Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Goldfields landscapes are dotted with mullock heaps: and one of the curiosities of these heaps of apparently useless rock is that they often feature quite healthy trees. How can these trees get a foothold in material you definitely wouldn’t be spreading around your garden?

Eucalyptus nortonii [L]and Eucalyptus melliodora [R] on a mullock heap at Spring Gully: vegetation can colonise surprisingly unpromising locations, and mullock heaps are among the more surprising.

We put this question to Castlemaine geologist Julian Hollis, and he suggested that one answer might be that pyrites in the heaps decay to a soluble material called melanterite, an iron sulphate which is sometimes used as a fertilizer: so, contrary to what we might think, there are plant nutrients in these rock heaps. Julian was open minded about what other explanations there might be, however. Suggestions welcome.

Attentive readers will have noticed the brief kerfuffle in January on the release of the Parks Victoria 2014-5 Annual Report. You can read the report here.

Interest has centred around the fact that Government funding to PV had been slashed by 37% in the time of the Coalition State Government. This statistic should come as no surprise to anyone following the fortunes of Parks and DELWP over the years. The relevant table can be found on page 25 of the report. It shows that Government funding in 2011 was $110 million, in 2012 it went to $122 million, then dropped steeply, to $76 million by 2015.

The result, of course, is that PV is less able to do what it’s supposed to do, in the way of basic land management, weed and feral animal control, research, education and other programs.

In the December issue of Parkwatch, Robert Bender calculates that  staff numbers at Parks Victoria have decreased by 6-7% per year since 2011. Making a crude but useful calculation, he finds that in 2011 each Parks employee was responsible for looking after 3700 hectares of land; by 2015 it was 4540 hectares. The obvious increase in workload inevitably means that, no matter how dedicated a given ranger [or support person] might be, the task of doing the job properly is becoming impossible. It’s not surprising that there are press reports talk of increasing  pressure, stress and demoralisation in PV.

Not that you’d know about pressure and stress by reading the Parks Victoria Report. As is the nature of these documents, it’s nicely illustrated, and full of good news. It might be unfair to call the general tone gaga, but not very unfair. Here’s the introduction, by Chairman of Parks Victoria Board, Andrew Fairley:

PV Annual Report: ‘our throat has been cut, and we’re feeling just fine.’

‘At Parks Victoria, we believe the future is one of excellence, so we have changed how we operated during 2014–15 to significantly improve the way we deliver our services. … The deployment of a new operating model and a new structure in our regions, complemented by realignment across our Corporate Services divisions, has brought considerable transformation to our business…The Parks Victoria Board is extremely excited by these changes…’ Page 8

Get it? What it means  is, ‘Government funding dropped from $96 million to $76 million last year, and we’re doing great!’

A more sober version of the same thing is contained in the financial part of the Report , which nevertheless manages to say that PV ‘achieved’ a deficit of $6 million:

‘Parks Victoria achieved a net result from transactions of $6.226 million deficit for the 30 June 2015 financial year. This was in line with expectations and follows a challenging financial period due to a decline in funding for Parks Victoria’s core operations [FOBIF emphasis].Throughout the 2014–15 financial year Parks Victoria continued to drive operational improvements through a restructure of its Regional Services operations. ..’ page 25

It’s pretty clear from this report that budget cuts are only one problem for Parks. Just as important is the corporate speak that dresses up savage budget cuts as ‘improvements’.

In the meantime, what’s happening in the Parks themselves? We do have great parks, but this Report, though it does have some useful info, won’t give you a real idea of the serious challenges the park system faces.

The Report papers over so many cracks that, like any rose tinted view of things, it quickly loses credibility. It blandly suggests on page 18, for example, that the feral horse and deer problems are under control in the Alps: this is a depressing evasion of the real facts. On page 17 we are told that major research projects on biodiversity in Box Ironbark regions have been ‘incorporat[ed] into bushfire planning.’ To say the least, this is premature.

Blackberry and briar rose, Cobblers Gully: the PV Annual Report claims that 40% of Parks’ area was ‘treated’ in one year.

Further, there are claims that are counter intuitive to the reader. On page 48 we read that the ‘Number of hectares treated to minimise the impact of pest plants, pest animals, and overabundant native animals and plants (including meeting ecological fire and watering objectives)’ is 1,683,824. This is over 40% of the land administered by PV–in one year! A lot depends on what you mean by ‘treated’–but would anyone claim that 40% of our parks are significantly weed free? Park Victoria rangers do a valiant job, but it’s hard to imagine they’d claim to be so on top of the weed and pest animal problem.

All the same, if you can skip the corporate speak, and maintain a reasonably sceptical perspective on the claims for a near perfect performance, the Report does give you an idea of the range of Parks Victoria’s activities. It’s a pity such documents veer so wildly towards propaganda that even their legitimate claims look dodgy.

We’ll have a look at a few more aspects of this report in future posts.

The theme of the next FOBIF photo exhibition is Trees in the Mount Alexander Region.

TOGS in Castlemaine will host the exhibition in March 2016 and later in the year the Newstead Railway Arts Hub has kindly agreed host the same exhibition. Photos will be for sale to cover fobif costs.

Red Box (E. polyanthemos) Photo by Bernard Slattery, Faraday Hill, 31 August 2015

So if you have any favourite photos of local trees send them along to FOBIF (info@fobif.org.au). There is also plenty of time to take new photos:  the closing date for the submission of photos is not till 31 January 2016.

We will place all photos we receive in a designated album on the FOBIF Flickr site as long as they fall within the guidelines. A FOBIF sub-committee will then select approximately 18 photos to be printed and framed in the two exhibitions.

If your photo is selected, as well as being included in the above two exhibitions you will receive a free mounted copy of your photo at the close of the second exhibition.

Guidelines

1. Photo to include local indigenous tree/s within the Mount Alexander Region.
2. A small file size is fine for Flickr but the photo will need to be at least 3 mg to be printed and included in the exhibitions. (At this stage only send files under 1mg)
3. The tree/s need to be identified (we may be able to help with this) as well as the photo location and date.
4. Photos can be closeups (bark, leaves, etc), individual trees, landscapes with trees as well as photos where flora and fauna associated with trees are the main feature.

White-plumed Honeyeater at partially built nest in River Red Gum, Loddon River. Photo by Geoff Park, 29 December 2014

We have already set up the Trees In Mount Alexander Flickr album so you can get an idea of the range of photos that fall within the guidelines.

Contact Bronwyn Silver at info@fobif.org.au or 54751089 for further information.

FOBIF’s field guide to Mosses of dry forests in south eastern Australia has sold so well we’ve had to go to a reprint edition, adding a few improvements along the way. The new edition is on sale via this website, or through selected outlets.

Rusty brown patches of Funaria hygrometrica stand out in a dry landscape at Dalton’s Track. What’s Funaria? You have to buy the guide to find out.