity of burning in these zones can be ecologically damaging.

This is not a simple matter. The Bushfire Royal Commission expressed the problem like this:

‘In the context of bushfires, ensuring the protection of human life means that sometimes compromises need to be made with people’s freedom to choose where they want to live, or the existence of pristine environments close to townships.’

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Twenty five walkers led by Jelsje Veenstra took on a cold and misty Mount Tarrengower on Sunday the 21st. They missed out on some great views because of the limited visibility, but got a good look at the Mountain’s heritage qualities.

FOBIF walkers on a wintry Tarrengower: what the mountain loses in views, it gains in atmosphere. DEPI has changed its burning regime on the south side of the Mount to 'maintain species resilience'.

This section of the mountain is scheduled to be burned by DEPI next autumn. In last year’s Fire Operations Plan the whole of the summit area and surrounds was zoned 1, Asset Protection, to protect the township of Maldon. In our response to the Fire Operations plan last year we argued as follows:

‘This is a very large parcel for a Zone 1 burn—as far as we can see, more than double the area of any other Zone 1 in our district. It’s very hard to see why it has been zoned in this way. While it is clear that bushland abutting the town needs careful fuel management, it’s by no means clear why the south side of the Mount needs high intensive fuel reduction, especially since the area around the Tower was burned in 2009.’

In the draft Plan tabled at the July 15 information session in Bendigo the Mountain has in fact been rezoned to ‘ensure that the more ecologically sensitive eastern slopes of Mt Tarrengower are preserved from frequent fuel reduction burning to maintain species resilience.’ FOBIF has not seen the maps of the rezoned sections yet.

The Annual General Meeting of the Friends of the Box Ironbark Forests will be held at the Castlemaine Continuing Education Centre, Templeton St Castlemaine, at 7.30 pm on Monday August 12. Guest speaker Ian O’Halloran will speak on the land restoration project under way at Post Office Hill Chewton. This fascinating 22 hectare site between the Post Office and the railway line is full of surprises, and the work of the Post Office Hill Action Group is a model for groups anywhere wanting to give a little corner of the planet a better chance.

Ian O'Halloran talks to the POHAG troops at Post Office Hill: the area is of interest geologically, and for its signs of Aboriginal and gold era history, as well as for a surprising wealth of plant species.

Members wishing to stand for positions on the FOBIF committee should forward nominations signed by two members of the Friends to Box 322 Castlemaine before that date.

A section of PO Hill after the gorse groomer has been through, with new plantings in the background.

FOBIF has once again questioned Parks Victoria about its track maintenance policy, after complaints from members about track works in the Fryers Flora Reserve and the Diggings Park. Complaints centred around the tonnes of blue metal put on some of the tracks, and the relentless widening of some roads.

Parks has advised us that recent works are mainly part of flood recovery works. The blue metal on the roads will be gradually packed into the surface. It’s visually not great, but may perform some useful function. More important is the fact that tracks seem to get wider every time work is done on them. This time, the work was done by contractors from Melbourne, who appear to have been given no briefing about how to handle road verges.

Near Tk: the apparently unanswerable question seems to be, how wide does a track need to be?

FOBIF has no problem with roads and tracks being maintained for important purposes, like fire management. Our problem is that over the years we have tried without success to get an answer to a very  simple question: what is the maximum width of a bush track? Given that we’ve measured some of them as wider than the Pyrenees Highway, it seems to be, Pretty Wide.

It’s hard to put figures on the problem, but it seems that rubbish dumping on public land is increasing. The latest outrage is on the Doveton St extension in Kalimna Park, where a collection of mouldy armchairs has been deposited, in an exercise which can only be seen as thumbing the nose at Park managers. It’s clear that those who think of the bush as their private tip believe that there are so few rangers that the chances of their being caught are minimal.

Yeah, very funny: mouldy furniture dumped a hundred metres from houses in Kalimna Park--clear evidence that dumpers have no fear of being caught. Victoria's parks make millions for the state, but ranger numbers are being cut.

Parks Victoria is in the process of cutting ten percent of its workforce. This measure is surrounded by the usual double speak that accompanies service cut backs: we are told that ‘any staff with roles in critical service delivery functions’ will be ineligible for a redundancy package. This kind of comical jargon seems to suggest that before this year, ten per cent of Parks staff were sitting around doing nothing. In fact, it tells the public that staffing in research or education will continue to be savaged, because these functions are not ‘front line’: but it’s clear that with these cuts, even ‘front line’ rangers will go.

Here are some facts about Parks:

–A Senate enquiry in 2007 found that our reserves are drastically understaffed by world standards: ‘staffing numbers for protected area management in Australia are much lower than in other countries. The global mean staffing levels for protected areas is 27 people per 100,000 hectares, with an average of 26.9 people per 100,000 hectares in developed countries. At the time the IUCN report was released, only 6 people per 100,000 hectares were employed to manage the protected areas in Australia.‘

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