Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The photo below is of a red bellied black snake on the Pyrenees highway at Barkers Creek in late December. Efforts to persuade the snake to move off the road in one direction or another proved futile, and the reptile was killed by passing traffic not long after this photo was taken. As we’ve reported in previous posts, reptile deaths on our roads are quite horrific, and in many cases avoidable.

Red bellied black snake at Barkers Creek. Though venomous, it’s ‘beautiful, and largely inoffensive’.

The red bellied black snake is venomous, but not as aggressive as browns and tigers can be when cornered. As the Australian Museum puts it:

‘This beautiful serpent shares our love of sunshine and water, and is a familiar sight to many outdoor adventurers in eastern Australia. Attitudes towards these largely inoffensive snakes are slowly changing, however they are still often seen as a dangerous menace and unjustly persecuted.’

It’s worth reading the Museum’s highly diverting account of this reptile’s mating rituals. The males engage in spectacular wrestling matches which can resemble mating. In their very useful guide Frogs and reptiles of the Bendigo district, Darren Green and Dale Gibbons relate the story of naturalist David Fleay, who caught and bagged two fighting snakes, ‘whereby they resumed their brawling inside the bag slung over his shoulder!’

The combats are not fatal, however: the loser wanders off to another area, presumably to try his luck elsewhere.

The photo below encapsulates the hard reality of summer, reptiles and roads:

The same snake a short while later: at least five million reptiles and frogs are killed on our roads each year.

We are very proud to announce that we have successfully gained funding through the Mount Alexander Shire 2014/15 Strengthening Our Community Grant to run a school holiday program in June 2015.

The FOBIF School Holiday Program for Winter 2015 is aimed at primary school age kids and shall be made up of three events of up to three hour duration in and around Castlemaine Botanical Gardens.

Expert presenters will educate children and their families with a live animal display, book reading and craft with the Castlemaine Library and an investigation of local mosses with a walk and talk around the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens.

This program joins four FOBIF bush walks through the year aimed at young children and youth and ensures that there are opportunities for families to become involved with FOBIF from April through to July.

Please feel free to circulate walks dates and promotional information for the School Holiday Program when it becomes available through your networks so as to support young people finding out about and learning how to protect our beautiful local bush. A summary listing of 2015 walks is now on this site.

Cassia Read with young people on this year’s Kalimna walk.

At the time of writing, it looks as if the ALP will form the next Victorian State Government. The Labor Party’s land management policy, like the enviro policies of all the parties, was pretty muted. It can be found in the last pages of the party’s 88 page platform. Below are a few sections which may be of interest in the next few years:

‘Fuel Reduction
‘Labor is aware of the need to undertake fire mitigation measures such as fuel reduction burning to reduce the risk of fires and to protect lives, property and the environment.

‘Labor will:

‘• Develop and implement fire management plans appropriate to the ecosystem being burnt, enhance regeneration and are based on current scientific research into biodiversity and sustainability requirements of indigenous flora and fauna [FOBIF comment: this sentence doesn’t hang together, but if it means anything, it means the five per cent target must go]

‘• Implement fire management practices based on mosaic burns principles, which allow for biodiversity preservation and ensure that managed burns replicate, as closely as possible, natural burns.

‘National Parks
‘Labor is committed to the creation and protection of a world-class system of National and marine parks for all Victorians to enjoy and will invest in these parks. Labor recognises that National and marine parks provide economic benefits for regional communities and are vital to the ecosystem, providing biodiversity, ecosystem services and recreational opportunities.

‘Labor will:

‘• Review the National Parks Act to ensure its primary focus on the conservation and protection of the national parks network including:

‘• Ban cattle grazing in the Alpine and Red Gum National Park

‘• Develop a strategic plan for the future of parks and reserves system to provide a blueprint for management of parks and reserves

‘• Review the status of Victorian State Parks to ascertain their suitability for inclusion as a National Park

‘• Exclude inappropriate commercial activities or inappropriate tourist developments and prevent any development inside National Parks that could compromise the integrity of the park

‘• Ensure separation of the roles of overseer of the Department and of management of parks and involve indigenous people in the management of National Parks

‘• Build a stronger park management agency and ensure direct reporting to the Minister for Environment. Ensure a specialist focus on environmental management of conservation areas and rare and endangered wildlife

‘• Investigate developing new National Parks to protect Victoria’s threatened species, unique vegetation including unique grasslands

‘• Labor will investigate the establishment of new National Parks and reserves in current productive forests where there is agreement between key stakeholders

‘Landcare
‘Labor recognises that protecting the environment would not be possible without the dedication and commitment of local community groups across
Victoria. Labor understands that community participation through Landcare is crucial to achieving sustainable resource management in communities
across Victoria.

‘Labor will:

‘• Strengthen and support Landcare and community conservation networks to ensure knowledge and information exchange occurs between Landcare groups

‘• Increase support for facilitators and improve management arrangements for Landcare groups

‘• Work with local Councils and landowners to better manage weeds and pests on public and private land.’

Doug Ralph

We are not quite sure of the exact year FOBIF walks began but it was sometime in the late 1990s. Doug Ralph, one of the founders of FOBIF, initially led all the walks but later other locals shared this task. For many years Margaret Panter helped with organising and promoting the walks’ program. Hundreds of people have come along to these walks exploring and learning to appreciate our local Box-Ironbark forests. As well many people on the walks including Frances Cincotta, Margaret Panter and Noel Young have shared their in-depth knowledge of local plants.

We have always kept the same format: 8 walks a year from March to October on the third Sunday of the month. As usual this year we had an interesting variety of destinations: Forest Creek (Marie Jones), Poverty Gully and Eureka Reef (Marian Letcher), Mount Alexander (Doug Ralph), Kalimna Park (Julian Hollis), Muckleford Gorge (Deirdre Slattery), Fryers Ranges (Richard Piesse), Muckleford Forest (Neville Cooper) and Fryers Ridge (Alex Panelli). A big thanks to all those leaders.

This year we have expanded the walks program. Naomi Raftery who joined the FOBIF Committee this year organised 2 family walks, an autumn one in Kalimna Park and a spring one in Kaweka Sanctuary. If you would like to see children exploring nature have a look at this slide show below. (Click anywhere on the image to start.)

Young FOBIF member Nioka Mellick-Copper organised two teenage walks, also in spring and autumn. The first was in Muckleford and the second on the Eureka Reef interpretive trail. These two walks were supported through a Mount Alexander Shire Youth Grant. More on these walks can be viewed here and here.

Teenagers with their parents on the Spring bush walk.

Due to March and September often being hot we have decided to have shorter walks in these months. The first 2015 walk of approximately 4 km will take place on 15 March in the Rise and Shine Bush Reserve. This walk will be led by Geoff Park. The full program for next year’s walks (adult, teenage and family) will be available early next year.

Recent polls have found that 81% of Victorian voters support more funding for the protection of nature, 57% oppose private developments in National Parks, and the environment is a bigger issue of concern than law-and-order and roads.

There are polls and polls, of course, but these findings look pretty reasonable from here. In any case, FOBIF believes that candidates in the upcoming election should be put on the spot about what they think about issues to do with the management of nature. We’ve circulated to members a list of questions it might be worth putting to candidates nominated so far. We hope lots of people will take the opportunity to ask the questions–and that they make it clear they don’t want pre packaged party responses. Let’s find out whether the candidates really have thought about the issues [and have serious convictions about them], or whether they’re just regurgitating the Party line.

Here are some questions we think are worth a run:

1. In 2012-13 the State Government embarked on a program of cutting 10% of Parks Victoria’s staff, continuing a process of cuts begun under the previous government. Do you support these cuts? Can you tell me how many Park Rangers are looking after parks in the Bendigo region? Do you think MPs would be more efficient if their funding was cut by 10%?

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In 1846 Joseph Parker described Campbells creek as

‘A scene of beautiful, crystal like waterholes, which sparkled in the glittering rays of the sun; every  waterhole was teeming with fish,and flocks of ducks.On the slopes and hills on either side of the creek, stood evergreen trees, with such even regularity, as to lead one to believe that they had been planted by the hand of science, consisting of golden, silver and black wattle, many of them in full bloom, also blackwood, sheoak and honeysuckle…’

Campbells Creek from the footbridge: many years of work by the Friends group have brought a remarkable revival.

Parker called it ‘nature’s paradise’, but the creek got a bit of a battering over the following century: you can see a photo of a section of it in 1946 here. Its current revival is the result of the commitment and hard work of the Friends of Campbells Creek and about 100 people rocked up to the Friends community day last Sunday to celebrate the creek and its future as a community resource. Have a look at the group’s Facebook page for more details.