Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

A new management plan for Kalimna Park will be released for consultation before the end of the year. The plan, part of the Balak Kalik Manya (Walking Together) project, is part of ongoing indigenous co management  in the park.

Not surprisingly, surveys have shown that Kalimna Park is mostly used for exercise and immersion in nature. Although rubbish dumping is a recurring problem, the park is relatively free of nuisances like rogue trailbike riders and destructive four wheel drive activity. This may be a function of the fact that the park is extremely popular, and it’s rare that you go there without seeing someone mooching about.

Well attended Zoom meeting on September 29 was briefed on progress so far on production of the management plan. Project co-ordinator Harley Douglas answered questions from attendees on issues including significant indigenous heritage sites, weed and fire management, the implications of a push to World Heritage status for the goldfields, and resourcing. The project has been funded from a grant designed to cover a similar management for Wildflower Drive in Bendigo.

The Balak Kalik Manya project forms an important part of the introduction of Indigenous co-management on public lands in Jaara country–itself part of Traditional Owner co-management statewide. The following article on this important trend is from the VNPA Parkwatch magazine, and is written by Phil Ingamells:

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Victoria has been quietly undergoing a radical change in management arrangements for our finest remaining ‘natural’ areas. Most of our national parks now have formal, or sometimes informal, joint management agreements with Victoria’s various Traditional Owner groups. In August this year, the Victorian Government reached a settlement agreement with the Taungurung people of central Victoria. It gives the Traditional Owners the right to jointly manage one of Victoria’s oldest national parks, Mount Buffalo National Park, as well as part of the Alpine National Park and Kinglake National Park, all of Heathcote Graytown National Park, Lake Eildon National Park, Mount Samaria State Park, Cathedral Range State Park, and some smaller reserves.

Settlement agreements have now been reached with many Aboriginal communities across Victoria, and they have been engaged in the development of joint management plans for some time.

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FOBIF has submitted an objection to the planning  permit application for a new supermarket in Duke Street Castlemaine. Our submission is essentially a repeat of our objection to a previous version of this permit application. We said at the time that ‘ we have no opinion on the wisdom of a second large supermarket in the town, or its location, or its design: we have to trust to the competence of council on these matters.

‘Our objection is solely related to the proposed landscape plantings for the development’.

Our second objection states: ‘FOBIF objected to a previous version of this application in July, on the grounds … that the landscaping proposal included the planting of several environmental weeds, something we have enough  of already.

‘The new application seems to have deleted one of these plants—the Peppercorn—but left the others.

‘We therefore repeat our objection: this proposal should not be approved until the proponents accept a responsible practice on the matter of landscape planting. This should not be hard to do, and we’re at a loss as to why the proponents appear reluctant to do it.’

And we are at a loss. You would think that respect for ecology would be a basic part of the formation of a landscaper…but it seems this is not always the case.

‘Environmental infrastructure’ is one of those phrases that makes the eyes glaze over, but actually, all it means is: things that help you enjoy good places. That is, bush tracks, ways of enjoying parks and gardens, and so on. As we’ve suggested many times, money spent on such things is not a cost, it’s an investment. If COVID 19 has made anything clear, that’s it: healthy natural places are essential for people’s mental and physical wellbeing, and it’s about time government budgets acknowledged this fact.

Castlemaine to Maldon walking track: money spent on providing access to healthy environments is an investment, not a cost.

FOBIF has made a short submission to Parliament’s enquiry into ‘environmental infrastructure.’ The gist of our submission is below:

Given the emphasis on population increase in the terms of reference, we note that the population of Victoria has increased by over a million in the last 12 years. In that time, Parks Victoria’s staffing has remained more or less frozen at 2008 levels.  Though the situation at DELWP is more complex, given its fire control responsibilities, we believe that as far as constructive management of bushland is concerned the situation is similar. We urge the committee to seriously examine the nature of funding of public land management.

Funding for public land managers is a key factor in the quality of environmental infrastructure close to townships, for very simple reasons:

1. Management of tracks and trails has to be more intensive: our observation is that road management by Parks Victoria and DELWP is often crude and destructive of adjacent bushland. We are forced to believe that this is a consequence of using untrained, unsupervised or simply uninformed personnel. Of course, the cure for this is increased funding.
2. Environments near townships need very careful management for fire prevention and mitigation: it’s not possible to light a large area ‘fuel reduction burn’ and let it do its thing inside the fire perimeter, because proximity to houses always poses a risk, and in any case large burned areas are a negative effect on amenity. The solution to this is treatment in much smaller patches…which costs money.
3. Nuisance behaviours like rubbish dumping and rogue trail bike riding are on the increase. Without a more frequent ranger presence these are bound to increase. Ranger numbers are deplorably low.

We have two further points:

1. Landcare groups in Castlemaine and Campbells creek have engaged in ambitious revegetation programs over the last two decades, with spectacularly successful results, including two widely used Creek trails. These groups need support.
2. We support the introduction of indigenous co management into our public lands, and specifically the ‘Walking together’ program designed to reform the management of Kalimna Park, adjacent to Castlemaine.