The Tasmanian Greens (yesterday) condemned Forestry Tasmania’s appalling waste of valuable specialty timber species, which rots and splits on the Burnie wharf as sawmillers cry out for access to such a valuable resource.
Greens Forestry spokesperson Kim Booth MP today took a group of Tasmanian country sawmillers and timber merchants to inspect the growing mountain of logs on the Burnie wharf, which was delivered to the mill as valuable timber and now awaits export to China as virtually worthless split and cracking logs.
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“There’s enough high value logs stacked up on the Burnie wharf right now to keep a generation of small family owned sawmills in business, but instead they are being sold into China as downgraded and virtually worthless whole logs,” said Mr Booth.
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“We saw thousands of tonnes of Eucalypt, Blackwood, Myrtle, and black heart Sassafras all splitting up in the sun and going to waste.”
“Many of the logs were of the highest quality, with a dense grain and a rich colour and could have been turned into superb furniture, musical instruments, wooden boats and other high value sawn boards and building timber.”
Swift Parrot (Lathamus discolor)
Listed as endangered under the Tasmanian Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 and the Federal Act.
Its favoured feed trees include winter flowering species such as Swamp Mahogany (Eucalyptus robusta), Spotted Gum (Corymbia maculata), Red Bloodwood (Corymbia gummifera), Mugga Ironbark (Eucalyptus sideroxylon), and White Box (Eucalyptus albens); species targeted in Tasmania for logging.
[Source: Photo by 0ystercatcher on Flickr,
^http://www.birdlife.org/community/2010/11/hope-for-tasmania%E2%80%99s-forests/]
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“The sawmillers were rightly upset and dismayed that they have been unable to get hold of these logs because Forestry Tasmania simply will not sell them to them.”
“This puts the lie to the claim that there is a shortage of specialty timber logs in Tasmania.”
“The only specialty timber trees that are locked up at the moment in Tasmania are the ones lying horizontal and splitting in the sun behind a cyclone fence on the Burnie wharf and locked up for export by Forestry Tasmania.”
It’s nothing but a fully publicly subsidised, completely incompetently run, spitefully driven, mendicant not-for-profit club operated for the benefit of a select few overfed underworked bludgers of little or no intellect.
Forestry Tasmania and the Tasmanian Government are deliberately creating unemployment in the private forestry sector.“
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State Forest on Forestier Peninsula, south eastern Tasmania Incinerated last month in the Forcett Fire
[Photo by Editor, 20110926, free in public domain]
Minke Whale mother and her calfJapanese ICR Whale Blood Sport Japanese Men Only
[Source: Sea Shepherd]
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Feb 2008:
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<<(Then Australian) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has vowed to do whatever it takes to end Japan’s whale hunt as the bloody slaughter continued yesterday.
Mr Rudd’s declaration came as Japanese companies scurried to try to minimise a consumer backlash over whaling.
A people-power campaign has begun against the Japanese whalers, spearheaded by The Daily Telegraph, with 100,000 people signing a petition of outrage.
Yesterday Mr Rudd joined the Australian people in demanding Japan cease its so-called “scientific whaling program”.
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Mr Rudd:
“I want to see an end to whaling. I don’t have a magic wand, but the Australian Government will do everything within our power to put pressure on the Japanese whalers to bring this slaughter to an end. Australia and Japan have a strong relationship, but that strength demands that we leave the Japanese in no doubt that Australia will continue to campaign to bring an end to whaling once and for all.”
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Mr Rudd said he had instructed Foreign Minister Stephen Smith to “exert real pressure” on the Japanese to end the program. However, talks this week between Mr Smith and his Japanese counterpart Masahiko Koumoura have been deadlocked. As the Japanese continued to harpoon and slice up minke whales throughout the day, Mr Smith emerged from talks saying the two men had “agreed to disagree“.
[Ed: What is Japanese for ‘up yours‘ ?]
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Consumers have now called for boycotts of all Japanese products, sending some of Japan’s biggest companies into a panic. Hayley Wilson, 21, of Surry Hills said she thought boycotts were the only solution: “Nothing else seems to be working.”
Big name Japanese companies immediately went into overdrive. Electronics giant Sanyo has written to the Japanese Consulate in Sydney voicing its concern about a consumer backlash. Sony Australia called on Australians to reconsider the approach and Mazda also begged Australians not to target its products.>>
Australian PM Kevin Rudd : ‘Whatever. You win’ to a stronger willed Japanese PM Yasuo Fukuda.
(Photo: Glen McCurtayne)
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<<Kevin Rudd has “agreed to disagree” with Tokyo on the issue. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has effectively conceded defeat on his plan to stop Japanese whaling, declaring after talks in Tokyo that Australia and Japan have agreed to disagree on the issue..
Ed: ‘Whatever happened to the days way back, when the world was safe
And it seemed worth saving,
We search for leaders on our hands and knees..’
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[Source: Richard Clapton, Song: ‘Best Years of Our Lives’, 1989, Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist from Sydney; off his album: ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’, on WEA Label 256582, ^http://www.richardclapton.com/?page_id=629 ]
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<<The long-awaited talks between Mr Rudd and his Japanese counterpart, Yasuo Fukuda, concluded yesterday with both leaders saying the Japan-Australia relationship was too important to be disrupted by their disagreement over whaling.
Mr Rudd later insisted that Labor’s policy had not changed from last year, when he demanded that the Howard government take Japan to the International Court and pledged that Labor would do so.
But he made it clear yesterday that Labor now had no plans to take Japan to court and would instead pursue its complaints through normal diplomatic channels and through its campaign to reform the International Whaling Commission.
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Mr Rudd:
“Prime Minister Fukuda and I have agreed that you can have disagreements between friends” (with Mr Fukuda at Rudd’s side, who understands English). “This disagreement should not undermine in any way the strong relations between our two countries … we will be working diplomatically for the period ahead.”
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This means, in effect, that after Labor’s election campaign pledge to haul Japan before the International Court, and after the Government spent $1 million sending a Customs vessel to follow the Japanese whaling fleet last summer to collect video evidence, Australia’s policy on whaling is now back where it started.
Mr Rudd immediately came under attack from anti-whaling groups and the Opposition, which said it was not good enough to “agree to disagree” and called on the Government to announce its long-delayed special envoy on whaling.
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Last summer the Japanese killed 551 minke whales, the most abundant whale species. This was well short of its target of 850 minkes and 100 larger whales.
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Japanese Sport Whale Meat
… blood sport as usual.
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Ecologist and former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has argued that Australia should not oppose the Minke kill, saying it frees up food in the oceans for the larger, endangered whales.
Darkside Ecology: when ecological knowledge is applied to kill wildlife
..selling skills, selective statistics, academic theories and even convincing hand movements..and all.
…meanwhile, Japanese whale blood sport as usual…
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Mr Fukuda was keen to talk about the whaling issue, raising it in private discussions over lunch as well as in formal talks. But the Australian side saw no shift in his stance, and in his public statement he emphasised that diplomacy had triumphed.
“We agreed to engage in further discussion, so that differences on this issue will not underline good bilateral relations,” he said.
The talks took place amid political turmoil in Japan, after Mr Fukuda was censured by the Opposition-controlled Upper House for making people over 75 meet more of their medical costs. But Mr Fukuda took two hours off his domestic troubles for an hour of official talks followed by lunch with Mr Rudd.
Importantly, he gave support to Mr Rudd’s initiative to try to tighten the nuclear non-proliferation treaty by setting up an international commission co-chaired by former foreign minister Gareth Evans and holding an international conference to discuss how the treaty can be made more effective.
In a communique, the two leaders did not mention whaling. But they emphasised the strengths of the bilateral relationship, which has been questioned after the sharp dispute over whaling and after the Rudd Government’s decision to pull out of talks between the US, Japan, India and Australia – which China saw as aimed against it. Instead, the leaders agreed to strengthen bilateral and trilateral defence co-operation.
Responding to Mr Rudd’s retreat on whaling, Greenpeace Australia Pacific chief executive Steve Shallhorn said it was time to move on the appointment of a whaling envoy “because regular diplomatic channels are clearly not working”.
Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said the failure to announce the appointment sent a message to Japan that Labor was only interested in the whaling issue for domestic purposes. He also said the Government’s election promise to take Japan to the International Court “was always a fraud“.>>
<<The Rudd Government has reneged on a promise to send an Australian ship to monitor Japan’s annual slaughter of 1000 minke, humpback and fin whales.
The Opposition said an Australian ship must be sent to gather evidence for use in a promised international courts case to stop the whaling.
The annual Japanese whale kill is in full swing despite a promise by the Rudd Government in May 2007 to take Japan to the international courts to stop the slaughter.
Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt wrote to Environment Minister Peter Garrett and demanded he honour the Government’s promises to monitor – and ultimately bring an end – to the whale slaughter.
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Mr Hunt:
“We are now facing the third whaling season since this promise was made and I ask that you agree now to dispatch a non-military observation vessel to the Southern Ocean by January 5, (2010).”
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The Humane Society International (HSI) said Japan’s own figures, revealed in secret documents discovered at the International Whaling Commission meeting being held this week, showed the “true, disgusting nature” of the country’s whale hunting.
“The purpose of this would be both to chronicle the tragic slaughter of these majestic creatures and to act as an intermediary in the case of conflict between the Japanese whaling fleet and non-government organisations.”
A spokesman for Mr Garrett said the Rudd Government had honoured its promise to monitor the cull in 2008 when it spent $1 million sending the customs ship the Oceanic Viking to observe the cull. That mission captured damning pictures of Japanese whalers killing a mother whale and its calf but the evidence was never used to take Japan to court, although it did reduce the Japanese whale cull that year. [Ed: See image at the start of this article.]
Japan’s whalers blamed “relentless interference” from environmentalists and the Australian surveillance ship for the fact they only took 551 minke whales out of a maximum quota of 935 in early 2008.>>
Research has become an internationally interpreted Japanese word for ‘Whale Blood Sport’
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Jan 2010:
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A criminally violent blood sportNo-one wants the whale meat.It is all about Japanese Men Only cultural barbarism
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<<Japan has risked an open breach with the Rudd government by hitting back hard at Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s handling of last week’s whaling confrontation in the Southern Ocean.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials have accused Ms Gillard of aggravating the whaling controversy between Tokyo and Canberra, and called for Australian action to prevent further illegal activities by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
The officials warned a senior Australian diplomat on Friday that Ms Gillard’s statements immediately before and after the collision between Sea Shepherd’s speedboat and a Japanese whaling ship were inflaming public opinion in Japan and making diplomatic resolution of the underlying dispute harder to realise.
This is the toughest public stance a Japanese government has taken towards Australia on Antarctic whaling — or any other issue — in recent times and is also highly unusual in singling out for criticism a senior member of a friendly government.
The move betrays Japanese frustration with the Australians’ political management of the issue, including Kevin Rudd’s repeated threats of international legal action against so-called scientific whaling, while not obviously helping to curb hazardous protest activities, including Sea Shepherd’s efforts to disable whaling ships.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs senior officials told acting japanambassador Allan McKinnon it was “not appropriate” for Ms Gillard to urge Japanese whalers and the activists in equal terms to show restraint, “notwithstanding the Sea Shepherd itself was conducting the unlawful rampage”.
Sea Shepherd accuses the Shonan Maru 2 crew of deliberately running over Ady Gil during a day of confrontation in which the activists’ speedboat ran across the Japanese factory ship’s bow and allegedly tried to entangle its propellers.
Ms Gillard yesterday stood by her call for calm on both sides and for Japanese and Sea Shepherd skippers to ensure crews’ safety as their first duty.
“These are extremely dangerous conditions and it is likely Australia would be called upon to deploy a search and rescue mission if things were to go horribly wrong,” Ms Gillard said. “It is not therefore inappropriate for Australia to call for calm from both sides in these circumstances.”
Japanese officials questioned the jurisdiction of Australia’s Maritime Safety Authority to investigate last week’s collision. Without access to the crew of Shonan Maru 2, any finding by an Australian inquiry into the collision is likely to be meaningless.
The Japanese have agreed to co-operate with a New Zealand investigation (Ady Gil was New Zealand-registered) and they are expected to vigorously contest a piracy complaint lodged in a Dutch court by Sea Shepherd on Friday.
Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson said yesterday the group was aiming to secure a charge of attempted murder against the Japanese crew.
“That’s what the crew of the Shonan Maru tried to do, the video makes that clear,” Mr Watson said from the Steve Irwin, which continues to pursue the whaling fleet.
“If I rammed and sank a Japanese vessel in Australian territory, the Australian navy would be on its way down here right now to arrest me.”
Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, in answer to questions from The Australian, have called for the Australian Federal Police to investigate Sea Shepherd’s actions the next time its vessels put into an Australian port.
Japanese officials were already annoyed that the Steve Irwin, which uses Australian ports for its annual Southern Ocean campaigns, was allowed to put into Hobart without question late last month after initiating the first clashes of the season.
They told Mr McKinnon that Ms Gillard’s call for the Institute of Cetacean Research to suspend charter flights monitoring the Sea Shepherd vessels that have been harrying the whaling fleet since mid-December “has already unnecessarily provoked the Japanese public opinion”.
“This has invited the Japanese public (to) call for a strong protest and it might impair both governments’ will to lead the whaling issue to a resolution through diplomatic efforts,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Japan aims to slaughter nearly 1000 minke whales this summer for “scientific research”, as well as 20 rare fin whales and 50 humpbacks. It has urged Canberra to distinguish between official Australian opposition to Antarctic whaling and illegal acts in international waters that put at risk Japanese crewmen and ships.
A culture that has long celebrated brutal killing
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On Wednesday, before news of the collision and in response to a newspaper report about the charter flights, Ms Gillard said: “We do not condone this action by the Japanese government at all and we are certainly urgently seeking legal advice about this conduct.” On Friday, she said: “Ending whaling will happen through diplomacy or legal action; it’s not going to happen on the high seas. And because we are pursuing diplomacy, I am in a position to advise that our embassy in Tokyo has made high-level representations to the Japanese government.”
Ms Gillard said Australia’s diplomats in Tokyo had made clear to the Japanese the government’s strong view that Japanese whaling had to cease: “We are pursuing diplomacy with all of our force. We have made it absolutely clear we are not ruling out taking international legal action.”
At that stage, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials would not confirm Thursday’s discussion with Mr McKinnon but The Australian understands that later on Friday they asked him for another meeting, at which they delivered the toughened message.
Ms Gillard yesterday maintained that the Australian government was “pursuing its anti-whaling position through the appropriate diplomatic and legal channels very strongly”.
“The government also respects the right of those who also oppose whaling to protest, and to do so peacefully,” she said.
Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said yesterday the government’s handling of whaling was damaging Australia’s relationship with Japan.
She said Mr Rudd should either fulfil his pre-election promise to pursue international legal sanctions against Japan or withdraw the threat.>>
<<Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says Japan must stop Southern Ocean whaling by November 2010 or face an international legal challenge.
The diplomatic heat between Australia and Japan appears not to have deterred whalers in the Antarctic cold.
As Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada met Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Sydney yesterday, the whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru was steaming through the heart of an Australian Antarctic whale sanctuary, anti-whaling activists aboard the Sea Shepherd vessel the Steve Irwin claim.
The pursuers took this image of the Nisshin Maru behind a GPS locator that showed its position as 65 degrees 11 minutes south, and 78 degrees 8 minutes east. That is only about 100 nautical miles from Australia’s Davis Station in eastern Antarctica, well inside the 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
Sea Shepherd pursuers.
In protected waters … a GPS locator aboard the Steve Irwin shows the Japanese whaler is just 100 nautical miles from Davis Station and well inside the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone.
GPS confirms Japanese whaler illegally trespassing inside the Australia Exclusive Economic ZonePM Kevin Rudd at the time did nothing about it.
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”It’s almost like a slap in the face,” Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson said from the Steve Irwin. ”They were skirting the EEZ by about a mile until Friday and then they dove down into it.”
Advertisement
Mr Rudd has strongly objected to the ”slaughter of whales” in the sanctuary declared throughout the EEZ. Whaling is banned in all Australian waters and the hunt’s illegality in this polar sanctuary was upheld in a 2008 Federal Court case brought by Humane Society International. In response to Mr Rudd’s warning on Friday that whaling must be brought to an end or Australia will go to an international court by November, Mr Okada reiterated Japan’s view that it was legal.
Mr Okada met Mr Rudd at Admiralty House in Kirribilli yesterday. His spokesman, Hidenobu Sobashima, said:
”In light of the importance of Australia-Japan relations … we hope that the two countries will confirm it is imperative to reach a diplomatic solution.”
Mr Okada will meet Foreign Minister Stephen Smith in Perth today before returning to Tokyo.>>
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[Ed: Came to nothing: …how’s your father, tasty food…Whatever. You win!]
<<The former prime minister Kevin Rudd launched legal action against Japan’s whaling program despite opposition from senior ministers and officials who warned it was likely to fail and strengthen the hand of the Japanese.
Leaked United States diplomatic cables also indicate that the decision to take Japan to the International Court of Justice was designed to divert public pressure on Labor over whaling.
The Department of Foreign Affairs warned that the case against Japan’s ”scientific” whaling would ”either fail completely or, at best, set up the Japanese to simply make changes to their program to improve the science”.
And a senior Australian diplomat told the Americans that both the then foreign minister Stephen Smith and the trade minister Simon Crean had made clear their opposition to an international legal challenge.
According to the cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald, officials told US diplomats that even if successful, legal action against Japan would be ”unlikely to stop the whale hunt entirely”.
They added that ”equally importantly, such action would probably take a long time, removing some of the pressure on the government for the next few years”.
The government yesterday attempted to play down earlier revelations that Australia had been prepared to secretly negotiate a compromise to allow continued Japanese whaling.
The acting Attorney-General, Brendan O’Connor, said that the ICJ case demonstrated that the government was not soft on whaling. ”I think that underlines the seriousness of the matter and the fact that this government … opposes whaling and will continue to fight through the courts,” he said.
But the new embassy cables show that the government’s advisers were deeply pessimistic about the prospects of success in any legal action.
In October 2008, as officials were working to develop their case, the US embassy reported to Washington that domestic political considerations were high in Mr Rudd’s thinking. It said he was likely to eventually see legal action ”as the least damaging politically of his limited choices in dealing with public anger over whaling”.
However, the embassy also reported the Foreign Affairs Department’s environmental strategies director, David Dutton, had admitted that his department and the Attorney-General’s Department ”had long shared the view that international legal action against Japan’s whaling program has a limited chance of success”.
Mr Dutton told US diplomats that the Attorney-General’s Department had ”recently done an about face” to argue that the prospects for success at the ICJ were ”high enough to justify taking action”.
Mr Dutton said the Foreign Affairs analysis was that the only basis for effective action was that Japan’s whaling violated the International Whaling Convention because it did not achieve substantive scientific outcomes.
”[Foreign Affairs] continues to believe that such a challenge will either fail completely or, at best, set up the Japanese to simply make changes to their program to improve the science,” the US embassy reported to Washington.
The cables also reveal that the Rudd cabinet was ”very divided” over how to deal with whaling, with the prime minister reported to have been ”increasingly worried that the Japanese will forge ahead despite Australian concerns”.
The embassy reported that Mr Dutton had said that Mr Smith and Mr Crean ”had made clear their opposition to an international legal challenge, but opined that … DFAT and by extension [Mr] Smith had ceased to have much relevance in influencing the PM’s office on this issue”.
When they announced the legal challenge in May last year, Mr Smith and the then environment minister Peter Garrett said the government had ”not taken this decision lightly”.
However, the cables also reveal that domestic politics featured prominently from the start of the government’s consideration of possible legal action against Japan.
Soon after the election of the Labor government, the embassy reported Australian government contacts were saying that referring Japan’s whaling program to the ICJ ”would be unlikely to stop the whale hunt entirely, but could well force modifications that would make it more difficult for the Japanese”.
The embassy’s contacts also suggested that ”equally importantly, such action would probably take a long time, removing some of the pressure on the government for the next few years”. Australia is not required to file its detailed arguments with the court until May and Japan is not obliged to respond until March next year. A hearing may not take place until 2013.
The leaked cables also reveal Japanese confidence that Australia’s legal challenge would fail and vindicate Japan’s position.
In February last year the US embassy reported that the Japanese deputy head of mission in Canberra had observed that the then foreign minister Katsuya Okada had ”made clear his growing annoyance with Australian complaints about whaling”.
”Okada is very confident that Tokyo will win a legal challenge and has suggested internally that it would be good for Japan to show that its whaling program is on firm legal ground,” the embassy reported.
The Greens and the opposition yesterday attacked the proposed Australian government compromise with Japan.
The opposition environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, said Labor had damaged Australia’s case against Japanese whaling.
”It’s absolutely clear that the Australian government was saying one thing publicly and then another thing privately about whaling so as to allow the continued hunting and slaughter of whales, all of the while this was being denied by the government.”
The Greens leader, Bob Brown, also said the proposed compromise was ”very troubling”.
”Hopefully this may help the current government take a stronger line,” he said.
He urged the government to use all available legal and diplomatic means, as well as naval surveillance, to increase the pressure on Japan to end the slaughter of whales.>>
<<The Australian Government condemns Japan’s decision to continue whaling in the Southern Ocean this year under the guise of science. Australia remains resolute in its opposition to all commercial whaling, including Japan’s so-called ‘scientific whaling’.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said the Government was particularly disappointed that this whaling will take place in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary established by the International Whaling Commission.
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Mr Rudd:
“There is widespread concern in the international community at Japan’s whaling program and widespread calls for it to cease. The Government has always been firm in our resolve that if we could not find a diplomatic resolution to our differences over this issue, we would pursue legal action. This is the proper way to settle legal differences between friends.”
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Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the decision to commence proceedings in May 2010 was not taken lightly.
“Australia believes Japan’s whaling is contrary to international law and should stop,” said Mr McClelland. “That is why Australia is taking our case in the International Court of Justice to bring to an end Southern Ocean whaling permanently.”
Environment Minister Tony Burke said the decision to take legal action demonstrated the strength of Australia’s commitment.
“The Australian Government remains opposed to all commercial whaling, including so-called ‘scientific whaling,” Mr Burke said. “We will keep working to achieve a permanent end to all commercial whaling.”>>
<<Japan’s whaling authorities are suing militant environmentalists Sea Shepherd for ‘harassing’ whale hunters.
It is the first time that Japan has attempted legal action abroad against anti-whaling campaigners, who have sometimes used extreme methods against ships involved in the hunt, carried out under rules that allow research whaling.
“Today, Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha and the Institute of Cetacean Research along with research vessels’ masters filed a lawsuit against the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) and Paul Watson,” they said in a statement. “The Institute of Cetacean Research and Kyodo Senpaku are seeking a court order in the US District Court in Seattle, Washington that prevents SSCS and its founder Paul Watson from engaging in activities at sea that could cause injuries to the crews and damage to the vessels.”
Kyodo Senpaku owns ships, while the cetacean institute operates the whaling programme under the authority of the Japanese government.
Sea Shepherd, based in Washington state in the US, regularly sends vessels to harass the whalers. In previous years it has thrown stink bombs onto the decks of the Japanese fleet, while vessels from both sides have repeatedly clashed.
The Japanese statement said the whaling programme was “greatly contributing to the advancement of scientific knowledge of whale resources in the Antarctic”.
Commercial whaling was banned under a 1986 International Whaling Commission agreement. “Lethal research” is allowed, but other nations and environmental groups like Sea Shepherd condemn it as disguised commercial whaling.
Tokyo says the whale hunts are needed to substantiate its view that there is a robust whale population in the world. However, it makes no secret of the fact that whale meat from this research ends up on dinner tables and in restaurants.
The statement condemned Sea Shepherd’s actions as “life-threatening”.
“Sabotage activities against the research fleet by SSCS and Paul Watson have been escalating over several years,” it said. “The activities perpetrated by SSCS and Paul Watson not only put at risk the safety of the research vessels at sea but are also affecting the scientific achievement” of the program, it said.
In February, Japan cut short its hunt for the 2010-2011 season by one month after bagging only one fifth of its planned catch, blaming interference from Sea Shepherd.
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Mr Watson (Sea Shepherd founder):
“We are not down there protesting whaling, we are down there intervening against criminal activities. We defend ourselves from being rammed, hit with water cannons, shot at, have concussion grenades and bamboo spears thrown at us, so yes, we defend ourselves. The United States government and courts have no authority over these ships so I don’t know what they are hoping to achieve.”
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Mr Watson – who travels to Australia each year to lead activists in their efforts against the whale hunt – said that the ships his organisation used were not owned by Sea Shepherd USA, nor were they US-flagged vessels.
The Japanese legal action came after the whaling fleet left port on Tuesday for this season’s annual hunt.
The coast guard has deployed an unspecified number of guards to protect the ships from anti-whaling activists, and the Japanese government has confirmed it will use some of the public funds earmarked for reconstruction after the massive March earthquake and tsunami to boost security for the hunt.
Three ships from the Sea Shepherd fleet are due to set sail over the coming days to once again confront the Japanese whalers, the organisation said. The Steve Irwin and the MV Brigitte Bardot will leave from Albany in Western Australia and the MV Bob Barker will depart from Hobart.>>
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MV Brigitte Bardot – whale defender Named after the famous French actress, who remains most supportive of Sea Shepherd’s cause to stop whaling
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“Being outraged by the fact that he’s been put in prison, I offer to take his place because I am his accomplice,” Bardot, 77, said in a statement. “I have always supported Paul Watson, my brother in arms,” said the retired French actress who had a Sea Shepherd trimaran named after her in 2011.
<<Japan’s whaling fleet has left its home port for another turbulent season in the Southern Ocean, this year courtesy of extra money from the nation’s earthquake recovery fund.
Three vessels have set sail from the port of Ishinomaki, in western Japan, with a mission to catch 900 whales over the next three months.
The Japanese fleet will have beefed-up security this year after its last season was cut short by the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group.
The fleet did not get anywhere near its target last season and Sea Shepherd is hoping for a repeat performance.
But there is anger in Japan and elsewhere this year about the source of new funds for the trip.
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The Japan Fisheries Agency says the trip’s use of $28 million from the earthquake recovery fund is legitimate, because it is taken from the government’s own quake recovery fund.
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Once again, the male dominated Japanese Government turns its back on its own
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Greenpeace Japan executive director Junichi Sato says it is a massive stretch to link whaling to the earthquake.
“It’s not related to the recovery at all,” he said. “It is used to cover the debts of the Whaling Programme because the Whaling Programme itself has been suffering from big financial problems.”>>
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[Source: Japanese whalers get $28m in earthquake cash’, 20120131, by Adam Harvey, AM Programme, ABC News, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-07/japan-whaling-fleet-embarks/3716546]
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Jan 2013:
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Former Greens leader Bob Brown says fear of a diplomatic fallout is preventing Australia from standing up to Japan on whaling.
Dr Brown, who is now a member of the Sea Shepherd board, also stood behind Sea Shepherd skipper Paul Watson, who jumped bail in July in Germany while being detained over an incident off the coast of Costa Rica in 2002.
The former senator says he wants the Australian Government to seek an international court injunction to stop Japan’s annual whale hunt in the Southern Ocean.
“They’re worried. They want a free-trade agreement, they’re worried that this is going to, in some way or other, annoy politicians in Tokyo,” he said.
“There’s a lot of Australians who are annoyed that the Australian Government, and indeed the Opposition when it was in government, haven’t stood up to the Japanese. And it’s time they did.”
Dr Brown said he has nothing but praise for Watson.
Interpol has issued an arrest alert for Watson, who is wanted in Costa Rica over charges relating to a confrontation over shark finning.
Watson has since said he is back on board an activist vessel and ready to confront whalers.
“I’ve admired Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd for 30 years,” Dr Brown said.
“They have done a fantastic job. It’s been non-violent, they have never harmed anybody in that process.”
The former senator also wants the Government to ensure the safety of the Sea Shepherd’s four ships and crew.
“This time they (the Japanese) have armed coastguard people – this is men with guns on their ships coming into the demilitarised zone in Antarctica – while our Government and governments elsewhere sit on their hands and allow this international law-breaking,” he said.
“It’s Sea Shepherd that’s upholding the law here.”
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Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd Crewin search of Japanese Whale Killing ShipsVoluntarily undertaking the job of the Australian Government.
<<Anti-whaling activists Sea Shepherd say they have made their first contact with Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean this season.
The group says its vessel the MV Brigitte Bardot intercepted harpoon ship the Yushin Maru 3 yesterday.
In a statement, Brigitte Bardot captain Jean Yves Terlain said the position of the whaling boat indicates it has not yet killed any of the mammals.
“The Yushin Maru 3 was on a westerly course, indicating that the fleet has been in bad weather for the past several days,” he said.
“The latitude at which they were found was rather far north and given that the large concentrations of whales are found further south, closer to the Antarctic Continent where there are high concentrations of krill, this would indicate that they have not yet begun whaling.”
Sea Shepherd says this year’s mission is its largest to date, involving four ships and more than 120 crew.
Mission chief and former Greens leader Bob Brown say it is also shaping up to be the most successful.
“We’re one day short of the end of January, the prime killing month for these whaling fleets, and they haven’t yet been able to kill a whale,” he said. “Sea Shepherd is very, very happy.”>>
<<Japan has begun injecting new tax-payer-funded subsidies into its whaling program in a bid to keep the fleet afloat, the ABC has learned.
It is believed the “profitable fisheries program” is helping to keep the so-called scientific research program’s ongoing debts at bay and to help refit the whaling fleet’s flagship.
With the Japanese fleet now entering Antarctic waters, the annual whale wars are again expected to flare any day.
Militant Sea Shepherd activists have been able to all but scupper the fleet’s catch over the past few years.
This, plus lower demand for whale meat, means the government has been forced to prop up the whaling program.
Some of the money has come from funds set aside for the rebuilding of communities shattered by the 2011 tsunami.
And now it appears more cash has come from the new taxpayer-funded subsidy.
“This subsidy is supposed to help fishermen in financial trouble,” investigative journalist Junko Sakuma said.
“Now it’s propping up the unprofitable whaling fleet, and if they keep running a loss, they won’t even have to pay it back.”
Documents seen by the ABC suggest the subsidy has already been used to partly refit the whaling fleet’s mother ship, the Nisshin Maru, with a smoking room and internet connections.
Patrick Ramage is the whale program director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Tomorrow he will release a report into just how the Japanese whaling industry is propped up financially.
“The most important finding of this new report is really three things: first, that whaling is an economic loser in the 21st century, second, that the Japanese people have lost their appetite for whale meat, and third that whale watching rather than whale killing is the economically beneficial whale industry for the 21st century,” he said.
Even the strongest supporters of whaling in Japan are pessimistic about the future of the hunt, especially with the government forced to pump in more subsidies into the fleet to keep it afloat.
Masayuki Komatsu is a former Japanese delegate to the International Whaling Commission and one of the architects of the country’s scientific research program.
He warns that the injection of this new subsidy is a sign that program is in big trouble.
“It’s not sustainable, right. How long can you get such money from the government? Everybody likes money, particularly other people’s money,” he said.>>
<<The Federal Government has ordered a Japanese whaling vessel to get out of Australia’s exclusive economic zone.
The Shonan Maru Number 2 – a Customs vessel which travels with the whaling fleet – entered the zone off Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean yesterday afternoon.
Environment Minister Tony Burke said he had made it clear to Japan that vessels associated with the whaling program “are not welcome in in Australia’s exclusive economic zone or territorial sea”.
“Our embassy in Tokyo has conveyed these sentiments directly to the Japanese government,” Mr Burke said in a statement.
Former Greens leader Bob Brown, now the mission leader of the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group, says he believes the vessel has armed Japanese personnel aboard.
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Mr Brown:
“It is accompanying the whaling ships into the killing fields off Antarctica. When the Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker made contact with the factory ship, this ship tailed Bob Barker and has been doing so for a couple of days. The Bob Barker has lost the [factory ship] Nisshin Maru but that was after it was hunted out of the whaling area and this Customs vessel, this government vessel, has kept with the Bob Barker through to Macquarie Island and into Australia’s economic zone waters.”
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Mr Brown says the Shonan Maru stopped this morning just outside Australia’s territorial waters. He says there may be legal arguments about who has control over exclusive economic zones.
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Mr Brown:
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“Tokyo has ignored the call from the Federal Government for this part of the whaling fleet not to enter our exclusive economic zone. It’s stayed outside the direct territorial waters but it has not obliged that request and protest from Australia that it should not enter our exclusive economic zone. That is a matter of some affront to Australia and one that I’ve no doubt the Federal Government will be looking to deal with during today.” >>
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[Source: Japanese whalers ordered out of Australian waters’, 20130201, by Samantha Donovan and staff, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-01/government-orders-japanese-whalers-out/4495166]
[The following article was initially written by Tigerquoll and published on CanDoBetter.net, 20100116, ^http://candobetter.net/node/1778, entitled ‘Ban whaling vessels from using our ports’].Japanese Whale Blood Sport…at it again, trespassing and poaching in Australian waters!
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One would assume that an organisation entitled the ‘Australia Strategic Policy Institute‘ would be a government body or a body at least having Australia’s strategic interests at heart.
But its director, Dr Anthony Bergin, with a title one would assume would be capable of research, has written an article for Fairfax media supporting Japan’s strategic interests.
Bergin’s article: ‘Ban Protest Vessels from using our Ports‘ dated 16th January 2010 in The Age newspaper sides with the Japanese whalers and calls on the Australian Government to support Japan in denying protesters access to Australian ports.
Perhaps Dr Bergin should take up residency in Taiji and become an employee of their Institute of Cetacean Research.
If Dr Bergin were respectful of the democratic rights to protest we have in Australia and recognised the Japanese incursion in Australia’s whale sanctuary in the Southern Ocean, and respected the existence rights of whales, then perhaps his article for Fairfax would have instead read like this…
The Australian Government has been far too even-handed in its statements about the reckless actions of the Japanese whalers trespassing in the Southern Ocean in breach of commercial whaling prohibitions.
By not condemning this annual intrusion by Japanese ships undertaking commercial whaling, Australia is in effect acquiescing in illegal poaching of whales, while Sea Shepherd does Australia’s naval monitoring of illegitimate Japanese whale poachers. Harassment will not change Japan’s position on whaling. And not condemning these Japans actions is counterproductive for Australia trying to secure its protection of endangered whales with the International Whaling Commission.
Whale Watching: A Minke Whale is harpooned by the Japanese whaling vessel Yushin Maru 2 in Australia’s Southern Ocean
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Australia could legitimately take Japan to court and hold Japan in breach of the Antarctic Treaty at the next meeting of the commission in Morocco in June 2010. Australia could legitimately and formally demand Japan to cease its whaling actions immediately.
Given the public interest in these matters, the Australian Government has sensibly asked the Australian Maritime Safety Authority to examine the recent events in the Southern Ocean. Yet it is hard to see how, on any reading of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, that the ramming of the Sea Shepherd vessel, the ‘Ady Gil‘, by the Japanese whaling vessel, could argue his actions were in compliance with it.
On January 6, 2010, the New Zealand flagged tri hull wave piercer, Ady Gill, was stationary in the water at the time of the ramming and no action was taken by the Japanese whaling vessel to avoid a collision. In fact the ship’s master the Japanese whaling ship, the ‘Shōnan Maru 2‘deliberately turned away from its course toward starboard to deliberately ram and sink the Ady Gil.
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Japanese Attack Formation – caught on video by Sea Shepherd’s MV Bob Barker On 6th January 2010, in Australia’s Southern Ocean, the traspassing ‘Shōnan Maru 2′ deliberately rams the stationary Ady Gil Australia lets the ship’s master and company Kyodo Senpaku Kaishaoff ‘Scott’ free!
(click image to enlarge)
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“The crew of the Ady Gil claimed that, at the last moment, the ‘Shōnan Maru 2′ turned to starboard, changing its heading to 30 degT6 and colliding with the port sponson and then smashing off a 3 metre section of the bow of the Ady Gil.”
At the time the Shōnan Maru 2 was believed to be under command of Master Toshiyuki Miura, an employee of Japanese company Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha.
Piracy and criminality at sea deserve more than a token ‘fact finding report‘ that concludes nothing:
<<On the basis of the available evidence, AMSA has been unable to determine whether either vessel took any action intended to cause a collision. In the absence of face-to-face interviews with all the parties involved, the value of the publicly posted video footage was limited. The lack of confirmation of the validity of the source of this footage and therefore its limited evidentiary value prevented definitive conclusions being drawn.”>>
It’s called a diplomatic whitewash. Australia and New Zealand didn’t even receive an apology from the Japanese Government.
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To demonstrate that Australia does not support the activities of the Japanese whalers, the Australian Government should ban the entry of its vessels into Australian ports.
In deciding whether to grant consent to vessels to enter its ports, a state is free to impose conditions as it wishes – access to a port of a state is a privilege, not a right.
Australia banned port access to Japanese fishing vessels in 1998 when Japan would not agree on a total allowable catch for Southern Bluefin Tuna in the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna. The port access ban was lifted in mid-2001. Why? It is an offence under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act for a whaling vessel to call at an Australian port unless the master has written permission from the environment minister to bring it into the port.
If the Federal Government is serious about ending whaling and shifting the Japanese Government’s position – one that has hardened in response – it should directly monitor all whaling activities in the Southern Ocean, follow through on its promise to take legal action against Japan, ban all whaling vessels from Australian ports and ban all use of aircraft from Australian airports for use by Japanese whalers.
Dr Anthony Bergin needs to continue his research and then get back to us with what he has learnt.
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To Japanese Whale Sportsmen, it’s just big game fishingIt’s the thrill of the harpooning!The whale meat doesn’t matter The ‘research’ label is to keep Greenies distracted in courts
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Comment by Anonymous 20100117:
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<<We urgently need leadership.
How is it that whaling authorities, or ‘spies’, were allowed to hire Australian planes to spy on anti-whaling protest ships!
Where are our border controls, our security forces? Australia is a sovereign nation, one to be proud of and patriotic towards. However, we have leaders cowering to Japan’s superior powers, and all their rhetoric about “legal options” and “diplomatic pressure” are just forms of procrastination, a smoke-screen for the public.
It is becoming clear that some agreement has been made between Japan and Australia to prevent any “interference” to their whale slaughter.
Head of the Australian whaling envoy, Sandy Holloway, is set to receive up to $200,000 for 100 days work. Costs could escalate to one million dollars as bureaucrats travel the globe in a futile effort to stop Japan killing whales.
Mr Holloway’s ‘formal representations’ to Japan, on a $1,800 a day retainer, were designed to fail and are really an expensive smokescreen to fool the Australian public.
Such was the ambiguity of diplomatic pressure that Japan even asked Australia for help against the “eco-terrorists” upholding the laws in the Antarctic!
Public money is being wasted. Australia’s Antarctic Territory, a $300 million whale-watching industry, domestic and international laws and Treaties are being abandoned in an effort to secure economic agreements with Japan.
Our government’s “anti-whaling” stance, despite pre-election pledges, is a charade. It is time we see some leadership from our Federal government and have Japan’s illegal whaling fleet permanently removed from the Antarctic. We urgently need leadership at this time, but clearly we won’t be getting it from our present government!>>
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Comment by Peter Bright (20100117):
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The Prime Minister has to overview the whole picture in the national interest, long term as well as short term. Although a Green, I believe that he and his government are being unfairly criticised and insultingly abused with insufficient cause.
A better understanding of any problem may sometimes be gleaned by putting oneself in the position of one’s despised target and considering matters from his point of view.
To protect the welfare of this nation Mr Rudd has to very carefully consider the reciprocal benefits of trade between Australia and Japan, as well as a whole lot of other factors and subterranean international innuendos the likes of which we could only guess at. Mr Rudd surely realises this, and so do his advisors.
In Mr Rudd’s position, with his huge and numerous responsibilities, I would not expect to last even a minute. Personally, I’m grateful he’s there.
Because of trade matters, and in the interests of keeping the peace, I suspect that the Japanese whalers down south could ram half the Australian navy without provoking Mr Rudd into showing retaliatory muscle.
Of course if I was the commander of an Australian naval ship that had just been rammed down there, I would, um, deal with the problem there and then.
It’s likely that my response would be something less than one fully loaded with diplomatic tact and courtesy.
[Ed: Like seizing and impounding the Japanese vessels, arresting the crews, and summoning the Japanese ambassador to the Australian Prime Minister’s office.]
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If Australia’s Prime Minister sides with Japan against Australia, what right does Rudd have to represent Australia as Prime Minister.
Rudd already sides with China and speaks fluent Chinese. Does he have similar allegiances to Japan?
Australia must escort Japanese vessels (which have a home territory 5000 or more kilometres north) out of Australian waters. Rudd has become a treacherous Prime Minister, favouring the rights of foreign powers over Australian sovereign rights. In doing so, Rudd has breached the Australian Constitution and must be sacked immediately.
1. Australian Antarctic Territory breached
2. Whale Protection Act, 1980 breached ‘Part I – Preliminary 6. Application of Act
(1) This Act extends to every external Territory and, except so far as the contrary intention appears, to acts, omissions, matters and things outside Australia, whether or not in a foreign country.
(2) Subject to subsection (3):
(a) to the extent that a provision of this Act has effect in and in relation to any waters or place beyond the outer limits of the exclusive economic zone, that provision applies only in relation to Australian citizens domiciled in Australia, Australian aircraft and Australian vessels and the members of the crew (including persons in charge) of Australian aircraft and Australian vessels; and
(b) to the extent that a provision of this Act has effect in and in relation to Australia or any waters other than waters referred to in paragraph (a), that provision applies in relation to all persons, aircraft and vessels, including foreign persons, foreign aircraft and foreign vessels.
(3) This Act has effect subject to the obligations of Australia under international law, including obligations under any agreement between Australia and another country or countries.
Part II – Preservation, conservation and protection of whales
9. Killing, taking etc. of whales prohibited
(1) A person shall not:
(a) in waters to which this Act applies, kill, injure, take or interfere with any whale; or
(b) treat any whale that has been killed or taken in contravention of this Act or has been unlawfully imported. ‘
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Japanese whalers keep poaching whales in Australian territorial waters contravention of Australia’s Whales Protection Act. Kevin Rudd, as Australia’s Prime Minister is dutifully bound to protect Australia’s sovereignty and enforce Australian legislation. But he is not.
3. Prime Minister’s failure to enforce Australian territorial legislation constitutes a breach of the Australian Constitution The COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA CONSTITUTION ACT – SECT 122 ‘ Government of territories’ states:
“The Parliament may make laws for the government of any territory surrendered by any State to and accepted by the Commonwealth, or of any territory placed by the Queen under the authority of and accepted by the Commonwealth, or otherwise acquired by the Commonwealth, and may allow the representation of such territory in either House of the Parliament to the extent and on the terms which it thinks fit.”
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Under the COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA CONSTITUTION ACT – SECT 120 ‘Custody of offenders against laws of the Commonwealth’
‘Every State shall make provision for the detention in its prisons of persons accused or convicted of offences against the laws of the Commonwealth, and for the punishment of persons convicted of such offences, and the Parliament of the Commonwealth may make laws to give effect to this provision.’
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Australia’s federal parliament has enacted the above legislation. The Japanese whalers have breached those laws, yet our Prime Minister fails to enforce these laws. But Rudd lets them go unpunished.
Indeed, Rudd is so appeasing of the Japanese as to be in allegiance with Japanese interests to the detriment of Australia’s interests. Under Section 44 of the Constitution sets out restrictions on who can be a candidate for Federal parliament.
It reads:“
‘Section 44 (i). Any person who..is under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or citizen of a foreign power…shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.’
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So Australia’s Prime Minister Rudd needs to work out whether he is siding with Japan or Australia.
If Rudd recognises Australian Antarctic Territorial Waters, then he needs to uphold and enforce Australia law.
If he sides with the Japanese, he is in breach of Section 44 and must be sacked from the House of Representatives forthwith. Q.E.D.
I also refer to a pertinent well researched letter by Mr Graham J. Clarke (President of Whales in Danger) dated 6th January 2003 to Minister for the Environment and Heritage, David Kemp. I also point out that since the Prime Minister has confirmed he will challenge Japan legally on this issue, indicates that the Australian Government considers Japanese whalers have breached the law and have a case to answer.
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Comment from Vivienne (20100306):
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<<What a disgrace our Federal leaders are! Instead of arresting the criminal whale killers, they actually act on their behalf and use our AFP to “investigate” Sea Shepherd.
What about Peter Buthane held captive? The cowards we have in government are grovelling to Japan to ensure safe trading relationships and “friendship”, and protected whales are just ignored.
Japan’s bogus “research” is a cover to return to commercial whaling, and due to our government’s incompetence and ignorance, Japan is winning the wars against whales.
This is a totally contemptible action by our Federal government, using the taxpayer-funded AFP contrary to our Australian interests. They have surrendered Antarctic security, and the blood of magnificent and gentle whales are heading towards becoming just another red meat!.”
..Trade with Japan is a different topic. Our economic relationship with Japan should not depend on their being allowed to audaciously break International and domestic laws and treaties. According the the Federal Court, 2008, we would be quite within our rights to stop Japan’s illegal whaling. Whether they are arrested and impounded should not depend on the economic power of the law-breaking nation. Setting a precedent that allows powerful nations to break the laws in our economic zones is dangerous and unfair.
Kevin Rudd is morally obliged to complete his pre-election promises and force Japan to respect our sovereignty. Anything else maligns us to being nothing but cowardly.
“Protected” whales are not political or economic pawns to be traded or betrayed so cruelly.>>
Australia’s native Dingo Dingo Persecution must end! Public perception has to change.
(Photo credit AAP, Jim Shrimpton)
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Dingo numbers have been reduced due to extreme uncontrolled overuse of the deadly 1080 bait, and the colonial cultural persecution of Australia’s top order predator, the Dingo.
<<But scientists say governments need to seriously consider reintroducing dingoes to the landscape in order to protect vulnerable native species.
Dingoes cause hundreds of thousands of dollars damage each year to livestock and there have been huge efforts to cull them by laying poisonous baits and shooting them. But this has allowed feral species like cats and foxes to thrive and experts say the current approach is counter-productive.
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About 40% of the country’s native species are listed as threatened or close to extinction, thanks to the explosion in numbers of feral cats and foxes.
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Dr Tony Friend, the president of the Australian Mammal Society, says trying to control these animals is a losing battle.
“We are getting reasonably good at controlling foxes in the local areas but cats are a huge problem, partly exacerbated by removing foxes, so once the foxes are taken out, cats do well and basically step into the feet of the foxes,” he said.
Research is being conducted Australia-wide to see if bringing back dingoes will help control these pests. One recent study in South Australia’s north recorded a reduction in feral cat and fox numbers with the introduction of dingoes.
Hannah Spronk from Arid Recovery, a conservation group based just outside Roxby Downs, is heading the research.
“All seven of the foxes that we released into that pen there were killed within 17 days by the dingoes,” she said. A night photo of a feral cat with a fairy prion in its mouth.
A feral (dumped) cat with a native bird in its mouth in Tasmania
(Photo credit of Parks and Wildlife Service, Tasmania)
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“They did autopsies I suppose you could say and the deaths were attributed to attacks by dingoes. All six of the feral cats that were in the pen died within 20 to 103 days after release.”
Dr Menna Jones, from the University of Tasmania, is looking at reintroducing top order predators to rebalance specific ecosystems. As well as dingoes, she is finding out whether the Tasmanian devil could also control invasive species.
“If we can put a large predator back into the ecosystem where it has become extinct, it can do the job of controlling feral cats or foxes 24 hours a day, seven days a week without the need for an ongoing management program that costs a lot of money and costs a lot of effort,” she said.
International expert and wildlife ecologist Professor Roy Dennis says dingoes could be reintroduced in a controlled manner to limit the damage they cause to livestock. But he says first of all public perception has to change.
“I think it would only work when it was the public themselves that wanted this to happen,” he said.>>
<<Dingoes don’t mix well with sheep and cattle but scientists believe there may be some benefit to keeping wild dogs around to control feral cats and foxes.
The Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre is investigating the ecological role dingoes and free-ranging crossbreed dogs play in Australia, so they can be effectively managed.
Peter Fleming, who leads CRC projects on managing wild dogs, says some people see them as under-utilised weapons against feral cats and foxes, also known as meso-predators.
Others only see them as destructive pests that attack sheep and cattle.
Dr Fleming, Principal Research Scientist in the Vertebrate Pest Research Unit of Biosecurity NSW, says it’s critically important to manage the negative impacts of free-ranging dogs using the most up-to-date scientific information.
“Right now, pressure is being brought to bear on livestock producers in some areas to reduce lethal control of all free-ranging dogs because of potential environmental benefit of dingoes,” he said in a statement.
“We know wild dogs and sheep don’t mix and that strategic co-management is the best way to go for both conservation and agricultural goals.”
He says PhD students are being sought to help with five-year research program to see if there are benefits of retaining free-ranging wild dogs to suppress foxes and feral cat impacts in some areas – while still controlling them for livestock protection. .
<<…How do we effectively manage dingoes and other free-ranging cross-breed dogs when we just don’t know the true ecological roles of these predators?
Researchers with the Invasive Animals CRC, led by Ben Allen and Peter Fleming – Wild Dog theme leader for the Invasive Animals CRC – have just published a critical review of dingo research methodology in Biological Conservation. Their work identifies the need for long-term research on the ecological roles of dingoes and other free-ranging dogs. But in the interim, long-term research to 2017 is already underway.
Based at Orange as principal research scientist in the Vertebrate Pest Research Unit of Biosecurity NSW, Dr Fleming said that depending on what they are eating at the time, free-ranging dogs are viewed differently by different stakeholders.
“For some, they are destructive pests attacking sheep and cattle. For others, dingoes are seen as an ‘under-utilised weapon’ against feral cats and foxes (collectively referred to as meso-predators),” he said.
Dr Fleming said there was much uncertainty about potential ‘meso-predator’ suppression by dingoes and wild dogs.
“It’s critically important that we manage the negative impacts of free-ranging dogs using the most up-to-date scientific information,” he said.
Dr Peter Fleming
Principal research scientist in the vertebrate pest research unit of Biosecurity NSW, Orange
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“Right now, pressure is being brought to bear on livestock producers in some areas to reduce lethal control of all free-ranging dogs, because of potential environmental benefit of dingoes.
“We know wild dogs and sheep don’t mix and that strategic co-management is the best way to go for both conservation and agricultural goals. Community wild dog control programs in livestock production areas can suffer because of conflicting information about the roles of dingoes and the other free-ranging wild dogs.”
“However, our review shows we are unsure what the ecological roles are. The new research may yet demonstrate there are ecosystem services and net benefits of retaining free-ranging wild dogs to suppress foxes and feral cat impacts in some areas, but they will still need to be controlled for livestock protection,” Dr Fleming said.
To get to the bottom of the dingo mystery and to determine the ecological roles of free-ranging wild dogs in the many different ecosystems that make up Australia, the Invasive Animals CRC and its partners Meat & Livestock Australia and Australian Wool Innovation and have embarked on a five-year research program to enhance the nation’s ability to manage all their impacts.
A statement issued by the Invasive Animals CRC said this information was critical to manage this unique and charismatic predator in Australia – the dingo, while mitigating livestock losses.
Based at the University of New England and Biosecurity NSW, the research program will centre on north-eastern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland, a biodiversity hotspot where livestock producers continue to suffer predation problems.
The UNE is currently receiving applications until February 15 for research PhDs to support the wild dog research team. Substantial Invasive Animals CRC resources are being devoted to the research, with up to eight PhD projects about native and introduced predators, their interactions with their prey, the plants the prey eats and the social and economic context of wild dog impacts.
“In five years’ time we will have a sound understanding of the relationships between the predators, prey, plants and people in the highly-productive north-east of NSW,” Dr Fleming said.
“In the meantime, the coordinated, strategic approach to managing free-ranging dogs and preventing livestock predation must continue,” he said.>>
Dunalley Wharf, Tasmania ~ idyllic serenityNow with far greater meaning
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On that blistering hot Friday 4th January 2013…this same wharf became a life saving critical refuge. Desperately trapped residents fled their homes from a raging inferno bearing down upon them and clung below the wharf for dear life, immersed in the cool salt water.
Dunalley’s Wharf became a final refuge for people of Dunalley to survive what would otherwise have been certain death by bushfire. It’s unassuming but vital human value is now etched in local memory, which must now already be legend.
Such horrific memories are destined to endure local lifetimes.
What let the firestorm descend upon Dunalley was negligently and morally wrong. It was stoppable on the 3rd and the escalated firestorm should never have come to this.
No-one deserves this, ever!
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Dunalley Wharf, a special place.
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Dunalley: a bushfire-vulnerable community
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The small rural fishing village of Dunalley is situated along on a sheltered coastline in south eastern Tasmania adjacent to established grazing country and immediately surrounded by hilly bushland.
Tourists drive through Dunalley from Hobart enroute down to the popular Tasman Peninsula where historic Port Arthur is situated. A smaller coastal village of Boomer Bay lies 1km to the north of Dunalley.
Zooming in, Dunalley is positioned on a narrow 700 metre wide isthmus of land between Dunalley Bay and Blackman Bay that connects the main island of Tasmania to the Tasman Peninsula – ‘East Bay Neck‘.
The Denison Canal cuts this isthmus and the town in two providing a boating shortcut transit between the two bays (like a micro version of the Panama Canal) . The Arthur Highway crosses over the canal at the Denison Canal Bridge.
“..Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”
~ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Dunalley is surrounded by water on both sides
(Denison Canal not shown)
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Dunalley has for over a century been a sawmilling and fishing town, but over recent decades has seen growth as retirees and holiday makers buy up and extend the population to just under 400 with new housing development communities like adjacent Primrose Sands sprouting up.
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QUESTION 1:
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What contribution and culpability have (1) housing planning approvals by local Sorell Council and (2) Sorell Council enforcement and compliance monitoring of Australian building standards in bushfire prone areas, played in susceptibilty of properties in Dunalley and Boomer Bay to bushfire damage? What role and approval if any has the Tasmanian Fire Service had in these housing planning approvals?
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Like so many rural communities across Tasmania and indeed south eastern Australia, the rural lifestyle appeal of coastal villages like Dunalley is the traditional timbered cottage amenity and the rustic bushland setting. Dunally also has the sheltered bays to complement its appeal.
Dunalley Wharf and Fish Market looking north from Dunalley Bay, with steep Township Hill in the background (long before the 2013 bushfire).
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However, the geographic restrictions of Dunalley being:
Surrounded by coastal waterways
Close proximity to bushland (a substantial ‘urban bushland interface‘)
Dunalley’s juxtaposition downwind of the prevailing north-west wind from extensive bushland vegetation
..all combined make Dunalley an inherently bushfire vulnerable community. In the event of a bushfire, normal expected evacuation by road would be restricted.
Indeed, evacuation from the dependengt Forestier Peninsula and sub-dependent Tasman Peninsula had to be both effected by sea, since the logistically vital Denison Canal bridge became impassable due to the bushfire emergency.
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QUESTION 2:
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What bushfire risk assessment, community education, community bushfire preparation and bushfire evacuation procedures had the Tasmanian Fire Service provided to the communities of Dunalley and Boomer Bay in the years, months, days ahead of the January 2013 bushfire?
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QUESTION 3:
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Did most residents of Dunalley and Boomer Bay consider their individual properties and their communities in general particularly vulnerable to bushfire? If so, what bushfire mitigation measures had been previously discussed and actually implemented. If not, why not?
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Following Victoria’s tragic Black Saturday bushfires of 7th February 2009, in addition to the subsequent Royal Commission, a study by a team of scientists from Australia and America examined 500 of the homes that were affected by the bushfires.
The study sought to learn from effects of land management on house loss to identify how houses could be better protected in future bushfires. The study compared the impacts of bushfire preparation measures like prescribed burning, grazing, logging of native forests, and the clearing if immediate bush on the survivability of houses in a bushfire.
The key result was that getting rid of vegetation ( trees and shrubs) within 40m of a house was by the most effective property preparation measure. Whereas measures such as logging native forests and prescribed burning had minimal impact on reducing house loss. The results of the study were published a year ago on 19th January 2012 in the online scientific journal ‘PLoS ONE‘.
Professor David Bowman, an expert in forest ecology and bushfire management at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, says this research is useful because it confirms scientifically what we already know.
“It’s really important that we get more effective at mitigating the effects of bushfires,” says Philip. “It does open up some pretty intense political issues,” he says. “You’ve got to ask the question: why are people living in these areas if these disasters are only going to keep happening? Why do peri-urban communities exist?”
Population growth in bushland areas and more frequent bushfire weather predicted with climate change are expected to create major challenges for protecting homes in the future.
What if any vegetation clearing buffer was conducted by the TFS immediately between Dunalley and the bushland recently and when was this done?
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QUESTION 5:
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What if any vegetation clearing buffer was conducted by property occupiers of Dunalley immediately around their properties recently and when was this done?
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QUESTION 6 :
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What if any bushfire preparation was conducted by property occupiers of Dunalley immediately around their properties recently and when was this done?
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Another Odd Hot Summer
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Historically, Tasmania’s southern latitude, and the fact that it is surrounded by sea, has generally meant that summer temperatures across Tasmania have been fairly mild in comparision to the increasingly scorching heatwaves that have beset mainland states over recent decades.
But Tasmania, on occasions does get summer heatwaves into the high 30s Celsius and hotter, notably on record during the summers of:
1895-96
1907-08
1939-40
1945-46
1967-77
1976-77
2008-09
2012-13 (just gone)
And so it was that at the start of summer on November 30, 2012, the Australian Government’s Bureau of Meterology forecast another unseasonally very hot summer for Tasmania and a media report ran thus:
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<<Today marks the beginning of the bushfire danger season in Tasmania — with temperatures forecast to soar. The mercury is tipped to go over 30C in the South today, prompting the Tasmania Fire Service to declare the season’s first total fire ban.
Hobart is forecast to reach 32C, while Campania and Richmond can expect 33C. Yesterday was also a hot one, with Hobart recording a maximum of 30C – 11 degrees above the November average.
The state’s top temperatures yesterday were recorded in Ouse, 32.6C, and Strahan, 32.5C.
TFS chief officer Mike Brown urged everyone living in and around bushland to review their bushfire plans. He said today’s fire ban was in response to the high temperatures and dry conditions.
“The vegetation across the state has dried out measurably despite recent scattered light rain.. today’s high temperatures meant fires could “develop in size very quickly and be difficult to control”. “There are a number of fires across the state that have been difficult to control and extinguish,” Mr Brown said.
Last night fire crews were at six vegetation fires across the state, the largest burning out of control around Poatina Rd, Central Plateau.
Southern Water has also introduced water restrictions today in response to the dangerous conditions. People should avoid all non-essential water use to leave enough for fire fighting.
Weather bureau senior forecaster Malcolm Downing said it was the first “very high danger” rating for the fire season. Mr Downing said there had been little rain over the past two weeks, which had significantly dried out vegetation. He said tomorrow should be cooler, with temperatures forecast to be in the low 20s.
Today’s total fire ban means that no fires can be started out of doors in the southern region, which includes the municipalities of Brighton, Central Highlands, Clarence, Derwent Valley, Glamorgan/Spring Bay, Glenorchy, Hobart, Huon Valley, Kingborough, Sorell, Southern Midlands and Tasman.
The ban started at midnight last night and remains in place until midnight tonight. Mr Brown said today’s fire ban also meant people could not use cutting, welding or other similar equipment in the open.
“Although the use of agricultural machinery, for the purpose of harvesting crops or slashing grass, is not included in this ban operators are requested to take particular care when using this type of machinery,” he said. Fires should be reported by dialling 000.
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Total Fire Ban Rules
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No fires may be lit or be allowed to remain alight in the open air until midnight tonight.
Tools and equipment that use a naked flame or generate sparks must not be used in the open air.
Barbecues that use wood, charcoal or solid fuel banned.
Gas and electric barbecues are permitted if the barbecue is a fixed permanent structure.>>
The following day, December 1, media reports alerted Tasmanians to several active bushfires across the state, and significantly one in Forcett.
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<<The Tasmanian Fire Service says the threat from fires across the state has reduced, but has urged residents to continue monitoring conditions.
Containment lines have been set around the fires at Glen Huon, Bruny Island, Forcett and Geeveston. The largest blaze was located at Poatina on the Central Plateau.
The 6,000 hectare Poatina Fire is burning in bushland located near high transmission powerlines, that connect the state’s north and south.
Tasmania Fire Service spokesman Andrew McGuiness told ABC News the fire will probably destroy caravans at Jonah Bay tonight, saying “it’s a big fire and it’s likely to get significantly bigger before they can put containment lines into control it.”
Another fire at Glenlusk, north of Hobart, also continues to challenge firefighters as they try to bring it under control.
Milder temperatures have helped firefighters gain the upper hand today, however windy conditions prevailed. People who aren’t residents are urged to stay away from the fire zones, while communities near the fires are urged to be alert for any changes in the fire conditions. They should also continue looking at the Tasmanian Fire Service website for the latest updates.>>
The ‘Precedent Excuse‘ that this latest bushfire could be ‘the worst ever‘, or ‘the worst in 100 years‘, or in 200 years – simply doesn’t wash.
It’s like telling the low lying folk of Queensland’s Lockyer Valley in 2011 that they had experienced the worst in a hundred year flood event; only two years later in January 2013 to experience the worst in a hundred year flood, again.
The risk of ‘Force Majeur‘ is not a factor of time, but of fickle Nature – basically a factor of luck.
Such is a convenient myth perpetuated by the accountable Tasmanian Government to try to shun its planning responsibility that Dunalley’s bushfire disaster was somehow unforseeable, and to try to excuse its emergency response failure that the disaster and its impact were somehow unavoidable.
Pull the other one, its got bells on it. These days, both floods and bushfires in Australia are a consequence of both Nature, and the actions and inactions of Man.
Government bureaucrats and politicians may think the people are silly, like believing the old saying that ‘lightning never strikes the same place twice‘. The factors that cause lightning to strike once don’t disappear between storms or even within the same storm.
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QUESTION 7:
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Since Tasmania’s infamous 1967 fires when the Tasmanian Government forewent any plausible excuse it may have had of ‘bushfire innocence’, what subsequent measures and investment have been taken by the Tasmanian Govermment in (1) bushfire emergency planning and (2) bushfire emergency response – to mitigate the spread and impact of wildfire? Given that the Dunalley Bushfire Disaster occurred have these measure and investment been adequate in meeting community expectations of government responsibility in 2013?
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QUESTION 8:
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What specific extra-ordinary bushfire fighting resourcing and strategies did the Tasmanian Fire Service seek and have implemented once it became aware of the forecast extreme bushfire weather conditions, and given that multiple uncontrolled bushfires, including the 6,000ha Poatina Fire, were demonstrating the extreme nature of the fire behaviour and already commanding TFS fire-fighting resources?
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Dec 2012 Two Air Tractor 802 Fire Bombers secured
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Air Tractor 802 fixed wing dedicated water bomber
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Just two weeks ahead of the Forcett Fire, the Tasmanian Government’s corporatised forestry department, Forestry Tasmania, announced that it has secured two dedicated waterbombing aircraft from Victoria to be based at Hobart Airport (Cambridge).
Significantly, Forestry Tasmania holds the State’s monopoly delegated management responsibility for Tasmania’s native forest reserves, in which it exploits for commercial timber logging.
Two large native forest reserves were ultimately impacted by the Forcett Fire – one south of the Arthur Highway in the Sorell local government area that includes ‘Big Blue Hill‘ which appears to have no identifiable name, and the other on the Forestier Peninsula – ‘Yellow Bluff Creek Forest Reserve‘.
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What does ‘managed’ mean?
[Photo by Editor, 20110926, free in public domain]
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<<Forestry Tasmania unveiled its latest weapon in the fight against forest fires at Cambridge Airport earlier this month. The two Air Tractor 802 fixed wing fire bombers were brought to Hobart from Ballarat (regional Victoria) for a week and were immediately put into action, fighting a bushfire at Musselroe Bay in the far North-East (Tasmania).
A private airstrip nearby enabled them to fill up with a mixture of water and foam from temporary inflatable tanks and be over the fire in minutes.
With a capacity of more than 3000 litres and taking just four minutes to fill up, the two Air Tractors, valued at $1.5 million each, dumped 40,000 litres in an hour and more than 150,000 litres on the Musselroe Bay bushfire.
Forestry Tasmania hired the planes and pilots from Field Air with the help of the National Aerial Firefighting Centre. Forestry Tasmania fire management head Tony Blanks said it was the first time the Fire Tractors had operated “in earnest” in Tasmania, where helicopters were more commonly used.”
Problem was that although one Air Tractor was vitally needed to fight the Forcett Fire, the second aircraft was previously returned back to Victoria at a time when dozens of fires were burning across Tasmania and with forecast extreme bushfire weather.
Madness. Why?
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QUESTION 9:
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In the wake of the Dunalley Bushfire Disaster what subsequent measures and investment is the Tasmanian Govermment to implement in (1) bushfire emergency planning and (2) bushfire emergency response to mitigate the spread and impact of future wildfire across the State?
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Preparation for an Extreme Forest Fire Danger Index?
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So by early December 2012 unusually extreme bushfire weather conditions were forecast for Tasmania. But this was what Tasmania had experienced previously, albeit occassionally, but not as unique as some sensationalists in the media would have us believe.
Significantly, from a bushfire management operational perspective, numerous bushfires were already active and occupying the Tasmanian Fire Service and its related agencies, the Parks and Wildlife Service and Forestry Tasmania, reducing resource capacity to respond to new and escalating bushfire emergencies.
Was the Tasmanian Fire Service by 3rd January already overwhelmed?
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QUESTION 10:
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Why did the Tasmanian Fire Service, well aware of the looming extreme forecast bushfire weather, not request special additional resources, such as from Victoria, including prudent preparatory delivery of the dedicated and proven effective waterbombing heli-tanker, then parked and idle in a hangar at Essendon Airport Melbourne?
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‘Elvis’, the celebrated Erickson Heli-tanker, with specialist bushfire-fighting pilot
A converted Sikorsky S-64E Skycrane, with a special “sea snorkel” and water tank
It is manufactured in Oregon, USA, dedicated to waterbombing bushfires and based at Essendon Airport Melbourne since December 2001.
Australia’s mainland states now have invested in at least four of them for standby bushfire application.
^http://www.ericksonaircrane.com/full_story/fullstory_firefighting.html
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Yet Tasmanian fire authorities defended their choice of aircraft to fight the state’s catastrophic south-east bushfire, while a much bigger helicopter stood idle on the mainland.
As the fires still burnt through the Tasman Peninsula on Sunday night, authorities warned that they held fears for a handful of people unaccounted for after the main fire passed.
The Tasmanian Fire Service’s chief officer, Mike Brown, said it had been an option to use the heavy-lift Erickson Air-crane against the blaze that devastated Dunalley and nearby coastal hamlets on Friday.
Under national aerial fire-fighting arrangements, five of the Air-cranes are positioned on the mainland, each of them able to suck up nine tonnes of water in 40 seconds, and fly at 200 km/h.
The aircraft, such as Victoria’s ”Elvis” and ”Gypsy”, have become part of bushfire folklore.
The Victorian CFA confirmed that in Melbourne on Friday, a day when the south-east fires were already burning in Tasmania in what were officially described as catastrophic conditions, one Air-crane went unused in its Essendon hangar.
Mr Brown said the Air-Cranes, which were heavily funded by the Commonwealth, still required a contribution from Tasmania.
”So we’ve got to have here what’s available in terms of being able to support as well,” he said.
”The support we can provide to the medium helicopters gives us, we think, the best outcome.”
A spokeswoman for the federal Attorney-General’s Department said moving the Air-crane also depended on moving refuelling capability.
Due to the nature of the aircraft, this was slower than moving smaller helicopters such as the Bell 212, she said.
More than 100 structures, many of them homes, have been lost in small communities, mainly around the Tasman Peninsula, but also near Bicheno on the east coast.
Acting Police Commissioner Scott Tilyard said searchers had scoured the burnt-out homes in the worst-hit towns of Dunalley, Boomer Bay and Bream Creek without finding any bodies, but the community still needed to brace for possible deaths.>>
<<As a result of the ongoing fire situation across the state, Tasmania Fire Service has welcomed and accepted offers of firefighting assistance from interstate authorities.
This will be in the form of personnel and will give some Firefighters and Incident Management Teams (IMT) the chance to have a break, as well as boosting firefighting numbers where needed.
TFS Chief Officer, Mike Brown
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TFS Chief Officer Mike Brown said:
“Tasmanian Firefighters have had a long record of providing assistance interstate and internationally over the years and our peoples skills and capabilities are highly regarded. I have been contacted by many of my counterparts from Western Australia through to New Zealand and many jurisdictions in between with messages of encouragement and offers for assistance.
Yesterday I spoke with the NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner and the Victorian Fire Commissioner and arranged for Firefighters and Fire Specialists to provide some much needed relief for our people. I’m very grateful that they have been able to respond so quickly”.
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The following are confirmed interstate deployment numbers coming to Tasmania:
7 x Rapid impact assessment officers from NSW Rural Fire Service (6 arrived yesterday, 1 today)
4 x liaison officers arrive today
17 x IMT personnel from Country Fire Authority Victoria, Department of Sustainability and Environment Victoria, & MFB arrive Sunday for Hobart
4 xIMT personnel arrive Sunday for Launceston
7 x Air operations arrive Sunday for Hobart
33 x Strike team firefighters arrive Sunday for Hobart (using TFS vehicles)
All personnel are due to return home on Friday.
“The potential for further requests for assistance will be considered later this week” TFS Chief Officer Mike Brown added.
[Ed: Better late than never, but tell that to the folk of Dunalley, Boomer Bay, Connelly’s Marsh and Copping!]
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Erikson Aircrane deployed to the Forcett Fire on 3rd January? If only!
Sorry, this machine was deployed in Dawson in Gippsand, Victoria this month.
Same landscape, different State.
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Erikson Aircrane deployed to the Forcett Fire on 3rd January? If only!
Sorry, this machine was deployed in Alpine Fire near Harrietville in Victoria this month.
..
When bushfire weather conditions become extreme – tinder dry bush and long grass, low humidity, temperature in the high 30 degree Celsius or hotter and strong winds – then the bushfire risk is exponentially heightened.
Bushfire risk is measured by the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI), which was developed in the 1960s by CSIRO scientist A.G. McArthur to measure the degree of danger of fire in Australian forests.
This Forest Fire Danger Index combines a record of:
Vegetation Dryness (based upon rainfall and evaporation)
Windspeed
Temperature
Humidity
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A fire danger rating of between 12 and 25 on the index is considered a “high” degree of danger, while a day having a danger rating of over 50 is considered an “Severe” fire danger rating. Above this level in 2010 a distinction was made between Forest and Grassland fuels.
For Forest fuels, an FDI over 75 is categorised as “Extreme” and over 100 as “Catastrophic”. In Victoria, the alternate rating name adopted for Catastrophic is “Code Red”.
For Grassland fuels the threshold FDI values for the Extreme and Catastrophic Ratings was increased to 100 and 150 respectively. However,in Western Australia, which currently only uses the Grassland FDI, the values of 75 and 100 were being used as thresholds during 2012.
Fire Danger Ratings (from 0 to 100+) ‘Catastropic’ is a new category introduced across Australia since the Victorian ‘Black Saturday’ tragedy of February 2009
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McArthur used the conditions of the Black Friday fires of 1939 as his example of a 100 rating. The FFDI on Black Saturday, 7 February 2009, reached more than 200.
However, grassfires present a higher risk than forests under the same bushfire weather conditions, simply because grass is more flammable than timber.
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National Framework for (bushfire) Scaled Advice and Warnings
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In Victoria, in the months following the devastating Black Saturday bushfire disaster of February 2009, in which 173 people perished under catastrophic bushfire conditions ( a FFDI of over 200), new fire danger ratings were formulated based upon this fire danger index.
The ‘Low’ rating was merged with ‘Moderate’ and a new ‘Catastrophic’ rating was introdiuced over and above what had long been the top rating of ‘Extreme’.
The new Catastrophic (Code Red) rating involves a fire danger index above 100. Under these types of weather conditions fires will be unpredictable, uncontrollable and fast moving. The fires in Victoria on 7th February 2009 provide an example of the types of fires that may be experienced under a ‘Catastrophic’ rating.
Standard advice to communities under these conditions will be that leaving is the safest option for survival.
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Australia’s National Fire Danger Ratingssince Sep 2009
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Australia’s new ‘National Framework for Scaled Advice and Warnings‘ were agreed and adopted by all Australian States and Territories at the Australian Emergency Management Committee meeting on 3rd and 4th September 2009. One would presume that this included Tasmania.
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The national framework includes:
The new Fire Danger Ratings (see above coloured table)
The vague bushfire management slogan ‘Stay or Go’ replaced by similarly vague slogan: ‘Prepare, Act, Survive‘. *
An agreed format for scaled warnings.
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Other agreed bushfire management emergency protocols also include:
Forecast fire danger advice will be issued throughout the media and will be aligned to the new fire danger ratings (which is based on the fire danger index)
Key messages have been designed to clearly communicate what is likely to occur if and when a fire starts for each of the fire danger ratings. Messages will include specific actions for the community to take during this outlook period.
The CFA Chief Officer will have responsibility for issuing warnings to the community during fires; delegated to local Incident Controllers with a backup in the State Duty Officer in the iECC.
Information units will have operational guidelines and the technological capability in place to enable them to quickly issue accurate warnings. Approval will occur at local incident level by the IC or deputy IC.
Where an ICC has not yet been established, warnings can be issued on behalf of the IC by information units in the RECC or iECC.
Warnings will be disseminated throughout a variety of media, for example websites, local radio and VBIL simultaneously via a single entry tool known as One Source One Message (OSOM). This will ensure that warnings are provided to all sources at the same time, will appear in the same format and contain the same language.
The iECC (or SECC) Information Unit will play a monitoring and auditing role in relation to community warnings, as well as a pro-active role when a warning hasn’t been issued or released.
All areas will have access to OSOM* (warning system). It can be issued at a very local level (for example at a regional office before an ICC has been set up) or in the iECC which will be manned throughout high fire danger rating or fire danger indicator days
In accordance with Royal Commission recommendations, there will be two warning categories, and three levels of information:
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‘ADVICE‘: This will advise you that a fire has started but there is no immediate danger, and includes general information to keep you up to date with developments.
‘WATCH AND ACT‘: This is a heightened level of threat. Conditions are changing and you need to start taking action now to protect you and your family.
‘EMERGENCY‘: This will indicate that people in specific locations are in danger and need to take action immediately to protect life, as they will be impacted by fire.
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* NB. The One Source One Message (OSOM) tool is a system with a single, multi-agency web-based portal to publish real time messages using standard incident management templates.
A clearer, unambiguous bushfire response slogan to replace ‘Prepare, Act, Survive‘ could be:
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‘No Bushfire Defence Certificate?
Self-evacuate now to your nearest registered Emergency Evacation Centre!‘
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It is high time that under bushfire rated conditions that are ‘Severe’ or ‘Extreme’ and when a wildfire is within a given risk range, that governments legally compel all residents situated in high bushfire-prone areas to compulsorily self-evacuate to a registered Evacation Centre unless they hold a current Bushfire Defence Certificate.
Such a certificate would at a minimum require:
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(1) Meeting minimum standards of building construction in compliance with the Australian Standard for construction of buildings in bushfire prone areas (AS 3959-2009)
(2) Preparation of property bushfire defence inspected and certificied by a bushfire delegated authority for the current season
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Under bushfire rated conditions that are ‘Catastrophic’ and when a wildfire is within a larger given range, ALL bushfire-prone residents, ought to be legally compelled to compulsorily self-evacuate to a registered Evacation Centre, irrespective of whether they hold a current Bushfire Defence Certificate or not.
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No Fire Danger Index used by TFS in the Forcett Fire
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Although, this bushfire danger rating system was officially in place across Tasmania since late 2009, the Tasmanian Fire Service chose not to include fire danger indices on its website or via the Tasmanian media. Why not?
The following remains the format of the TFS public notice of active bushfires; in this case the ‘Forcett Fire’:
FORCETT FIRE:
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<<Alert Level: [Going] Advice
Type: VEGETATION FIRE
Last Updated: 13-Jan-2013 8:18 AM
First Reported: 03-Jan-2013 2:13 PM
Location: Inala Road, FORCETT
Status: Going
Agency: Tasmania Fire Service
Incident Number: 201651
Size: 24,040 Ha
Details: Bushfire Advice Message FORCETT FIRE 201651 Current from:13/01/2013 08:12 AM until: 13/01/2013 11:00 AM or further notice There is a large bushfire at between Forcett and the Tasman Peninsula . The fire danger rating in this area is forecast to be high for today. Fire under these conditions can be difficult to control . There is no immediate threat to communities. This bus …
More Info | Current Incident List>>
How effectively then, does the above bushfire information by the TFS assist potentially impacted people to be appropriately informed about the fire risk category of danger, the spatial fire threat (where it currenty is, which direction the fire front(s) is/are currenty headed, how fast it is moving, forecast changes), the timing of the threat to various ‘at-risk’ people? How effectively does the above bushfire information assist these people to appropriately prepare to either defend their properties or else to self-evacuate? Where are the registered evacuation centres for people?
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QUESTION 12:
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In Tasmania, does the Tasmanian Fire Service measure, use and publish a specific forecast and actual Fire Danger Index based upon weather information received from the Bureau of Meteorology? Does the TFS use the Forest and/or Grassland index? Why were such indicators not provided on the TFS website or via the Tasmanian media in relation to the current 2012-13 summer season ahead of and during the recent bushfire emergencies across the State? Is the publicised TFS bushfire emergency information adequate?
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3 Jan 2013: Forcett Fire Reported
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It is not officially publicly reported how the Forcett Fire was first detected by the responsible bushfire fighting authority, the Tasmanian Fire Service on the 3rd January 2013, except that the Tasmanian Fire Service website states consistently in successive daily updates that the “First Reported time was “03-Jan-2013 2:13 PM” at Location “Inala Road, FORCETT“.
After the disaster impacting Dunalley, Boomer Bay, Copping and other communities, on Tuesday 8th January, as the result of detailed investigations jointly conducted between Tasmania Police and the Tasmania Fire Service, the cause of the fire commonly referred to as the Forcett Fire had been officially determined.
<<The cause has been determined as of an accidental nature with the fire emanating from an old fire in a burnt out tree stump at Forcett. This fire has smouldered through the root system and ignited in the weather conditions of Thursday 3 January.
Detectives and Fire Scene Examiners from the Tasmania Fire Service have interviewed all available witnesses and people with information thereby assisting in their determination on the fire.>>
But this ‘determined cause’ was the consequence of a prior fire that has not been publicly reported. The reason for the relatively prompt cause being determined and officially declared by the Tasmanian Police was to legally trigger insurance claim processing to the insured victims, which is understandable.
However, the original cause of the “old fire in a burnt out tree stump at Forcett” remains publicly undetermined.
The Tasmanian Fire Service website states that the fire ignited near Inala Road, Forcett on 3rd January 2013. Inala Road is situated about 2km east of the rural village of Forcett along the Arthur Highway. It is a one kilometre long gravel No Through Road that connects half a dozen farm properties to the Arthur Highway. See map below.
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Inala Road Forcett Satellite Map, 2011
Click image to enlarge (Inala Road is top right)
[Source: Google Maps]
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Inala Road near the intersection of the Arthur Highway in 2010
Photo looks south, with the hills toward Dunalley on the left.
Inala Road is characterised by farmland interspersed with partially deforested native bushland, and patchy regrowth.
Click image to enlarge.
[Source: Google Maps, March 2010]
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Inala Road is easily accessible by fire trucks, so with a small fire and with low wind conditions, the prospect of suppressing the fire early on the afternoon of Thursday 3rd January would have been greater than at any subsequent time before it impacted Dunalley 24 hours later.
The exact location of the ignition along Inala Road has not been reported by the Tasmanian Fire Service on its website. Like most fore agencies, the Tasmanian Fire Service chooses to delete (censor) operational fire records after a few days.
However, a Forcett Fire Map provided on the ABC News website dated 4th January 2013 was obviously obtained by the ABC from the Tasmanian Fire Service, shown below:
1. The ignition source of the fire was north of the Arthur Highway along Inala Road (top left of above map). This places the TFS confirmed ‘burning stump’ midway along Inala Road, per juxtaposed mapping below.
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Deduced Ignition Location of the Forcett Fire
In the absence of TFS publicly confirming the exact location of the ‘burnt stump’ ignition source,
by deduction from the Forcett Fire Map above, the Inala Road ignition source appears midway along Inala Road, Forcett.
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Inala Road
Where along Inala Road was the burning stump that re-ignited the Forcett Fire?
Ask the TFS.
It is incumbent upon the Tasmanian Fire Service to be transparent about the exact source loation of this fire so that the truth be known.
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2. Consistent with the prevailing north-westerly windwind, the direction of this fire was that it initially headed easterly after re-igniting from the declared ‘burning stump‘ in the afternoon of Thursday 3rd January. Sometime in the evening of the 3rd January the wind reverted to the prevailing direction from the north-west and thereafter continued consistently from this direction through the couyrse of the following two weeks into the Forestier Peninsula.
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Open farmland along Arthur Highway, near the Inala Road intersection looking south east toward Dunalley
Click image to enlarge
[Source: Google Maps, March 2010]
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3. The separate strip of fire burnt south along the Sugarloaf Road would appear to be specifically contained and so likely to be a deliberately lit control line/fire break defensively intended to prevent the main wildfire crossing the road in the event of a wind change to the east. This is conjecture in the absence of TFS public explanation on its website.
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QUESTION 13:
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What was the cause of the “old fire in a burnt out tree stump”. Lightning doesn’t usually light tree stumps; trees on ridges yes. But Inala Road is not on a ridge, so the lightning excuse is a convenient furphy. Was the fire a consequence of a farmer’s ‘pile burn’ or ‘burn off’? Who lit the fire? Was the burn off authorised by the Tasmanian Fire Service? If so why, when it is summer and at a time of high bushfire risk? What investigations are being conducted by the TFS and/or Tasmanian Police into the original cause of the fire?
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Jan 2013: Bushfire Conditions around Dunalley
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Prevailing Wind
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As the crow flies, Hobart Airport is about 12km from the ignition source that purportedly started the Forcett Fire near Inala Road, and Hobart Airport is about 25km from Dunalley.
The following wind rose chart of the Bureau of Meteorology shows that over the past half century, the prevailing wind for Hobart Airport is predominantly from the north-west. This may be generally extrapolated for the surrounding Sorrell local government area, including Forcett and Dunalley.
Significantly, the prevailing wind is a most relevant environmental factor in the Forcett Fire, because of the juxtaposition of Forcett to Dunalley.
The ignition source at Inala Road Forcett was north west of Dunalley, the same as the prevailing wind.
Wind typically increases in the early afternoon as the temperature differential between the hotter land mass and the nearby cooler sea strong maximises. This is referred to as a diurnal wind pattern. On Friday 4th January as temperatures soared, this wind was predictably due to increase and at around 2pm it did. The 15 km/h breeze increased to a recorded peak of 52km/h at 1.57pm.
So the Forcett Fire on 3rd January was predictably and reliably going to burn toward Dunalley. The diurnal wind pattern at the time was nothing extra-ordinary, and therefore would have been predictable.
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Ignition source at Inala Road, Forcett was 17km North West of DunalleyClick image to enlarge
[Source: Google Earth]
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QUESTION 14:
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Given that a light north west prevailing breeze was predictably fanning the Forcett Bushfire toward Dunalley in the afternoon and evening of 3rd January, what firefighting response including backburning was undertaken to prevent the Forcett Bushfire’s spread south east toward Dunalley?
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All Thursday afternoon, through Thursday night and all Friday morning the observed wind was relatively light. The following account is poignant:
“A couple of kilometres just off the Arthur Highway at Fazackerlys Rd, a small group of farm workers, some locals and a police officer watched from a safe distance the fire which had burned slowly all morning in the wooded hillsides to the north. The smoke rose straight up from several large and small outbreaks burning around farmland.”
The Forcett Fire on the afternoon of Thursday 3rd January 2013Burning out of control south of the Arthur Highway heading right (south east)Low winds meant it was not a fast moving firestorm at this stage.
View across Frederick Henry Bay looking north-east, perhaps Bally Park/Carlton settlement in the foreground.
(Photo by Ian Stewart, 20130103, click image to enlarge)
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So, the Forcett Fire on the morning of Friday 4th January was still slowing burning through relatively accessible farmland under light wind conditions. Why wasn’t it extinguished?
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Forcett Bushfire
(Photo by Moemahfoudh, 20130104)
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QUESTION 15:
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Given that the Forcett Fire was still declared uncontained by the Tasmanian Fire Service in the morning of Friday 4th Jaunary, what addition emergency bushfire response measures were implemented by the TFS to prevent the fire impacting Dunalley?
Did the Bureau of Meteorology publicise forecast increased wind speed and the extreme temperature for 4th January on the 3rd January? What Fire Danger Index was forecast by the TFS for 4th January for the ongoing Forcett Fire and was it not clear to the TFS that the risk to Dunalley and Boomer Bay from the Forcett Fire was catastrophic?
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The2pm Diurnal Wind
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…and then the wind came up…at Fazackerlys Rd just after 2pm, all hell broke loose. The fire had taken a run.
As the Forcett Bushfire impacted Dunalley at around 2pm on 4th January, recorded wind gust reached 80km/h, driving the fire south into Dunalley at unstoppable speed.
Bushfires are known to fan their own wind. According to the CSIRO, bushfires can generate their own wind. “Strong convection set up by the heat of the fire creates an in-draw wind that can interact with the prevailing wind. Depending on the direction of the prevailing wind and the location of the fire, this in-draw wind may increase or decrease the strength of the prevailing wind.”
On 4th January 2013, maximum temperature records were broken at eight weather stations across Tasmania. Hobart reached 41.8°C, breaking the previous temperature record by 1°C.
However, as explained above, these extreme temperatures although technically breaking records, were only doing so by marginal degrees on the 3rd January. Tasmania had recorded similar extreme hot summer temperatures on at least seven previously documented occasions. So, despite media sensationalism and the vested interest of the Australian Government’s climate change commission to claim justification for its government-dependent revenue, by no means were the temperatures of January 2013 unprecedented, or ‘off the scale‘.
Yes, it was forecast to be an unusually very hot dry summer for Tasmania, no more no less.
Significantly, Thursday 3rd January 2013 peaked at a very high 34.4 Celsius. The maximum on the following critical day Friday 4th January is not recorded. This is likely due to the Dunalley gauge reader being otherwise pre-occupied escaping from the impacting bushfire.
Anecdotally the mid afternoon temperature spiked at 40.2 Celsius at around 2pm that day, and about a kilometre south-west the Stroud Point weather station registered 54.9 Celsius at a time not disclosed – perhaps between 2:30pm and 3pm that day.
[Source: ‘From spark to raging inferno’, 20130113, by David Killick in The Sunday Tasmanian. See extract below]
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QUESTION 16:
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Given the pre-existing bushfires across the State causing concern, the forecast bushfire conditions, the known prevailing NW wind across the Sorrell Council area (Forcett – Dunalley) what special bushfire emergency response measures did the Tasmanian Fire Service take critically on 3rd January 2013, on being alerted to the Inala Road ignition to prevent the fire spreading? Why was the fire not contained on the 3rd January, while it was in accessible farmland, before it advanced slowly into hilly less accessible timbered State reserves toward Dunalley?
So the following article extract provides the best light on what happened on the Friday, 4th January 2013 at Forcett:
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‘From spark to raging inferno’
by David Killick
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<<IT only takes a spark to start a fire.
At Inala Rd near the south- eastern Tasmanian town of Forcett, that spark is believed to have been struck some time before Christmas.
A landowner was clearing a tree stump the old fashioned way by burning it out. They thought the fire was out, but it smouldered unchecked in the root system for two weeks, before flaring and dooming a town.
The morning of Friday January 4, 2013, was unremarkable in Dunalley.
It was warm and still.
If anything it was perhaps a little quieter than normal.
The heat and the fire risk warning encouraged some people to leave and traffic through the town was light despite the school holidays.
Inside the weather station by the water at Stroud Point, the temperature ticked over the 30C mark just before midday.
At the Dunalley Fish Market in Fulham Rd, tourists and families stopped to eat their lunches.
Along Marion Bay Rd at nearby Copping, many residents seemed to have taken the advice of fire authorities and left.
Local shopkeeper Kate North was concerned, but not overly so.
“If the wind doesn’t come up we should be OK,’’ she said. “The problem will be if it gets into the bush and heads towards Dunalley.’’
A couple of kilometres just off the Arthur Highway at Fazackerlys Rd, a small group of farm workers, some locals and a police officer watched from a safe distance the fire which had burned slowly all morning in the wooded hillsides to the north.
The smoke rose straight up from several large and small outbreaks burning around farmland.
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And then the wind came up
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And then the wind came up. At 1.43pm, give or take a minute either side, a wall of flame suddenly emerged above the treetops, leaping into the air, 20 or 30 metres high.
Burning embers began to rain down. The south-easterly wind had swung west. The gust that fanned the fire hit Dunalley 8km away at 1.57pm at 52km/h. The temperature spiked 5C in six minutes to 40.2C.
There is an unholy trinity that keeps bushfire fighters awake at night. High temperatures, strong winds and low humidity.
Add heavy fuel loads and a source of ignition, and there is no force of man that can stop a bushfire.
The 2009 Victorian fires which killed 173 people have seared the word “catastrophic’’ into the popular lexicon the fire danger beyond “extreme’‘.
These were the conditions that existed in the hills north of Dunalley.
As one man put it, conditions on January 4 were unlike anything Tasmania has seen since 1967.
“I’ve been a firefighter for 35 years. I have never seen a fire so destructive as that was on Friday,” he said.
“On a day like that you cannot fight a fire. It doesn’t matter how much water or how many helicopters you have.’”
AT Fazackerlys Rd just after 2pm, all hell broke loose. The fire had taken a run. All of a sudden four houses and their outbuildings were surrounded by the flames.
The Tasmania Fire Service crews raced from outbreak to outbreak, saving what they could.
Local Todd Hildyard had been on a bulldozer several hundred metres away.
He raced the flames to his back steps and with a hose and the help of his teenage son somehow stopped the home going up.
“We were bloody lucky – she was awful close to getting in here,” Mr Hildyard said.
Another group fought a desperate battle just up the road.
Although a house near the highway was saved, one by one the flames claimed sheds and outbuildings.
The beautiful old hay shed by the highway went up.
Less than a kilometre away at the top of a hill above Copping, John Yaxley was fighting an astonishing battle to save his place surrounded by bush, most of it ablaze.
Somehow he saved his home and a shed with $60,000 worth of wine inside, but his parents’ grand pentagon-shaped hilltop house was lost, as was the caretaker’s home.
Locals watched helpless from the shade outside Kate North’s shop at Copping.
Amid the light grey smoke of burning bush could be seen the terrible dark smoke of people’s homes going up in flames.
One older man watched his home burn.
“I saw it catch fire, I knew where to look and I thought `any moment now’ and it went up. There’s a lot of nice things gone but that is the way of the world. It’s a devil of a thing.”
The fire rolled down the ridgetops to Marshton Lane.
In a hurried roadside conference as the flames raged around, the firefighters knew the task was already too great.
Getting in front of this fire would be an act of suicide.
“Guys, it’s all turned to shit,” said one.
Those there say that just after 3pm the hellfire rolled over the hill behind the golf course like a storm.
A terrifying black, red and purple wall of flames.
Smoke darkened the sky.
Helicopter pilot Ben Brolewicz watched from above.
“It was probably as bad as it gets. With all of the heat that it generated it created a sort of a vortex that picked stuff up and flung it through the air,’’ he said in an interview with the ABC.
Bryan Webster called it a “tsunami of fire”.
With his partner Fiona Hills and her 11-year-old son Darcy Scott, Mr Webster fled to the water’s edge as the fire roared into town.
The family sheltered in the water for two hours with a mob of terrified wallabies for company.
At another jetty, another miraculous escape.
The Holmes family, grandma, grandpa and five grandchildren in their care fled the flames and sought shelter.
A haunting snapshot taken of them sheltering in the water has become the iconic image of these fires worldwide.
The family were calm, but huddled and prayed. Not one was harmed.
Josh Clements’ home was saved. His parents weren’t so lucky. He and his family pushed a boat out into the canal as the front hit and floated in the bay for several hours.
Hundreds of metres from the burning town, the Stroud Point weather station registered 54.9C.
The wind by now was gusting to 80km/h, driving the fire to the south.
The school went up, as did the police station, the bakery and many homes.
But somehow not a single life was lost.
Those who were not in the water were shepherded by police to the local pub to shelter – a move that saved scores of lives.
AS Dunalley burned, the fire spread left and right, from its formerly narrow front.
The eastern edge moved into Boomer Bay – a pretty community of waterfront shacks.
Just after 4pm, Steve Fisher and several dozen other locals watched as the fire approached steadily through knee-high grass.
“We’ll stick with it as long as we can,” he said calmly.
At that moment, just a few hundred metres away to the south, dozens of people were fighting for their homes and their lives.
Simon and Tully Brooks tried to fight the grassfire as it approached.
The father and son attacked with buckets and hoses, but their house went up.
They knew it was hopeless. They grabbed what valuables they could and fled.
Lex Johnson saw his neighbours run for their lives. “I was up at the corner when it circled around the back and through the trees behind our property,” he said.
“And then we saw the people from down the road running to get away from the fire . . . and it was catching up to them.”
Those cut off by the fires fled to the jetty where many were saved by the bravery of a helicopter crew.
The crew of paramedics returned over and over in thick smoke and plucked people from the water including a pregnant woman and five dogs.
On a point just east of Dunalley, not far from the weather station, it was helicopters too that saved the Jenkins family.
Ten members of the family had moved their caravans and cars to the water’s edge as the fire burst over the nearby hills.
As the flames drew close, a helicopter appeared and doused the family again and again until the threat had passed by.
Further north, at Connellys Marsh the battle would rage through the night.
Cut off from all outside help, neighbours banded together to keep each other safe.
A flotilla of small boats ferried away those who wanted to leave and then those who stayed faced the flames.
Martin Thorpe returned to watch the shack his family had cherished for 30 years, razed by the fire.
GRAEME Grundy dragged a neighbour to safety then fought with Mr Thorpe to save his own place – in part thanks to a water pipe that burst at just the right moment, showering the place with the remaining water from his 1000-gallon tank.
When the sun rose, the seaside hamlet was dotted with small clearings filled with smouldering ruins.
Somehow, more homes were saved than lost.
As the survivors contemplated their extraordinary night, the fires delivered one last cruel blow. The last home to be lost at Connellys Marsh went up around 8am.
The Inala Rd fire caused more havoc and destroyed more homes and continues to burn in spots south of Eaglehawk Neck, but most of the damage took place in about three hectic hours.
An inquiry will determine how – against all odds – not a single human life was lost or a serious injury sustained that Friday. Fire chiefs say there has been much planning and many lessons learnt from Black Saturday in Victoria in 2009. After such horrific losses as Victoria’s, people are far more aware of the risk of fire.
And communications have improved since then too. The hundreds of broadcast alerts, website updates and urgent text messages played their part.
And there was some luck. The area was surrounded by water which gave so many a place to run to when it all became too much.
But summer is not over yet. After a long dry spell, huge tracts of the Tasmanian bush are loaded with fuel.
The peak of our fire season is still weeks away. As hard as it is to believe, the worst may not yet have passed.>>
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[Source: ‘From spark to raging inferno’, 20130113, by David Killick, in The Sunday Tasmanian (not published on the Internet), but reproduced in the Tasmanian Times; additional reporting by Zara Dawtrey, Matt Smith, Bruce Mounster, Blair Richards, Linda Smith, and Tim Martain, posted by PB 20130115, ^http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/the-new-normal/show_comments]
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Hindsight Local Reflections
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Most of the bushland that the bushfire burnt through before impacting Dunalley was privately owned.
Locals in the Tasmanian fishing village of Dunalley say the fire which ravaged their community would not have been so ferocious if hazard reduction burns had been carried out before the summer.
A massive fireball bears down on Dunalley on Friday. The Dunalley Primary School in the foreground would be soon destroyed.
[Source: Photo by Michael Goldsmith, Tasmania Fire Service,
^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-10/fireball-2jpg/4459102]
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A total of 126 properties were destroyed or damaged in the Dunalley fire, and a photo (above) given to the ABC yesterday and taken from a fire-fighting helicopter shows a giant fireball bearing down on the town at the height of the inferno.
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The following audio is hindsight feedback from local residents of Dunalley and the immediate surrounding area, about their citizen lay views about what could have been done to prevent Dunalley burning.
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Audio: Listen to Felicity Ogilvie’s report (ABC Radio News, AM Programme, 20130110):
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One resident who still has a home is oyster farmer Justin Gock.
“I believe that if you’ve got people living in areas where there’s substantial forests, there should be significant management plans in place to control situations like this,” he said.
“Because if these areas were back-burned like they used to and the infrastructure was in place, fair chance it might not have happened.”
Tony Disipio, who lost his house in the blaze, is critical about the lack of preventative burns around Dunalley.
“Well 25 years ago they used to burn off regularly around the hills, it was like a winter thing, a winter exercise,” he said.
“And I noticed over the years that there was just less and less of it.”
Homes damaged by bushfire seen from above between Dunalley and Boomer Bay, Tasmania Photo: A total of 126 properties were destroyed or damaged in the Dunalley fire. (AAP
Farmer Sandy Gray has also noticed that preventative burns have been declining in recent times.
“In the old days, they used to go around and just quietly do a few, especially on the northern, north-western sides of the townships like Dunalley. It’s a pity they don’t still do it,” he said.
The State Government and Fire Service are promising to review their policies on controlled burns, but with fire warnings still current for parts of the state, they say they will wait until the current crisis is over.
The Tasmanian Fire Service’s Deputy Chief Officer, Gavin Freeman, says there has been no reduction in preventative burn-offs near Dunalley.
“I don’t believe there has been less done. You can always look back with a bit of hindsight and say yes, we could do more perhaps,” he said.
“But until we get these fires under control and are able to look back and do a proper analysis of where the fires have burnt to and what they burnt through – and bear in mind, under catastrophic conditions – we don’t really know whether that field reduction burning would be a benefit or not.”
The fire service may do some burn-offs, but the responsibility for preparing for a bushfire lies with the land owner.
At Dunalley it appears most of the bushland the fire tore through is privately owned.
The Tasmanian Minister for Emergency Management, David O’Byrne, says public land accounts for 20 per cent of the area affected by the fire.
“Fuel reduction and that sort of management is a joint responsibility between government, in terms of our land and in the parks land, but also in the private land that is around Tasmania,” he said.
“It’s important we have a community conversation around this. Now is not the time for that conversation, we need to get these fires under control.
“Once we can assess the impact of the fuel loads around… we can have a discussion on the basis of fact and reality as opposed to people’s pretty raw emotions at the moment.”
Another Remote Ignition that has destroyed another National Park
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One of the many bushfires that beset New South Wales this month, purportedly ignited by lighting in the Warrumbungle National Park on Saturday 12th January 2013, has over a week later burned out over 54,000 hectares.
Warrumbungle National Park bushfire map
Labelled by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS) as the ‘Wambelong Fire‘,
since the ignition occurred in the vicinity of the Wambelong Creek inside the national park.
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Once again it seems that the remote location of the ignition prevented immediate response by a predominantly truck-based bushfire management organisation dependent upon volunteers.
The forecast bushfire weather last month was for this month to be extreme and worse, ‘catastrophic’ in inland and southern New South Wales. Temperatures were forecast to be in the 40s Celsius and with some regions expected to have strong winds. The bushfire risk was known. The Rural Fire Service warned the public of the risks of bushfire across the state.
However, the publicised information is spatial with the maps, and the following pertinent facts for this ‘Wambelong Fire‘ , a classified ‘Major Fire‘ have not been published.
Why not?
Forest Fire Danger Index, including the derived calculation breakdown shown
Fire fighting log of actions
Location of ignition(s) and estimate time of day
Time of detection (lag between ignition and detection)
Cause, even if unknown and still being investigated a week hence
Response time onsite resources (ground/air)
Initial fire-fighting resources deployed in first day/second day..
Issues and problems experiences by fire fighting due to lack of resources – prevention, monitoring, detection, response, suppression
Direct cost of fire fighting (RFS, and outsourced air charter, interstate resources)
Economic cost of the fire
The wildlife impact, given that it has burnt in National Park ecological assets
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If the public was provided with such information for each bushfire, taxpayers would begin realising the immense triple bottom line costs of bushfires (economic, social and ecological) and accept that more needs to be done about resourcing bushfire fire-fighting in order to mitgate bushfire substantial, destructive and long-term impacts.
In the case of the ‘Wambelong Fire‘ only the following information is currently officially published on the RFS website, with the previous days records back to 12th January archived and removed from the website :
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Wambelong WNP Fire (Warrumbungle National Park)
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ALERT LEVEL: Advice
LOCATION: Broadly bounded by roads linking Coonabarabran, Bugaldie, Tooraweenah, Coonabarabran 1km Sth Bugaldie village, 8km west Coonabarabran, western boundary entrance to Warrumbungle NP, 5 kms north of Tooraweenah township, 2kms from Newell Highway (east of Tooraweenah) Siding Spring Observatory is near the centre of the area burnt
COUNCIL AREA: Warrumbungle
STATUS: Being Controlled
TYPE: Bush/Scrub/Grass fire
FIRE: Yes
SIZE: 54,207 ha
MAJOR FIRE UPDATE AS AT 21 Jan 2013 07:11: A 53,000 hectare bush fire is continuing to burn in the Warrumbungle National Park to the west of Coonabarabran.
RESPONSIBLE AGENCY: Rural Fire Service
UPDATED: 20 Jan 2013 15:45 (Ed: late yesterday)
<<A 53,000 hectare bush fire is continuing to burn in the Warrumbungle National Park to the west of Coonabarabran.
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Current Situation
The bush fire is burning in the Bugaldie area, 1km south of Bugaldie village, 8km west of Coonabarabran and 5km north of the Tooraweenah township. Crews will spend today backburning along Mt Terrace Road. People in the area may see an increase of smoke and fire activity as a result.
Rainfall across the area has reduced fire activity on the fireground, this is helping firefighters work to contain the fire.
53 properties, 113 outbuildings, livestock and farm machinery have been destroyed as a result of this fire.
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Advice
If your life is at risk, call Triple Zero (000) immediately.
Continue to monitor the situation and follow your Bush Fire Survival Plan.
Keep checking www.rfs.nsw.gov.au, listen to local radio or by call the NSW RFS Bush Fire Information Line on 1800 679 737.
For information on road closures check http://livetraffic.rta.nsw.gov.au. Roads may be closed without notice.
For information on national park closures, please visit the National Parks and Wildlife visitor website.
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Recovery Information
NSW Police and the Ministry for Police and Emergency Services are coordinating the recovery effort.
Details of assistance can be found online at www.emergency.nsw.gov.au or by phoning the dedicated hotline number on 1800 018 444.
Counselling and Chaplaincy services are also on hand to provide assistance to residents.
A Disaster Recovery Centre is open 7 days a week from 8am-6pm. The centre is located at Coonabarabran Town Hall Supper Room on John Street.
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The next update on this fire will be at 10:00am Monday 21st or unless the situation changes.>>
National Parks ignored as ‘Ecological Assets’ worth saving from bushfire
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The Australian Government delegates management of national parks across Australia to the respective state governments. It is not working. State funding has been slashed and State governments’ interest in national park conservation are wanting and falling well short of 21 Century community expectations. The current and disturbing retrograde trend is seeing most state governments treating national parks under their care as tourist and recreational resources that in the case of bushfires are but a costly burden and expendable.
In New South Wales the authority charged with ecological conservation and protection of all national parks across New South Wales is the State-based NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) , which currently a diluted division with the Department of the Office of Environment and Heritage. The NPWS has an operational section that deals with bushfire management in national parks and works in co-operation with the RFS, a largely volunteer force sourced from local communities. The coalition of the RFS and the NPWS in NSW function with a joint delegated responsibility and accountability for bushfre management in national parks and reserves across NSW.
On its website, the NPWS only provides information about the closure of National Parks affected by bushfires, thus:
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<<Warrumbungle National Park – Fires, floods and park closures
Last update: 18/1/2013 11:59PM
Closed areas: Park closures will remain in force for this park or reserve for the next several days. Park closures and bans will be reviewed at 14.00hrs each afternoon.
Clearly, the combined management of the NPWS and the RFS in respect to bushfire fighting in the Warrumbungle National Park has been an abject failure. Most of the magnificent Warrumbungles have been incinerated. No information about the extent of the burning through the national park itself is provided by the NPWS or the RFS. Only the total 54,000 or so aggregate area, which includes farmland and rural property, has been reported.
This bushfire is yet another example of the national parks not being respected a conservation assets to be protected from burning like human life and property.
Just last October 2012, the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park was largely burnt out during the bushfire labelled as the ‘Macleay River Fire’ which burnt out 59,663 hectares. Responsible agency was the Rural Fire Service.
Before that in August 2012, the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, the NPWS deliberately started a broadscale hazard reduction burn deep into the Grose Wilderness well north of the township of Springwood. The fire escaped containment lines as the wind picked up and burnt out 5,000 hectares of protected natural World Heritage vegetation, before threatening the community of Bowen Mountain Park.
NSW Rural Fire Service spokeswoman Brydie O’Connor has said: “Conditions have been good for that hazard reduction. Obviously the wind came up a bit today but since it breached containment lines it actually dropped down a bit.”
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In the Warrumbungles, the ignition on 12th January was allowed to whip up into a fire front that become uncontrollable; “absolutely ferocious” according to Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner Rob Rogers.
But was it ferocious in the first hour of being ignited on 12th January – probably not. We’re RFS resources already stretched? Probably.
The bushfire under extreme weather conditions has ended up not only incinerating the majority of the Warrumbungles National Park, but has subsequently destroyed over 53 homes, more than 113 outbuildings, livestock, kilometres of fencing, pasture and agricultural machinery in the Coonabarabran area, as well as several buildings at the Siding Spring Observatory, Australia’s national astronomical observatory.
What National Park ecological values have been incinerated?
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The Warrumbungle National Park forms a vital part of the Brigalow Belt bioregion which otherwise has been largely deforested over two centuries of colonisation, leaving just the Warrumbungles natural for any remnant dependent biodiversity.
The affectionately named ‘Warrumbungles‘ support woodlands dominated by blue-leaved ironbark (Eucalyptus fibrosa), scribbly gum (Eucalyptus rossii), black cypress pine (Callitris endlicheri), whitewood (Atalaya hemiglauca) and rough-barked apple (Angophora floribunda) found on stony sandstone plateau and its streams.
Silver-leaved ironbark (Eucalyptus melanophloia), spotted gum (Eucalyptus maculata) and smooth-barked apple (Angophora costata) occur on stony hills in the north of the bioregion. Narrow-leaved red ironbark (Eucalyptus creba), white cypress pine (Callitris glaucophylla), red stringybark (Eucalyptus macrorhynca), patches of mallee (Eucalyptus sp.) and broom heath (Melaleuca uncinata) occur on gentler sandstone slopes.
There are 3 endangered ecological communities within the bioregion listed under Schedule 1 of the TSC Act. These are the semi-evergreen vine thicket Cadellia pentastylis (poline or scrub myrtle) and carbeen open forest communities. The bioregion is important for the long-term viability of these vegetation communities which are predominantly found here, with a small area lying in the Nandewar Bioregion. The carbeen open forest communities are now restricted to the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion and very limited areas of the Darling Riverine Plains Bioregion.
Benson (1999) notes brigalow, box woodlands and plains grasses as the most threatened plant communities in the bioregion. The grassy white box woodland community also occurs in this bioregion. It is nationally endangered and protected under the EPBC Act 1999. At a species level there are 4 endangered and 12 vulnerable species listed in the schedules of the TSC Act. Records within the bioregion tend to be concentrated in the major reserves and forests of the bioregion such as Goonoo State Forest, the Warrumbungles, Mt Kaputar and the Pilliga.
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What has been the bushfire’s impact on the Significant Fauna?
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Warrumbungle National Park circa 1992
[Source: ^http://las.new-england.net.au/2010/02/08/from-the-archive-warrumbungle-national-park/]
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Few faunal studies have been conducted by the NPWS in the Warrumbungles, so the pre-bushfire faunal population is little known.
<<Although few systematic surveys have been conducted in the bioregion, records from a variety of surveys can be used to illustrate the vertebrate fauna of the bioregion, which consists of 18 amphibian species, 68 reptiles, 281 birds and 82 mammal species.
Many of these species are considered threatened, including the endangered malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata), for which the bioregion contains important habitat, and the vulnerable koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) which has important populations in the Warrumbungles, the Pilliga and the area around Gunnedah (NSW NPWS 2000a). In this bioregion the tree species often selected by koalas include Blakely’s red gum, river red gum and white box, while pilliga box, poplar box, narrow-leaved ironbark and rough-barked apple are occasionally used for food (NSW NPWS 2000a).
Another significant mammal species in the bioregion is the vulnerable eastern pygmy possum (Cercartetus nanus) which has a very patchy distribution, with more than 10 records of the species known from each of only 5 locations in NSW, the Pilliga State Forest being one of them (NSW NPWS 2000a).
The birds of the bioregion are highly diverse, mainly consisting of tropical woodland species and comprising the largest number of Australian resident species of any bioregion. There are no major populations of rare or threatened birds in the bioregion and although many birds within the bioregion have restricted ranges, none is endemic. Exotic species are low in numbers and those present are located mainly around towns.
Although bird species diversity is high relative to other NSW bioregions, the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion has experienced major declines in ground-nesting, ground-feeding insectivorous and grassland birds, a trend common to many parts of Australia. An increased reporting rate in the bioregion’s rainforest and temperate forest taxa may reflect greater survey effort in these habitats. Reduction of bird diversity in habitat fragments and the continued loss of woodland and freshwater birds seem to be the prediction for the future. However, there was an increase in the numbers of mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) and the common myna (Acridotheres tristis).
Conservation of habitat is crucial to the survival of small grassland and woodland birds. This should include protecting a substantial and representative proportion of the woodland and grassland landscapes of the bioregion, as well as maintaining and increasing the connectivity between seasonally variable food sources. >>
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Apparently 80% of the heritage listed Warrumbungle National Park has been destroyed by this fire.
In anyone’s terms, 80% loss is an abject failure of fire-fighting.
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Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata)
(An endangered native of the Warrumbungles)
The circumstance of this ‘Wambelong Fire‘ has similarities to the McIntyre’s Hut Fire which in January 2003 started in remote national park, was left to burn because it was difficult to attack and was not immediately threatening houses. Ten days later it coalesced with other fires and became the infamous Canberra Firestorm where four people perished.
This ‘Wambelong Fire‘ also has similarities to the Gross Valley Fire of November 2006 in the Blue Mountains, which started on a remote Burra Korain Ridge, was similarly left to burn because it was difficult to attack and was not immediately threatening houses. Ten days later it coalesced with another fire and incinerated over 14,000 hectares of the magnificent Grose Valley including the iconic Blue Gum Forest.
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By 15th January this year, the RFS faced over 170 identified bushfires raging across the State and over 485 million hectares of bushland, national park and farmland have been destroyed by the bushfires. RFS fire-fighting resources were unquestionably stretched.
An aerial photo of the Wambelong Fire (Warrumbungle NP) smoke plume travelling 14km up into the atmosphere.
(Photo by a commercial airline pilot)
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Yet the NSW Government wants to cut Bushfire Fighting Resources ?
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The current New South Wales Government Treasury has demanded that the NSW RFS cuts costs of $11.7 million over four years, yet expects front line fire-fighting to meet community expectations of bushfire protection and suppression.
The current RFS resources cannot cope with current bushfire emergencies with what they’ve got, let alone to achieve the same fire-fighting outcomes with less resources.
How absurd, irresponsible and negligent!
In the face of known major bushfire emergency risk impacting the State of New South Wales and causing widespread destruction, the NSW Government by cutting resources to its sole emergency response agency and one already chronically under-resourced, is a callous abrogation of the NSW Government’s fiduciary duty to the people and assets of New South Wales.
Under catastrophic bushfire weather conditions, the NSW Government will be deliberately and unacceptably exposing rural New South Wales to catastrophic bushfire risk and disaster and opening the government to substantial civil class actions, yet more bushfire enquiries with damning reports, if not individual criminal prosecutions for the implicated Ministers and Premier.
The following article is telling. It dates from September 2012, just four months ago:
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<<With a bad season forecast, rural firefighters worry budget cuts may threaten property and lives, writes David Humphries.
For 50 of his 71 years, Brian McKinlay has been fighting bushfires or doing his utmost to prevent them. He was a brigade captain at Hornsby in 1970 and has been a group captain overseeing several brigades (mostly in the Hawkesbury) for the past 30 years.
A man not given to hysterical outbursts, right now he’s hot under the collar. And the brushfire he’s helping to fan as president of the Rural Fire Service Association – covering the 70,000 volunteers who make the RFS not only the world’s biggest fire service but also one of its higher-rated emergency services – threatens to spread on fronts across NSW.
In the process, firies hope to shake the O’Farrell government from the slumber of a cost-cutting policy that looks, when stripped bare, like penny-pinching, but which would burn more than political fingers if predictions of a horror bushfire summer are realised.
“We’re trying to make the state government aware a global approach to budget savings will have an unfair and unjust impact on bushfire fighting,” says McKinlay, a semi-retired registered surveyor. “The effects long term on the RFS will be quite profound and will hit morale.”
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But why such anxiety? First, some recent history.
State government revenues are in a pickle because receding consumer confidence and other factors have driven down goods and services tax (GST) receipts, and because other state sources such as property taxes are weak. The government’s labour bill is judged to be too high and a 1.1 per cent haircut was ordered across departments and agencies, with police the one exemption.
At the RFS, that converted to the fire chief, Shane Fitzsimmons, this month inviting staff to apply for voluntary redundancy. He’s said to want 120 departures from the 900 RFS staff – about one in eight.
“While the NSW RFS is committed to delivering on its cumulative savings target of $11.7 million over four years,” Fitzsimmons said in a media statement this week, “this process would not affect front-line and key support service areas, especially in relation to supporting and serving the community.”
Well, that’s that, then. We can all sleep soundly. But not quite. Assurances about not affecting “front-line” services are par for the course in such announcements. But the RFS is all about front-line services; they are its purpose for existence. If any job at the RFS was not directed at bolstering the bushfire fighting capacity and effort, what was it doing there in the first place?
“Seventy per cent of RFS staff are also volunteers or have been volunteers,” McKinlay says. “They have a great understanding of the system. They’re not in there just for the job.
”RFS staff are about 1% of the total and some are on dedicated programs, like work crews and management support for things like hazard reduction.”
If this was an efficiency drive targeting waste and inadequacy, let the government say so. Instead, it’s dressed up as fiscal imperative.
And that’s where we find the big sting. The RFS and other emergency services – the Fire and Rescue Service (the metropolitan fire brigades) and the State Emergency Services – are not funded like other government agencies. Their budgets comprise mandated contributions: 14.6% from the state, 11.7% from local government and 73.7% from insurance companies.
In other words, when the RFS talks about labour savings of $11.7 million over four years, the state government benefits by just $1.7 million, or about $427,000 a year.
McKinlay says: “One needs to appreciate the government predicament with revenue reduction but this brings about a harsh outcome with no real savings to the Treasury.”
So a one-size-fits-all policy, projected to the public as budget trimming, delivers to that purpose just a seventh of the promised pot. Most of the saving goes to insurance companies, which are under no promise to pass any savings to policy holders.
Indeed, the insurance lobby – now joined by the Shires Association – has been pressing for at least a decade to have the emergency services funding formula scrapped and replaced by a levy on properties, despite 6 per cent of NSW ratepayers already defaulting on rate demands they claim they cannot afford.
The NSW Treasury has hinted at sympathy for this switch and has begun formal talks on options. One emergency services insider told the Herald this week “the smoke and mirrors” artificial saving to government was regularly pointed out to ministers and backbenchers but this had not shifted government sentiment.
The Rural Fire Fighting Fund – the RFS budget – dropped this year from $271 million to $263 million. The government share was $38.5 million. It was the first time in 14 years that RFS funding fell. In that time, funding nearly quadrupled and rose on average by about 13 per cent a year.
That’s because nothing quite focuses government minds like disaster and the prospect of it. To be caught fiddling while the state burns is political folly of extraordinary arrogance or stupidity, akin to driving an unregistered car with dodgy brakes.
“The unprecedented rain we’ve had in recent years has led to an increase in fuel growth, particularly grass growth west of the Divide,” the RFS said in a written reply this week to questions from the Herald. “In some parts of western NSW, there has been more growth than we’ve seen in 30 or 40 years.”
And here’s a spooky thought. For the past 70 years, these conditions prevail about every 10 years. The last two occasions were in 1994-5 and 2001-02.
In the former, four people died and 225 homes were damaged or destroyed. The senior deputy state coroner, John Hiatt, investigated for 1½ years. His report became the basis for the 1997 Rural Fires Act and the modern RFS, with its single command and control structure replacing the disjointed previous regime of local governments effectively running their own brigades with all that meant for under-resourcing, incompatible communication systems and lack of clarity about who called the shots.
Some brigade tankers were built around 1930s flat top trucks, lacking speed, protection and cross-country endurance. What followed was a massive re-equipment program – involving 2500 new tankers and communication upgrades – as well as volunteer retraining and the professionalisation of RFS management.
By the summer of 2001-02, Sydney again was under fire. This time, however, we were better prepared. One hundred and 20 homes were lost or damaged but no lives were lost and the city’s outer defences were not breached, as they were six years earlier and as they would be with Canberra in 2003.
These aren’t improbable scenarios for Australia’s biggest city. With national parks to the south, west and north, much of Sydney is built on sandstone shelves that keep bushland root systems shallow and thus vulnerable to intense burning.
“Volunteers are concerned because they don’t know what’s going to happen to the RFS,” Brian McKinlay says. He concedes they are not likely to stop volunteering – an outcome that would give the Treasury a real financial headache – but warns that morale is a delicate fig leaf that would reveal unpleasant consequences if left to wither.>>
Meanwhile, instead of the NSW Government quickly and responsibly coming to the financial and humanitarian assistance of residents who have suffered directly from this ‘Wambelong Fire‘, and in many cases lost everything as a result, the local Warrumbungle Shire Council has set up the Warrumbungle Shire Mayor’s Bushfire Appeal and is appealing for donations from members of the public who wish to assist.
State Government disinterest, under-resourcing and disregard for bushfire emergencies is disgusting.
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Footnote
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<<The Blue Mountains District sent several crews of volunteers to fires in western and southern areas of NSW last week.
A strike team of five trucks, 22 volunteers and team leader Duncan Allan travelled to Coonabarabran on Sunday morning, January 13 where 51 properties were lost in one of the worst NSW bushfires in a decade.
(Ed: If these fire fighters were paid NSW Fire Brigade members, each would have been compensated thousands for their efforts in earned pay and award entitlements under The Crown Employees [Fire and Rescue Permanent Firefighting Staff] Award 2011. This is how our governments with ‘other’ priorities save money).
Several other Blue Mountains RFS volunteers and staff assisted the Incident Management Team, and a team from the Police Rescue also attended.
Strike team leader Duncan Allan said the group returned to Katoomba RFS district headquarters on January 18 very tired but satisfied after five tough days helping communities near Coonabarabran.
“It was a sizeable and complex fire over there and by the time we’d left, the perimeter of that fire was about 100km,” he said.
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“There’s a world of difference because they don’t have as many resources and equipment as most of the Blue Mountains brigades…many of them are farmers and have been there for generations.”
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“It covered both national parks and private farmland and there was also a smaller fire burning further north of the main fire front. Our strike team consisted of brigade members from Glenbrook, Blaxland, Warrimoo, Linden and Woodford and our role was in maintaining the control lines at the southern end of the fire.
“It was pretty hot conditions and we didn’t get much sleep, but we got to meet some of the local rural brigade members in the Coonabarabran region which was good.
“There’s a world of difference because they don’t have as many resources and equipment as most of the Blue Mountains brigades, but they make up for that with incredibly good local knowledge, as many of them are farmers and have been there for generations.”
Air operations specialists from Blue Mountains District left for the town on January 19 (Ed: a week after the fire started) and a remote area fire team, airbase operations and air radio operations specialists were despatched to Cooma where another major bushfire struck.
Other Blue Mountains RFS volunteers helped with fighting a bushfire in Wollondilly.
After a welcome return to cooler and more humid conditions in recent days, most of the fires are no longer threatening property and some are only under ‘patrol’ status now.
In a statement on its Facebook page last weekend, Blue Mountains District RFS said “the effort and commitment put in by our volunteers has been amazing and is very much appreciated by our colleagues in these areas.” (Ed: Compulsory government spin to supplant genuine compensation – i.e. money).
“It is wonderful to know that we have so many people willing to help where they can.”>>
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[Source: ‘Local Firies help bushfire emergency’, 20130123, by journalist Shane Desiatnik, Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper, p.13)
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This fire has now burned out 56,281 ha, just like Macleay River Bushfire in Oct 2012!
Official RFS Update on this Bushfire as at 20130129
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Wambelong WNP
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ALERT LEVEL: Advice
LOCATION: Broadly bounded by roads linking Coonabarabran, Bugaldie and Tooraweenah. 1km south of Bugaldie village, 8km west of Coonabarabran, western boundary entrance to Warrumbungle NP, 5km north of Tooraweenah township, 2km from Newell Highway (east of Tooraweenah). Siding Spring Observatory is near the centre of the burnt area.
COUNCIL AREA: Warrumbungle
STATUS: Under Control
TYPE: Bush/Scrub/Grass fire
FIRE: Yes SIZE: 56281 ha
RESPONSIBLE AGENCY: Rural Fire Service
UPDATED: 29 Jan 2013 13:25
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[Source: New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Current Fires and Incidents, Wambelong WNP Bushfire, ^http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=683], accessed 20130129, note this information is routinely deleted by the RFS so will shortly not be available to the public. It’s called hiding the truth).
China Central Television (CCTV) building in Beijing in a gloomy coal fired smog
An all too regular and deadly occurrence for Beijing locals.
[Photo: Reuters]
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China’s urban air pollution is serious, lethal and chronic.
It is a direct consequence of excessive dependent use of coal-fired power by industry, exponential growth in petrol/diesel vehicle use. In the capital Beijing’s case, Beijing’s geographic location at the northern tip of the North China Plain bounded by the Xishan and Yanshan mountain ranges, places it in natural valley head air trap.
Under frequent meterological conditions, ambient air around Beijing has nowhere to go, and so lingers and becomes trapped for many days at a time.
But introduce massive industrial and transport pollution with this natural and known lack of breeze, unable to fan away and dissipate local carbon monoxide pollution somewhere else, and so Beijing’s air becomes suffocatingly deadly smog.
So Beijing is not a place tolerant of industrialised pollution.
Beijing does not have to aspire to 1980s Los Angeles smog infamy, yet blind industrialism has slowly fueled a degradation of this ancient cultural city into a replica Los Angeles with all the ugly economic waste negativity.
In the past three days, this is just what has again besetted Beijing – trapped ambient air pumped with massive local Beijing industry and transport carbon monoxide, has grabbing again world attention and empathetic concern for Beijing locals trying to breathe.
As part of an emergency response to ease seriously dangerous air pollution the government of China has ordered government vehicles off Beijing roads.
<<Beijing hospitals have been inundated with patients complaining of heart and respiratory ailments and the website of the capital’s environmental monitoring centre crashed. Hyundai Motor’s venture in Beijing suspended production for a day to help ease the pollution, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Measurements of PM2.5, fine airborne particulates that pose the severest health risks, rose as high as 993 micrograms per cubic metre in Beijing on January 12, compared with World Health Organisation guidelines of no more than 25.
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‘Beijing’s Air Quality Index was as high as 500 at 6am on Monday.’
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Air Quality Index (AQI)
PM2.5
Health Advisory
Good (0-50)
None
Moderate (51-100)
Unusually sensitive people should consider reducing prolonged or heavy exertion.
Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups
(101-150)
People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion.
Unhealthy
(151-200)
People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion; everyone else should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion.
Very Unhealthy (201-300)
People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid all physical activity outdoors. Everyone else should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion.
Hazardous
(301-500)
Everyone should avoid all physical activity outdoors; people with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should remain indoors and keep activity levels low.
Long-term exposure to fine particulates raises the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases as well as lung cancer, according to the World Health Organisation (^WHO).
”Pollution levels this high are extreme even for Beijing,” the Beijing head of ^Greenpeace East Asia climate and energy campaign, Li Yan, said.
”Although the government has announced efforts to cut pollution, the problem is regional and to fix Beijing’s problem, we also have to fix industrial pollution in neighbouring regions like Hebei and Tianjin and even as far as Inner Mongolia.”
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Exposure to PM2.5 helped cause a combined 8,572 premature deaths in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xi’an in 2012, and led to economic losses of $US1.08 billion ($1.02 billion), according to estimates in a study by Greenpeace and Peking University’s school of public health published on December 18.
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”The number of people coming into our emergency room suffering heart attacks has roughly doubled since Friday when the air pollution became really severe,” the deputy head of cardiology at Peking University People’s Hospital, Ding Rongjing, said.
China, which the ^World Bank estimates has 16 of the world’s 20 most-polluted cities, is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
On Sunday, Beijing began its emergency-response plan to the pollution, which included ordering government vehicles off the roads to cut usage by 30%, according to Xinhua, citing the director of the city’s environmental protection bureau’s air quality department, Yu Jianhua.
The plan also calls for construction sites to limit activity that creates large amounts of dust and asks industrial companies to reduce emissions.
Residents are advised to stay indoors and use public transport if they need to go out, while primary schools should reduce outdoor activities, Xinhua said.>>
[Ed: Problem is that Australia’s coal exports, while driving China’s prized economic boom, at the same time are poisoning urbanised Chinese with coal-fired carbon monoxide.
The progressive narrowness harks to Dickensian London:
“This is a London particular . . . A fog, miss.”]
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Australian Government Clean Energy Future..plan
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<<..Outlines the existing policies already underway to address climate change and cut carbon pollution and introduces several critical new initiatives.
The plan has four pillars: a carbon price; renewable energy; energy efficiency; and action on land. The plan also details how the Government is supporting Australian households, businesses and communities to transition to a ‘clean energy future‘.>>
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Foreword
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<<The Australian Government has been advised by scientists that the world’s climate is changing and that there will be adverse effects on our nation if the trend of rising temperatures continues.
As a hot and dry continent, Australia has more to lose from climate change than all other developed countries. There are significant risks to our environment and our economy.
The clear scientific consensus is that human activity which releases carbon pollution into the atmosphere, mainly the use of fossil fuels, is risking dangerous climate change. This is why the Government has adopted a plan for a clean energy future for Australia.
The plan will cut pollution and drive investment helping to ensure Australia’s prosperity in the low pollution world of the future.
We will do this by introducing a carbon price into Australia’s economy. This will put a price tag on every tonne of carbon pollution released into the atmosphere by the country’s biggest polluters – around 500 businesses will be required to pay for their pollution under the carbon pricing mechanism.
The carbon price will create a financial incentive to reduce carbon pollution that will flow through our economy.
Households will be looked after with tax cuts, higher family payments and increases in pensions and benefits, to meet the costs passed through by some businesses.
The carbon price will change Australia’s electricity generation by encouraging investment in renewable energy like wind and solar power and the use of cleaner fuels like natural gas.
Treasury modelling shows the economy will continue to grow strongly with a carbon price. Extensive analysis by economists and independent institutions such as the Productivity Commission has demonstrated that market mechanisms like a carbon price or an emissions trading system are the cheapest ways of reducing pollution.
The Government is committed to supporting jobs as the economy is transformed. That is why we will support jobs throughout manufacturing, including in the steel and food processing industries, and in coal mining.
Australia has boundless renewable energy resources. We need to do more to take advantage of these resources.
The Government’s Renewable Energy Target, combined with the carbon price, will deliver around $20 billion of investment in renewable energy by 2020 in today’s dollars. It will mean that the equivalent of 20% of Australia’s electricity will come from renewable sources by 2020.
The Government will also drive this shift by creating a $10 billion commercially oriented Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in renewable energy and innovative technologies to cut pollution. The world is moving and economies which do not start cleaning up now will fall behind.
Australia has spent the last decade working out that putting a price on carbon pollution is the cheapest way to tackle climate change. The Government’s plan for a clean energy future has been negotiated by the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. The Committee has agreed to a comprehensive set of measures to help fight climate change.
The Government is separately investing in further measures to ease the economic transition to a carbon price, as well as taking additional steps to reduce carbon pollution… Carbon pricing and moving towards a clean energy future is a reform we need to keep our economy competitive, to protect our environment and to do the right thing for our children and future generations.>>
[Ed: Note: Due to this large file size, it may be quicker to click on the above link, then on your web browser select File, Save As… , then once downloaded, to access the saved PDF file]
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Meanwhile, Australia’s coal exports to China continue unabated – in 2011, 13.7 million tonnes of metallurgical coal.
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One of the many of Australia’s working open cut coal mines, this one in the Hunter Valley
[Source: ^http://www.kateausburn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/DSC052381.jpg
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Australia provides around 30% of the world coal trade, which still accounts for 40% of total world power generation.
In 2011, Australia was the world’s largest exporter of metallurgical coal and the second largest exporter of thermal coal. Australia is also the fourth largest producer, and has the fifth largest resources of black coal in the world.
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[Ed: This makes Australia the prime pusher of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet.]
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Australia’s accessible economic demonstrated resources are sufficient to sustain current black coal production rates for nearly 100 years.2 Brown coal accessible economic resources are estimated to be able to sustain current brown coal production for over 500 years.2
Coal is Australia’s largest energy export earner. In 2010–11, Australia exported 283 million tonnes (Mt) of metallurgical and thermal coal to world markets worth A$43.7 billion. Total coal (black, saleable) production in Australia in 2010–11 is estimated to have been 345 Mt. Over the medium term, total Australian metallurgical and thermal coal exports are forecast to increase by nearly 72 per cent: from 283 Mt in 2010–11 to 486 Mt, valued at $56.5 billion, in 2016–17.
The majority of Australia’s metallurgical and thermal coal exports were exported to the Asian region in 2011. This leading position has grown over many years of coal trade, based on the quality of Australian coal resources and the ability of Australian industry to meet and respond to the needs of its customers.
In 2011, Australia’s top four export markets for metallurgical coal were Japan (40.8 Mt), India (28.9 Mt), Republic of Korea (16.5 Mt) and China (13.7 Mt). Australia’s top four export markets for thermal coal were Japan (65.4 Mt), the Republic of Korea (29.5 Mt), China (19.9) and Taiwan (19.1 Mt).
Australian brown coal (lignite) production, mainly from the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, was 68.75 Mt in 2009–10. Brown coal is used domestically in electricity production. Coal, both black and brown, accounted for over 75 per cent of Australian electricity generation in 2009–10..
Hunter Valley Coal Train, loaded with black coal for export
Australia: committed to supporting jobs in coal mining, despite a domestic economy not allowed to fall behind, while climate change negotiations are for other government departments to distract the limelight.
So the Australian Government’s plan for coal exports is to nearly double capacity from 2008 to 2017, while at the same time..
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“adopting a plan for a clean energy future for Australia to cut pollution and drive investment helping to ensure Australia’s prosperity in the low pollution world of the future.”
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How is such a ‘plan’ not a right proper farce?
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Coal stocks await loading for export in Newcastle. Photo: A record 114 million tonnes of coal was export from Newcastle in 2011
(Corey Davis: Getty Images)
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Newcastle Port Corporation CEO Gary Webb says record coal export figures are due to all stakeholders working together on the Hunter’s coal chain network.
There were record figures for December while the total coal export figure for 2011 was just over 114 million tonnes – up 11 per cent on the previous year.
The trade is worth nearly $13 billion. There were several extended maintenance outages on the coal chain network in 2011, but Mr Webb says they had no impact.
“Those known maintenances are factored in to the modelling that is done for the coal chain,” he said. “And it is just a credit to all the players, the miners, the load points, the above rail operators, ARTC, the terminals and ourselves to make it all fit together.”
Newcastle Port Corporation says there is no doubt coal export records will continue to be broken, as new infrastructure comes on line. Planning is currently underway for Port Waratah Coal Services T4 loader, while mining magnate Nathan Tinkler also wants to build a loader.
Mr Webb says further growth is inevitable. “These records will become regular things,” he said. “The framework provides for the right place for the next terminal. It provides for the certainty for long term contracts to be met and realised. And certainly we will continue to see export records continued to be met calendar year and financial year for the next few years.”
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[Source: ‘Record coal exports for Hunter’, ABC News, 20120106, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-06/record-coal-exports-for-hunter/3760768]
The Australian Government continues to encourage operation of Australia’s most polluting coal-fired power station. Worse is that corporate owner AGL pays no tax.
<<More than a decade after first trying to get control of Loy Yang Power Station, AGL has won the prize and is paying just $400 million less than the $3.5 billion enterprise value of the original deal.
Along the way, it has created competition policy history by challenging the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission in court. Yesterday, it finally forced the regulator to admit it had erred in its original rejection of the deal. Politically, its timing is perfect because it gets to collect $240.1m in cash to compensate for the cost of a carbon pricing scheme that Tony Abbott says he will scrap when he gets into government next year.
The $1.1bn carbon permits AGL boss Michael Fraser will collect will be worthless, but then he won’t be paying any tax.
The Loy Yang vehicle is virtually in the hands of its bankers now, which is one reason AGL wants to take full control before its 32 per cent equity stake turns into a millstone around Fraser’s neck.
Joint venture partner, Japanese utility TEPCO, is under government control since last year’s nuclear accident in Japan.
On balance, Fraser can say he has got a good deal, but against the history, this maybe not be quite as good as it first looks.
Certainly, it is not as good a deal as his bankers got when you consider Citibank and Deutsche will collect $8.3m in underwriting fees on a deal with zero risk, being sold at a massive 22 per cent discount on a stock that, for its defensive qualities, will fly out the door.
This must rank as the most expensive call centre in Australia.
Citi picks up another $900,000 for advisory work and just how much the real star of the show, competition lawyers Ashurst, picks up was not disclosed.
The ACCC had blocked the deal because it was worried Australia’s then biggest energy retailer, by controlling 30 per of Victorian coal, would set the scene for mass consolidation.
Barriers to entry created by the vertical integration were, of course, not as the ACCC first imagined, as the Federal Court told the ACCC in 2003 and the market has shown ever since.
The market is now dominated by three integrated suppliers — AGL, Origin and TRUenergy — with a plethora of smaller retail firms and generators headed by Tasmanian Hydro and Snowy Hydro.
While final ACCC clearance was a walk in the park, Fraser has timed his run well, because the next consolidation will be looked at more seriously. This is saying something, when you realise this deal was the result of some five months of negotiation.
Fraser says the deal works out cheaper than the NSW assets it missed out on 18 months ago and cements the company’s place in the Victorian and South Australian market. And he still has plenty of fire power to bid for the next round of NSW privatisations.
Just how the political windfall over the carbon pricing mechanism works remains to be seen. The Opposition Leader has said he will abolish it, but what will be left in its place is the key. Abbott could reduce the confusion by laying down the specifics of his plan.
The carbon tax is, of course, another impost for already stretched consumers, but utility prices will be the main item to increases in price. On government estimates, a $50 shirt will cost 65c more when the scheme starts on July 1, and most shirts are imported, anyway.
Myer has said its costs will rise by only $4.5m on a $1bn cost base. That explains why the retailers should be leading the charge telling consumers the impact won’t be as severe as some fear. Still, consumer sentiment is such that that will be a tough sell.
Big impact: The huge plume of smoke from the Victorian fires as seen from the NASA earth observatory 20070111.
[Source: Herald Sun]
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Grossly Under-resourced bushfire emergency management sees millions of tonnes of smoke polluting Australia.
2007 (even before the 2009 Bushfires):
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<<Victoria’s monster bushfires have generated the power of more than 100 atomic bombs and pumped out millions of tonnes of pollution, greenhouse gas and toxic clouds, scientists say.
The tens of million of tonnes of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by the 1 million ha blaze exceed the combined emissions of the state’s power stations, industry and cars by about 30 percent, according to figures compiled for the Herald Sun online by the CSIRO.
Victoria produced about 7.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the past month from burning coal, petrol and gas; while bushfires raging in the same time pumped out 10.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
CSIRO atmospheric scientist Mick Meyer said the emissions from Victorian fires were about 10 times normal.
The fires also generated 2.5 million tonnes of carbon monoxide; 300,000 tonnes of volatile organic compounds such as (Ed: acetaldehyde), benzene, formaldehyde and hydrocarbons; 85,000 tonnes of methane; 64,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides; and 59,000 tonnes of smoke, Dr Meyer’s calculations show.
..The (Ed: carbon monoxide), methane and nitrogen oxide emissions would add to global warming with the heat-absorbing gases creating an effect equal to 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
“The emissions from bushfires including savannah fires, wildfires and fuel reduction burns account for about 3 to 4 % of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions,” Dr Meyer said.
The energy produced by the blazes also dwarfs that produced by humans, according to data provided by the CSIRO and energy agencies.
The fires have burned enough fuel to provide the entire state’s electricity needs for two-and-a-half years, or 125,000 Gigawatt hours, equal to the energy of 112 one-megaton atomic bombs.
CSIRO Fire behaviour expert Justin Leonard said the emission estimates could also vary depending on whether the fires blazed through eucalypt or pine forests, grasslands or scrub, and the thickness of the fuel.
A new study by the Melbourne University, the CSIRO and the national Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre has begun to better gauge the amount of pollutants produced by bushfires.
Country Fire Authority spokesman Ken O’Brien said many people were unaware of the colossal power of an out-of-control bushfire.
“You only have to see a reasonably small fire to realise the amount of energy produced,” Mr O’Brien said.
“But one million hectares being burned is an awful release of power.”
Researchers say the most immediate pollution threat to Victorians came from tiny particles in smoke – with about 59,000 tonnes flung into the atmosphere by the fires.
While comprising just 0.25% of the emissions, the Environment Protection Authority reported last month that the air quality over Melbourne was the worst since records began thirty years ago.
NASA satellites also clearly showed massive plumes of smoke spread as far as New Zealand and Tasmania.
An EPA high smoke advisory for the Latrobe Valley and East Gippsland was still in place late this week as smoke levels there remained up to ten times normal levels.
EPA spokesman John Williamson said the community could expect poor visibility and high levels of air particles from bushfire smoke.
The state’s chief health officer Dr Robert Hall said excessive smoke could aggravate heart or lung conditions including asthma and also trigger respiratory problems in others.
“It is likely that everyone within the community may be affected and they should avoid prolonged or heavy physical activity and stay indoors whenever possible,” he said.
<<The deadly bushfires that have claimed hundreds of lives will also harm the environment as the carbon-rich eucalypt forests release their payload of CO2.
The deadly bush fires in Australia have released millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to more than a third of the country’s CO2 emissions for a whole year, according to scientists. According to Mark Adams of the University of Sydney. “Once you burn millions of hectares of eucalypt forest, then you are putting into the atmosphere very large amounts of carbon.”
Australia’s total emissions per year are around 330m tonnes of CO2. Adams’s previous research has shown that the bush fires in 2003 and 2006-07 had put up to 105 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because they burned up land carrying 50 to 80 tonnes of carbon per hectare.
This time, however, the forests being destroyed are even more carbon-rich, with more than 100 tonnes of above-ground carbon per hectare. The affected area is more than twice the size of London and takes in more than 20 towns north of Melbourne, so the CO2 emissions from this year’s disaster could be far larger than previous fires.
“The world’s forests are crucial to the long-term future of the planet as they lock away millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide,” said Robin Webster, a climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “More must be done to protect them – deforestation is having a devastating effect and as climate change takes hold, forest fires like those in Australia are likely to become more frequent.”
The carbon dioxide emissions from forest fires are not counted under the agreements made by countries in the Kyoto Protocol, though it is being considered for inclusion in the successor treaty that will be debated later this year in Copenhagen. The usual reasoning behind it was that, with any fires, new growth of vegetation would take up any extra CO2 that had been released. “That is true to a point, but if the long-term fire regime changes – we are now starting to have more fires – we may completely change the carbon balance of the forest,” said Adam.
He added: “All informed scientific opinion suggests that whatever new protocol is signed [at the UN summit] in Copenhagen or elsewhere will include forest carbon, simply because to not do so would be to ignore one of the biggest threats to the global atmospheric pool of carbon dioxide, the release of carbon in fires.”
Another out-of-control bushfire in Warrumbungle National Park (350km NW of Sydney)
This one a few days ago shown raging towards Australia’s Siding Spring Observatory in the Warrumbungle Ranges.
Photo: NSW Rural Fire Service, 20130113
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This latest bushfire episode has reported over 40,000 hectares of National Park burnt, which is how much CO2?
<<The worst bushfires in NSW for more than a decade have ripped through the state’s north-west, taking 33 homes and destroying 40,000 hectares of land.
More than 80 Rural Fire Service volunteers supported by 18 aircraft spent most of Monday trying to contain the 100-kilometre wide front that burned through the Warrumbungle National Park near Coonabarabran.>>
Warrumbungle National Park and Australia’s Premier Observatory
(Source: Google Maps)
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<<About 100 people living in the area were forced to evacuate their homes and the RFS on Monday night said the blaze remained ”a large and dangerous bushfire” that was worse than the Black Christmas fires in 2001.
On Monday night there were 125 bushfires burning in NSW, 30 of which were uncontained.
The acting Premier, Andrew Stoner, described the bushfire season so far as ”a hell of a week” but while milder temperatures helped firefighters on Monday, winds and temperatures were expected to increase by Friday.
The Bureau of Meteorology said most of the state would be in the high 20s to mid-30s with Sydney temperatures rising from 30 degrees on Wednesday to 37 on Friday. Bourke is forecast to be in the high 30s for most of the week, peaking at 40 degrees on Saturday.
As Australia recovers from last week’s record-breaking temperatures, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, said it was clear heatwaves were occurring more frequently, and would increase further as the planet warms.
”It [last week’s heatwave] could be [a result of climate change], but I wouldn’t draw any conclusions on one single event,” Dr Pachauri said. ”I think you have to take the whole aggregation over a period of time and then come up with the conclusion, which is precisely what we have done.
”They [the findings] are very, very clear. Heatwaves are on the increase, extreme precipitation events are on the increase, and on that there is really no room for doubt any more.”
An RFS spokesman said the Warrumbungle National Park fire had been ”absolutely shocking”.
”At one point there was a smoke plume rising 14 kilometres in the air. The fire was so big and there was so much smoke, it was shocking,” he said.
”It’s still not under control. It’s still burning in the Bugaldie area. It’s been a big effort to get around it.
”The winds, the temperature, the low humidity, just shocking.”
A teacher at Coonabarabran’s high school, Peter Morrissey, nearly lost the family home in the Yerrinan Valley.
”We’re very lucky, but unfortunately that’s not the case for everyone,” he said. ”The home just next door has been burned to the ground, while others have remained untouched.”
Firefighters were able to establish containment lines on a fire about 20 kilometres east of Cooma, in the state’s south. The fire burned through more than 12,000 hectares of bush and grassland.
RFS volunteers have worked for a week now, fighting more than 100 fires across the state. ”They are an amazing bunch of men and women,” the spokesman said. ”They’re buggered but they’re not broken,” he said.>>
[Ed: “Shocking” belies a cultural, even inherited colonial mindset of submissive genuflection in the face of Act of God ‘natural disaster.’
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Such primitive defeatism encourages complacent status quo of those in charge to prevail and with impunity be able to rise above all criticism, just like in the presence of devine aristocracy]
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Tasman Peninsula Bushfire January 2013
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Ed: Australian uncontrolled Major Bushfires must be releasing more than 100 Hiroshima’s of Carbon Monoxide every year ~ yet culturally no-one raises a questioning eyelid of the slightest concern.
They want to stop labelling species as “common” like the “Common” Wombat. Many once ‘common’ wildlife species like the Koala, Thylacene, Platypus are either extinct or approaching extinction due to Humanity’s dismissive common treatment, disrespect and slaughter.
Many wildlife species with the word ‘common’ in their name: Common Brushtail Possum, Common Ringtail Possum, Common Wallaroo are mostly treated with common contempt as if vermin. Look at Lenah Meats of Launceston in Tasmania. Common Possum and Common wallaby are native wildlife but are being poached for butchering, fur and profit. Lenah claims it is a company with “a deep ethical position“…operating from “a climate change perspective“. ^http://www.lenah.com.au
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The intrinsic value of ‘Home Range’
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Many species of wildlife are territorial. It does not so much mean that they are aggressively territorial, as modern society has come to interpret the word ‘territorial’, but that the wildlife adopt a ‘Home Range‘. They live, feed, breed within that home range, because Nature has endowed sufficient food richness and sanctuary to enable them to survive in an ecologically sustainable population. Territorial wildlife that are forced outside their home range, generally die. Deforestation and large bushfires do this. The cumulative impact is regional extinction, particularly given that much wildlife habitat has long been reduced to remnant disparate islands barely large enough to sustain territorial wildlife populations.
Similarly, when people live in a place for a while, they become more acquainted, familar, fond and attached to the place. They get to know the local characteristics, habits, patterns, and idiosyncracies of a place that are particular to that place. Their knowledge about the place deepens to an insight and a local wisdom and this instils affection and a sense of belonging to the place and an empathy and custodial, if not parental, responsibility for its inhabitant creatures and their habitat. Personal attachment to a place is the when a place becomes valued as a home. One’s home is not just a roof over one’s head. It is the immediate surroundings, connections and amenity – the Human Home Range. The place becomes ‘special’.
A home and a home range hold personal value and over time, one’s daily life, lifestyle and home and home range become intertwined. This naturally engenders a need to preserve and protect the place almost in a territorial sense, because without it one’s own daily life and lifestyle values are impacted. After all humans are animals and have derived common primordal instincts and behaviours.
And so it is wholly understandable that when external harm impacts upon one’s home and home range, response is powerfully emotive and vocal because the sense of loss is personal and soulful.
This month’s tale about the killing of the local Wylie’s Baths Octopus may seem to outsiders to be a relatively ephemeral case in point. But what matters is the impact on people and their home and on wildlife and their home. Another example could equally apply to BP oil covered Pelicans along the Lousianna coast, firestorms and tempest that have ripped through human and ecological communities. It is about a place that has become special and this is revealed in the emotive way the tale is told and the feelings expressed by locals.
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Coogee’s historic Wylie’s Baths, Sydney’s seaside pool at Coogee since 1907
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<<It was an unusual whodunit: a much-loved octopus found dead at Coogee’s historic Wylie’s Baths. But it did not take long to find the likely perpetrator – an overzealous cleaner armed with chlorine.
”I’ve been swimming there for 11 years and I’ve never seen anything remotely like this,” said Coogee resident Matthew Martin who described the scene at the tidal bath as a ”dead sea”.
Wylies Baths Coogee.
”Not only was every marine fibre bleached white and dead, so was every marine creature that usually lives in the pool.”
The Wylie’s Baths Trust, which runs the site, has posted a mea culpa on its website about the death of its resident octopus ”apparently as a result of chlorine contamination”.>>
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<<As you may be aware, very regrettably our resident octopus recently died, apparently as a result of chlorine contamination in the pool. Chlorine has been used to clean the pool surrounds for many years. It is a necessary function of our duty of care to manage serious slip hazards caused by the build-up of marine growth.
The success or otherwise of the cleaning process is a complex issue, dependent upon many factors including frequency, volume, timing, tide, temperature and swell. It appears in this instance, we got it wrong.
Wylie’s Baths Trust and Management are engaging Randwick City Council and the EPA on the matter and will be reviewing our pool cleaning procedures as part of the investigation. We look forward to patrons ongoing support in our endeavours to maintain the pristine, safe and natural Wylie’s Baths environment we all hold so dear.>>
<<The notice said the ”success or otherwise of the cleaning process” – to routinely remove slip hazards posed by algae growing around the pool – was dependent on a range of factors including ”frequency, volume, timing, tide, temperature and swell”.
”It appears in this instance, we got it wrong,” it said.
But that was not enough for Randwick City Council, which said the pool must come up with another cleaning method to prevent slip hazards at the baths.
Although some Sydney councils use chlorine or another algicide to do this, all pools cleaned by Randwick – including the neighbouring ladies’ baths – are cleaned using a hot-water pressure system.
”We are committed to safe maintenance practices which do not harm our local marine life,” a council spokeswoman said.
A spokesman for the trust, Tony Cousins, said it had asked the Environmental Protection Authority to help it review its cleaning.
”If there’s a good option for us to use other than chlorine, we’ll be dead keen on using it, I can assure you,” Mr Cousins said.
But he said he did not think the incident had stirred lingering disquiet about management changes last year, which were part of an attempt to make the pool more financially sustainable.
Regular swimmer Fiona Giles said the mishap was ”arguably a direct result of the communication problems that persist” at the site.
Wylie’s had recently returned to cleaning the pool with chlorine after using grit and a bristle brush proved ineffective.
Sydney Institute of Marine Sciences director Peter Steinberg, a professor at the University of NSW, said the effect of chlorine on marine life was localised and short-term, but its use had ”diminished significantly in recent years”.
”It’s frowned upon by the agencies that worry about those kinds of things,” he said.
Work was ongoing to develop non-toxic wax coatings to control algae, he said, but other experiments using small grazing snails have been abandoned.
”It was difficult to corral the snails in the end,” he said.
A Coogee local, Reg Chappell, said management might have made an error cleaning the pool. But he and fellow regular swimmer Sam Camer said the marine life – which in the past has included bream and a Port Jackson shark – would return with the tide. Less conventional methods have been deployed in the past to clear Wylie’s of unwanted marine visitors: a persistent wobbegong was once hurled back into the sea by its tail.
”We threw him over the corner, but then he just came back in again,” Mr Camer said.>>
This month’s tale about the killing of the local Wylie’s Baths Octopus at Coogee compares with a previous tale just a few beaches up at Clovelly about the killing of a well known Blue Groper fish affectionately known by many locals simply as ‘Bluey‘.
Clovelly’s much loved Blue Groper – a gentle giant
(Eastern Blue Groper – Achoerodus viridis)
[Source: ^http://regainingparadise.wordpress.com/category/clovellys-blue-groper/
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“In the old days (1940’s and 1950s) my friends and I used to be able to go to Rottnest (Perth’s holiday island) and spear a boat load of dhuies (best fish around). These days there’s nothing there – I don’t understand it.”
~ 85 year old veteran Western Australian spear fisherman Maurie Glazier quoted by niece Jo Buckee 20040908.
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2005
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<<Outraged beachgoers have accused divers of spearing one of Sydney’s friendly, much loved blue gropers at Clovelly Bay, a repeat of the “murder” of a similar fish which sparked a public outcry three years ago.
NSW Fisheries and Randwick Council (Sydney) are investigating claims that two men emerged from the water with a 1.5-metre spear and a mesh bag containing a female groper at about 9.30am on Sunday.
In 2002, the then premier, Bob Carr, expressed outrage at the killing of a groper at Clovelly which was initially thought to be Bluey – an inquisitive fish which was something of a local character.
Sam Zahedi, a member of Clovelly Surf Club, was among those who remonstrated with the divers involved in Sunday morning’s incident.
“I saw two men come out of Clovelly baths – both of them had diving suits on,” he said.
“One had a spear about five-and-a-half feet long and one had an underwater bag with a groper in it.” He said the fish had the distinctive yellow and grey-brown colouring of female gropers.
Kelly Stevens, a spokeswoman for NSW Fisheries, said: “We have had a report of this incident and we are investigating.”
A council beach inspector spoke to the men about spearfishing, although it is unclear whether the officer saw a groper.
Gropers are a cherished element of Sydney’s sea life and are famed for their tame behaviour. The coast between Bronte and Coogee is an aquatic reserve and killing gropers carries a fine of up to $11,000.
Among their fans is Mr Carr, who enjoys snorkelling at Clovelly and who described those responsible for the 2002 death as “mongrels”. It later emerged that Bluey was still alive and that the victim had been another groper.
Geoff James, president of Clovelly Surf Club, said that any attack on a groper would be deplored by local people: “All the members of Clovelly Surf Club and the Clovelly community abhor any such event or practice. The gropers are part of the unique nature of our little beach and community.”
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Gentle Giants
The blue groper has been the official fish of NSW since 1996.
Known to snorkellers and divers for their fearless, inquisitive nature, the fish can grow to 1.2 metres long and have distinctive large eyes.
Gropers are born female, with a grey-brown colouring. Some turn into bright blue males later in life.
They are natives of Australian waters and largely found between southern Queensland and Wilson’s Promontory, Victoria.>>
<<He’s probably Sydney’s favourite fish, popular with tourists and locals alike – even though nobody’s really sure if he’s still alive. Bluey – the eastern blue groper that was thrust into the public spotlight when it was “murdered” at Clovelly Bay in 2002 – is somewhat of a local character.
On January 22 that year, the Courier published an article titled ‘Appeal to find groper killer‘, after it emerged that a spear fisherman was seen holding a metre-long groper.
“Bystanders saw the young man emerge from the water with the groper still alive and watched as he bashed the fish with a diver’s knife,” the report read.
Locals were outraged and the then premier Bob Carr, a close friend of Bluey, described his killer as “a mongrel”.
A week later, in the Courier’s January 29 issue, it seemed the tide had changed for Bluey.
“Stop nailing that coffin,” journalist Andrew London wrote, as he explained of how two readers, both avid scuba divers, claimed the Clovelly fish was not the groper killed.
Fred Angles of Randwick said he had fed Bluey after the spearing incident and reckoned the fisherman killed one of the smaller female gropers in the area.
“Bluey is huge,” Mr Angles said in the report. “There is no way he could have paraded Bluey on his spear because he is so heavy.”
Phew! Bluey was still alive, and his legend would live on.
Then in November 2005, outraged beachgoers accused divers of spearing another groper at Clovelly, but this one was definitely a female, so it seemed Bluey was off the hook once again.
All gropers are born female, with a grey-brown colouring, and some turn into bright blue males as they age.
Greg Towner, a diving instructor for Deep Six Diving, said at least two blue gropers were seen regularly at Clovelly, and about four or five frequented the area further out to sea near Shark Point.
“They are pretty much everywhere along the Sydney coastline, but you can be reasonably sure that Bluey is still there [at Clovelly],” he said.
But Clovelly surf club captain Alan Kane said it more was likely that the fish which swimmers, snorkellers and scuba divers call Bluey is another blue groper.
“The name ‘Bluey’ seems to get passed down a fair bit,” he said. “Where the original Bluey is, I’m not too sure, but there’s a bit of a hand-me-down arrangement to whoever is the dominant blue groper at the time.”
Whether or not the true Bluey is still nibbling on the toes of swimmers at Clovelly is not that important, Mr Kane said.
“We love our Bluey,” he said, “and lots of people from all over the place come out to see him, so we think they love him, too.”>>
“I’ve been diving at Gordon’s Bay since 1965. I’m a big supporter of the aquatic reserve. It just gives people an opportunity to interact with wild animals and I believe that enhances their life. Because they also get a better appreciation of their environment. Nothing’s going to give me greater pleasure than my grandchildren are old enough to take them for a dive and introduce them to Bluey. And I think that would be just a wonderful thing.”
The legendary Clovelly Bay groper, famed for befriending many a Sydney snorkeller, may have returned. Or he’s spawned a family.
Intriguingly, the new Bluey on the block could also be a female that has changed sex and simply replaced him, a phenomenon characteristic of the eastern blue groper species.
Bluey was thrust into the spotlight in 2002, when he was “murdered” by an unknown spear fisherman. So loved was the fish, the then NSW premier Bob Carr called the killer ”a mongrel”, before announcing five new aquatic reserves near Sydney beaches to protect marine life.
”I have seen the groper,” the premier pronounced at the time. ”I have swum with him. I know the groper, he was a friend of mine.”
But then a year or so later, Clovelly swimmers sighted Bluey, sparking debate on whether rumours of his death had been greatly exaggerated. And this summer a large bright blue dominant male has been spotted.
A Coogee Pro Dive scuba master, Evan Batten, confirmed a Bluey lookalike was in the area, but said it was impossible to verify whether it was the original. Such sightings are so regular Mr Batten calls Bluey the ‘Elvis of the Sea‘.
”Bluey is definitely a legend, he was extremely large, 1.2 metres long and a very rich blue. But did he get killed? Was it really Bluey they speared? Maybe he escaped and now has come back?”
To John Rowe, the secretary of the Gordons Bay Scuba Diving Club, Bluey is ”the Phantom”, named after the comic-strip character who never dies. While he was a long-time fan of Bluey, Mr Rowe said no one knew when the legend began ”especially because when the dominant Bluey dies a dominant female becomes the new Bluey,” he said.
All eastern blue gropers start life as greenish-coloured females, though some will change sex and colour to become blue males.
Professor Steve Kennelly, the director of fisheries research at the Department of Primary Industries, doubts the original Bluey is still alive and suggested another fish may have simply replaced him. ”It’s safe to say a Bluey or Bluey’s relatives are back but it’s definitely not him or his son,” he said. ”I’d be very surprised if it was the original as he wouldn’t have lasted this long.”
Professor Kennelly said public outrage over Bluey’s death had helped promote a need to protect the species. It has been illegal to spear gropers since 1969 – they can only be fished with a rod and line. In 1998, the eastern blue groper was announced the official fish of NSW.
News of Bluey’s possible return excited Mr Carr.
”I snorkelled at Clovelly a few weeks ago and was happy to see a family of gropers enjoying the crystal clear water with me,” he said. ”Why anyone would spear them is still beyond my understanding.”>>
<<The NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI) has fined a man for spearing four Blue Groper, which is the official fish of NSW, at Twofold Bay at Eden.
The 49-year-old man was caught as a result of a routine fisheries inspection by NSW DPI Fisheries Officers.
NSW DPI Director of Fisheries Compliance, Glenn Tritton, said there are strict rules for catching Blue Groper in NSW.
“It is very disappointing to see the illegal taking of our State emblem, especially when it has been protected from spear fishing for more than 40 years,” Mr Tritton said. “Anyone who undertakes any sort of fishing on our waterways needs to know the rules, ignorance is no excuse.
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“NSW DPI will not tolerate the spearing of Blue Groper and penalties can range up to a maximum of $11,000.”
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Mr Tritton said the 49-year-old man was found snorkelling, carrying a speargun, adjacent to a small inflatable boat on the southern side of Twofold Bay.
“Fisheries Officers approached the man and the small vessel and allegedly observed four Blue Groper in the boat that had wounds consistent with those made by a spear,” he said.
“When interviewed, the man admitted to spearing the four Blue Groper.”
The man was formally interviewed and was issued a $500 penalty notice on the day.
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Fishing Rules for Groper:
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A recreational fishing licence must be held for all methods of fishing in NSW
In NSW Groper can be only taken by using a rod and line or a handline
Groper cannot be speared and have been protected from spear fishing since 1969
Groper cannot be taken and/or sold by any method of commercial fishing
There is a bag limit of 2 Groper per day
There is a size limit of 30 cm (only 1 of which can be longer than 60 cm)
People must also comply with any additional restrictions which apply in marine parks and aquatic reserves.>>
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(Ed: It is about time the Blue Groper was respected properly as a legally protected species nationally under Australia’s EPBC Act, without having to wait for its numbers to further decline. Why should wildlife species be denied a right to ecological protection unless their numbers have become endangered? The rarity basis for wildlife protection is but base moral relativism, and exploitative convenience.)
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<<The Blue Groper became the official fish of NSW following the death of “Bluey” at Clovelly in 2002, who was killed by an unknown spear fishermen. It is protected from spear fishing because it is so tame and inquisitive, so it is highly vulnerable to this method of fishing.
The Blue Groper presents in several different colours including blue, green, brown and red and changes sex from female to male during its life cycle. The largest specimens are males that are coloured the bright blue from which it takes its name.
Anyone witnessing illegal spearing of Groper is urged to contact their local fisheries office immediately.>>
"We're coming to you from the custodial lands of the Hairygowogulator and Tarantulawollygong, and pay respects to uncle and grandaddy elders past, present and emerging from their burrows. So wise to keep a distance out bush."
Dead native forest rotting for weeks/months on Burnie Wharf, Tasmania
Swift Parrot (Lathamus discolor)
Listed as endangered under the Tasmanian Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 and the Federal Act.
Its favoured feed trees include winter flowering species such as Swamp Mahogany (Eucalyptus robusta), Spotted Gum (Corymbia maculata), Red Bloodwood (Corymbia gummifera), Mugga Ironbark (Eucalyptus sideroxylon), and White Box (Eucalyptus albens);
species targeted in Tasmania for logging.
[Source: Photo by 0ystercatcher on Flickr,
^http://www.birdlife.org/community/2010/11/hope-for-tasmania%E2%80%99s-forests/]
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State Forest on Forestier Peninsula, south eastern Tasmania
