Australia’s Wildlife Hate

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Peter’s comments:

‘An Australian icon…I was taken by the colours, textures and moronic behaviour of the idiot/s who did this in the first place…
For instance there was evidence they had initially fired the first shot at a further distance but not satisfied with that they moved closer… There was a very good chance they were peppered by numerous richochets… candidates for the Darwin Awards…It’s always the minority that ruin it for others…’

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On 29-Mar-2010, Chris Palmer, the self-confessed serial roo shooter on CanDoBetter wrote:

“My son is an up and coming roo shooter to at the age of 4 he can skin and gut a roo nearly as quick as me and over the last 4 weekends he has shoot over 50 roos with only 8 misses they still didnt get away tho like always dad was there to clean up the mess.”

Clearly, this individual values his behaviour of slaughtering kangaroos acceptable to the extent he is inculcating in his young son his same values, attitudes and practices from an early age. Shooting wildlife is a violent crime against the natural animal kingdom. We are not savages anymore. We don’t have to kill wild animals. It is a choice and an immoral act. Clean kills are wrong but also occasional. The suffering death of a bullet injury by a 4 year old followed up with a knife or blunt axe to the joey reflects a vicious and depraved existence.

Orphaned kangaroo ‘joey’

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Cruelty Connections

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‘According to a 1997 study done by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and Northeastern University, animal abusers are five times more likely to commit violent crimes against people and four times more likely to commit property crimes than are individuals without a history of animal abuse.

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There’s something uniquely sickening about cases of animal abuse that outrages the community more than most crimes. To hear of a defenceless creature being brutalised by a cowardly attacker can get the blood of even the gentlest soul boiling.

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This week we learnt of the shocking case of Snowy, a much loved family pet suffering horrific injuries at the hands of a torturer. The 18-month-old cat’s ears were mutilated and he had been set alight. Also this week charges against the man believed to have tortured Buckley, a puppy who had his ears and tail hacked off, were dropped amid fears that the case would not stand up in court.

In recent months there have been multiple cases of animals being tortured and killed in a trend that appears to be Australia wide. It seems no animal is immune from such callous attacks; pets, wildlife, even dolphins have been targeted by individuals who derive some sort of thrill from inflicting pain on an innocent creature. Despite the increasingly violent and sadistic nature of these attacks and the public’s growing disgust, offenders if caught can expect little more than a slap on the wrist.

More often than not these cases don’t reach the courts but the few that do demonstrate our judicial system’s failure to treat animal abuse as a serious offence. Magistrates can impose jail terms of up to 5 years but it is extremely rare for a custodial sentence to be handed down in an animal abuse case. Despite extensive evidence linking cruelty to animals to serious violent offences against people, the judiciary continue to treat such crimes as largely trivial matters.

If our system is designed to punish as well as prevent serious criminal offences then surely greater attention needs to be paid to those who mistreat animals, particularly those who torture and kill for fun. The direct relationship between animal abuse and violent crime has been recognised by the FBI since the 1970s. Many of the world’s most notorious killers have long histories of animal abuse; Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, Edmund Kemper and Albert DeSalvo better known as the Boston Strangler were all fond of torturing animals. In Australia murderers such as Paul Charles Denyer, Robert Barrett and Ivan Milat are known to have tortured animals long before they started killing people.

What greater motivation do our legislators and Courts need to treat animal cruelty with the utmost seriousness? Simply cautioning offenders is not good enough.

In the US, there has been a growing trend towards toughening laws to make animal abuse a felony rather than a misdemeanour. Penalties for individuals who engage in deliberate animal cruelty have been increased, dramatically in some states. England has similarly strengthened its animal welfare laws but in Australia we continue to treat these heinous crimes as minor offences not worthy of lengthy custodial sentences despite profilers and psychologists telling us that one of the strongest precursors to violent crime including murder is a history of animal abuse. Tough penalties including incarceration must be handed down for serious animal abuse cases.

You don’t need to be a psychologist to work out that only a uniquely depraved individual could ignore the agonised cries of a defenceless animal and continue the ghastly business of inflicting maximum pain and suffering.

To allow such cruel and sadistic behaviour to go unpunished is not only morally reprehensible, it may very well have dire consequences when at some point these offenders turn their particular brand of rage and fury on the rest of us.’

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‘Many studies in psychology, sociology, and criminology during the last twenty-five years have demonstrated that violent offenders frequently have childhood and adolescent histories of serious and repeated animal cruelty.‘

The FBI has recognized the connection since the 1970s, when its analysis of the lives of serial killers suggested that most had killed or tortured animals as children. Other research has shown consistent patterns of animal cruelty among perpetrators of more common forms of violence, including child abuse, spouse abuse, and elder abuse. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association considers animal cruelty one of the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder.

The line separating an animal abuser from someone capable of committing human abuse is much finer than most people care to consider. People abuse animals for the same reasons they abuse people. Some of them will stop with animals, but enough have been proven to continue on to commit violent crimes to people that it’s worth paying attention to.

Virtually every serious violent offender has a history of animal abuse in their past, and since there’s no way to know which animal abuser is going to continue on to commit violent human crimes, they should ALL be taken that seriously. FBI Supervisory Special Agent Allen Brantley was quoted as saying

“Animal cruelty… is not a harmless venting of emotion in a healthy individual; this is a warning sign…” It should be looked at as exactly that. Its a clear indicator of psychological issues that can and often DO lead to more violent human crimes.

“So much of animal cruelty… is really about power or control,” Lockwood said. Often, aggression starts with a real or perceived injustice. The person feels powerless and develops a warped sense of self-respect.   Eventually they feel strong only by being able to dominate a person or animal.

Sometimes, young children and those with developmental disabilities who harm animals don’t understand what they’re doing, Lockwood said. And animal hoarding – the practice of keeping dozens of animals in deplorable conditions – often is a symptom of a greater mental illness, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Just as in situations of other types of abuse, a victim of abuse often becomes a perpetrator.

According to Lockwood, when women abuse animals, they “almost always have a history of victimization themselves. That’s where a lot of that rage comes from.”

In domestic violence situations, women are often afraid to leave the home out of fear the abuser will harm the family pet, which has lead to the creation of Animal Safehouse programs, which provide foster care for the pets of victims in domestic violence situations, empowering them to leave the abusive situation and get help.

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“A significant amount of data, both anecdotal and empirical, show that animals are often killed or harmed to intimidate, frighten or control others including battered women or abused children.”

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Whether a teenager shoots a cat without provocation or an elderly woman is hoarding 200 cats in her home, “both are exhibiting mental health issues…but need very different kinds of attention,” Lockwood said.

Those who abuse animals for no obvious reason, Lockwood said, are “budding psychopaths.” They have no empathy and only see the world as what it’s going to do for them.

History is full of high-profile examples of this connection:

• Patrick Sherrill, who killed 14 coworkers at a post office and then shot himself, had a history of stealing local pets and allowing his own dog to attack and mutilate them.
• Earl Kenneth Shriner, who raped, stabbed, and mutilated a 7-year-old boy, had been widely known in his neighborhood as the man who put firecrackers in dogs? rectums and strung up cats.
• Brenda Spencer, who opened fire at a San Diego school, killing two children and injuring nine others, had repeatedly abused cats and dogs, often by setting their tails on fire.
• Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler” who killed 13 women, trapped dogs and cats in orange crates and shot arrows through the boxes in his youth.
• Carroll Edward Cole, executed for five of the 35 murders of which he was accused, said his first act of violence as a child was to strangle a puppy.
• In 1987, three Missouri high school students were charged with the beating death of a classmate. They had histories of repeated acts of animal mutilation starting several years earlier.   One confessed that he had killed so many cats he’d lost count. Two brothers who murdered their parents had previously told classmates that they had decapitated a cat.
• Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer had impaled dogs’ heads, frogs, and cats on sticks.
• More recently, high school killers such as 15-year-old Kip Kinkel in Springfield, Oregon, and Luke Woodham, 16, in Pearl, Missouri, tortured animals before embarking on shooting sprees. Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot and killed 12 classmates before turning their guns on themselves, bragged about mutilating animals to their friends.

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As powerful a statement as the high-profile examples above make, they don’t even begin to scratch the surface of the whole truth behind the abuse connection. Learning more about the animal cruelty/interpersonal violence connection is vital for community members and law enforcement alike.”

It is a fact that acts of animal cruelty lead to forms of cruelty against humans.

“A criminologist and forensic psychologist at Bond University, said the torturing, maiming and killing of animals were red flags of someone capable of future violence against people.”
They go on to state specific cases: “Archibald McCafferty, Sydney’s ‘Kill Seven’ murderer, used to strangle chickens, cats and dogs before killing people.”

“In Victoria, serial killer Paul Charles Denyer disembowelled a native cat and cut the throat of its kittens.”  He went on to become the Frankston killer’ murdering  Elizabeth Stevens, 18, Debbie Fream, 22, and Natalie Russell, 17, in Frankston Victoria in 1993.

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WARNING:  THIS VIDEO CONTAINS DISTURBING ANIMAL CRUELTY WHICH MAY OFFEND.  WE INCLUDE IT TO PORTRAY THE REALITY OF AUSTRALIA’S TREATMENT OF KANGAROOS

(To play video press the arrow in centre of video; to stop video press the pause button on bottom left)

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2011:   Hobart’s Jamie Peter Smart decapitates 3 kittens

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‘A Hobart court has heard the DNA of a man accused of decapitating kittens was found on their bodies.

Jamie Peter Smart, 31, is appearing in the Hobart Magistrates Court, accused of decapitating two kittens and of strangling a third.

Prosecutor Mel Jerrim told the court Smart and two other men had gone to the Glenorchy home of the kittens’ owner in March last year because they thought she had thrown rocks to break up their all-night party.

The court was told the owner had refused to open the door and had called police when one of the men smashed the window of her car with a blockbuster.  The first officer on the scene has given evidence of finding the body of one kitten, the head and body of another and just the body of a third.

The court heard a full DNA profile matching Smart’s was found on the decapitated kittens.  DNA profiler Rita Westbury told the court it was unusual to get a full match from DNA transferred by contact.  Normally such a match would come from a body fluid sample.

It suggested the kittens were handled for an extended period of time or with force.

Ms Westbury agreed it was not impossible that Smart’s DNA could have been transferred from blood on an axe handle to the kittens by a third person.

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Later in May 2012 Jamie Smart was found guilty…

‘A Glenorchy man has been found guilty on two counts of killing an animal.  The three five-week-old kittens were found by police after being called by the kittens owner in March 2010.  Magistrate Olivia McTaggart found Jamie Peter Smart, 32, guilty of decapitating two kittens.

The Magistrates Court in Hobart heard Smart’s DNA was found on the kittens.  The court heard Smart and two other men went to a house in Hopkins St, Moonah, bordering a party they were attending in March 2010.   The trio accused the female occupant, and owner of the kittens, of throwing a rock through a house window at the party.  The woman denied the accusation before one of the men smashed the window of a car parked in her driveway.

When the woman looked out her window a short time later she said she saw Smart with the head of a kitten in his hand baiting a dog.

Smart had pleaded not guilty to three counts of killing an animal.  He will be sentenced next month.

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‘Domestic violence linked to animal abuse: study’

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‘The connection between animal abuse and violence against humans is well documented. Melbourne’s serial killer Paul Denyer and mass murderer Martin Bryant are amongst those whose history began with the abuse of animals.

Martin Bryant, who killed 35 people at Port Arthur (Tasmania), tortured and harassed animals at age seven, which was one of the first red flags he was a person with severe conduct disorder symptoms.  Bryant was given an air rifle for his 14th birthday. Martin at 19 would kill dogs and shoot at tourists with an air gun which he always carried with him.

Martin Bryant tortured animals

Now, a university study has established a connection between domestic violence and animal abuse. The Monash University study showed just over half of family violence victims reported the perpetrator had also abused the family pets, and many women said they had delayed leaving a violent relationship out of concern for their pet’s welfare.

Interview by ABC Reporter Lisa Whitehead in 2007:

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‘RIC HOLLAND, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, LORT SMITH ANIMAL HOSPITAL:   We had a dog that had clearly been punched in the face with severe facial injuries and broken limbs. Probably it had been struck with a cricket bat or a baseball bat.

DR SASHA HERBERT, LORT SMITH ANIMAL HOSPITAL:   The male owner said that the dog had run through a plate glass window to get to him. I suspect the dog had been thrown through the plate glass window rather than having run through it itself, or it else it was so frightened that it was running from something rather than to something.

JUDY JOHNSON, EASTERN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SERVICE:   The threats to the pets are used as a controlling mechanism by a perpetrator to say, “Look, remain with me. If you leave I will do such and such. I will either shoot the dog, I’ll strangle a cat, I’ll skin the guinea pigs, and when I find you and the children eventually, I’ll do the same to you”.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   Those threats against the family pets may never be carried out, but they’re powerful coercive tool used to trap women and children in the web of domestic violence.

DR NICOLA TAYLOR, CENTRAL QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY:   They can be used to keep them silent, particularly in the case of children where child abuse is concerned. They can also be used to make the victims stay in the relationship, or to make them behave in ways that they wouldn’t normally behave.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   The stories workers in the field of domestic violence have been hearing for years are now being reaffirmed by the findings of the first Australian study examining the link between pet abuse and domestic violence.

DR SASHA HERBERT:   And so have there ever been any injuries to your cat?

LISA WHITEHEAD:   In the survey by Monash University and Melbourne’s Eastern Domestic Violence Service, more than half of the victims of family violence said their animals had been abused. The report mirrors the findings of research overseas where pet abuse is now seen as an indicator of other violent behaviour.

DR NICOLA TAYLOR:   In the States they call it a “red flag” and what this essentially means is that if we know that there is animal abuse going on, then we should be looking more deeply for signs of child abuse and spousal abuse and other dysfunctional behaviour in that family.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   Disturbingly, the Monash University study also found a third of the women living in crisis accommodation delayed leaving the family home out of concern for their pet’s welfare.

JUDY JOHNSON:   There’s long stories of maybe the crisis line spending an hour on the phone to a woman talking to her about the possibility of finding a refuge, the difficulty of finding the refuge, and then at the very end the woman will say “And what about my horse?” And then you’re really back to square one because she won’t leave without the horse or the cat.

DR NICOLA TAYLOR:   We need to also realise that the children very often have an attachment to these pets which can preclude them leaving.

TILLY:   I had a family of dogs and they’re just as important to me as my two children. I didn’t want to leave them and find that he had hurt them or victimised them for me leaving.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   Tilly was caught in a violent relationship for two and a half years. Desperate to get out, she tried in vain to find a temporary home for her dogs.

TILLY:   I rang the RSPCA, I rang a lot of different agencies that … any agency that I could think of and there just was nothing out there. I couldn’t actually afford to take my dogs to a private kennel.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   Finally, Tilly says she had no choice but to have one of her dogs put down.

TILLY:   I sat in the car and cried for a quarter of an hour, shaking, and it was not something I had ever planned to do, and it’s certainly something that I never wish to ever have to do again.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   It’s a grim option, but most domestic violence refuges can’t accommodate pets, and few animal shelters offer respite care for more than a week or two, leaving women and children little choice but to leave their pets behind. That’s the dilemma Naomi faced when escaping to a refuge with her children.

NAOMI:   It was one of the first things that was actually brought up “What is he going to do to the animals?” They were really scared and really distressed about leaving them behind. They were their comfort. They were their safety and security.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   But Animal Aid’s new Pets in Peril program came to Naomi’s rescue.

CLIENT:   Good, good. I believe you have Gidget for me?

ASSISTANT:   That’s right, yes.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   Working closely with Melbourne’s Eastern Domestic Violence Service and a network of suburban vet clinics, Animal Aid finds safe homes for pets for a month or more. Coordinator, Debra Boland, says the importance of the program was brought home to her by one 12 year old girl.

DEBRA BOLAND, PETS IN PERIL:   She used to ring on a regular basis just to … not to find out if they were OK, or not to find out when they could come home, but if they were still alive.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   Experts say witnessing pet abuse as a child can have serious consequences.

DR NICOLA TAYLOR:   We know essentially that children who do witness domestic violence and who presumably also witness this kind of abuse to pets, will be in a much higher risk category for developing anti social behaviour of some kind or another.

LISA WHITEHEAD:   Animal Aid is just one small service helping to break that cycle of abuse, but recognition of the problem is slowly growing. The Queensland RSPCA runs a state-wide animal foster program for pets in crisis and other state RSPCAs have dedicated services in some areas. Now Melbourne’s Lort Smith Animal Hospital wants to get on board, working with domestic violence and child abuse agencies across Victoria. It plans to set up a 24 hour transport and boarding service for pets at risk.

RIC HOLLAND:   That then gives a very clear access to the women in this situation to escape from a violent partner, be very confident that the pets are being cared for and once her life has got back on track, to actually reclaim the pets and bring them back into her and her children’s lives.

NAOMI:   They were relieved, unbelievably relieved. We could actually start looking at books again, looking at books of different animals without the tears coming. They’re very excited about getting them back.’

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2010:   Baby Koala Shot multiple times, north of Brisbane

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In January 2010, a baby Koala was shot multiple times and eventually died. It’s mother too was shot though survived, as explained in the following news article from Brisbane just two month ago:

‘A young koala is fighting for its life after it was wounded in a cowardly shooting at Morayfield, north of Brisbane.

Moreton Bay Koala Rescue president Annika Lehmann said the young male koala, estimated to be about eight or nine months old, had been taken to Australia Zoo for treatment.
The 940-gram koala, which had been named “Doug”, was in an induced coma.

He was found at the base of a tree at J Dobson Rd in Morayfield, Ms Lehmann said.
“Our rescuers got a call this morning about a little joey sitting at the trunk of a tree and his breathing was laboured,” she said.  “Mum was 30 metres up in the tree, so we needed tree climbers to get her down, but the little boy was sitting at the bottom of the tree, so he was easy to get.”

Ms Lehmann said it was unclear how long Doug had been suffering as a result of the attack.

“He was very lethargic and dehydrated, so we don’t think this happened this morning or yesterday, it might have happened one or two days ago,” she said.

“At first we thought he had pneumonia, but when he had an x-ray they discovered the two bullets.  “One is in the left chest cavity and one is in the lower abdomen.”

Ms Lehmann said Doug’s mother, which could also have been wounded, was also being assessed.

“I can’t really say much about her condition, but it looks like she’s OK,” she said.

Ms Lehmann said she had never seen a koala shot in the area before, although she was aware of several kangaroos shootings.

“Morayfield is one of those areas that we feel koalas are still relatively safe, so it was really bad that we found him there,” she said.

RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty said the attack was disturbing, with the joey a “50/50 chance” of survival.

“At first glance, because it was a slug gun that was used, it’s probably kids but we really need to catch those who are responsible,” he said.

“All too often we’ve seen in the past the links between animal cruelty and other forms of violence down the track, so if this was kids they need to be made to be accountable for their actions now to nip something like this in the bud.”

Mr Beatty said people could call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or the RSPCA Cruelty Complaints Hotline on 1300 852 188 if they had any information on the attack.’

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Another Koala shot at Kippa-Ring, north of Brisbane in October 2011

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2009:   Kangaroos shot with arrows in Melbourne

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One of the kangaroos shot with an arrow in Melbourne, February 2009

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A man has been arrested over the shooting of two kangaroos with arrows in Melbourne’s outer north this month.

The 27-year-old man from Thomastown, a Northern Melbourne suburb, was arrested in Epping on Wednesday morning.  Police say they raided two Thomastown properties and seized two bows, six arrows, an arrow quiver and camouflage clothing.   The man is also being interviewed over another incident in which a person was allegedly shooting a bow and arrows in a Bundoora park close to other people.

Kangaroo left for dead with an arrow through its head

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An eastern grey kangaroo was found shot in the head with an arrow that had penetrated through the bone and into the nasal cavity at the University Hill Estate in Bundoora on May 9.

After an operation its prospects of a full recovery are good.

In an incident two days earlier at the same location, a juvenile female kangaroo was found with an arrow imbedded in its rump.  Wildlife Victoria has offered a $10,000 reward to catch the person responsible.

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Police charged the 27-year-old Thomastown man over the Bundoora shootings that horrified animal lovers this month.

One kangaroo survived after an arrow passed through its head while the other was found with an arrow in its rump.  The man was arrested at his workplace on McDonalds Rd, Epping, on Wednesday morning and faces cruelty charges.   A search of his house discovered two bows, five arrows, an arrow quiver, a paper target and camouflage clothing.

As he left Mill Park police station, he claimed he “didn’t know they were a protected animal” before driving away in a hotted-up car.

Detective Sen-Constable Dave Richards said police had acted on a tip-off.

“We had received a call from someone concerned for their (kangaroos’) well-being,” he said.

Sen-Constable Richards said police had received several tip-offs, particularly after Wildlife Victoria posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to a prosecution under the Cruelty Act.

The man was charged with reckless conduct endangering life and four counts of aggravated cruelty. He was bailed to appear at Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court on June 25.

Wildlife carer Belinda Gales, who has been looking after the injured kangaroos at Chum Creek Wildlife Shelter, said she was relieved to hear of the arrest.

She said it was a miracle the kangaroos – dubbed Beau and Hope – survived.

“Beau has made an amazing recovery. The only evidence is some small sutures on the side of his head,” Ms Gales said.

“Hope has taken a bit longer, because her wound got infected, but, hopefully, they will both be fine.”

Ms Gales hopes the kangaroos will be released in about two weeks.

“They have come to depend on each other, so they will stay here, and when they are both fit, they will be released together,” she said.

“We don’t know where they will go yet, but the main thing is that they go into a safe environment.”

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Another five months later Twenty-seven-year-old Justin Stavropoulos was found guilty and jailed..

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‘A man who pleaded guilty in Melbourne to shooting four kangaroos with a bow and arrow has been jailed for 12 months.

Twenty-seven-year-old Justin Stavropoulos pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and hunting protected wildlife.  His lawyer asked the court to consider a sentence Stavropoulos could serve in the community.

But Magistrate Jennifer Grubissa said a jail term was the only appropriate sentence to deter other people from doing the same thing.  She said the offending was cruel and callous.
The four kangaroos were shot in Bundoora earlier this year.

One survived the attacks. Two died quickly. And a third kangaroo, with an arrow through its face, died after surgery.

The magistrate said Stavropoulos should have known that unless he was a perfect marksman his actions were unlikely to lead to a humane death for the animals.
Stavropoulos was ordered to serve a non-parole period of four months.

Stavropoulos is appealing the sentence.  He was granted bail to face an appeal hearing in the County Court next March.

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Well, Robin Hood aspirant Stavropoulos appealed the court’s decision, however the judge upheld the jail term..

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‘A judge has upheld a 12-month jail term given to a camouflage-clad man who shot and maimed kangaroos with a high-powered bow and arrow.

Justin Stavropoulos, 27, killed and maimed several kangaroos during hunting trips in Melbourne’s northern fringe during April and May last year.  He was given a 12-month jail sentence, with a minimum of four months, in the Heidelberg Magistrates Court last October, but was bailed pending an appeal.

However, his sentence was today upheld by Victorian County Court judge Frank Gucciardo.   Judge Gucciardo said Stavropoulos may not have appreciated the stupidity of his actions, but the community needed to be sent a strong message that violence towards animals was unacceptable.   The judge accepted Stavropoulos believed the animals were game and could be hunted, but said it must have been obvious to him that using a high-powered bow and arrow would have caused the animals agony.

“How such a weapon can be so easily obtained can only engender dismay”, he said.

Stavropoulos must pay compensation of more than $4000 to wildlife authorities involved in rescuing the injured animals.   Stavropoulos, of Thomastown, had pleaded guilty to charges of animal cruelty and hunting protected wildlife.

Outside court, animal activists welcomed the sentence.

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Justin Stavropoulos

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The story made the Los Angeles Times ^http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2009/05/kangaroo-recovering-after-being-shot-through-the-head-with-an-arrow.html

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2012:   Kangaroos shot with arrows in outside Canberra

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Canberra kangaroos shot with bow and arrows at Mount Ainslie outside Canberra

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Kangaroos have been shot and killed with a bow and arrows in what park rangers are describing as a “distressing” spate of attacks on Mount Ainslie.

Two kangaroos were shot dead by arrows in the area in the past two weeks, and one had to be put down to end its suffering.

National Parks, Reserves and Rural Land manager Stephen Hughes said those responsible for the attacks could be charged a range of offences, which could see them face two years in prison and up to $22,000 of fines.

“It is very distressing to discover this illegal behaviour which, in addition to the suffering caused to the kangaroos, poses a public safety hazard,” he said.

“Mount Ainslie is a high use reserve which is particularly popular with late afternoon and evening walkers, joggers and cyclists.”

Police and park rangers have stepped up their monitoring of the area to try and catch the culprits.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a report via the website at www.act.crimestoppers.com.au.

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The ACT Government is appealing to the public for information on the arrow attacks.  There has been a number of attacks on kangaroos in Canberra’s Mount Ainslie Reserve using a bow and arrow.

Over the past two weeks members of the public have reported finding kangaroos that have been killed or injured with arrows.  Rangers found one kangaroo already dead while another had to be put down to end its suffering.

ACT Parks manager Stephen Hughes says the use of a high powered bow and arrow is illegal and the incidents are extremely concerning.

“This is a professional bow and arrow that’s being used,” he said.  “Our two major concerns are that apart from the obvious suffering caused to the kangaroos from this activity, it’s a serious threat to the many visitors that walk and ride in Mt Ainslie Nature Reserve every day.

“These people are being put at risk by this irresponsible behaviour.”  Mr Hughes says the situation is distressing.  “It’s unbelievable that people can find it entertaining to undertake this sort of activity in this day and age, shooting our native wildlife,” he said.

The ACT Government is appealing to the public to help catch the people responsible.

“ACT Policing has been notified of the illegal activity. Together with rangers, police will step up their monitoring of the area,” Mr Hughes said.

Hobby Killers (killing for fun) continues to be funded by the New South Wales taxpayer

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‘Animal Cruelty as a Predictor of Other Criminal Behaviours: Australian Data’

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‘As part of a larger study, a total of 200 participants was randomly selected from a New South Wales (NSW) Police database containing 947 individuals involved in animal cruelty incidents (Clarke, 2002; 2003).  The sample included 38 female (M = 32.8 years, SD = 12.6 years) and 162 male (M = 28.4 years, SD = 8.7 years) participants. All participants were located using a NSW police service data collection system.

Conclusions:

Out of the sample of 200, 61.5 percent had alsocommitted an assault. Further, more than half of these individuals, all of whom had a history of animal abuse, also had convictions for driving offences, domestic violence and stealing. Other offences observed included drug and firearms offences, sexual assaults, malicious damage, assaulting police and street offences. It is noteworthy that as many as 17% of these offenders had also been sexually abuse.

In fact, animal abuse was a better predictor of sexual assault than previous convictions for homicide, arson orfirearms offences.

These data demonstrate that animal abuse is predictive of other criminal behaviours including violent crimes. These findings, therefore, indicate that identified animal cruelty needs to be given increased attention, both by law enforcement and service provision organisations, in efforts aimed at reducing or preventing criminal behaviours. Recognition of factors that may inadvertently be endorsing or aiding the maintenance of violent criminal and animal abuse behaviours is also important. Continued legalisation of recreational hunting may be one such factor.”

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‘Research shows abusers believe abuse is justified‘

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A criminal psychology research article by Robert Agnew of Emory University, USA, entitled: ‘The Causes of Animal Abuse: A Social-Psychological Analysis‘ presents a theory that explains why individuals engage in animal abuse.

“First, I describe the immediate determinants of animal abuse. Animal abuse is said to result from ignorance about the abusive consequences of our behavior for animals, the belief that abuse is justified, and the perception that abuse is personally beneficial.

Second, I describe an additional set of factors that have both direct effects on animal abuse and indirect effects through the above three factors. These additional factors include individual traits, like empathy; the individual’s socialization; the individual’s level of strain or stress; the individual’s level of social control; the nature of the animal under consideration; and the individual’s social position.”

Animal abuse is no different to child abuse.

As disgusted as nearly all Australians are with animal abuse, Australia’s animal protection laws remain are inadequate both as a deterrent and as a punishment.

Wildlife killing and abuse is morally unacceptable and should be made a crime in the same way that killing or abusing humans is a crime. All that would be required is adding an animal section to the existing crimes acts around the country.

“A correlation between animal abuse, family violence and other forms of community violence has been established. Child and animal protection professionals have recognized this link, noting that abuse of both children and animals is connected in a self-perpetuating cycle of violence. When animals in a home are abused or neglected, it is a warning sign that others in the household may not be safe. In addition, children who witness animal abuse are at a greater risk of becoming abusers themselves.”   [American Humane Society]

Police are not required to enforce animal cruelty breaches.

Instead it is relegated to an under-resourced, under-equipped RSPCA, which is at best a toothless force.  Australia should set a moral standard, establish a national squad within the Australian Federal Police to deal specifically with animal abuse. Australia needs to set up a central database on animal killers and abusers just as in the same way paedophiles are monitored as social deviants.  No more abuse!

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Cat shot 27 times point blank by an air rifle in Cairns

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After the cat incident in Cairns, it seems logical that air rifles and bb-guns are those weapons that adolescents get access to before firearms.

Access and acceptance to such weapons tends to one more familiar with those on the land or a non-urban lifestyle. It may be worth investigating this in an article. Meanwhile, the ‘bevan’ mindset and animal cruelty that persists in some communities is an eye opener.

Check the correspondence in the following sites:

http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Air-Rifle-t215353.html

http://www.airgunbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119277

http://www.ozziehunting.com/

http://www.ssaasa.org.au/

http://www.ssaa.org.au/juniors.html

http://www.juniorshooters.com.au/main/Home.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BB_gun

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Dodgy Story : ‘Man-mauling wombat felled by axe’

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“…Bruce Kringle, 60, lay on top of the animal in a desperate bid to stop the attack in Flowerdale (Victoria) just before 7am. A neighbour heard his cries for help and, after telling Mr Kringle to move off the animal, killed it with a blow from the back of an axe.  Geoff McClure, compliance team leader for the Department of Sustainability and Environment, said a wombat attack was extremely unusual.”

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Frankly, I find this hard to believe and indeed suspicious.   A ‘rogue wombat’?  This is a wombat..

Australian Wombat – a docile noctural herbivore

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Wombats are native to this part of Victoria. If anything, it is the humans with axes that are the rogues. Did Kringle have a Alexander Pearcian moment after getting on the turps perhaps? Alexander Pearce was that notorious 19th Century convict in Van Diemans Land who butchered his fellow escapees with an axe then ate them, as the recent disturbing film portrays [Watch Trailer].  (To play video press the arrow in centre of video; to stop video press the pause button on bottom left)

The incident should be investigated by both a RSPCA vet and the police taking account of witnesses, and including a blood alchohol test on both the men, and a background check on Kringle and the ‘neighbour’ who killed it with an axe for any history of animal abuse.

Killing a wombat with an axe? How cruel, vicious and unnecessary!

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Kangaroo shooting ‘industry’

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‘Contrary to claims by regulatory agencies, the industry here in Australia is not fully professional, with a large proportion of casual shooters amongst licensees.

Kangaroos that are inaccurately targeted (not hit in the head from 80 to 200 metres at night) may suffer a painful, protracted death and their carcasses will not be utilised.

Pouch-young joeys are clubbed on the head!

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Young-at-foot are supposed to be shot, but since the industry is self-regulated, they are often left to die of starvation or predation.

Taken together, it is likely that up to a million young are killed annually as collateral damage and their carcasses not used. This is an unacceptable practice by international standards. They are the by-products of the greatest massacre of wild animals in the world. In a similar case of harvested terrestrial wildlife, the products derived from young Canadian Harp Seals – which are clubbed to death – have been banned in most westernised countries.

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“It’s embarrassing for Australia that we eat our own wildlife ….I’m here to tell you it’s just not right. Simply do not buy, use or eat kangaroo products”

~ Steve Irwin (1962 – 2006)

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Approach to Marysville before Black Saturday

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‘Thoughts on the Victorian Bushfires’

by Andrew Campbell

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Countryside north of Marysville before Black Saturday

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A friend in America asked me for my thoughts about some of the media and web reports circulating about the Victorian fires.

As a Victorian forester with professional training in fire behaviour, fire suppression and fire management, and with experience as a sector boss in fires leading up to and including Ash
Wednesday (February 1983), I have maintained an on-going interest in fire management in Australia. As a consultant policy adviser and research manager I’m interested in what our
response says about our collective knowledge base. The way we handle fires for me is one of the key indicators for how well we are learning to live in this ancient continent. The Victorian fires, and in particular some of the media since the fires, suggest that we have a long way to go in improving the ecological literacy of Australians and the body politic.

There has been lots of rabid stuff coming out since 7th February, pushing long-held anti-green agendas. Suggestions that it’s all the greenies’ fault and headlines like “will the real arsonists
please stand up” claiming that conservationists, tree protection policies and green groups’ opposition to hazard reduction burning are to blame for the fires — and by implication, the tragic loss of life and on-going suffering for people and wildlife — have been particularly ghoulish and offensive.

Claims that more broadscale fuel reduction burning in Victoria’s forests would have prevented these fires and the horrendous loss of life are nonsense. The reasons why these fires have been so destructive of life and property are multiple, interacting, complex and systemic – inevitably a recipe for media to simplify and take short-cuts to reach a convenient narrative (even better if it can be polarised into two opposing camps) that ends up being misleading and unhelpful.

Three crucial facts: 47 degrees temp (115 Fahrenheit), 120km/hr winds and relative humidity of 6%. That these conditions followed two weeks of >40 degrees heat wave, that in turn followed an unusually wet November-December and lots of late spring-early summer growth, after a decade of drought, made for an explosive tinderbox and an unprecedented
Fire Danger Index.

7th February 2009 looking east of Melbourne

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Under those conditions, fuel reduction, access tracks etc are much less useful. These fires burnt through areas that had been burnt by wildfire in 2004, and logging coupes that had been clear-felled within recent years. Mountain Ash forests — the tallest flowering plants in the world — have a lifecycle adaptation to fire. They are difficult to ignite (because they are usually wet forests with predominantly smooth bark), but when the conditions are right, they burn ferociously, creating an ash bed suitable for their regenerating seedlings. As ash seedlings are shade-intolerant, they regenerate best after very hot fires that destroy the canopy. In the absence of such fires over their life cycle, they will not persist. When fires are exploding through the canopies of 200+ feet high trees with volatilised oils creating a superheated vapour, the ground layer becomes virtually irrelevant. Witnesses described huge trees literally exploding, and that is an accurate description under these sorts of conditions.

There were few if any lightning strikes on Saturday until the cool change came through in the evening. Along with problems with power lines, arson probably played a role and two people have already been arrested. The authorities were getting saturation airtime on Melbourne radio and TV from Wednesday onwards, telling people to avoid forested areas if at all possible on Saturday. They were saying very clearly that Saturday would be the worst fire conditions ever experienced in Victoria. While these warnings were essential, it is possible that these very warnings motivated arsonists. There has been too little bushfire research on arson, but that which has been done suggests that it is an important factor in large wildfires.

Black Saturday Firestorm

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Australia (especially Victoria) needs a complete rethink of fire preparedness. With a drying, warming climate, these hitherto unprecedented conditions will become more frequent in future. Professor David Karoly of the University of Melbourne has explained that the maximum temperature, relative humidity and drought index (but not wind speed) in Victoria on 7 February were clearly exceptional and can reasonably be linked to climate change. In early 2007, the Climate Institute commissioned the Bushfire CRC, the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO to undertake the most comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the impact of climate change on bushfire weather in Australia. That report concluded that on the current climate change trajectory, very extreme fire weather days may occur around twice as often by 2020 and four to five times as often by 2050 across much of southern and eastern Australia.

Few people have made the connect between fires and water supplies. If we did fuel reduction burns over the areas and on the frequencies advocated by the “it’s all the greenies’ fault” brigade, then water yields from forested catchments would drop, CO2 emissions would increase, species composition of forests would change and some species would disappear.  Crucially, we would still have significant risks to life and property, both as a direct result of fuel reduction burns getting away, and because it would not prevent wildfires under the sorts of extreme conditions experienced on 7 February.

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The answers for me lie in these areas:

1. Dramatically improved fire detection, early warning and first attack capabilities, with real-time use of satellite imagery, many more aircraft already in the air over high-risk areas on high-risk days, and highly trained first attack crews in helicopters distributed around the state (noting that aerial operations are difficult in very windy conditions and first attack possibilities are limited under the catastrophic conditions of 7 February);
2. More aggressive fuel management immediately around houses and fire survival bunkers for houses/communities in fire prone areas, and changes to planning laws, home lending and insurance policies and practices, and building codes to mandate fire-sensitive design for measures such as window shutters, leafless guttering systems, under-floor venting, gas bottle storage etc;
3. Dramatically ramped up efforts to identify arsonists (psychological profiling of fire volunteers etc), penalties for arson, and close monitoring of known arsonists on bad days, with increases in the size of arson squads and stronger penalties for arson; and
4. Much better and mandatory training in fire preparedness for everyone in high-risk areas.

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The ‘leave early, or prepare, stay and fight’ policy remains the right policy. But the bar has been lifted for both options. Leave early means before the high-risk day (which is reasonable now that forecasts are so accurate). Prepare, stay and fight means being trained, equipped and ready with a plan B (the survival bunker) for those rare (but more likely in future) situations (>40C, <20% relative humidity, >80km/hr winds, super-dry fuels) like 7 February where fire behaviour becomes unpredictable and off the scale. If you don’t have such a bunker (see below) and the forecast is for such conditions, as was clear by 4 February, then you should leave very early.

If you have a house in a beautiful bush setting on an elevated site that is difficult to defend, then a valid strategy would be to invest in insurance rather than bunkers, tanks, pumps and so on. Then get into the habit of leaving (and having critical possessions, pets etc organised) before extreme fire weather arrives. You’d then take your chances with the house, knowing that there is still a greater chance of being in a car accident in any one year than having your house burnt down in a bushfire. Even in this scenario though, I’d nevertheless reduce fuel loads in the vicinity of the house as far as possible.

Rob Gell (pers comm), weatherman, communicator and environmentalist, responded to an earlier version of this piece, noting that councils, banks and insurers have much to answer for, and big opportunities to improve their practices:

“They’ve let thousands of lower socioeconomic sector families settle in fire-prone areas where lots are cheaper and the urban planning issues of overlooking and proximity are not on the agenda. The insurance industry and the banks have been accomplices. The banks have required insurance to build but are not concerned when the policies lapse after the first 12 months. More than 50% of houses were uninsured – I have heard 58%! The insurance companies have not insisted on annually checked and approved Fire Plans – let alone provide a premium discount if a plan is approved. There are no premium discounts for fire-proof house design or for sprinkler systems, working pumps etc.”

Turning off the gas supply at the mains on high-risk days would also reduce the risk for residences. Fuel reduction near houses is important. If councils are prepared to approve dwellings being built in high-risk areas, then it follows that they also need to approve the necessary clearing. But for small lots on high risk sites in forested regions, even total clearing may not be sufficient to ensure safety under extreme conditions, so much more consideration needs to be given to the landscape planning and development approval processes in the first place.

Professor Michael Buxton of RMIT notes (pers comm) that:

“anticipatory policies on the use of materials, building design and building location are long overdue. Governments keep avoiding these issues. Fire hazard mapping is proceeding, but government and local responses remain inadequate. Why do we prevent people from building in a flood plain but allow developers to subdivide land on ridges with one access point in areas of high potential fire hazard?”

For existing houses, if people have any intention of staying, it is important to have at least one significant area of cleared land free of flammable material. This is a completely different matter to broadscale fuel reduction over the whole forest estate. In times past, we would have called that cleared safe area a lawn. Now we need to look at other options.
These fires proved that a parked vehicle (preferably a diesel) with the engine running and the air-conditioning on full recirculating could be a suitable survival shelter, provided it was parked on a large enough clear apron away from major fuel loads. But they also reinforced the well-known point that attempting to flee in a car in dense smoke once the fires are well underway is incredibly risky.

For me, much of the media commentary, the so-called informed opinion and the human behaviour on display during and since the fires, underline the point that in many ways we are still behaving more like displaced Poms, than Australians who are adapted to living in this extraordinary continent. Rowan Reid from the University of Melbourne, wondered in The Age why it is that our weather forecasts don’t routinely report the fire danger index (see below) to better educate the community about likely fire behaviour. It’s also critical that people learn that on extreme fire days they must be well clothed, in heavy cotton from ankle to wrist, with a good hat (preferably a hard hat) and something to cover the face. I find that the hard hat with integrated visor that you can buy with your Stihl chainsaw is a good start.

I cannot believe all the TV footage from the fire zones (in these fires and other recent big fires) showing people trying to defend their properties wearing shorts, singlets and thongs.
Fire-resistant footwear is especially important under ember attack in thick smoke. In countries where temperatures often exceed 40C, the natives dress in long loose-fitting robes, usually white, they always have head-dress and they don’t expose acres of flesh directly to the sun — and that’s in daily life, let alone when confronting a fire…

Stay or Go?

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Forest Management and Fuel Reduction

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There is a crucial distinction between strategic hazard reduction burning and managing fuel loads in the immediate vicinity of houses and townships; and broadscale fuel reduction burns across the whole forest estate. I think the former is under-done and the latter is overrated. The crucial point that must be underlined is that under very extreme conditions (Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) above 50 — see below), fuel loads are no longer the key driver of fire behaviour, compared with weather (some of which is fire-induced) and topography (especially slope). It is worth remembering that in January 2003, Canberra had a strip 5-10 km wide of flogged-out, drought-stricken paddocks with not a blade of grass on them as a “fire break” to its west, but this did not prevent fires from reaching the pine plantations on its western edge. Once that happened, then of course high fuel loads so close to houses (noting that the plantations were there before the suburbs) led to houses in Duffy, Chapman and Holder being lost.

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“This is a completely different matter to broadscale fuel reduction over the whole forest estate.”

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In particular, the suggestion that having had more fuel reduction burning over larger areas more frequently during the drought of the last decade in Victoria would have prevented
these fires — and by extension that doing even more of it is essential in the hotter, drier climate we are moving into — is not backed up by the best available science. Fuel reduction burning doesn’t bring rain.  [Note:  Moreover, recent research by Clive McAlpine and colleagues has found a statistically significant correlation between the warming and drying in southern and eastern Australia in recent decades and large-scale broadacre land clearing.]

In the bush itself, there is a case for strategic hazard reduction burns in dry sclerophyll stringybark and box-ironbark forests, woodlands and grasslands. Done properly, strategic hazard reduction burns can reduce fire crowning behaviour and increase the probability of control under most conditions. There is a case for arguing that the 2003 and 2006-7 fires lasted so long because fuel build up over large areas made fire control more difficult. But it does not necessarily follow that the answer is therefore more frequent burning off on a larger scale. We need more and better research to understand the appropriate scale, pattern and frequency that will balance ecological health with (changing) fire protection objectives. Fuel reduction burning on the scale and frequency advocated recently by some advocates (e.g. 10% of whole estate every year) is a blunt instrument likely to lead to perverse outcomes without preventing large fires under catastrophic conditions.

The word ‘strategic’ is important. It is easily abused, for example in proposals to clear great swathes of bush in “strategic firebreaks” that coincidentally align very well with freeway construction programs. For me, ‘strategic’ hazard reduction means consistent with a well thought-through strategy, based on the best available (preferably current) scientific research, with very clear and internally consistent objectives (which balance other public good objectives like water, greenhouse and biodiversity) and performance measures. Much that has been advocated recently fails those tests.

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“There is a compelling case for national leadership in bushfire policy, education, research,knowledge management, monitoring and evaluation, and building the technical capabilities we will need in a much more challenging future for fire management in Australia.”

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Water catchments need to be handled very carefully or water yields will drop even further.  Fire researchers are already questioning the increasing tendency to use back-burning as a first option rather than a last option in fire suppression, because it increases the ultimate size of fires and the length of the burning edge. Lives have already been lost during back burns.  On balance, keeping more tracks open is justified, provided tracks are well-designed and maintained.

Climate change means that the notion of a ‘cool burn’ is problematic. There have already been coroners’ inquests into the deaths of firefighters undertaking so-called ‘cool burns’. Fuel reduction in wet sclerophyll forests is difficult, because when the forest is dry enough to burn, it means virtually having a planned wildfire. Professor Peter Kanowski of the Australian National University has published a very useful briefing note on fuel reduction burning for the Institute of Foresters, pointing out that, while there is a case for more fuel reduction burning, there are many constraints, and it can’t be implemented in fire-sensitive wet eucalypt forests carrying heavy fuel loads such as the Mountain Ash forests north-east of Melbourne.

It is also a fallacy to suggest that tall wet eucalypt forest in south-eastern Australia used to be burned on a regular basis by Aboriginal people and that with increased frequency and
extent of fuel reduction burning, we would be returning to a more ‘natural’ burning regime.  Painstaking research by Ron Hateley of Clunes, in a forthcoming book drawing upon a wide range of primary sources from the diaries of the first settlers and explorers, finds no evidence of so called ‘firestick farming’ by Aboriginal people in Victorian forests. Such burning may have occurred on a modest scale in the open woodlands and grasslands of northern Victoria, but there is no solid primary evidence in either the early diaries, the sedimentary record or the dendrochronological record (tree rings) that Aboriginal people burned the forests of southern and eastern Victoria. Hateley documents solid evidence that historians and others have extrapolated evidence from northern Australia, assuming that Aboriginal burning practices in the northern savannas were also employed in the forests of southeastern Australia. Repeated and reinforced by authors as diverse and notable as Geoffrey Blainey, Tim Flannery and Phil Cheney, this has become an enduring and unhelpful myth.  The primary evidence suggests that the tall wet sclerophyll forests and temperate rainforests of south-eastern Australia were characterised by a thick, almost impenetrable understorey, and not subject to regular firing by humans prior to European settlement. Phil Zylstra’s research, based on dendrochronology and charcoal and pollen deposits, suggests that fire frequency in the Australian Alps and the wet sclerophyll forests of south-eastern Australia has substantially increased since European settlement.

Mount Buffalo incinerated

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Drying conditions mean that in south-eastern Australia, a ‘cool burn’ in our tall eucalypt forests is now most likely possible in spring, when marsupials and birds are breeding. Under contemporary conditions, fires at this time of year are very difficult to control and often become wildfires with consequent risk to life and property — especially as over recent decades we have approved so many more dwellings in and on the fringes of the bush.

There is a torrent of ignorant opinion from self-appointed experts (mainly from outside Victoria, from people who were not there on Saturday (Germaine Greer being the most extreme example!)) hitting the media at the moment, blaming the greenies, the government and local councils for not doing enough hazard reduction burning. I see a grave risk that the intense and widely shared desire to implement measures “so that this can never happen again” (when of course it can and will), will translate into simplistic, one-dimensional approaches that default to non-strategic fuel reduction burning and increased clearing of native vegetation — with perverse and unintended consequences.

No mainstream conservation organisation in Australia is opposed to well-targeted and managed hazard reduction burning. A drying climate and a very dry decade have narrowed the windows within which it can be done successfully, and many communities and people with respiratory problems complain about the smoke (not to mention the wine industry).
The size of wildfires in Victoria over the last decade means that vast areas have been fuel reduced, and yet the events of 7 February still occurred. Professor David Lindenmayer of the ANU (pers comm) points out that: “I worked out of Marysville for 25 years and every year for the past 5 years the outskirts of the town were fuel reduced.”

Kevin Tolhurst from the University of Melbourne (a current fire researcher gathering current data under contemporary conditions, unlike some retired ‘experts’ trotted out by the  media) has said that more fuel reduction in the forests would have made little if any difference under Saturday’s conditions. Prof Ross Bradstock from the University of Wollongong and
the Bushfires CRC, has pointed out that the Fire Danger Index (FDI) was over 150 in Melbourne on February 7. The FDI incorporates temperature, wind speed, humidity and a
measure of fuel dryness. It was developed in the 1960s and calibrated on a scale from zero (no fire danger) to 100 (‘Black Friday’ 1939) for both forests and grasslands. Fuel reduction research has mostly involved small-scale experiments at FDIs between 10 and 20. A forest FDI (FFDI) above 50 indicates that, due to fire crowning and spotting behaviour, weather becomes the dominant indicator of fire behaviour, and it becomes impossible to fight a running forest fire front. When eucalypt forests are crowning, fuel reduction at ground level is academic. Recent research suggests that with a drying warming climate we are now seeing unprecedented FDIs, and need to introduce a new fire danger rating above ‘extreme’ called ‘catastrophic’ to more realistically present the dangers associated with days like 7 February.

Graeme Beasley inspects his property damage in the town of Koornalla near Churchill

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A spirited debate that digs deeper into this issue, with well-informed contributions from most sides of the argument, can be found at http://realdirt.com.au  [Ed: Try: ^http://www.realdirt.com.au/2009/02/18/hazard-reduction-the-blame-game/] . Some interesting recent photos, showing how the 7 February 2009 fires burned through areas fuel-reduced in April 2008, can be found at http://crikey.com.au.  [Ed:  Try:  ^http://www.crikey.com.au/topic/victorian-bushfires/]

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Where to now?

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Much of the recent criticism of Victorian authorities is unfair, or at best premature. The Victorian authorities have more expertise in these sorts of fires than anyone else. It should be remembered that over 300 new fires started in Victoria on 7 February, and only a dozen were not rounded up, which was a great effort. But those 12 major fires, under unprecedented conditions, caused enormous damage and horrible loss of life. None of the 181 deaths announced up to 10 February were firefighters, which is a huge improvement from Ash Wednesday 1983 and Black Friday 1939. Tragically, one volunteer firefighter from Canberra has since been killed by a falling tree, and several others have been injured by falling limbs in trying to secure control lines. But overall, the marked reduction in firefighter casualties from the firefront itself, compared with previous large-scale fires, is commendable. The Victorian inter-agency coordination processes, their large fire management systems, their aerial detection, airborne infra-red fire-mapping systems, their personnel training, and their community education and communication approaches are already up with the best in the world (especially considering their resource constraints compared with say California). This is entirely appropriate given that Victoria is the most dangerous wildfire region anywhere, in its combination of climate, fuel types and fuel loads, topography and population density.

That is not to suggest that all these things and more could not be much better — as the Royal Commission will no doubt reveal. Professor Rod Keenan, Head of the Department of Forest and Ecosystem Science at the University of Melbourne, has written a perceptive piece arguing that we need to rethink Bushfire Governance at the national level, supporting a stronger national approach to bushfire and land management. I agree with Rod on this, as the intersections between fire management and other national priorities such as climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, water yields and biodiversity conservation are acute.

National Army Response – ‘Operation VIC FIRE ASSIST 2009’

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There is a compelling case for national leadership in bushfire policy, education, research,knowledge management, monitoring and evaluation, and building the technical capabilities
we will need in a much more challenging future for fire management in Australia. We have already made a good start with national coordination of aerial fire-fighting through the National Aerial Firefighting Centre (NAFC) and in collaboration across States and Territories through AFAC. But more could be done, and the Australian Government could be taking a stronger leadership role beyond just providing funds.  These fires, against the background of climate change, herald a new era. We now need to achieve a comparable improvement in  preparedness, training, equipment and discipline across the wider community, especially in high-risk bushfire zones. This is a mammoth and systemic education, planning, policy, technical and management challenge. It will inevitably mean allocating more resources to these tasks than we have in the past. The public response to these fires in donating hundreds of millions of dollars has been heart-warming. Governments always seem to be able to find funds for rescue packages and disaster response measures after the event. But our record in investing properly in prevention and risk management is modest at best.

Just as the post-mortems of 1939, 1967 and 1983 also led to fundamental re-thinks and systemic improvements (albeit with patchy implementation), so will the Royal Commission into  these fires. The whole planning system should be overhauled, way beyond just building codes and vegetation management. Premier Brumby and his cabinet — and I suspect now Kevin Rudd — appear to understand that business as usual will not do. They also seem to understand the link to climate change in making events such as these (and worse) more likely in future. But they have yet to make the logical jump to the urgency of mitigating climate change, which means setting ambitious targets, and retooling the economy from top to bottom to achieve them.

Bushfire Governance is a National Responsibilty

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I’m reminded of the challenge of running whole farm planning courses for farmers in the mid-1980s, looking at how to redesign farm layout and management to get a more synergistic blend of conservation and production. It was difficult to get farmers to imagine an entirely new farm layout — the fences on the ground had become fences in their heads. The most effective technique I found was to say “imagine that your farm has just been burnt out, and all the fences and infrastructure have been destroyed. Would you put them back exactly as  they were before?” Invariably, the response was an emphatic ‘no, of course not’.   That simple scenario exercise often unlocked their imagination and strategies for how the farm could be redesigned to better ‘fit’ into the landscape, its soil types, hydrology and land forms, rather than be superimposed on to it in a rectilinear fashion dictated by some colonial surveyor 150 years ago.

This analogy applies equally at the level of the world financial system, and at the level of national, state and local governments in Australia. We have had our bushfire, literally and figuratively. The old structures have been flattened. Let’s not put them back as they were. Let’s take the opportunity to redesign, to rewire, to replumb and to replenish our landscapes,
our economies, and our basic systems for food production, energy, transport, water and housing, to fit new climatic, ecological and economic circumstances.

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Gippsland Bushfire of 1898

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The following advertisement by Pfizer Australia appeared in The Land newspaper on 22nd September 2011 in the ‘Livestock’ section on page 70.  It was promoting Pfizer’s pharmaceutical vaccine product Gudair® Vaccine for the control of Ovine Johnes Disease (OJD) infecting Australian sheep.

The ODJ Menace may well be a threat to sheep flocks,

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Wolves have got absolutely nothing to do with Ovine Johne’s Disease.

Wolves don’t even exist in Australia.  They are native to continental Europe and Northern America where in fact the Gray Wolf continues to be persecuted and where Pfizer is headquartered, in New York City.

Ovine Johne’s Disease is a serious wasting disease that affects a wide range of animals, including cattle, sheep and goats in Australia.  It is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium paratuberculosis) that live mainly in animal intestines but can also survive in the outside environment for several months.

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Any effective vaccine is clearly welcome.

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This is the cause of Ovine Johne’s Disease, the bacteria ‘Mycobacterium paratuberculosis’

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Pfizer’s advertised image above of an angry Gray Wolf  is misleading, grossly inappropriate and unethical.  It wrongly and unfairly demonises the wolf species as a predatory threat to Australia sheep. Wolves are not a threat to Australia sheep.  They do not exist in Australia.

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Wolves have been persecuted since before Medieval times in Europe.  The feelings of disdain and condemnation they held toward the wolf came from England and other parts of Europe in the form of fables, fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood), and so-called true stories that sometimes reached mythological proportions.  The European hatred of the wolf was the result of much more than fantastical tales of the animal’s criminal nature.

Wolf Prejudice dates back to Little Red Riding Hood

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During European colonisation of northern Americas, European puritan Pilgrims thought they had a great moral, religious, and economic duty to subdue the wolf, along with taming the ‘wild west’ wilderness, wholesale deforestation of forests and popping off ‘tribal savages’, otherwise known as Native Americans.  The Puritans regarded the wilderness itself as a howling beast, a wolf inspired by the Devil.

So having established the wolf as a representative symbol of unkempt nature, evil, criminality, animalistic desires, and even cruelty, it was natural that America’s newcomers felt a strong moral duty to exterminate wolves. Wolfing, trapping, poisoning, denning, shooting has killed off thousands of wolves.  In 1905, cattle ranchers in Montana won passage of a law that required the state veterinarian to infect captive wolves with the sarcoptic mange and release them into wild wolf habitat (Williams 1990).

This irrational cultural hatred of wolves has perpetuated unchecked across northern American through three centuries, forcing the Gray Wolf to the brink of extinction, like the Bison.

The ultimate effect of these predator control campaigns virtually extirpated of the wolf in the United States. In May 1943, the last wolf killed in Yellowstone fell to the rifle of a local cattleman (Loomis 1995). By 1945, the only wolves left in the Western United States were stragglers (Lopez 1978) were all but gone. Except for a small population in northern Minnesota and a few on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, wolves no longer existed in the lower forty-eight states (Lopez 1978).

Gray wolves once roamed the United States from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wolves were intensively killed in staggering numbers, eradicating them from almost all of the lower-48 by the 1930s. Today, wolves have mounted a comeback, but their recovery is far from certain. Congress, for example, recently kicked wolves in Idaho and Montana off the endangered species list, which opens the door for hundreds of wolves to be killed.

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Alaska’s brutal ‘Predator Control Plan’
serving hunters at Nature’s expense – the Grey Wolf is native to Alaska.
The plan has already been in effect for three years, during which time aerial gunners have slain 564 wolves,

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Pfizer’s wolf persecuting advertisement incites a public hate message against wolves.  It is symptomatic of a Baby Boomer attitude of domination over Nature inherited from ancestral ignorance and perpetuated in childhood by being read ‘Little Red Riding Hood‘ as children. Even in this fairy tale, the wolf was used a a metaphor for evil men. May this Grimms Brothers book be banned for children!

Pfizer management, its advertiser and the owners of The Land newspaper should withdraw the advertisement and make a public apology for denigrating wildlife and perpetuating a primitive fear against Wolves.    Pfizer claims that it:

  “incorporates protection of the environment, health and safety (EHS) into how we run our business. Environment, Health and Safety policy commitments set our direction and align with our company mission. Our policy is brought to life through strategic and operational decisions made daily by thousands of colleagues, guided by company values and effective management systems.”

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The above advertisement is inconsisent with this company mission.

Gray Wolves remain persecuted across America by irrational Baby Boomer attitudes

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What’s left of Tombstone Creek old growth rainforest in Tasmania after a ‘Planned Burn’

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‘My name is Prue Barratt and I live in Maydena in the Derwent Valley (Tasmania).  I’m writing this to highlight what small towns around this state have to deal with in Autumn and Winter.

Today (Wednesday) started off as a spectacular crisp winter’s day; one of a few really beautiful days we get through our colder months.  So I was excited to get outside for the day to enjoy the sun.  But by the time I organised myself to venture out it was too late … as I opened my front door I was confronted by smoke … it was literally blowing in my door.

I covered my nose and stepped out to see what was going on and realised there were fires right around our little town;  not one fire but a two or maybe three, I couldn’t actually see how many because I couldn’t see and I could hardly breath, I stepped back inside, grabbed the camera,  and took the pictures above; this was the view from my roof … 360 degrees surrounded by smoke.

It was one of the worst smoke-outs I had experienced whilst living here and by the time I got back inside I reeked of smoke.

This is just plain wrong. It is the 21st Century on a planet that is worried about carbon pollution!   Our leaders need to put an end to these archaic practices now. There is no need to subject communities or the environment in general to this kind off filthy practice.

Tasmania already has one of the country’s highest rates of asthma allergies and lung problems.  Why is this allowed to continue?  Tassie is supposed to be the “Clean Green State”.

I’m pretty sure the tourist bus loaded with people which crawled through town didn’t think it was a clean green state.  I’m pretty sure they were horrified that this happens in a supposed developed country every year.

When your eyes are stinging and you are too scared to open the doors of your home because your house will become unbearably flooded with smoke; when you are concerned for the wellbeing of old and frail family members because you just can’t get away from it unless you completely pack up and leave for the night …

You feel like a prisoner in your own home … in country in this day and age.. There is a serious problem!

Postscript:   I just needed to add to my article that three Norske Skog (Boyer pulp mill) employees just turned up on my doorstep and apologised for all the smoke.  They weren’t burning coupes but were asked by a couple of locals to burn piles close to their houses; most of the coupes were already burnt earlier in the season, so I need to acknowledge that … but the whole burning off thing needs to stop regardless. They said they were looking into alternatives but it needs to stop now; not later. They have had long enough to change the way they do things … at our expense.’

[end of article]

.Smoke-filled atmosphere engulfing Maydena, South West Tasmania

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In 2009 paper maker, Norske Skog, with its pulp mill plant situated at Boyer on Tasmania’s Derwent River, axed 50 jobs as a combined consequence of its automation upgrade to its pulp mill plant and due to the structural downturn in paper sales by its newspaper clients. 

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Ed:  Newspapers are losing advertising revenue to Internet based businesses like Seek.com, CarSales.com.au, and HomeSales.com.au and so selling less newspapers and so buying less paper from the likes of Norske Skog.

Pile burning and forest (coupe) burning by Norske Skog is typical business-as-usual deforestation across Tasmania, not only by the forestry industry but by National Parks, the Tasmanian Fire Service and by rural landholders.  It is all part of an inherited colonial cult of bush arson that is a key threatening process driving habitat extinctions across the island.  Prescribed burning, aka ‘hazard reduction’, is a euphemism for State-sanctioned bush arson which is endemic practice not only across Tasmania’s remanining wild forests, but throughout Australia.  It is a major contributor to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, which are what many scientists argue are Man’s cause of global warming and climate change.

The Gillard Labor Government is about to introduce a Carbon Tax on 1st July 2012, whereby Australia’s major industrial polluters must pay a Carbon Tax of $23 per tonne.  Yet the many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of timber that are burnt by bushfires is somehow excluded – whether it be lightning ignitions allowed to get out of control, or deliberate State-sanctioned bush arson.  This makes the Carbon Tax nothing but discriminating political greenwashing, with minimal climate impact.  Meanwhile, and more critically, Australia’s ecology, regions by regions, is being driven closer to extinction by destructive bushfire management. 

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Comments to Prue’s article by Tigerquoll

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‘CEO Bob Gordon and his Forestry Tasmania (FT) forest marauders along with his partners in eco-crime Tasmania Fire Service (TFS) Chief Officer Mike Brown need to be paying Julia’s Carbon Tax.  But instead of $23 per tonne, it ought be $23 per cubic metre.

Send the two organisations broke. Do not donate to the TFS bastards.  They light more fires than they put out.  ‘Fuel’ Reduction is a euphemism for bush arson.  It gives ‘em somthing to do in the off season.  It reflects the helpless defeatism of Tasmania’s non urban fire emergency service denied proper and effective government resources to put out serious wildfires when they occur.’

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TFS bastards setting fire to native forests is defeatism, knowing that unless native vegetation is converted to sterile parkland that in a real wildlife it is every man for himself.

They even have removed the ‘Low Fire Risk’ category and added a ‘Catastrophic Fire Risk’ category.  They may as well add an ‘Armageddon’ category and be done with it!  It is defeatism at its worst.

Local case in point – look recent Meadowbank Fire near Maydena in February this year east of Karanja.  It started on Saturday, reportedly by “accident” at the Meadowbank Dam and  burnt out 5000 hectares.  Two days later was still officially ‘out of control’.  The meaningless and flawed motto of ‘Stay or Go’ was supplanted by the false sense of security of ‘Prepare, Act, Survive’.  In reality the pragmatic community message ought to be ‘You’re On Your Own’.

This Tassie Dad’s Army fire agency is more adept at starting bushfires than putting them out.

The under-resourced, raffle funded volunteer dependent model is abject Government neglect of emergency management.  Every time someone criticises the non-urban fire fighting performance, the government bureaucracy and politicans hide behinds the nobleness of community volunteers.

Imagine if URBAN fire fighting was volunteer dependent on someone’s pager going off?  Goodbye house.

I feel for the volunteers, but have no respect for the policy or organisation.’

Tasmania’s Derwent Valley 20120401

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Here’s a question..what is the impact on Tasmanian fauna?

Here’s some research…

“It’s spring, and soon we’ll start to get sensationalist stories predicting a horrendous bushfire season ahead. They will carry attacks on agencies for not doing enough to reduce fuel loads in forests close to homes, for unless those living on the urban fringe see their skies filled with smoke in winter they panic about losing their homes in January.

Fighting fires with fear is a depressing annual event and easy sport on slow news days. Usually the debate fails to ask two crucial questions: does hazard reduction really do anything to save homes, and what’s the cost to native plants and animals caught in burn-offs?

…A new scientific paper published in the CSIRO journal Wildlife Research by Michael Clarke, an associate professor in the department of zoology at La Trobe University, suggests the answer to both questions is: we do not know.

Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security rather than to reduce fire risks, and the effect on wildlife is virtually unknown.’

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State-sanctioned bush arson in Tasmania

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Bushfires, their smoke and heat, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.  So Bushfire Management has an obligation to reduce bushfires, not create them.  Bushfire Management needs to pay a Carbon Tax just like any other industrial polluter.

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‘Forestry tries to spin results of CSIRO Emissions Study’

..more smoke and mirrors from an out-of-touch agency.

‘The Tasmanian Greens today said that a CSIRO study comparing smoke emissions from wood-heaters with forestry burn-offs did nothing to justify Forestry Tasmania’s outdated and unsustainable management practices.  The study, commissioned by Forestry Tasmania, found that the majority of smoke pollution in specific parts of the Huon Valley during 2009 and 2010 was caused by wood-heater emissions.

Greens Forestry spokesperson Kim Booth MP said that these results aren’t surprising, particularly in the more densely populated areas such as Geeveston and Grove where the study was conducted.

“This is not a case of one type of smoke pollution being better than another.  All smoke emissions are an unwanted nuisance for the community, particularly for those with pre-existing respiratory problems such as asthma.”

“The commissioning and release of this study by Forestry Tasmania is another obvious attempt to justify their so-called regeneration burns. That’s despite the Environment Protection Authority identifying numerous breaches of guideline safety levels for particle emissions caused by burn-offs.”

“We need to be working as a community to reduce all smoke emissions and improve air quality.  This means that we must work to educate people on the importance of installing heaters that burn efficiently, and comply with Australian standards.”

“Forestry can’t play down the negative impact of its burn-offs.  The Greens receive many complaints from people suffering from respiratory problems, such as asthma, who have no option in some cases but to pack up and leave home during the forest burns season.”

“Proper systems need to be put in place, or its time these burns were stopped once and for all.”

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2010:  Escaped Controlled Burn at Ansons Bay in mid-Summer

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‘The derived fire location..corresponds to a wildfire at Ansons Bay (north-east Tasmania, near Bay of Fires) , listed on the Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS) webpage on the 23rd of January.

This fire had burnt out 100 ha on 23rd January 2010, and had burnt a total of 200 hectares when reported as extinguished on the 26th.

The fire was reported as an escaped permit burn.  The permit burn was ignited on the 22nd of January 2010. The local TFS brigade responded to the wildfire at 14:00 EDT on the 23rd. The wildfire burnt mainly in grassland.

Smoke from a bushfire at Ansons Bay on the 23rd of January 2010 moved westwards towards the Tamar River. The BLANkET air stations at Derby, Scottsdale and Lilydale each detected the smoke as it moved. Ti Tree Bend station(Launceston) and the Rowella station in the lower Tamar also detected the smoke. Derby is approximately 35 km from the fire location, while Ti Tree Bend and the Rowella stations are approximately 100 km from the burn. The peak 10–minute PM2.5 concentrations at these stations were of order 10 to 15 μg m−3.

At Rowella the hourly–averaged PM2.5 reached to near 20 μg m−3 near 21:00 AEST.

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Tasmanian Forest Industry – its case for burning native forests every year

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‘The Tasmanian forest industry planned burning program, which includes both burning for forest regeneration, and burning for property protection generally commences in mid-March if conditions are suitable.

.. The Coordinated Smoke Management Strategy developed by the Forest Practices Authority is being used by the Tasmanian forest industry.

As of 2011, all smoke complaints are being received and investigated by the Environment Protection Authority, a Division of the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment.  [Ed.  But the EPA has no watchdog besides the community, so it can be as incompetent, as negligent, as complicit, as dismissive, as colluding with its sister Tasmanian Government agencies all it likes.  The EPA does not have any law that requires it to be publicly transparent.  The photos in this article evidence the Tasmanian EPA as an ineffectual and spurious organisation.]

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Forest Regeneration

Fire is an important part of the life cycle of Eucalypts. In nature most eucalypt species require the disturbance provided by fire to regenerate. Eucalypt seeds and seedlings need a mineral soil seedbed, abundant sunlight and reduced competition from other plants to establish and grow. In nature this situation is provided by a major wildfire. Tasmanian forest managers mimic nature by using fire in a planned and controlled way to re-establish healthy fast growing trees after harvesting.

Planned burns are part of an industry-wide programme by :

1. Forestry Tasmania (FT)
2. The Forest Industries Asssociation of Tasmania (FIAT).
3. Tasmania Fire Service
4. Parks & Wildlife Service, Tasmania.

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Forests & Timber

Forests managed for timber production take more carbon out of the atmosphere over time than unmanaged  forests locked up in reserves.  Tasmania currently has 47% of forests locked up and unmanaged.

Timber from managed forests is used to build an array of structures from houses to multi-level buildings, sports arenas to architecturally designed public spaces.  Timber is light and easy to work with and allows for flexibility and efficiency in design.  Timber is warm, aesthetically pleasing and most importantly, renewable.  Environments rich in timber have a kinship with nature and make people living and working in them feel at one with the outdoors.

It is so important, in these tough economic times, to use local products.  Tasmanian timber produced in the state comes from sustainably managed forests, administered under processes established by Government. In addition, all public and most private forests in Tasmania are third party certified as being sustainably managed by the Australian Forestry Standard.  Tasmanian timber is a particularly environmentally friendly choice and we should be using more wood to help combat climate change.

Wood is stored greenhouse gas – held together with stored sunlight.  If we are serious about trying to address greenhouse and climate change problems, we should be growing and using more forests, for sustainable energy-efficient products that store carbon and for sustainable biomass-based energy systems.

Harvesting a forest results in the release of some carbon dioxide back into the air from which it came however a considerable portion remains stored in resulting forest products such as furniture, timber for housing and a myriad of paper products.

Use more wood not less.’

Ed:  Fire is unnatural in old growth wet Eucalypt forests.  Many forest plant species are fire sensitive so will not recover in teh evnt of a fire.  No fauna are fire tolerant – they either burn to death or die after fire from starvation, exposure or predation.  Those who burn forests have no idea of the impacts upon fauna populations, nor the impacts of fire upon biodiversity.   Their lay observation upon seeing regrowth of some species is that setting fire to forest habitat must be ok. 

Those who perpetuate and extend this myth, fabruicate the notion that fire is healthy and indeed essential for forest regeneration and survival.  All new recruits of the Tasmanian Forest Industry, Tasmania Fire Service and Parks & Wildlife Service are duly indoctrinated to this dogma.  Of course it is unsubstantiated crap.  Al one needs do is walk through an ancient Styx forest that has not been burnt for hundreds of years to disprove the myth.

Those vested interests who stand to profit from deforestation and exploitation of native forests, brandish all protected forest habitat as being ‘locked up’ and ‘unmanaged’.  The ecological values of the forests are dismissed as worthless.  It is no different to 17th Century traders denied access to Africans for the slave trade.

Timber that is from native old growth forests is not “renewable” unless the industrial logger is prepared to wait 500 plus years to harvest.  Logging old growth is eco-theft and irreversibly ecologically destructive.

Tough economic times means that the smart investment is into sustainable industries where there is strong market demand and growth for products not vulnerable to buyer rejection on the basis of immoral sourcing or production.

Biomass-based energy is a technical euphemism for burning forests, which is unacceptable because is causes green house gas emissions.  Buring natiuve forests also drive local habitat extinctions.

Use LESS wood NOT more!

2010:  Smoke rises into the sky above the Huon Valley in southern Tasmania

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Parks & Wildlife Service – its case for burning native forests every year

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‘Planned burning is an important part of fire management designed to maintain biodiversity and to reduce the risk posed by bushfires to people, houses, other property and the natural environment.   Fire plays a major role in the ecology of the Tasmanian natural environment. Fire can be a vital force in maintaining healthy bush. But in the wrong place at the wrong time, it can also lead to the destruction of unique vegetation communities, human life and property.

Our diverse vegetation communities have differing responses to fire, from potentially devastating impacts in alpine areas and conifer forests, to ecologically sustainable effects in buttongrass moorlands and dry scelerophyll forest.  Tasmania’s unique fauna has some interesting adaptations to fire. For some species, it is essential for their habitat requirements.

‘The Parks and Wildlife Service is responsible for the management of bushfires on all reserved land in Tasmania.

This management includes:

• control of unplanned bushfires
• planned burning to reduce fuel loads and make fire control easier and safer
• planned burning to help maintain biodiversity, promote regeneration of plants that depend on fire and to maintain suitable habitat for animals
• maintaining assets that assist with bushfire control, for example, fire trails, firebreaks and waterholes.

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Planned Burning of Tasmania’s National Parks (to date) for 2012

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The first planned burn area in the table above labelled as ‘Narawntapu‘ applied to Narawntapu National Park, specifically at Cosy Corner, Bay of Fires Conservation Area, in north-east Tasmania.  The ecology is renowned for its Wombats and Tasmanian Devils.  Where do they go when Parks Service starts fires?

Tasmania’s famous ‘Bay of Fires’

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The posted notice read:  

‘Parks and Wildlife Service is today (Tuesday 8 May) conducting a fuel reduction burn in the Bay of Fires Conservation Area south of St Helens at the Cosy Corner North campground.  The burn is about 20 hectares. The objective is to reduce fuel loads to provide protection for the campground in the event of a wildfire.’

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So somehow the planned burn of 20 hectares extended to nearly 800 hectares inside the protected National Park!  Was this yet another escaped burn?  Where is the ecological report of damage to flora and fauna?   So much for the National Parks motto ‘leave no trace’.  How hypocritical!

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“How can walkers help keep Tasmania wild and beautiful?

Leave No Trace is an internationally accepted way of minimising impacts on the places we visit.”

~ Parks and Wildlife Service, Tasmania

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The National Park before the burn

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A wombat in Narawntapu National Park cannot run from fire

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The Burn Area of nearly 2800 hectares of Tasmania’s National for 2012, translates to 28 square kilometres.

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Forest Smoke across southern Tasmania, from planned burning, April 2008

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Tasmania Fire Service – its case for burning native forests every year

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Ed:   It doesn’t just have one programme, but two.  One programme to burn native forests every year, the other to slash and bulldoze access to get good access to burn the native forests.

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Fuel Reduction Programme

‘Each summer, bushfires in our forests pose a significant threat to communities in rural areas, and on the rural-urban interface. Large, uncontrollable bushfires can have serious consequences for Tasmanians. The Tasmanian Government has committed funds towards a program of planned fuel reduction burns to help protect Tasmanians from the threat of wildfires. The program will see the State’s three firefighting agencies, Forestry Tasmania, the Tasmania Fire Service and the Parks and Wildlife Service combine their expertise in a concerted program aimed at reducing fuel loads around the state.

The objective of the inter-agency Fuel Reduction Burning Program is to create corridors of low fuel loads to help prevent large wildfires.  The program complements but does not replace fuel reduction burning and other means of fuel reduction close to houses and other assets.’

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Bushfire Mitigation Programme

‘The Bushfire Mitigation Programme provides funds for construction and maintenance of fire trails and associated access measures that contribute to safer sustainable communities better able to prepare, respond to and withstand the effects of bushfires.

The program is administered by Australian Emergency Management (AEM) within the Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department. Tasmania Fire Service is the lead agency in Tasmania for the Bushfire Mitigation Program.

In the 2009 Budget the Australian Government announced funding of $79.3m over four years for a new Disaster Resilience Program (DRP).

The DRP will consolidate the existing Bushfire Mitigation Program (BMP), the Natural Disaster Mitigation Program (NDMP) and the National Emergency Volunteer Support Fund (NEVSF) in an effort to increase flexibility for the jurisdictions and streamline the associated administration for both the Commonwealth and the States and Territories.

The Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department is currently working with representatives from each jurisdiction to ensure that the transition to the new DRP is as smooth as possible.

The DRP will commence in 2009-10 and details of the funding arrangements, program guidelines and implementation plans will be announced by the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s department and disseminated to the relevant agencies and stakeholders in each jurisdiction in due course.’

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‘Burnoffs’ Chemical Cocktail’

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Smoke haze from burnoffs pushed Tasmania close to breaching air safety standards last week.

In one 24-hour period, emission levels from the forestry regeneration and fuel-reduction burns “were approaching the standard”, state environmental management director Warren Jones told the Sunday Tasmanian.

Elevated particle levels had been detected in Launceston and Hobart on several days during the week.

A Sunday Tasmanian investigation into the smoke haze has revealed:

• Between 5000ha and 7000ha is earmarked for forestry regeneration burns this season.
• About 70,000ha of the state’s forest was razed by wildfire in the past summer.
• The smoke contains a mix of carbon monoxide, tar, ash, ammonia and known carcinogens such as formaldehyde and benzene.’

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‘Forestry burn offs continue to threaten…’

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The Tasmanian Greens today said that the Parliament needs to commission an independent study into the total social, environmental and economic costs of forestry burns, as they continue to emit pollutants into the air causing distress to the many Tasmanians suffering from respiratory complaints, and also impacting on Tasmania’s clean, green and clever brand.

Greens Health spokesperson Paul ‘Basil’ O’Halloran MP burn-off practice as outdated, old-school and not in line with appropriate practice today, especially when it continues to put thousands of Tasmanians with respiratory complaints in distressing situations. These airborne emissions impact disproportionately on children.

“Once again Tasmania’s beautiful autumn days are blighted by the dense smoke plumes blocking out the sun and choking our air,” Mr O’Halloran said.

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“This is an unacceptable situation. It compromises Tasmanians’ health, our environment, and is an insult to common-sense.”

“The Greens are calling for the Minister to commission independent social, environmental and economic impact study of these burns.”

“Tasmania’s tourism industry also has reason for concern over this due to the plumes of smoke that choke up the air sheds and appear as a horrible blight on the Tasmanian Landscape.”

“We also want to see an end to these burns, and are calling on the Minister to consult with the community to establish a date by which this polluting practice will end once and for all.”

“It is also concerning at the impact these burns have on Tasmania’s biodiversity and threatened species such as the Tasmanian Devil, burrowing and freshwater crayfish, and a myriad of other plant and animal species.”

“The annual so-called forest regeneration burns have just commenced with Forestry Tasmania alone intends to conduct 300 coupe burns over five districts, and this will emit copious amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change, not to mention the risk this poses for the many Tasmanians who suffer from respiratory complaints such as Asthma,” Mr O’Halloran said.

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The Killing of Wild Tasmania – Extinction by a Thousand Fires

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These photographs provide an illustration of current Tasmanian forestry practices. The photos are from Coupe RS142E, in the upper valley of Tombstone Creek, one kilometer upstream from the Tombstone Creek Forest Reserve in the northeast highlands of Tasmania. Tombstone Creek is a tributary of the upper South Esk River, the headwaters of the water supply for Launceston.

Majestic ancient Rainforest in Tombstone Creek (c.1000 AD to 2006)

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AFTER

‘I first came upon this forest in May 2003, and was so struck by it’s beauty that I made several return visits during the following 12 months. This steep valley-side supported a wet and mossy forest characterized by myrtles, blackwood, tall eucalypt emergents, groves of tree-ferns up to eight meters high and some of the largest sassafras that I have seen anywhere in Tasmania. Many of the sassafras trees had trunk diameters of one meter or more at chest height.

This forest was clear-felled by cable-logging in the summer of 2005 and burnt in an exceedingly hot fire in April 2006. All of the rainforest trees were killed outright. The site is steep and soils are sandy and the valley side was left in a condition which was highly vulnerable to severe soil erosion. This coupe is bordered by some areas that were logged within the last 10 years or so, and the regrowth in these adjacent coupes is a mix of wattle and eucalypt. A narrow strip of rainforest remains at the new coupe’s lowest edge, along Tombstone Creek, but recolonization by the rainforest trees cannot occur, due to the competitive advantage of the eucalyptus and wattles in a full sunlight situation. This is especially so in the context of a drying climate. Simply put, the process enacted here is conversion, in this case from a mature mixed rainforest dominated by myrtle and sassafras, with eucalypt emergents, to an uncultivated crop of wattle and, presumably, the aerially sown eucalypt species.

In this process of conversion, which is far from being confined to this particular coupe, two options are precluded. Firstly, the option for the natural forest to continue to exist for it’s own sake and to develop towards rainforest, a point from which, given the age of the eucalypts, it was not far removed. The second opportunity forgone is for the possibility of alternative uses of species other than wattle and eucalypt, including wood uses, for future generations of people.

Other negative and significant ecological impacts have occurred here, including devastating effects on wildlife, altered hydrology, atmospheric pollution, weed invasion and not least, the release of massive amounts of carbon, previously sequestered within the soil and the living vegetation, into the atmosphere.

The scenes depicted here are all within 100 meters of each other. The forest scenes were photographed in 2003, the other scenes in October 2006.

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Further Reading

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[1]   Bush Arson excuse by Forestry Tasmania  ^http://www.forestrytas.com.au/uploads/File/pdf/pdf2012/regen_burn_program_insert_2012.pdf  [Read Document (PDF, 1.4 mb)]

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[2]   Fuel Reduction Programme, March 2008, Tasmania Fire Service, ^http://www.fire.tas.gov.au/Show?pageId=tfsFuelReductionProgramme, [Read Document  (PDF, 1.7 mb)]

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[3]   ‘The burning of Tasmania’, 20080425, various contriubutors Vica Bayley, Dave Groves, Tim Morris, Matthew Newton, Tasmanian Times,  ^http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/tassie-burns/

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[4]   ‘The dangers of fighting fire with fire’, by James Woodford, 20080908, Sydney Morning Herald, ^http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/the-dangers-of-fighting-fire-with-fire/2008/09/07/1220725850216.html]   Text extract below:

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‘It’s spring, and soon we’ll start to get sensationalist stories predicting a horrendous bushfire season ahead. They will carry attacks on agencies for not doing enough to reduce fuel loads in forests close to homes, for unless those living on the urban fringe see their skies filled with smoke in winter they panic about losing their homes in January.

Fighting fires with fear is a depressing annual event and easy sport on slow news days. Usually the debate fails to ask two crucial questions: does hazard reduction really do anything to save homes, and what’s the cost to native plants and animals caught in burn-offs?

A new scientific paper published in the CSIRO journal Wildlife Research by Michael Clarke, an associate professor in the department of zoology at La Trobe University, suggests the answer to both questions is: we do not know.

What we do know is a lot of precious wild places are set on fire, in large part to keep happy those householders whose kitchen windows look out on gum trees.

Clarke says it is reasonable for land management agencies to try to limit the negative effects of large fires, but we need to be confident our fire prevention methods work. And just as importantly, we need to be sure they do not lead to irreversible damage to native wildlife and habitat.

He argues we need to show some humility, and writes: “The capacity of management agencies to control widespread wildfires ignited by multiple lightning strikes in drought conditions on days of extreme fire danger is going to be similar to their capacity to control cyclones.” In other words, sometimes we can do zip.

Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security rather than to reduce fire risks, and the effect on wildlife is virtually unknown.

The sooner we acknowledge this the sooner we can get on with the job of working out whether there is anything we can do to manage fires better. We need to know whether hazard reduction can be done without sending our wildlife down a path of firestick extinctions.

An annual burn conducted each year on Montague Island, near Narooma on the NSW far South Coast, highlights the absurdity of the current public policy free-for-all, much of which is extraordinarily primitive. In 2001 park rangers burnt a patch of the devastating weed kikuyu on the island. The following night a southerly blew up, the fire reignited and a few penguins were incinerated. It was a stuff-up that caused a media outcry: because cute penguins were burnt, the National Parks and Wildlife Service was also charcoaled.

Every year since there has been a deliberate burn on Montague, part of a program to return the island to native vegetation. Each one has been a circus – with teams of staff, vets, the RSPCA, ambulances, boats and helicopters – all because no one wants any more dead penguins.

Meanwhile every year on the mainland, park rangers and state forests staff fly in helicopters tossing out incendiary devices over wilderness forests, the way the UN tosses out food packages. Thousands of hectares are burnt, perhaps unnecessarily, too often, and worse, thousands of animals that are not penguins (so do not matter) are roasted. All to make people feel safe. Does the burning protect nearby towns? On even a moderately bad day, probably not. Does it make people feel better? Yes.

Clarke’s paper calls for the massive burn-offs to be scrutinised much more closely. “In this age of global warming, governments and the public need to be engaged in a more sophisticated discussion about the complexities of coping with fire in Australian landscapes,” he writes.

He wants ecological data about burns collected as routinely as rainfall data is gathered by the agricultural industry. Without it, hazard reduction burning is flying scientifically blind and poses a dangerous threat to wildlife.

“To attempt to operate without … [proper data on the effect of bushfires] should be as unthinkable as a farmer planting a crop without reference to the rain gauge,” he writes.

In the coming decades, native plants and animals will face enough problems – most significantly from human-induced climate chaos – without having to dodge armies of public servants armed with lighters. Guesswork and winter smoke are not enough to protect our towns and assets now, and the risk of bushfires increases with the rise in carbon dioxide.

James Woodford is the editor of www.realdirt.com.au.

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Some claim kangaroo meat is ‘green’. Some even claim killing kangaroos is ‘better’ for Australia’s environment.

So what if Australian farmers of lamb, beef, pork and chicken transitioned to kangaroo?  To this author it is like employing mass murderer Ivan Milat to skin platypus for cheap token tourist purses.

Personal bias aside, Australia’s Federal Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry, has highlighted the flawed presumptions of Australia’s roo trade as unviable.

The following extracts are taken from Sydney Morning Herald’s Jacob Saulwick in his article ‘Henry doubts viability of roo harvesting’ of 13-Mar-10 (reproduced below):

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“If we’re lucky, it will be many decades before we know whether these judgments are well based,” Dr Henry said of commercial kangaroo harvest quotas in December… “If they are, this will turn out to be the first instance in human history of the sustainable plunder of a natural resource.”

Dr Henry is at odds with prominent ecologists, as well as the economist Ross Garnaut. Professor Garnaut’s 2008 climate-change review made the case for an increased diet of roo displacing cattle and sheep consumption. The Garnaut report cited a study by George Wilson and Melanie Edwards that predicted a 3 per cent drop in greenhouse emissions if roo numbers rose from 25 million to 175 million, pushing cattle and sheep of rangelands, and displacing some red meat consumption.

Critics on the Henry side question the numbers, unconvinced kangaroo meat could ever replace red meat consumption in Australia to any significant degree.

“A lot of the environmental movement supports eating kangaroos, because people think it is green,” said Daniel Ramp, a biologist at the University of NSW helping set up a think tank on the roo industry with the Institute of Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney.

“But we need to follow that argument through and ask how many sheep or cattle we could displace with meat from a kangaroo.”

On Dr Ramp’s figures, if every Australian were to start eating roo regularly, its population would need to swell from about 25 million well into the hundreds of millions and possibly billions.

Industry estimates put the average amount of meat derived from a single roo at 12 kilograms. If a 12-kilogram meat yield provides 48 people with one 250 gram meal, 24 million roos would be needed for everyone in Australia to have one meal a week.

But quotas prevent the industry harvesting more than 15 per cent of the roo population a year, making a population above 160 million necessary. Providing fillets would require many more roos, while maintaining the existing amount of meat that is used for pet-food could push the required population into the billions.

“Imagine if we had 175 million kangaroos running about?” said Dr Ramp. “The environmental degradation would potentially be large and it would not be safe to drive on rural roads for the sheer number of kangaroos.”

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Standard roo shooter myths need to be debunked such as the false claims that ‘kangaroo meat is ‘green’, better for the environment and could replace farmed livestock outright.

• The ethics of killing wildlife still has not been justified by roo shooters.
• The ethics of the means of killing kangaroos and their joeys still has not been justified by roo shooters.
• The ethics of encouraging a wildlife export trade in kangaroo meat by Anna Bligh to Russia says a lot about Anna Bligh.
• The inherent risk of using kangaroo meat for human consumption still has not been justified by roo shooters.
• The lack of effective government controls associated with kangaroo killing continues to be ignored by state and federal governments.

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Red Meat Consumption

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The debate over whether we should reduce our consumption of meat is warranted, both from an ethical standpoint and an environmental one. If farmers were paid a decent kilogram price for traditional livestock that factored in the cost of land management and rehabilitation on downgraded farmland, the consumption would reduce as it would become unaffordable to most.

The first step is to make livestock (read ‘meat’ – beef, lamb) a gourmet food – high quality and high price – say $40/kg like fillet steak. Market forces would then reduce the demand. Livestock farmers would need to transition to other more sustainable industries (with government subsidy). The primary industry outcome would see a fraction of the current land being used for red meat production. It would be organic, grass feed/ free range, humane and profitable – but government restricted like the abalone industry.

The other strategy is to develop sustainable alternatives that offer natural nutritional equivalents – heam iron, protein, selenium (antioxidant) , zinc, omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin D and B-group vitamins (riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6 and in particular vitamin B12).

“But Vitamin B12 cannot be found in plant foods, therefore inadequate intakes of B12 are a problem for strict vegetarians. Lacking vitamin B12 can adversely affect neurological function including memory and concentration.”   [Meat and Livestock Australia website]

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Further Reading:

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[1]  ‘Henry doubts viability of roo harvesting’

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‘Eating kangaroo meat is, by all accounts, much better for the environment than dining on pork, lamb or beef. The natives emit negligible methane, tread lightly and without contributing to erosion, and have no need for vast quantities of feed intensively farmed elsewhere.

Then why is the Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry, ardent conservationist, flashing warning signs about the country’s $250 million roo industry?

Twice in the past six months he has highlighted concerns about kangaroo harvesting in his public speeches. And the issue he raised was not the animal welfare charge most commonly levelled – joeys are killed by a blow to the head – but whether the harvesting of roos is viable.

“If we’re lucky, it will be many decades before we know whether these judgments are well based,” Dr Henry said of commercial kangaroo harvest quotas in December.

“If they are, this will turn out to be the first instance in human history of the sustainable plunder of a natural resource.”

Dr Henry is at odds with prominent ecologists, as well as the economist Ross Garnaut. Professor Garnaut’s 2008 climate-change review made the case for an increased diet of roo displacing cattle and sheep consumption.   The Garnaut report cited a study by George Wilson and Melanie Edwards that predicted a 3 per cent drop in greenhouse emissions if roo numbers rose from 25 million to 175 million, pushing cattle and sheep off rangelands, and displacing some red meat consumption. Critics on the Henry side question the numbers, unconvinced kangaroo meat could ever replace red meat consumption in Australia to any significant degree.

“A lot of the environmental movement supports eating kangaroos, because people think it is green,” said Daniel Ramp, a biologist at the University of NSW helping set up a think tank on the roo industry with the Institute of Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney.

“But we need to follow that argument through and ask how many sheep or cattle we could displace with meat from a kangaroo.”

On Dr Ramp’s figures, if every Australian were to start eating roo regularly, its population would need to swell from about 25 million well into the hundreds of millions and possibly billions.

Industry estimates put the average amount of meat derived from a single roo at 12 kilograms. If a 12-kilogram meat yield provides 48 people with one 250 gram meal, 24 million roos would be needed for everyone in Australia to have one meal a week.  But quotas prevent the industry harvesting more than 15 per cent of the roo population a year, making a population above 160 million necessary. Providing fillets would require many more roos, while maintaining the existing amount of meat that is used for pet-food could push the required population into the billions.

“Imagine if we had 175 million kangaroos running about?” said Dr Ramp. “The environmental degradation would potentially be large and it would not be safe to drive on rural roads for the sheer number of kangaroos.”

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Australia’s tradition of the ‘Wood Fire’ is ecologically destructive

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During Australia’s winter months, many in older homes habitually yearn for the warmth and glow of a traditional Wood Fire, and so utilise their open fire places and wood heaters.  So habitually, upon the onset of winter people stock up on Firewood.  It is a cultural yearning for the nostalgia of the Wood Fire – warm, earthy, dancing flames, flickering, spark spitting, the woodsmoke – we’ve all been there, it is tantalising and it feels right because it is natural – the ancient campfire tradition across humanity.  In doing the Wood Fire ritual, we seek to rekindle our connection to Nature.

The warmth and glow of a traditional Open Fire

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In earlier times when a few hundred of us settled in a given forest region, few forest resources were taken and so the forests replenished and seemed to cope.  The forests were naturally resilient.

But as subsequent human hoards have invaded the land, and have bred and sprawled across the countryside in the hundreds of thousands, we have deforested entire forests in the process.  These forests haven’t coped with the devastation.  No forest could cope.

Australia’s native forests have been hacked, logged, burned and bulldozed into agrarian pasture to the horizon.  Australia’s original blanket vegetation cover has been reduced to sad islands barely able to support wildlife habitat and in many cases causing extinctions – locally, regionally and nationally.  All one needs do is a Google Earth search to appreciate the devastation on the natural landscape.

A legacy of forestry

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Humanity’s sheer numbers and the encouraged consumption rate of Australians risk exacerbating the deforestation.  Contemporary Australia is simply extending and perpetuating the old colonial exploitive mindset and a lifestyle reminiscent of 19th Century invading colonists.

The cultural heritage of the Wood Fire is necessarily contributing to this deforestation, particularly to Australia’s native Box-Ironbark Forests.

For Australians to continue to yearn for the glow, warmth and woodsmoke of the traditional Wood Fire now that we number in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and so the aggregate consumption of timber for firewood has simply become unsustainable.  Our native forests have become too small and disparate to sustain wildlife breeding.

The few shrinking native forests that our forebears and their frenzied clearing have left us, simply are disappearing.  Australia’s remnant native forests continue to be destroyed by us just to serve this selfish cultural yearning for earthy nostalgia of the Wood Fire.  The same applies to all woodheaters.

A classic wood fire in an old style open fireplace

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The Australian Wood Fire cultural imperative through winter has become a driver of forest extinctions.  There have become too many of us wanting tonnes of the forest to burn in our open fires and wood heaters, and too few forests left.

Australia’s firewood demand is driving deforestation.  There is estimated to be around 800,000 wood heaters and 700,000 open fire places in Australia (ANZECC, 2001).   There combined use is unsustainable and has got to stop!   We need to question this inherited and habitual Open Fire/Woodheater culture and the devastating impact it is causing to our native forests.

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[Source:  ‘Firewood Conference’ in Armidale, NSW, May 2001, ^http://dazed.org/npa/npj/200102/FebYourNPA.htm]

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Commercial Firewood is Forest ‘Eco-theft‘

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Firewood taken from a native forest for personal use is one thing.  The scale and severity of adverse impact upon forest ecology will vary according to the amount taken and the ecological sensitivity of the place it is taken from.  Few domestic takers of firewood will be qualified ecologists and so will have no or little comprehension or respect for such impacts.

A private firewood stack

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According to the CSIRO, up to 5.5 million tonnes of timber is harvested annually for Australian domestic firewood use. When industrial firewood use is included, the total amount rises 20% to between 6-7 million tonnes.  This weight is roughly double the amount of eucalypt currently exported annually from Australia as woodchips.  About half of all domestic firewood is collected by the consumer and 84% of domestic firewood is collected on private property.  [CSIRO, 2000]

Across Australia, access to State Forests is unfettered and the collecting of firewood for personal (domestic) consumption is an uncontrolled free-for-all, little improved from the exploitative mindset of Australia’s early and more ignorant colonists.

Australian colonial  ‘progress’

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Deforestation by firewood taking is perhaps not as broadscale and well known as the Conservation Movement’s exposure of state-sanctioned Industrial Logging by the likes of Australian state government departments:

• ‘VicForests‘    (Victoria)
• ‘Forests NSW‘    (New South Wales)
• ‘Forestry SA‘   (South Australia)
• ‘Forestry Tasmania‘    (Tasmania)
• ‘Forests and Wood‘    (Queensland)
• ‘Forests Products Commission‘   (West Australia)

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Or is it?

It is Australia’s Commercial Firewood Industry that contributes to the demise of Australia’s remnant native forests by its ‘death by a thousand cuts‘.    Commercial Firewood entails the direct taking of wood from Australia’s native forests for commercial sale and profit.  It is of a scale far greater than domestic forewood collecting, but where are the statistics kept and publicised by the Australian Government?

Just as demand for firewood drive supply, the artificial low economic cost of firewood encourages demand volume.  Since firewood is sold a low cost, it competes favourably with jalternatiuve sources of fuel, such as gas and electricity, for domestic heating.  Commercial firewood suppliers also deliberately appeal to the Wood Fire cultural image to encourage their firewood sales.  Suppliers and consusmers thus feed off each other at low cost and high volumes, and so more native forests lose out.

A commercial firewood stack

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The low or no cost availability of timber from State Forests Native timber means that the industry operates on an industrial scale taking vast quantities of timber, particularly from the preferred hardwood Box-Ironbark Forests and the like.  The Commerical Firewood Industry is encouraged by the Australian Government and by all state governments, which ignore the practice as if Australia’s natuve forests are unlimited, as if it had no adverse ecological impact upon the forest ecologies, as if it didn’t matter, as if there were no tomorrow.

Commercial Firewood Production

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Across Australia, each state government issues cheap permits for collecting firewood from State Forests.

This reflects:

1. A cultural disregard for the values of Australia’s disappearing forest ecologies up to Prime Ministerial and Cabinet level
2. The inadequacies of State laws to protect forest ecology
3. An antiquainted colonist mindset persisting throughout the dominating Liberal and Labor parties.

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The ecological impacts and the plethora of ecological advice and warnings about the destructive impacts of logging on forest ecology are being ignored.  Australia’s Commercial Firewood Industry fuels demand for cheap firewood and in the process exacerbates Australia’s deforestation.

Australia’s Firewood Industry is unsustainable and has got to be nationally controlled.   We need to challenge this exploitative industry and correct ignorant government policies.  We need to find alternatives to the Wood Fire to stem the devastation of Australia’s remaining native forests and to help prevent more wildlife extinctions.

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‘Forest Eco-theft’ involves the immoral taking of timber from a native forest, especially in large industrial quantities, for commercial gain and incurring no or little economic cost to the taker. The intended or actual use of the timber is irrelevent, but may include logs, firewood, craft timber, or woodchips. The greater the timber volume taken, the greater impact upon a forest and so the more serious the Eco-theft. 

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‘Eco-theft’ is only different to criminal theft because of the colonist exploitative mindset of current governments rejecting native forest having ecological value worthy of protection under the Crimes Act.

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An industrial scale Hakki-Pilke firewood processor from Norway

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Forest Eco-theft in an environment of dwindling forest habitat has become a key threatening process.  At the current rate of Forest Eco-theft, Australia’s native forests fueling our pleasure for earthy glows and hearth warmth, will be gone.

Firewood Logging simply destroys forest habitat and contributes to the demise and local extinctions of threatened and endangered wildlife.  Australia’s flora and fauna deaths and ultimate extinctions has become infamy – Australia currently has the worst record of mammalian extinctions on the planet, and the Firewood culture is contributing to it.

Many consumers of firewood either actively couldn’t care, or else passively turn an insular blind eye to the adverse ecological impacts of firewood harvesting.  Our Australian Government ignores the firewood deforestation problem, avoiding it for party political convenience – immorally, irresponsibly and unrepresentingly.

Just as Poaching Wildlife is immoral, so too is Forest Eco-theft.    Both these exploitative practices hark to colonial times and need to be banned.

Firewood Logging of State Forest near Taralga NSW in 2006.

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Why choose ‘Ironbark Firewood’ ?

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Why choose Ironbark Firewood ?  Why not choose an alternative sources of fuel for home heating?   Never thought to question the legitimacy of your fuel?

Here’s the justification by one firewood supplier as to why one should choose Ironbark Firewood:

1. ‘Long Burning. Harder to start but will burn 6 – 8 hours. These timbers are the slowest growing and the hardest of all hardwoods.’
2. ‘Very little ash. Clean out fire only once per season approximately.’
3. ‘Strong Burning. Cannot be put out even if the vent closed, unless water is used.’

A classic Ironbark ‘Open Fire’

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The most common type of firewood commerically sold and promoted in the eastern Australian states is Ironbark Firewood.   This is typically sourced from Box-Ironbark Forests  (native grassy woodlands).

According to the Firewood Association of Australia (FAA), Ironbark and Box are the preferred firewood in Queensland, while in Victoria, southern NSW and South Australia, River Red Gum is preferred.  Jarrah and Wandoo hardwood timbers are preferred in Western Australia, while in Tasmania, Brown Peppermint is considered the best firewood.

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What the hell? 

[Source: “Environmental vandals” cut down 100-year-old trees on land at East Maitland, 20180905, by Donna Sharpe, ^https://www.beaudeserttimes.com.au/story/5629093/chainsaw-massacre-environmental-vandals-cut-down-100-year-old-trees/]

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Sydney’s Firewood has been linked to ongoing Queensland land clearing, and in Queensland successive backward state governments have an ignoble reputation for land clearing like there’s no tomorrow.

Landclearing in Queensland has become the major supplier of Sydney’s quality firewood.  Most of Sydney’s big firewood companies now rely on the Sunshine State for a significant proportion of ironbark and box logs – highly sought-after timbers because of their density. The National Parks Association says firewood from endangered Queensland woodlands is being used in homes across New South Wales.

Back in 2001, the National Parks Association of NSW called on the NSW Government to limit the State’s use of firewood following revelations that most of the wood sold by Sydney’s big firewood companies comes from clearing of Queenslands threatened Ironbark and Box woodlands.

Ironbark Woodland of Central Queensland

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At the time, Mr Charlie Spiteri, the owner of Betta Burn Firewood, one of the biggest suppliers in Sydney, refused to reveal how much firewood he supplies each year but estimates that the Sydney region, including Katoomba, consumes about 100,000 tonnes.

Commercial Firewood stockpile

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Spiteri said about a third of his supply was sourced from Queensland, where the wood is worth between $40 and $50 a cubic metre. By the time the freight reaches Sydney, it is worth up to $125 and is being snapped up. “People are choosing ironbark and box and we have to go where the timber is,” Mr Spiteri said.

Other major sources of hardwoods for Betta Burn include the Pilliga State Forest in north-west NSW and private properties in the Nyngan area.

Executive officer at the National Parks Association (NSW), Mr Andrew Cox, said:

“Firewood collecting is the second largest threat to Australia’s temperate woodlands after land clearing. Now its being linked to landclearing!”   “We know little about the impacts of firewood collecting and governments have been slow to take an interest. Most firewood consumers are unaware of where their wood comes from or the huge impact it has on threatened animals, birds and reptiles.”

“The firewood industry is large, but mostly unknown”, said Andrew Cox, NPA Executive Officer. “About 1,500,000 tonnes of firewood are used by New South Wales each year, exceeding the State’s yearly combined production of sawlogs and woodchips.”

“Firewood collecting targets slow-growing ecosystems and some of their most important components. Eucalypt species such as ironbark, box and red gum are the most favoured firewood sources.”

“We need to move away from the need to ‘clean-up’ a forest or woodland and instead look at dead wood as an important ecological component – just as important as the living trees.”

“Its because we’re not properly managing the woodlands that a wave of bird extinctions is underway in central NSW. More than 20 woodland dependent birds are declining from their former range and may become extinct in NSW. “It’s not ecologically sound, it’s not sustainable and there are serious impacts on birds, on animals that depend on the hollows.”

But no-one knows for sure how much timber salvaged from the bulldozed woodlands of Queensland is making its way south of the border in convoys of semi-trailers. Firewood collection operates in a legal vacuum – especially on private land – and virtually no figures are kept for where wood is sourced or how it is collected.

[Source: ‘Sydney’s Firewood Linked to Queensland Land Clearing‘, by Andrew Cox, Executive Officer, National Parks Association of NSW, 20010428, ^http://dazed.org/npa/press/20010428firewood.htm]

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Since then, over a decade ago, what has changed?  Anything?  Nothing?  Has the problem gotten worse?

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83% of the original Box-Ironbark Forests have gone

In Victoria, few forest and woodland ecosystems are as poorly represented in parks and reserves as the distinctive Box-Ironbark ecosystems of northern Victoria.

Since European settlement these forests and woodlands have been extensively cleared and fragmented for agriculture, urban development and gold mining, and cut for a variety of wood products. They once covered three million hectares of northern Victoria, but 83% of the original Box-Ironbark vegetation has now been cleared.

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Not only have the forests and woodlands been mostly cleared, but what is left is highly modified from its original structure and is also very fragmented. These remaining forests and woodlands are mostly on public land and these areas are  ecologically important for a rich diversity of flora and fauna, many of which are rare or threatened.

Box-Ironbark forests and woodlands are highly accessible and the visitor is rewarded by a vibrant array of bird species, carpets of wildflowers in Spring, the rich aroma of eucalypt  nectar, and many sites of historical and cultural interest. Despite their apparent uniformity, these forests actually have great diversity with around 1 500 species of higher plants and over 250 vertebrate species recorded in the region; many are largely restricted to Box-Ironbark forests and woodlands.

Some 297 Box-Ironbark plant species and 53 animal species are now classified as extinct, threatened or near-threatened.  In addition, at least ten plant and animal species are known to have disappeared from the study area since the 1840s, and numerous others have become locally extinct. It is also clear and of great concern that many species, particularly birds, are known to be still declining.

Accordingly, a key feature of Box-Ironbark nature conservation is the promotion of ‘recovery’ for many species, rather than simply maintaining the status quo.  Many Australian animals are dependent upon large, old eucalypt trees which contain the hollows required for shelter and breeding. At least six of the threatened Box-Ironbark fauna species are strongly dependent upon these trees. The massive loss of large old trees over the last 150 years is strongly implicated in the decline of these species and perhaps many others. It is therefore recommended that as well as protecting existing large old trees, additional measures be taken to ensure that there will, over time, be more large old trees in the forests.

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‘Why is Firewood so cheap?

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Ironbark is a preferred firewood in eastern Australia because it burns longer and hotter, so Australia’s native Ironbark forests continue to be logged for firewood.

Ironbark firewood stack, commercially cut and split ready for domestic delivery

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The Australian hardwood timber industry now mainly relies upon plantation timbers and sustainable forestry management practices.  Australian Ironbark Flooring retails at a premium price at typically over $80/m2 at 19mm thick.   If that square meter of flooring was stacked one metre high to achieve a cubic metre, the calculated retail price for a cubic metre would be (1000m/19mm = 50 layers of flooring roughly, making the retail price for a cubic metre of Ironbark flooring around $80 x 50 = $5600/m3!

Expensive Ironbark Flooring

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But commercial suppliers of firewood do not own plantation timber, nor do they buy their firewood from plantation timber growers.  They certainly do not pay $5,600/m3 for firewood.

Commercial firewood is generally sold at considerable profit at under $160/m3, reducing in price according to volume purchased.  Why would an commercial grower of plantation Ironbark hardwood sell the timber for firewood at $160/m3, when as flooring the typical market price is a factor of some 35 times greater at $5600/m3?

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Commercial Firewood taken from native forests means that the $160 selling price is nearly all profit!

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Australia’s commercial firewood instead is simply taken from Australia’s native hardwood forests.  It is simply taken from State Forests at no cost to the commercial operator, except for a pultry token permit fee.   That is why it is sold so cheaply.

This is why firewood remains a cheap affordable source for domestic household heating.  But the cost is artifically economic and excludes the ecological cost.

How is this not Forest Eco-Theft?   If the suppliers of Ironbark Firewood had to pay hardwood plantation owners a fair wholesale price for firewood, at such a high price their business model would be unviable.  Firewood suppliers only exist because their business model relies upon firewood theft from dwindling State Forests, which continues to go unpoliced and ignored by the Australian Government.

Industrial Firewood Industry

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Where do YOU get your FIREWOOD from?

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1. Where do you get your firewood from?
2. Is it legal or eco-stolen?
3. Is it accredited?
4. What is Australia’s Firewood Industry doing to protect Australia’s long exploited and dwindling Ironbark Forests from firewood theft by firewood suppliers?   
5. What is the Australian Government doing to prevent firewood theft from State Forests? 
6. What is the Australian Government doing to monitor and control Australia’s firewood industry?
7. Who in the Australian Government monitors the integrity and ecological protection of State Forests across New South Wales and indeed across Australia?
8. Where is the ongoing review and analysis into the ecological health of Box-Ironbark Forests (Grassy Woodlands) across New South Wales and Victoria?
9. Why are the statistics on firewood theft from State Forests not collected and publicised?
10. Who polices and penalises deforestation of State Forests?
11. How many people are caught and fined/gaoled for deforestation of State Forests
12. Isn’t it illegal to steal firewood from State Forests – living trees or deadwood?

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At the time of publication of this article, the New South Wales Government’s official website on Environment and specifically on Threatened Species reads:

“There has been a serious system failure on the threatened species website (www.threatenedspecies.nsw.gov.au) and it is no longer available”

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Pile of Ironbark Firewood cut and split ready for domestic delivery

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In the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, the local newspaper advertises numerous suppliers of firewood, particularly at the onset of winter, and particularly promoting Ironbark Firewood as the premium product as follows:

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But from where do these firewood suppliers source their firewood?

Not one of the above advertisements provides any proud statement about sourcing their wood ecologically responsibly, nor about being ecologically accredited.  The default presumption thus is that none of these suppliers is environmentally responsible, nor accredited.  So don’t buy from any of them!

Is the advertised firewood sourced illegally from Australia’s disappearing Box-Ironbark Forests, and so exacerbating the deforestation problem?  How do we know it isn’t?

How simple is it for any common thief to buy a chainsaw, drive out to a patch of State Forest in a ute or in a truck or with a trailer in tow, then chainsaw several trees in a Box-Ironbark Forest, paying nothing for them, then flog the wood for personal profit?   Too easy!  Anyone can buy a chainsaw from a local garden tool supplier, even a kid.  There are no chainsaw laws in Australia.  It is treated like buying secateurs.   Bunnings sells cheap chainsaws brand-new for just $200!

So armed with a trailer and chainsaw, a common thief has a lucrative business, one ignored by the Australian Government.    With firewood retailing from $160/cubic metre, it is a nice little earner.  This exploitative immoral trade in Ironbark Forest ecology is negligently condoned by the Australian Government and state governments.

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‘Forest Eco-theft’ wiping out Ironbark Habitat

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Logs have life inside

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‘Collecting firewood is one of humankind’s oldest activities.  Australians enjoy the beauty and warmth of a wood fire, and in many regional areas wood fires are the only practical source of heating.

Dead trees, often with hollows, make popular firewood as they are seasoned and burn well.  But firewood collection comes at a cost to the environment, the consequences of which may not be entirely understood for years.  Many firewood users are unaware of the ecological price of collecting dead trees and fallen logs.  Often they mistakenly think they are just keeping the forest or farm tidy.

Firewood harvesting has an effect on our native woodlands, and a variety of threatened species.  Dead standing and fallen timber provides crucial habitat for numerous species of animals and birds.  It is now recognised that the removal of this wood for firewood is contributing to a significant loss of wildlife, particularly in the woodlands of south-eastern Australia.  It is not just native animals that benefit from old wood left lying on the ground.  This debris is valuable shelter for stock too.  How many times have you found a newborn calf or lamb against an old log safe from the weather?

Habitat Tree of critical value to wildlife

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Not only does standing and fallen dead wood provide important habitat for animals and birds, it also plays an essential role in maintaining forest and woodland nutrient cycles.  Scientists from the CSIRO believe that dead wood is at least as important as living trees, fallen leaves and soil for the maintenance oif ecological processes sustaining biodiversity.’

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The Regent Honeyeater has become a ‘flagship species’ for conservation issues in the box-ironbark forest region of Victoria and New South Wales.

Regent Honeyeater (Anthochaera-phrygia)

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Australia’s native Regent Honeyeater, was formerly more widely distributed in south-eastern mainland Australia from Rockhampton, Queensland to Adelaide, South Australia, but is now confined to Victoria and New South Wales, and is strongly associated with the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range.   Its natural habitat is eucalypt forests and woodlands, including Box-Ironbark Forests.

The Regent Honeyeater has been badly affected by land-clearing, with the clearance of the most fertile stands of nectar-producing trees and the poor health of many remnants, as well as competition for nectar from other honeyeaters, being the major problems.  Birds Australia is helping to conserve Regent Honeyeaters as part of its Woodland Birds for Biodiversity project.

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Leard State Forest Leadership

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Further Reading:

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[1]    ‘Box-Ironbark Forests & Woodlands Investigation‘, by The Environment Conservation Council, 2001) by The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, Australia,^http://www.veac.vic.gov.au/investigation/box-ironbark-forests-woodlands-investigation-ecc-

‘This report contains the ECC’s recommendations for public land use in the Box-Ironbark area of northern Victoria, extending from Stawell to Wodonga. The recommendations incorporate those for parts of the LCC’s North Central, Murray Valley and adjoining areas.’    (>Read Report, PDF 6.6MB – large file may be slow to load)

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River Red Gum

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Play music by Australia’s David Hyams:
[Music source:  ^http://www.milestogo.com.au/]

Myrtleford’s 200+ year old River Red Gum

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Most Australian trees, like native Australians, have otherwise been despised and slaughtered by Colonists…

Indigenous Australians

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The township of Bright before the exotic trees.

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The ‘Penny Tree’

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..”As a result of the devastating bush fires which raged through Gippsland some 18 months ago, this Settler in the Fumina district was unfortunate enough to lose his home, and afterwards took shelter in this big hollow tree.

The space available was enough for 2 large beds, tables, chairs and sundry other furniture.  Under the deft fingers of “The Lady of the Tree” it soon transofrmed into a comfortable home for the Family, until eventually replaced by a 6 roomed home some time later.”

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Victorian colonists driving  ‘COLONIAL PROGRESS‘

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‘Tarkine Tasmania:  wild, unique, diverse’
(A photographic essay of exploration into this unique wilderness)
Images and text courtesy of Jenny Archer and Jen Evans
Purchase book:  ^http://www.tarkineimages.com.au/purchase.html

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The unique Tarkine

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Tasmania’s Tarkine Wilderness is one of the few remaining wild temperate rainforest regions left on the planet!

‘The Tarkine‘ is named after the Tarkiner people who traditionally inhabited the region from 30,000 years ago.  It stretches from Tasmania’s wild coastline to the west, the Arthur River to the north, the Pieman River to the south, and the Murchison Highway to the east.

The Tarkine contains remarkable natural and cultural values, including one of the world’s most significant remaining tracts of temperate rainforest.  The Tarkine covers an expansive 447,000 hectare (4,470 km²) wilderness region of recognised World Heritage significance up in the North-West corner of Tasmania, containing the largest temperate (Myrtle-Beech) rainforest in Australia.

Tasmania’ Tarkine Wilderness is indeed ‘wild, unique and diverse‘.

Myrtle Beech (Nothofagus cunninghamii)

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The Tarkine compared internationally

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‘The Tarkine‘ is the same size as internationally well-respected national parks:

1. New Zealand’s Kahurangi National Park   (4,520 km²)
2. United States’ Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona   (4,927 km²)
3. Indonesia’s Tanjung Puting National Park in southern Borneo   (4,150 km²)
4. Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park   (4,528 km²) …per map below:

Scotland has a Tarkine wilderness equivalent – ‘Cairngorms’

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^http://www.cairngormslearningzone.co.uk/habitats-species.html

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Compare The Cairngorms with The Tarkine of a similar size.  The Tarkine is a relict from the ancient super-continent, Gondwanaland, characterised by highly diverse ecosystems from giant ancient forests to huge sand-dunes, sweeping beaches, rugged mountains and pristine river systems.  [Sources: ^http://tarkine.org/, ^http://www.corinna.com.au/Story/Tarkine.aspx]

The Tarkine has more than 400 species of diverse flora, including a range of native orchids and many rare and threatened species. There are more than 250 vertebrate species of fauna, 50 of which are rare, threatened and vulnerable.

These include:

• Spotted-tailed Quoll
• Tasmanian Devil
• Eastern Pygmy Possum
• Wedge-tailed Eagle
• White-breasted Sea Eagle
• Grey Goshawk (white morph)
• Giant Freshwater Lobster
• Orange-bellied Parrot   (on the brink of extinction)

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The Cairngorms are similarly ancient, a glacial landscape formed 40 million years before the last Ice Age.  The area also features a rare ancient woodland, the Caledonian Forest, as well as unique alpine semi-tundra moorland habitat.

The moorland provides important habitat to many rare plants, birds including Ospreys, breeding Ptarmigan, Dotterel, Snow Bunting, Golden Eagle, Ring Ouzel, and Red Grouse, with Snowy Owl, Twite, Purple Sandpiper and Lapland Bunting seen on occasion.   The Caledonian Forest supports rare birds such as the endangered Capercaillie and endemic Scottish Crossbill (found nowhere else on the planet), the Parrot Crossbill and the Crested Tit.

The Scottish Crossbill

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The Cairngorms is also home to:

• Red Deer
• Roe Deer
• Mountain Hare
• Pine Marten
• Red Squirrel
• Wild Cat
• Otter
• as well as the only herd of Reindeer in the British Isles..

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Meanwhile, The Tarkine is home to more than 130 different species of birds during the seasons throughout its variety of habitat types and landscapes. This includes eleven of Tasmania’s twelve endemic birds. The two migratory species that breed only in Tasmania, the ‘Endangered‘ Swift Parrot, and the ‘Critically Endangered‘ Orange-bellied Parrot, forage in the Tarkine.

Orange–bellied Parrot (Neophema chrysogaster)

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Orange-bellied Parrot numbers down to about 20 individuals in existence!

The Orange-bellied Parrot breeds in south-west Tasmania and migrates along the west coast (The Tarkine) and forages on coastal plants.  Consequently the Tarkine’s coastal vegetation is extremely important habitat. The endangered Swift Parrot breeds predominantly in south-east Tasmania and feeds on the nectar from the Tasmanian Blue Gum, and in the Tarkine, the Swift Parrot forages on these trees during the post-breeding dispersal and migration season.

The Tarkine’s bird species richness is correlated to the Tarkine’s rich habitat diversity; the sea, coastal shores, freshwater wetlands, streams and estuaries, heathland-moorland mosaic of the coastal plains, woodland and open forests, wet eucalypt forests, mixed forest and extensive rainforest.’

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National Park Protection

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The Cairngorms ecological values were recognised and protected as a National Park (NP) by the new Scottish Parliament in 2003.  [Read More:  ^www.cairngormscampaign.org]

But unlike the Cairngorms NP, Kahurangi NP, Grand Canyon NP and Tanjung Puting NP, just less than 5% of The Tarkine is protected as a National Park.   Within the Tarkine region’s 4,470 km2, recognised as bounded by the coast to the west, the Arthur River to the north, the Pieman River to the south, and the Murchison Highway to the east, only Savage River National Park  (180km2) , less than 5% of The Tarkine, provides any formal ecological protection.

The ‘Donaldson River Nature Recreational Reserve’, the ‘Meredith Range Recreational Reserve’ and the Arthur Pieman Conservation Area within The Tarkine offer no formal ecological protection and are open to mechanised recreational abuse.  See map below.  Propaganda by vested interests would have many believe that these reserves offer sufficient ecological protection, but such reserves permit multiple uses – motorised vehicular access including off-road, as well as road making, logging, burning,  mining, poaching of wildlife, fishing, farming and tourism development – so effectively offering no ecological protection.

What scaremongering crock!  But then who are the readership and who are the sources of advertising revenue of The Examiner?

The Tarkine of North-West Tasmania

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Savage River National Park  

(inside The Tarkine)

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Savage River National Park is described by the Tasmanian Government’s Parks and Wildlife Service as follows:

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‘Savage River National Park is a wilderness region in the north west of Tasmania. The park protects the largest contiguous area of cool temperate rainforest surviving in Australia and acts as a refuge for a rich primitive flora, undisturbed river catchments, high quality wilderness, old growth forests, geodiversity and natural landscape values.

The western portion of the park includes the most extensive basalt plateaux in Tasmania that still retains a wholly intact forest ecosystem. The upper Savage River, which lends the park its name, runs through a pristine, rainforested river gorge system. The park contains habitat for a diverse rainforest fauna and is a stronghold for a number of vertebrate species which have suffered population declines elsewhere in Tasmania and mainland Australia.

The parks remoteness from human settlement and mechanised access, its undisturbed hinterland rivers and extensive rainforest, pristine blanket bog peat soils and isolated, elevated buttongrass moorlands ensure the wilderness character of the park. Like the vast World Heritage listed Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area to its south, the area is one of the few remaining temperate wilderness areas left on Earth.

Unlike other national parks, Savage River National Park remains inaccessible. In keeping with its wilderness character, there are no facilities and no roads or mechanised access to the park. However, the park is surrounded by the Savage River Regional Reserve, in which a number of rough 4WD tracks provide limited access. To the north of the reserve, a number of State Forest Reserves can be accessed by standard vehicles. They offer an insight into the magnificent rainforest ecosystem that lies to the southeast within the Savage River National Park.’

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 But the above description is only a tiny snapshot of The Tarkine

The Tarkine still is undoubtedly one of the World’s great wild places

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The Tarkine’s World Heritage significance

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The Tarkine is a region of recognised World Heritage significance. It’s wilderness, vast rainforests, wildlife, landscapes and unique Aboriginal values are outstanding on a world scale.

However, the Tarkine is not protected as a National Park nor listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.  Only a fraction, less than 5%, of the Tarkine region is fully protected as a National Park.  This means that many of the Tarkine’s outstanding natural and cultural values, are in dire peril due to repeated exploitation demands from industrial logging and more recently industrial mining.

These industrial threats mean that The Tarkine ecology could be lost forever!

Logging legacy in The Tarkine

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Attempts have been made to have The Tarkine listed not only as a National Park, but also as a World Heritage Listed Area.

Local conservation champions of The Tarkine, the Tarkine National Coalition (TNC) have produced an extensive proposal that would protect the Tarkine and its unique values as a National Park and World Heritage area, for all people, for all time, just like Kakadu NP and Cairngorms NP.

Read More:

• >Tarkine World Heritage Values Summary
  

• >Tarkine World Heritage Values  Map
  

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The Tarkine would become recognised as one of Australia’s great iconic wild places, allowing locals, visitors, walkers, photographers, scientists, the Aboriginal community and tourists alike to see, visit and experience this unique place.

A number of prominent bodies have recognised the World Heritage significance of the Tarkine:

• The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (1990)
• The Tasmanian Department of Parks, Wildlife & Heritage (1990)
• The Australian government recognised the Tarkine’s outstanding national significance through listing the Tarkine on the register of the National Estate Leading Tasmanian & Australian environment groups (including The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation, amongst a wide range of others)
• The Australian Senate formally and unanimously recognised the World Heritage significance of the Tarkine (2007).

For the Tarkine to be inscribed on the World Heritage list, it would need to be formally put forward to UNESCO (the United Nations Body) by the Australian Government.  Yet, there has been a failure by successive Environment Minister’s to instruct the Australian Heritage Council to commence assessment of the World Heritage values contained within the Tarkine.

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The natural ecological wealth of Tasmania’s Tarkine Wilderness

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On 11 December 2009, Australia’s Environment Minister (then Peter Garrett MP) entered The Tarkine in Australia’s National Heritage List under the emergency listing provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. This emergency listing lapsed in December 2010.

The Australian Heritage Council has since completed a preliminary assessment of The Tarkine and found that The Tarkine might have one or more National Heritage values.  It is now up to Australia’s Environment Minister (currently Tony Burke MP) to decide whether The Tarkine, or areas within it, should be listed of Australia’s National Heritage List.   So, the fate of this magnificent wild region, effectively Australia’s Amazon, rests with one man, Tony Burke MP.

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Tarkine Threatened by Industrial Miners

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Despite The Tarkine’s many unique ecological values, there are some who chose to ignore and dismiss The Tarkine for their own self-serving gain.  Industrial Miners are seeking to plunder The Tarkine for minerals below ground.  If these miners get their way, they will open cut The Tarkine and irreversibly destroy it.   The Tarkine’s natural future as a wild region and its dependent wildlife hang in the balance.

Currently limited mining occurs within parts of the Tarkine.  The most significant mining operations within the Tarkine region is the Savage River Iron Ore Mine, which is currently managed by Grange Resources, and the Hellyer Mine managed by Bass Metals.

Savage River Iron Ore Mine

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Hellyer Zinc and Lead Mine

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Now there are another 10 new mines proposed to destroy The Tarkine!

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Tasmanian Government’s mining leases (Dec, 2012)

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Nine of the planned ten mines are nearby Savage River ‘open-cut’ style mines.  The Tasmanian Government under the watch of Labor’s Bryan Green MP has overseen its Tasmanian Mineral Council grant some 56 exploration licences over the Tarkine to 27 different industrial mining companies.

Savage River Mine location map

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Savage River Open Cut Mine

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Savage River – a savage scar in The Tarkine

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Venture Minerals‘ proposed Tin Mine at Mount Lindsay (2011)

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West Australian headquartered Venture Minerals has submitted mining permits to the Tasmanian Government to allow it to develop a tin/tungsten open cut mine at Mount Lindsay, so it can sell Tasmanian resource wealth to China.  It will extend over 36,000 hectares (360 km2), creating a permanent scar through The Tarkine, roughly an area the size of the Tamar Valley from Launceston to Georgetown.

Mount Lindsay Tin Mine Plans (Venture Minerals)

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“The Mount Lindsay mine is a Pilbara style open cut super pit that will devastate a large area of the Tarkine rainforest wilderness within an existing reserve. The 3.5 x 3km disturbance area is the equivalent of 420 Melbourne Cricket Grounds and a 220m depth being over twice the height of the Sydney Harbour Bridge,” said Tarkine National Coalition spokesperson Scott Jordan.

“It is completely inconsistent with the protection of the Tarkine, and Minister Burke must act immediately to ensure that the Tarkine has the highest level of protection going into this assessment.”

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Venture Minerals plans to rely on Tasmanian hydro power (probably at a government subsidised discount and so further reducing the power available to Tasmanian residents).   Tasmania’s precious natural heritage is pillaged to make West Australian and foreign corporate investors richer.

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Shree Minerals proposed open-cut mine at Nelson Bay River (2011)

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Shree Minerals wants an open cut mine on the upper reaches of Nelson Bay River.   According to the Tasmanian Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), Shree Minerals Ltd has proposed to develop an open pit magnetitie/hematite mine and processing plant near Nelson Bay River, approximatley 7 kilometres east of Temma in northwest Tasmania. The proposed mine will target 4 million tonnes of the resource over a 10 year period producing 150,000 tonnes of product per year.

.Shree Minerals proposed Tin Mine Near Nelson Bay River

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Shree Minerals is an Indian company based in Madhya Pradesh in central India [Read More:  ^http://www.shreemineralsandfuels.com/]  So Tasmania’s precious natural heritage is pillaged to make Indian billionaires richer.

It has found to give scant regard to protecting fragile ecology in The Tarkine.   Shree Minerals’ Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Nelson Bay River open cut iron ore mine as a mismatch of omissions, flawed assumptions and misrepresentations, according to the Tarkine National Coalition.

• Key data on endangered orchids is missing
• Projections on impacts on Tasmanian devil and Spotted tailed quoll are based on flawed and fanciful data
• The EIS produced by the company as part of the Commonwealth environmental assessments has failed to produce a report relating to endangered and critically endangered orchid populations in the vicinity of the proposed open cut mine. The soil borne Mychorizza fungus is highly succeptible to changes in hydrology, and is essential to the germination of the area’s native orchids which cannot exist without Mychorizza. Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke included this report as a requirement in the project’s EIS guidelines issued in June 2011.
• Shree Minerals have avoided producing scientific claiming that its proposed 220 metre deep hole extending 1km long will have no impact on hydrologyor on cthe adjacent Nelson Bay River.
• Data relating to projections of Tasmanian devil roadkill from mine related traffic are flawed. The company has used a January-February traffic surveys as a current traffic baseline which skews the data due to the higher level of tourist, campers and shackowner during the traditional summer holiday season. DIER data indicates that there is a doubling of vehicles on these road sections between October and January.   The company also asserted an assumed level of mine related traffic that is substantially lower than their own expert produced Traffic Impact Assessment. The roadkill assumptions were made on an additional 82 vehicles per day in year one, and 34 vehicles per day in years 2-10, while the figures the Traffic Impact Assessment specify 122 vehicles per day in year one, and 89 vehicles per day in ongoing years.“When you apply the expert Traffic Impact Assessment data and the DIER’s data for current road use, the increase in traffic is 329% in year one and 240% in years 2-10 which contradicts the company’s flawed projections of 89% and 34%”.   “This increase of traffic will, on the company’s formulae, result in up to 32 devil deaths per year, not the 3 per year in presented in the EIS.”

“Shree Minerals either is too incompetent to understand it’s own expert reports, or they have set out to deliberately mislead the Commonwealth and State environmental assessors.”

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Nelson Bay River flows through pristine wilderness

In 2011, a visit to the Shree Minerals’ Nelson Bay River proposed mine site in the Arthur Pieman Conservation Area has discovered that the mining company has failed to cap at least nine drill holes, creating risks to the resident population of disease free Tasmanian devils.

Failing to cap drill holes is a serious breach of both the Mineral Exploration Code of Practice and the operating conditions of their Exploration License. If Tasmanian devils are found to have perished in the holes, the company may be in breach of the Threatened Species Protection Act 1995.

Shree Minerals death traps for Tasmanian Devils

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Ecological damage from ‘Mineral Exploration’

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Shree Minerals carving up wilderness across The Tarkine, even before mining commences

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Even before actual mining commences, mineral exploration causes its own destructive impacts upon fragile ecosystems:

1. New access roads are bulldozed through pristine wilderness to multiple exploration and drilling sites.
2. Native vegetation and dependent ecology is destroyed as gridlines are bulldozed
3. Fragile top soils are removed
4. Soil erosion occurs at drills sites as soon as it rains, and rainfall is particularly intense across western Tasmania
5. The eroded soil becomes sediment and chokes and pollutes nearby watercourses and further downstream
6. Exposed soils also erode into watercourses, and without topsoil the native vegetation is unable to recover
7. Rubbish is dumped
8. Spills of chemicals and pollutants from drilling contaminate crystal pure watercourses and permeate into ground water and aquifers
9. Spread of pests including plant diseases such as myrtle wilt is exacerbated
10. Drill holes into ground water disturb and alter aquifers causing unknown impacts particularly in karst areas, which are prevalent across The Tarkine

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These impacts are ignored by industrial miners.

Industrial Miners eco-raping the fragile Tarkine

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Tasmania’s Minerals Council – one eyed to pillage

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The Tasmanian Minerals Council exists so that Tasmania may be mined.  Irrespective of what values are on the surface, the Tasmanian Minerals Council sees Tasmania as a quarry to be exploited.  If it is not mining Tasmania, or talking about current and planned mines, or encouraging more mining of Tasmania, then it simply isn’t doing its job putting its very existence into question.  Its mandate is one eyed.

Just as Forestry Tasmania is the industry driver of logging of Tasmania’s native forests, the Tasmanian Minerals Council is the industry driver of mining Tasmania’s native forests – same destructive outcome, just different type of industrial exploitation.  Both are tacit Tasmanian government departments only with corporatised names and structures.   See a map of Tasmania through the eyes of the Tasmanian Minerals Council below:

Quarry Map of Tasmania

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Tasmanian Minerals Council describes itself as “the representative organisation for the exploration, mining and mineral processing industries in Tasmania“.  It counts among its members all of the main mines and mineral processing operations.   So basically it is the Tasmanian Government’s Department of Mining, but named a ‘council‘ in order to convey a public impression of being an industry body, whereas it is just a policy arm of government.

And the board of directors are all executives employed by industrial miners.  They each have vested interests in mining Tasmania for their own company benefits, and collectively to maximise the exploitation of Tasmania for mining.  It is cosy chronyism, and accountable to the broader Tasmanian community.

“You wouldn’t want to contemplate a Northern Tasmania economy without Temco (an industrial manganese-alloy smelter operation) and Bell Bay Aluminium”

~ Terry Long, 17th March 2012.

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To justify its existence the Tasmanian Minerals Council thinks it and mining Tasmania is very important.

“The minerals industry is the cornerstone of Tasmania’s economy. It is important to the lives of every Tasmanian and brings with it a rich economic and cultural heritage and a capacity to ensure a prosperous future for Tasmania.”

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The Tasmanian Labor Party (currently in government)  and the Tasmanian Liberal Party both see mining as important to Tasmania because of the mining royalty revenue derived by the Tasmanian Government.  Of course it is about money.

To be politically correct, the Tasmanian Minerals Council professes a catchphrase:  “promoting the development of safe, profitable and sustainable mineral sector operating within Tasmania“.  It may be sustainable, but sustainable for industrial miners, not Tasmania’s ecology.

It sees itself playing a role in developing the world’s natural resources to supply the demands of modern society, by digging up more of Tasmania.  It says that it recognises modern societal expectations of good environmental management and claims that it is ensuring environmental impacts are minimised.  It promises that ongoing problems from old mining operations in Tasmania will be rectified if possible.  It talks about following a ‘Code for Environmental Management‘ and about observing a set of principles and encourages continual improvement for environmental performance, and indeed broadened the Code to encompass goals and actions that are more representative of a sustainable development framework.

Wonderful motherhood stuff, except the mining reality across Tasmania is completely different.

2011:  Sludge from the Aberfoyle Mine runs into the river at Luina (Savage River National Park)

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Queenstown’s sulphuric acid legacy of copper mining

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The confluence of the King River and Queen River, a few years ago.

‘Past damage caused from mining around Queenstown was a product of its times, although present and future generations live with its legacy. Historical practice is not modern practice. Mt Lyell Mine’s holocaust landscape legacy is testament to a past that did not have the technological knowledge or environmental vision we have today. The economic imperative was the main consideration.’

What has changed?   Nothing.

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Tasmanian Minerals Council – ‘Group-Serving Bias’ Syndrome

Head in the ground, the Tasmanian Minerals Council is functionally fixed on the view that Tasmania exists so that it man be mined for profit.

The Tasmanian Minerals Council and its mining fraternity suffer from Group-Serving Bias – the tendency to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to the interests of miners, while auto-dismissing conservationists’ ecological concerns.  They see themselves as unaccountable to the Tasmanian public – only to the government and mining vested interests.

The plethora of evidence showing the mining industries destructive impacts on the natural landscape and irreversible harm caused to wildlife and its habitat are ignored by industrial miners and the Tasmanian Minerals Council.  The devastating moonscape and dead river legacies of mining across Tasmania are conveniently dismissed by the Tasmanian Minerals Council as ‘history’.

Those careered into the exploitative cultures of Industrial Logging and Industrial Mining, ignorant of Ecology, fail to respect vital and rare natural values even when immersed in a pristine and rare region like The Tarkine.

Why?

Industrialists during their working lives culturally learn a perception bias to dismiss Nature not as integrated Natural Assets, but as untapped Resources waiting to be exploited and profited for industrial gain.

This is an Industrial World View that emanated out of the Industrial Revolution in early 18th Century Britain.  Industrialism has become synonymous with Human Progress and has exponentially grown into what has become known as 20th Century global multinational industrialism.   Multinational Industrialism is all about large scale efficient exploitation of resources – Natural or Human in order to maximise self-serving interests.  On a local level, this translates into exploitation.  The Industrial World View is locally destructive, selfish, arrogant and short-sighted.  The Tasmanian Minerals Council continues as a legacy of that time..

Scott Jordan of Tarkine National Coalition at the so-called “rehabilitated” tailings dam at a tin mine in The Tarkine.

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Tasmanian Mineral Council’s public image spin-doctoring claims that the Tasmanian mining industry did not have a good history when it came to good environmental management. Environmental awareness began to rise around the world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Until then, the environmental performance of both industry and individuals was often poor, when measured against today’s standards.

Crap!

The Tasmanian Minerals Council does not recognise The Tarkine.  Instead, it sees the west coast of Tasmania being “world famous for its geology and mineralisation and world class mineral deposits lie in an arc of volcanic lavas from Low Rocky Point in Tasmania’s South West, northwards through the great mining areas of Mt Lyell, the Dundas mineral field, Henty, Zeehan mineral field, Renison Bell, Rosebery, Tullah, Que River and Hellyer then eastwards to the Moina mineral field near SheffieldSuper…”

What Tarkine?  What forests, where?

This year, the Tasmanian Minerals Council encouraged by the Labor Party’s pro-industrialist, Bryan Green MP, is ramping up mining activity, particularly in The Tarkine.  Bryan Green is currently Tasmania’s Deputy Premier and Minister for Primary Industries, Water, Energy, Resources, Local Government, Planning, and Racing.

Bryan Green MP

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Bryan Green and Tasmanian Minerals Council are in a froth at present with ‘almost 80 companies spending a record $38.7 million last year looking for the mines of tomorrow’.  Drill rigs are humming on many of the 194 exploration licences held by these companies and another 15 licences are pending approval’ – reports the Hobart Mercury newspaper.

Spending on exploration has now rebounded to above pre-global financial crisis levels and several projects have progressed to the point where new mining jobs are on the horizon.

Mining hopefuls are shoring up iron and tin deposits on the West Coast, while others are looking deeper into coal proposals at Fingal and silica projects at Maydena.

Venture Minerals is progressing its iron and iron, tungsten and tin mine at Mount Lindsay outside Burnie and Shree Minerals is working to get its iron ore mine running at Nelson Bay River, in the Tarkine.

Shree Minerals is one of about 20 companies with their eyes set firmly on the mining potential in the Tarkine, as conservationists are working to have the area protected through a Natural Heritage listing. Ultimately, green groups want the area to become a national park, which would stop mining development in its tracks.

At Zeehan, Melbourne-based company Stellar Resources is spending $6 million on a year-long drilling program as it progresses its plans to construct a $108-million tin mine and processing plant.

Stellar Resources chief executive Peter Blight said the company hoped to move into construction in 2014 and start producing tin concentrate in 2015.  He said the company was excited by its Heemskirk Tin project which it took on as a solo venture last year.

The area has been investigated for its mineral potential before first by the West Coast’s mining pioneers and more recently by Aberfoyle. When Western Metals took over Aberfoyle, the Zeehan tin project sat in the bottom of a drawer.

But Mr Blight said early drilling and scoping studies looked promising and he expected to be working on financing the project by the end of next year.

Demand for tin continues to increase as the world shuns lead solder.  Right now, there is a 70,000-tonne gap between global tin demand and supply.

When developed, the Heemskirk project would produce almost 4000 tonnes of tin concentrate a year and be only the second tin mine in Australia.

The other, Renison Bell, is just 18km away from Zeehan.’

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Now Industrial Miners are set to exterminate The Tarkine!

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