Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The Andrews government has closed an “outdated” legal loophole that allowed people to kill wombats without a permit in eastern Victoria.

More than 4000 wombats are killed each year, according to the Victorian Greens, because of a decades-old rule that allowed landowners to control the marsupial’s population at 193 parishes in Gippsland.

The amendment to the Wildlife Act 1975  officially revokes an outdated law that declared wombats unprotected in some parts of the state.

It follows a state government inquiry into wombat protection laws that was triggered by public outrage after it was revealed that wealthy international tourists were being invited to a farm in northern Victoria to hunt the animals.

Wombats are present in large numbers in the protected environment of Wilsons Promontory National Park. Photo Bronwyn Silver, 2019.

We recently sent a fobif newsletter to our members. We have reprinted a version here for our members and supporters who may not have received it.

Welcome to 2020 – a year with a difference and with many challenges across Victoria and Australia. The smoke haze is a reminder of the current and future threat of fires and the damage that they bring to communities and to our natural environment. We will continue to put relevant posts on the FOBIF website – please send any links that you think will add to our understanding.

Join or renew FOBIF memberships
The 2020 membership form is now available. Please note that you need to return this form by email or post if your contact details have changed or if you are a new member. If you are paying by bank transfer use your surname for the code. Membership paid in the last 3 months of 2019 with cover 2020. 

Open committee meetings
Remember FOBIF committee meetings are open to all members. They are held at the Castlemaine Community House building, Templeton Street, Castlemaine, on the second Monday of every month from February to November, at 6pm. Come along and have a say.

FOBIF 2020 walks program
Thanks to the organising team, the 2020 Walks Program has been planned to cover a wide range of locations and interests Check the website before each walk for any alterations. 

FOBIF books and greeting cards
This year saw a new printing of our Wattles of the Mount Alexander Region. This book as well as Eucalypts of the Mount Alexander Region and Mosses of Dry Forests can be purchased through our website or at Stoneman’s Bookroom

We also produced eight greeting cards which feature photographs of our local bushlands. Photographers are Joy Clusker, Patrick Kavanagh, Damian Kelly, Geoff Park, Bronwyn Silver, Bernard Slattery and Noel Young. They are available through our website as a set of eight for $20 including postage. 

Marie Jones
FOBIF President

As a follow up to our note on the BOM/CSIRO local climate guides, we’ve come across a Bendigo Advertiser 1991 table of rainfall in Bendigo over the period 1863 to 1990.

The average annual rainfall over that 127 year period was 553 mls. The average for the period 1989 to 2018 has been 460 mls–a drop of 93 mls per year. So, if you’re old enough to have decided things are getting dryer around here, you’re probably right…

We’re constantly and boringly on at DELWP and Parks Victoria about their road maintenance practices, which as often as not consist of gouging a few extra inches out of the bush. It’s not often we see them gouging a bit of their own infrastructure, however. Usually when you see metal guide posts knocked over you can assume it’s some wandering motorist. At this point on the Porcupine ridge road, however, it’s pretty obvious it’s a maintenance job.

Porcupine Ridge road: the metal traffic guide post has been crushed by the grader. It’s a useful proof to us that the road has actually been widened. And the post only costs $12.32

Well, they don’t cost much…but it is a pretty tricky spot on the road, and a visible reflector post would be quite handy at that spot. The post on the other side of the road at the same place has been crunched too–presumably in the same improvement exercise.

Serious bushfires still burning in NSW have brought out some familiar discussion themes. Like this one: if only there had been more fuel reduction burns, these fires wouldn’t be so bad. And: the reason we don’t have enough reduction burns is that environmentalists are stopping them.

These charges have been loudly proclaimed by prominent media figures like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt, and we can confidently expect to hear them again this fire season. It’s worth making a few points on the subject, because it seems like the 2009 Bushfires Royal Commission and its aftermath has never happened.

Fuel reduction programs can enable firefighters to control a fire more easily, before it gets to the uncontrollable stage. But they have to be properly done, and they don’t always work. Fuel reduction is not like putting a vacuum cleaner through the bush and sucking up all the fuel, making the place much safer. It’s a tricky and sometimes risky enterprise, and needs the right conditions for success: too wet, and your burn won’t take; too dry, and you risk blowing the place up. If your burn is too moderate, it makes no difference. If it’s too severe, it can not only destroy natural values, but it can cause prolific regrowth with a resultant increased fuel load. A parliamentary report in 2002 noted:

‘Post burn assessments of the effectiveness of prescribed burns in the Blue Mountains in the period 1990-97 found that 30 per cent of the burns had a negative result, 40 per cent were sub-optimal, and 30 per cent could be rated as effective burns. The negative results occurred when there was more “creation of fuel” than reduction of fuel, with “creation” of fuel being the fire’s curing of fuels rather than consumption of them.’

This is not an argument against fuel reduction–and these figures may not apply to all situations: but they are a caution against the claim that reduction is easy, and all you have to do is get rid of restrictions on it.

The charges that fuel reduction programs in NSW have been stymied in some undefined way seem to be flat out false. They’ve also distracted attention from the fact that fuel reduction, whatever its merits, is only one of several major challenges facing fire authorities.