Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The pic below shows a stretch of the Railway Dam road north of the Fryers Ridge Road. Significant numbers of sizeable trees have been cut down: ‘hazardous tree removal’ in preparation for DELWP’s upcoming management burn.

This exercise is a reminder of the Department’s tree massacre on Mount Alexander last year, in which we were informed (after numerous enquiries) that all trees had been checked by an arborist before removal. And, further back, we had some bizarre lopping and felling of small trees along Forest Creek , supposedly for safety reasons.

With the best will in the world, we’re getting sceptical of the kind of expertise that waves a wand over these activities…

In the light of the upcoming management burn in Kalimna Park, here are a couple of photos to brood on. They were taken at a point on the Circuit Walk track last week. One side of the track was burned by DELWP five years ago, and looks like this:

Fuel reduced bush: plenty of flammable Cassinia and other understorey plants…

The other side was not burned, and looks like this:

Directly opposite the photo above: unburnt bush, with apparently lots less fuel.

On the face of it, the unburned section has less fuel than the ‘fuel reduced’ section. The photos illustrate the complexity of fuel reduction exercises. Contrary to widespread belief, fuel reduction burns don’t vacuum up all the fuel, leaving it nice and safe: they may provoke prolific regrowth, and even increase the fuel load. That’s why detailed research  should accompany every burn, to show all aspects of the exercise, ecological and safety related. This, of course, would cost a lot of money…

DELWP has put a lot of research effort into the upcoming burn, perhaps provoked by the efforts of community workers to document the presence of the Copper Butterfly. Its preparation works for this exercise have provoked some disquiet. We’ll report on these in future posts.

Here’s the latest in our never ending series on dumb rubbish dumping in our bushlands. That pair of display boards is very distinctive. They look like they’re designed to fit on the back of a truck for advertising purposes. Surely someone could recognise them and trace the dump to its source?

Rubbish dumped near the Fryers Ridge Road/Old Coach road junction, March 25: the display boards look quite distinctive…could they be recognisable?

The Tarrengower Cactus Control group has created a very short online survey to try to gauge how other community members and groups within the Mount Alexander Shire feel about noxious weed management within our Shire.

Are you concerned about the spread of noxious weeds in our local natural environment?

Do you think enough weed management is carried out by our local Shire?

Would you like our Shire to treat our natural environment with a greater priority?

Would you like to make a comment about local weed control?

You can find the survey here.

There are 10 simple questions and it should take only 5 minutes to complete.

The group will collate the answers at the end of May 2020. If there’s a general dissatisfaction with the work done by our Shire, then they’ll try to coordinate some action to persuade the Council to increase its priority of our natural environment in forthcoming budgets.

As the picture shows, the Kalimna Park loop track has a shiny new sign at the entry, making it much easier to find the start of the walk on the Tourist road. The metal box at its side contains copies of the new full colour walk brochure produced by the Friends of Kalimna Park, and launched last year.

Perhaps it’s a pity that DELWP has obscured half the sign with a notice about its upcoming fuel reduction burn, but the message is clear enough anyway.

The walk takes the visitor through a variety of vegetation zones, and the informative notes greatly enhance the experience. It won’t come fully  into its own till the wildflower season starts in a month or two, but even in autumn sparseness it’s worth a look…especially before that reduction burn takes place.

FOBIF has lent its name to the letter below, urging DELWP to take account of recent research on the Eltham Copper butterfly when it conducts its fuel reduction operation in Kalimna Park this autumn.

This operation is a test case for the often contradictory pressures on DELWP:

–It is obliged to take measures to ensure human safety in fire conditions

–it is obliged to protect the health of our soils and our water catchments, and the biodiverse plant and animal communities that are part of that health.

Sweet Bursaria, Kalimna Park: the plant is crucial to the survival of the Eltham Copper Butterfly. The letter proposes exclusion zones to protect known colonies of the creature.

In  the past, managers have focused on the first of these: their expertise has been strongly in the area of fire behaviour, not the ecological effect of fire.

In the not so recent past the second objective has been treated with a mixture of helplessness, resignation and contempt. Fire managers have been known to freely confess ignorance of ecology, and sometimes have exhibited what we think of as the ‘tough guy’ approach to nature: ‘she’ll come back, no worries.’ A classic example was the brazen indifference of the notorious Tarilta burn of 2012, no better than an exercise in ecological vandalism.

Managers are increasingly acknowledging that ideally, reduction exercises should be conducted with a detailed knowledge of the area in question, its ecology and fire history. The nub of the matter is in the word ‘ideally’. Managers often plead lack of resources when urged to take a very detailed look at the areas they have marked off for their operations. As a particular case, the Kalimna burn was planned in the knowledge that the endangered butterfly was there, but without any detailed idea of where it was concentrated, or, for that matter, what effect fire and smoke might have on the creature. This letter urges them to take note, and act accordingly [the exclusion areas recommended here are shown in the next post] :

Proposed Planned Burn at Kalimna Park 2020

The proposed fuel reduction burn footprint at Kalimna Park was put into place by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) at a time when no comprehensive surveys for adult Eltham Copper Butterfly (ECB) had ever been undertaken.  During the 2019-20 summer season, local ecologists and community volunteers conducted a detailed assessment of ECB habitat and adult butterflies across the entire Park. Now that this dataset has filled in a significant knowledge gap regarding the distribution of the ECB and its habitat, it is clear the proposed fuel reduction burn footprint will have severe impacts on the ECB unless amended.

Following an analysis of the 2019-20 survey results, we consider it essential that several exclusion zones are created within the current proposed burn footprint to prevent potentially severe impacts to the Eltham Copper Butterfly. It is not acceptable that any exclusion zones be created with mineral earth breaks – alternative measures such as brush-cutting vegetation to ground level would have to be adopted.

We propose four exclusion zones, each which are marked on the attached map. The four areas are described below.

1. North of Hunter Street. This ridgeline supports one of the largest sub-populations of ECB known in Castlemaine. Notably, there are no stringybarks along this ridgeline so it presents significantly lower fuel risk. Frequent fuel modification could be carried out along the 30m buffer from the houses to the west without compromising the ECB population.

2. North-western section of proposed burn footprint. This area supports over 3.5 hectares of high-quality ECB habitat (moderate to high Bursaria cover), more than all of the remaining ECB habitat around the Eltham-Greensborough populations combined. ECB have been recorded within the footprint area and just outside to the north-west. 

3. Hilltop west of Kalimna Park Tourist Road. A sub-population of ECB occurs on this hilltop. The site supports low fuel levels and is close to Kalimna Park Tourist Road, so exclusion would not be difficult to achieve with sufficient effort. 

4. Far eastern section of southern burn footprint. Several ECB have been recorded in this area and considering it is on the very edge of the burn footprint, exclusion would not be difficult to achieve with sufficient effort. 

We would like to request a meeting to discuss these options, ideally also including a site assessment to inspect each of the four proposed exclusion zones.

Concerned Ecologists, Naturalists and Residents of the Box Ironbark

Friends of Kalimna Park

Friends of the Box Ironbark Forests

Here’s a link to the map referred to in the above letter. The proposed exclusion zones are bordered in white, and numbered 1 to 4:
ECB Habitat and Adult Surveys_Kalimna Park_2019 2020_A2P_2 March 2020-1-Copy