Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

This year has been the worst on record for drownings of native water rats, and the second worst for platypus.

According to DELWP, an average of five platypus are drowned per week in Victoria, victims of illegal or inappropriate yabbie nets. One of the culprits is the ‘Opera house’ net, which traps air breathing animals, stops them from surfacing, and drowns them. An alternative, appropriate net would have an open top, allowing the animal to escape.

It’s illegal to use the Opera net in public waterways, but has been legal in private water: however, from July 1 next year, it will be illegal to use it in all Victorian waterways.

The Victorian Fisheries Authority has a deal with some stores to offer a free exchange of old opera house nets with open top nets. The Authority has done tests and found the new nets are very effective yabbie catchers. The Victorian Fisheries Authority had supplied a  list of participating stores.

So it was a bit of a downer to find one of our local stores offering Opera house nets for a bargain price before Christmas. Nothing illegal about it, of course…up to next July. But maybe not a great Christmas gesture for one of Australia’s most remarkable creatures.

Photo caption: Christmas catalogue for Lyal Eales stores. The Opera style yabbie net is a platypus killer.

By the way, there are heavy penalties for taking protected wildlife, or using prohibited equipment in public waters: nearly $39,000 and 24 months jail.

Join Connecting Country and Muckleford Catchment Landcare on Saturday 19 January 2019 from 10.00 am to 12.00 pm to learn about snake ecology and behaviour. Snakes play an important role in healthy ecosystems, snacking on frogs and smaller reptiles and providing a food source for larger predators. Find out what makes good snake habitat, how we can protect snakes, as well as keep our pets and families safe!

The workshop will include an opportunity to meet real live snakes. However this activity is optional.

This is a family-friendly event held at a property in Muckleford. All are welcome. Morning tea will be provided.

RSVP is essential. For bookings and more information contact Jacqui Slingo by email at jacqui@connectingcountry.org.au or phone 03 5472 1594.

A flyer on the workshop is available here.

This workshop has been made possible by funding from the North Central Catchment Management Authority.

About 20 people gathered at Walmer last Monday for the FOBIF end of the year BBQ. It was perfect weather for a relaxed and enjoyable end of the year celebration.

Looking north-west at Walmer. Photo by Harley Parker

Lynette, Harley and Rex relaxing.

The FOBIF committee wishes all friends of our forests a happy Christmas and a great new year. Our 2018 walks program will soon be available. We’ll see you in the bush in the new year!

This weekend (22-23 December) is the last one for the Nature Photography in the Goldfields exhibition by Patrick Kavanagh, Geoff Park and Bronwyn Silver at the Newstead Railway Arts Hub. The ‘Hub’ will be open from 10am – 4pm.

Dusky Woodswallows. Photo by Geoff Park

Echidna. Photo by Patrick Kavanagh

Emerging Yellow Gum blossom. Photo by Bronwyn Silver

Vicroads has set up a community consultation on its plans to clear vegetation from the Pyrenees Highway between Newstead and Muckleford South.

Readers may remember that FOBIF objected to some of these removals, arguing that the safety objective could be better achieved by rumble strips and reduced speed limits on the winding stretch of road. Vicroads’ response to that was to say, effectively, that reduced speeds would make no difference, something we found hard to understand. The Vicroads 2016-7 Annual report noted that ‘The most common crash types were run-offroad on high-speed country roads and intersection crashes in metropolitan Melbourne.’ On the face of it, efforts to reduce speeds, along with traffic calming measures, might be a good response to this brutal fact. Vicroads’ response, however, seems to give up on the speed matter, and hope to soften the impact of any accidents.

Vicroads last consulted the community in 2016 and since then they ‘have been developing strategies to mitigate risk to fauna and flora as part of our obligations under federal legislation.’ We understand that this involves assessing the impact of tree removal on Swift Parrot populations.

The consultation is a drop in session on Tuesday January 8, from 5 pm to 8 pm [drop in any time you can], at the Newstead Recreation centre, 21 Panmure Street.

We’re offering this info tentatively, since Vicroads’ email on the matter sets the date at ‘Tuesday 8 January December 2018’…

You can verify all this by emailing an RSVP to NRengagement@roads.vic.gov.au

A justification of the project can be found here.

You can find FOBIF’s posts on the matter by putting ‘Pyrenees Highway’ into the search box at the top of this page.

We believe works are due to start not long after the consultation.

In 2012 a British think tank estimated that ‘for every pound made by advertising executives, they destroy an equivalent of £7 in the form of stress, overconsumption, pollution and debt; conversely, each pound paid to a trash collector creates an equivalent of £12 in terms of health and sustainability.’

So says Rutger Bregman in his book, Utopia for realists [2017]. We can’t verify this, but we find it strangely plausible. Who hasn’t winced at some commercial being yelled from the radio? The amount of mental damage inflicted by some of these ads must be enormous.

Here’s an example, in the form of a question:

Should drivers be forced to drive on roads? Or should they have the right to drive wherever they like?

Tyre marks on moss beds, Mount Alexander: irresponsible, dangerous and damaging behaviour is actively encouraged by car manufacturers and retailers.

These seem like pretty weird questions: of course you should drive on a road. People don’t drive into the Botanical Gardens, up to the edge of the lake. They know there are limits.

But the bush is different. Opponents of the recent VEAC recommendations on the Wombat and Wellsford forests complained that if these places were national parks, they would have to drive on roads, an infringement of their traditional rights. Apparently they don’t realise that the law on this matter is the same on all public land.

Some drivers of SUVs, and riders of motor bikes, believe that these machines have the right to go anywhere. Earlier this year, believe it or not, Coliban Water had to appeal to motorists not to drive into the Malmsbury reservoir!  Cars have been driven across moss beds on Mount Alexander, and when Parks Victoria blocked a very small section of road near Lang’s Lookout, the rock barriers were furiously graffitied  by drivers who didn’t want to walk an extra 100 metres…

Where does this weird mindset come from? If you want to know,  just watch a few sporting events on television, and be amazed at the commercials promoting off road vehicles. Almost without exception they show vehicles plunging through creeks, churning up dust, even driving in the sea. Most of the driving is irresponsible, some of it dangerous, some of it silly [driving in salt water’s not great for the car].

Given that SUVs spend most of their time on the school run, or to the coffee shop, what’s the point of this publicity?

It seems that ‘Advertisers like to push your hot buttons. One of them is your attraction to nature. Car companies use our love of the great outdoors to sell some of the most gas-guzzling and polluting vehicles around.’ How about that for irony?

And here’s a sad footnote: in 1977 a Federal Parliamentary enquiry in Australia looked into the matter of off road vehicles and their increasing impact on the environment. It concluded, among other things:

‘–articles and programs about ORVs should project an environmentally responsible attitude towards their use and that the Australian Press Council should take note of this conclusion.

‘–manufacturers, distributors and advertisers have a responsibility to ensure that their advertising material does not depict off-road vehicles damaging the environment or in any other way encourage irresponsible use of ORVs and that the Australian Association of National Advertisers should take note of this conclusion.’

FOBIF’s arithmetic has been wobbly of late, but we’re pretty sure that was 41 years ago. Readers can judge just how effective those recommendations have been.

Coliban Water has been promising to close down some of its inefficient water races for years. These include the Poverty Gully race, which has been leaking repeatedly—a problem not helped when a DELWP fuel reduction burn destroyed the plastic lining water authorities had installed to try to improve the channel’s efficiency. They certainly reduced that particular fuel.

FOBIF supports the closure of the channel, believing the water is best allowed to boost the ailing Coliban River. At the same time, the closure will have some unfortunate side effects. Channel leakages over the years have created the odd interesting minor wetlands, which dry up when the channel isn’t running, but manage to revive when the water comes.

So, what happens when the water stops for good? It seems that the authority may have at last acted to close the channel, and Naomi Raftery has the following response:

‘A few years ago I wrote a piece for Connecting County’s Nature News. It chronicled the excitement of moving into a new rental in Chewton, which backed onto an ephemeral creek line, fed, as it were, by a leak in the Poverty Gully water race. My enthusiasm was for the frog and birdlife that abounded following a leak and my newfound interest in identifying different species attracted to the water.

‘Coliban Water are in the process of decommissioning the water race, which will be finalised in January 2019.  The result is a deafening silence. The frog chorus is gone, the White-faced Herons are not anywhere and the weed march is on.

‘While FOBIF applaud the sensible decision to decommission the race, it is a good case in point for illustrating what will happen in the event of a warming climate and reiterates the importance of setting up solid, long view management of our natural places and in order that they become resilient refugia for  humans and plants and animals.’

Right: although an artificial situation, the case is a very good example of what lies ahead for vulnerable corners of our region, like wetlands and water courses, as a warmer and drier climate settles on the country.

The FOBIF breakup for the year is on next Monday, 10 December beginning at 6pm. Further details can be found here. All FOBIF members and supporters are welcome.

The opening of Nature Photography in the Goldfields by Geoff Park, Patrick Kavanagh and Bronwyn Silver will take place this Sunday at 11am at the Newstead Railway Arts Hub. Everyone is welcome and refreshments will be provided. The exhibition will run between 10am and 4pm over the first 4 weekends in December. The first day of the show is this Saturday, 1 December. Find all the details here. 

One of Geoff Park’s exhibition photos: Male Mistletoebird, Spring Hill Track, 3rd September 2018

And the FOBIF ‘Creatures’ photo exhibition at TOGS will finish this Thursday (November 29). All photos are for sale and reasonably priced. Proceeds of sales go to FOBIF to cover costs. You can see more ‘Creatures’ photos on our Flickr site  and on this previous post.

We would like to thank TOGS once again for their support in mounting this exhibition. This is our fifth show at the cafe and our ninth in total. 

Victoria’s weird practice of classifying deer as a protected species for the benefit of recreational hunters has come increasingly under fire from farmers, landcarers and municipalities, both rural and Melbourne fringe.

Deer in Chewton: They damage crops, trash the bush and are a traffic menace–and illegal hunters are a danger to the public.

If you’re under the impression that deer are cute species which occasionally appear in romantic pose, have a look here and here for a wake up call about the damage to agriculture and the environment caused by rapidly growing feral deer populations. They don’t just damage the environment: they’re a pest to farmers and a danger to motorists. What’s more, rural residents in remote rural areas report living in fear of illegal hunters.

Perhaps as peculiar as the protected status of the deer is the apparent protected status of hunters. The recent draft deer strategy showed clearly that recreational hunting is not reducing deer numbers, now at a million and growing exponentially. Yet the strategy is heavily weighted to giving hunters more chances to enjoy their sport while doing nothing about the problem.

FOBIF’s response to the strategy can be found here.