What happens under the tractor?

Posted on 26 March, 2012 by fobif

The first public evening session in Connecting Country’s 2012 Education Program was attended by 75 people at Campbell’s Creek last week.

The talk was given by Dr Denis Saunders, who posed a set of question about the long term viability of agriculture in Australia. He discussed the curious fact that we know little or nothing about the effect of agricultural practice on soil micro organisms, and argued that ignorance on such matters might lead to long term bad practice. His theme, on the interdependence of people and environment, was stated as an acknowledgement of Aboriginal land management practices in the words: ‘we are country, country is us.’ A fuller report on the evening, together with info on the remaining sessions in the program, can be found here.

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Tarilta questions

Posted on 24 March, 2012 by fobif

Following our visits to the DSE burn site in the Tarilta Gorge [see our post] we have written to DSE management in Bendigo seeking a response to the following questions:

1. Last year in our submission on fire zones we drew attention to the steep slopes in this area, and the need to be extra careful in any burning operation. Given that heavy rain was predicted in the week after the proposed burn, why was there evidently no effort to protect the steeper slopes? [Sludge in the creek is up to a metre deep in parts. In walking along the creek bed you can go up to your waist at one point in soil and ash]

2. We’re still at a loss as to DSE’s inability to protect large trees from these burns. Red box on the slopes and even larger trees on the valley floor have been destroyed. We’d like to know what kind of supervision takes place in this area.

3. The Ecological Management Zone’s purpose is ‘promoting biodiversity and ecological renewal. Planned burning will be used to manage native species and ecological communities which require fire to regenerate.’ Can you tell us which species you had in mind in this operation? Is there baseline data to enable an assessment of the success of the operation?

4. We were under the impression that in this zone the intention is to do a mosaic burn covering about one third of the area. It seems to us that much more was actually burnt. Can you tell us what your estimate is of the burn coverage?

We’ll post the reply as soon as it’s available.

 

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Floods: running to the past

Posted on 23 March, 2012 by fobif

Recent heavy rains in Victoria have brought about a return of calls to strip vegetation from waterways as a way of reducing flood levels.

The claim that vegetation along waterways raises water levels was raised last year when some locals blamed landcare plantings for flooding in Castlemaine. At the time FOBIF pointed out that creeks and streams had been stripped of vegetation for many years up to the 1990s. This practice had not solved the flood problems but had produced a few of its own, including, predictably, erosion of stream banks. It’s worth remembering that the shocking floods in the past came along streams entirely stripped of vegetation—the catastrophic 1889 event being the most infamous.

In our post we quoted Australian Land and Water research which showed that ‘Adding or removing large wood (snags) in streams has little effect on the height and duration of large floods.’ This is the consensus opinion of those who have looked seriously at the flood problem, but it has not stopped the State government from announcing that it would consider going back to the practice of ‘desnagging’ streams. It’s hard to believe that the government will proceed with a practice which so obviously failed, but we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime the Midland Express carried a front page article with photo on March 6 showing Nationals MP Damien Drum with a local businessman examining vegetation which allegedly raised flood levels in the previous week. FOBIF members have been down to look at the site in question. There is debris in the creek at the point in question, but in our opinion there is no case for wholesale vegetation removal [see picture]. At that point Campbells Creek does a sharpish left turn which would cause some banking of water, but the creek itself was not seriously blocked.

Campbell's Creek near Gaulton St, March 14 2012. FOBIF believes that there is a case for vegetation management in town creeks, but that wholesale removal of native vegetation is a policy proven to have failed in the past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a case for removing vegetation which clearly chokes streams—willows being a prime villain in this respect, and the CMA has been busy in Campbell’s Creek doing just that. It is also obvious that some measures should be taken to protect buildings which past planning mistakes have allowed to be built under flood levels—and that Council should vigorously resist future attempts to build on flood  prone land. For this to happen we would need precise flood mapping–and, amazingly given the number of floods we’ve had over the last hundred and twenty years, that doesn’t seem to be available.

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Bendigo fire meeting

Posted on 21 March, 2012 by fobif

FOBIF was represented at a meeting in Bendigo on March 7 with DSE land and fire community engagement officer Simone Blair. The meeting was organised by the Bendigo and District Environment council.

The meeting was an opportunity for community groups to table their difficulties in communicating with DSE on matters specifically to do with fire management. FOBIF believes that these difficulties arise mainly because DSE is obliged to implement a very blunt range of policies, the main one being that of burning off five per cent of public land, regardless of local conditions. Nevertheless, we believe that even under these constraints, DSE could do better: and we are of the view that some of their efforts smack of carelessness or neglect—the burning of Tarilta Gorge being one [see below].

BDEC members present were insistent that DSE should try more actively to counter unreasonable fear of the bush, and that the dangers of grass fire should be made clearer to the public. The belief persists that the Bracewell Street Black Saturday fire was a bushfire, when it burned mainly through waste grassland. They also underlined the importance of fire protection works on private land.

There will be a follow up meeting in April.

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Walkers observe the effects of a Fuel Reduction Burn

Posted on 21 March, 2012 by fobif

Forty-five walkers set out from the SEC Dam Track in Green Gully on 21 March for the first FOBIF walk of the year.  It was not the normal scenic bushwalk as the route was mainly through areas of the Muckleford Forest which had been burnt in the fuel reduction burns in the Spring of 2011.

Frances Cincotta from Newstead Natives Nursery and Chris Johnston, author of the Muckleford Forest blog led the group.

Frances and Chris explaining the areas affected by different burn zones. Photo by Noel Young

The areas burnt in spring were mainly in Zone 2 and 3 – Zone 2 is Strategic Wildfire Management Zone and Zone 3 is Ecological Management Zone.  One of the aims of the walk was to see if we could identify the differences in the % of landscape burnt based on the zoning. Zone 2 can be up to 80% burnt, and Zone 3 is 30-50% burnt. (Zone 4 Prescribed Burning Exclusion). The group walked along Demo Track, a renowned wildflower area, so people could see the stark difference between the burnt and unburnt sides of the track.

Left and right sides of Demo Track at same point (unburnt and burnt). Photos by Noel Young

Apart from Gold Dust Wattle, Dianella and epicormic growth on eucalypts there was little evidence of regrowth and the number of trees, including at least one Native Cherry Exocarpos cupressiformis, that had been destroyed was disturbing. This post is based partly on a Muckleford Forest blog article. Click here to see more.

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