Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The draft map below shows the strategic fuel breaks proposed for the Castlemaine township area. Final decisions about the breaks are yet to be made, but the works are expected to be completed this financial year.

The main fuel breaks projected are

North of Castlemaine: Dalton’s Track and Youngmans track.

In the township: borders of Kalimna and Kaweka

South of the town:

—areas along Moonlight and Forest Creeks

—Poverty Gully, Little Bendigo, the Loddon Prison, Mathiesson Drive.

—Chewton: around Adelaide Street and the Fryers road.

The fuel breaks are essentially mulched areas up to ten metres wide along roadsides: but we are assured that they will not be all the same. The Forest Creek works will involve removal of weeds, for example, as will much of the work around Kalimna. The Castlemaine Field Naturalists have expressed concern about the effects of mulching Youngmans Track, a notable wildflower area: discussions are proceeding on this part of the project.

The draft map below shows the strategic fuel breaks proposed for the Castlemaine region. The lines are provisional but we are assuming they’ll be close to final.

The black lines are the breaks around the Castlemaine-Chewton area, plus the important Chewton-Fryerstown road. They are to be implemented this financial year.

The blue lines are for works planned for 2022-3. They include an east west break through the Muckleford Forest, along Bells Lane Track; and Fryers Ridge Road and Salt Water Track in the Fryers Forest.

As we’ve previously reported, FOBIF is generally supportive of appropriate fire protection works around settlements, or directly concerned with settlement safety. Our main worry with this project relates to the forest breaks: in our view, mowing high value roadsides permanently down to 10 centimetres and mulching the result would be an amenity catastrophe and a serious biodiversity setback. The fuel breaks project includes provision for research by the Arthur Rylah Institute on the ecological effects of mulching, but in our view such research would have a lot in common with an autopsy.

Fryers Ridge Road, September 2021: Under current proposals this would be mown down to 10 centimetres, mulched, and kept permanently in that state.

FOBIF has asked the fuel breaks project leaders to consider whether the desired safety outcome could be achieved by extra tree thinning and judicious understorey management along roadsides. A justification for this approach can be found in Melbourne University research. The authors of the research conclude:

‘Thinning to reduce fire risk is intended to slow the rate fire spreads, lower flame heights and improve recovery after wildfire hits. This was shown in a 2016 extensive review of US research, which found thinning and prescribed burning helped reduce fire severity, tree mortality and crown scorch. A 2018 study on Spanish pine forests had similar results.

‘Our own research on Australian forests also supported these findings. We found mechanical thinning plus burning in silver top ash reduces fire fuel hazard, with major reductions in dead trees, stumps and understory.

‘We compared thinned and unthinned alpine ash forests using computer modelling, simulating severe to extreme weather conditions. And we found modelled fire intensity decreased by 30% and the rate of fire spread and spot fires moving ahead of the main fire decreased by 20% with thinning.’

Thinning, properly implemented, can also have ecological benefits.

FOBIF is not wedded to this or any other specific approach to fire safety: what we are urging is that fire managers investigate approaches which might have safety and ecological benefits. We are as concerned about safety as anyone: but we are opposed to any approach which assumes that human safety is incompatible with ecological health.

As we reported on August 16, DELWP is planning to create fuel breaks in this region, both near settlements and through bushland: ‘Strategic Fuel Breaks are a strip of land where vegetation has been permanently modified to reduce the rate of spread and intensity of fire for the direct protection of assets and/or assist fire control.’ (FOBIF emphasis).

Fryers Ridge road: how would this verge look when turned into a fuel break?

The breaks will generally be along tracks or roads. They could be up to 40 metres wide, including the width of the roads, though in our region they may be narrower. There is some confusion about how they’ll look: some documents say that they are mown down and mulched to 10 centimetres, others that they can resemble ‘open grassy wood or heath lands.’ The difference is important: no heathland would survive being mown and mulched to 10 centimetres. We’re hoping to clear up exactly what is meant by the breaks proposed for our region.

Some of the proposed breaks are centred around Castlemaine and Chewton, others are planned for the Fryers Forest and the Diggings Park, including Fryers Ridge road and Porcupine Ridge road.

Last Monday the FOBIF committee adopted the following position on the breaks:

1. Fuel breaks near settlements are in principle a good idea, consistent with the principle of giving priority importance to human life.
2. Thinning of bush roadside trees, and removal of hazardous ones, is a sensible safety measure, if properly done
3. The mulching of bush tracksides is a serious biodiversity and amenity risk. Each trackside should be treated on its merits, but we believe that mulching the Fryers Ridge and Porcupine Ridge road verges would be

–an amenity catastrophe: the status of the roads as wildflower hotspots will be perhaps definitively damaged. We believe that the view shown in the above photo will no longer be seen along these roads.

–a very serious reduction of biodiversity value for the whole of those forests, regardless of the protection offered to pockets of endangered species.

FOBIF is acutely aware of the risks posed by fire in a warming climate. We believe, however, that fire protection measures should be undertaken with every effort made to avoid damage to natural systems. There’s not much point in destroying the village to save it.

Is it possible to manage vegetation along major bush roads so as to ensure firefighter safety, without reducing vegetation to a lawn? We hope so.

So far, consultations between local environment groups and the fuel breaks team have been constructive. We hope they continue that way.