Looks natural, but decades of cattle have toxified the riparian zone’s soil and flora co-biology
From 12th-14th May 2017, the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service has planned to set fire to 9km2 of designated wildlife habitat in the Abercrombie River National Park south of the town of Oberon. It’s about 150km west of the Sydney GPO as the crow flies.
NPWS Area Manager Kim de Govrik has contracted a helicopter to indiscriminately drop incendiaries into the remote and steep wilderness valleys and ridgelines around Silent Creek, west of Abercrombie Road. It will blanket burn vast swathes of remnant forest within the national park.
“NPWS will use a helicopter and ground crews in the steep terrain in the south-east corner of the Park,” Mr de Govrik said.
Any wonder how Abercrombie’s Silent Creek got its name?
Two generations ago, American marine biologist and author, Rachel Carson in 1962 launched her seminal book ‘Silent Spring’ telling how all life—from fish to birds to apple blossoms to human children—had been “silenced” by the insidious effects of DDT on Cape Code, Massachusetts.
DDT stands for Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, a hazardous agricultural synthetic pesticide developed in the 1940s that also contaminated food crops and ecology and caused human cancer and Alzheimer disease. Its use wasn’t banned until 2001.
Hazard Reduction policy is finishing the extinction job across New South Wales and Australia. Originally termed ‘prescribed burning’, it too has been used since the 1940s originally by US foresters.
A camp stay in Abercrombie River National Park will disturb any informed conservationist of how silent the birdlife is in the region. No dawn chorus like in healthy forest habitats. And try camping at Silent Creek after the hazard reduction.
“People are advised that smoke from the burn may impact upon the local area and they should close their windows and bring their washing indoors. Those with asthma or people who are susceptible to respiratory problems should avoid the area or remain inside with windows and doors closed. Motorists are reminded to drive to the conditions, observe all warning signs and follow directions from fire crews,”Mr de Govrik said.
It is another contribution by government to hazardous and unnecessary smoke, toxic air pollution, greenhouse gases, and human global warming that governments complain about. Yet in contradiction, this burn is part of the NSW Government’s $76 million package of what it calls hazard reduction over six years.
Hazard Reduction Fallacy
To protect the scarce Australia’s remaining national parks, hazard reduction arson is run by state governments each in turn cut funding and otherwise set fire to the wildlife habitat, in case it burns. In New South Wales, the misnamed National Parks and Wildlife Service brings in its petrol-laden trucks and with the the firie-eyed enthusiasm of the Rural Fire Service sets fire to these ‘national parks’ every time the bush has grown back.
‘Hazard reduction’ is spin for habitat reduction. Habitat is deemed a hazard, and its forest a fuel risk. It is a policy of perpetuating inadequate fire fighting funding to responsibly and quickly detect, respond to and put out bushfires, like their urban professional counterparts are tasked to do. Instead, the cheap and ecologically destructive approach is to burn the habitagt in case it burns, so less to worry about. It is self-defeating. Like setting fire to ones home to stay warm in winter. Read up on the demise of the Rapa Nui on Easter Island.
The government’s hazard reduction Managing fire-prone NSW national parks requires a three-pronged approach, including fire planning, community education, and fuel management. When it comes to fuel like dead wood, NPWS conducts planned hazard reduction activities like mowing and controlled burning to assist in the protection of life, property and community.
So the $76 million claims “to boost bushfire preparedness and double hazard reduction in the State’s national parks“. Many such hazard reduction operations undertaken by NPWS across NSW each year, many with the assistance of the RFS, who relish the opportunity. Yet when bushfires occur, the same slow response ensues and the same widespread destruction often results, with or without hazard reduction. Ember attack in high winds travels kilometres beyond any hazard reduction ground.
But the government arson cult is entrenched. The lack of responsible funding is chronic.
No flora species has ever been made extinct because it has not been fire ravaged, yet how many species of fauna are on the edge of extinction because they continue to be?
Anyone with respiratory problems or suffering from Asthma is urged to visit NSW Health or the Asthma Foundation. Remnant native wildlife like the locally indigenous Black Pademelon, not so Common Wombat and Ringtail Possum, will just have to suck it up. Each of these species is territorial which means that they don’t relocate when fire devastates their home range.
What about the locally indigenous Echidnas, Eastern Grey Kangaroos, Emus, Platypus, Goannas, Eastern Water Dragons, Broad-headed Snakes, Wedge-Tail Eagles dependent the habitat and the more than sixty species of native birds?
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Abercrombie a habitat island within a logged landscape
Abercrombie River National Park is situated surrounded by a logged landscape to the horizon. The Park was gazetted in 1995 as part of a nature conservation strategy supposedly aimed at maintaining the state of New South Wales’ biodiversity. It claims to protect an important part of remnant bushland within the south-western central tablelands.
By incinerating it?
Actually, the truth is that the region has been too steep for pastoralists to trash, so it was left. Then the 19th Century gold prospectors got in and dig a lot of it up, before it was abandoned and surrounding farms let their pigs escape and go feral. Sadly, Abercrombie has become a play zone for weekend hoons.
When did the Parks Service last do a wildlife survey in Abercrombie? Back when the park was gazetted in 1995 when ecologist Christopher Togher wrote his Report on the Biodiversity and Land Management of the Abercrombie River Catchment.
Booroolong Frog (Litoria booroolongensis). Locally indigenous to the Abercrombie River region, an endangered species
How many left in Silent Creek?
The ‘Parks Service’ thinks it knows best, and has atrophied to presume it exists to facilitate anthropocentric tourism and recreation. So the tourism arm of the ‘Parks Service’ has set the region aside for exploitation for four wheel touring, fishing, camping, canoeing and bushwalking with two toilets.
The National Parks Service website hypocritically states:
<<Abercrombie River National Park is a special place..This is an environment built for adventure. One of the most popular activities in the park is 4WD touring (and trail biking). Some of the trails running along gorges and ridges can be pretty challenging, even for the experienced driver. For those with plenty of energy, you can also explore these trails on mountain bikes..>>
Near Bummaroo Ford Abercrombie River (hoon park), 19th May 2015
On the same page, Parks Services recognises that Abercrombie River National Park is a special place for nature and wildlife conservation. Then it recommends people “get out into the national park and have an adventure!” It’s all about the experience see.
Oberon Council, home of lumberjacks, claims it is:
<<surrounded by a number of national parks and is the perfect base to experience these enormous sanctuaries of pristine bushland and all they have to offer. Our national parks are a haven for adventure seekers, with bushwalking, mountain biking, canyoning, camping, abseiling, rock climbing, fishing, 4WD touring and so much more.>>
But you have to drive through vast areas of clear felled forest and plantations around Oberon to get there.
There are four camping sites within the Abercrombie River National Park at Bummaroo Ford, The Sink, The Beach and Silent Creek – all overused.
Feral pigs run riot throughout the region, happily destroying the riparian zones of the watercourses with impunity. Over the decades, cattle and now feral pigs have dug up the riparian vegetation causing bank erosion. They have toxified the soil biology causing weed infestation and facilitating the spread of flora diseases such as dieback – so destroying the region’s native ecosystem.
Feral pigs thrive in the Australia bush and cause immense environmental damage especially to watercourses.
In the 1960s there were about 50,000 pig farmers across Australia, and many escaped. The Abercrombie River National Park has been left to become a haven for feral pigs. Yet the Plan of Management states: “Within the Abercrombie catchment is an extensive amount of remnant riparian vegetation which is extremely important in maintaining water quality and habitat for threatened aquatic ecosystems.” (Source: ‘Abergrombie River National Park Plan of Management 2006, 2.2.2. Significance of Abercrombie River National Park, page 2).
<<Feral pigs are opportunistic scavengers and prey on invertebrates, bird eggs, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians and soil invertebrates. Their selective feeding habits also affect the biodiversity of vegetation and creates competition for food resources of native species. Feral pigs have negative impacts on native ecological systems including changing species composition, disrupting species succession and by altering nutrient and water cycles. Impacts can be direct or indirect, acute or chronic, periodic or constant, and may be influenced by changing seasonal conditions. Feral pigs tend to congregate around water as they are highly susceptible to heat. The impact of the pigs wallowing in wetlands and watercourses totally destroys these finely balanced ecosystems. They also prey on ground dwelling mammals, reptiles and birds, in some cases putting extensive pressure on rare and endangered species.>>
Then there are the feral rabbits, feral goats, feral deer and feral recreational hoons. The absence of park rangers is conspicuous.
How Australia treats its national parks
The ‘Parks Service’ website promotes “rivers and creek systems within the park provide habitat for trout cod and Macquarie Perch, which are totally protected species. River blackfish, silver perch and the Murray cray are also found which are regionally rare. Introduced trout may only be caught during the trout season from the October long weekend to the June long weekend.“
So it encourages people to fish protected species?
In Sunday 7th January 2014 (hot mid-summer), campers abandoned their camp fire without extinguishing it. Their haphazard campsite, situated on Macks Flat near a pine plantation about 1km north of The Beach, was not approved It burned around 50 hectares including within the Abercrombie River National Park. It was not a designated camping site and the campers went unpunished.
The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service is legally responsible under the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 to to protect and conserve areas containing outstanding or representative ecosystems, natural or cultural features or landscapes or phenomena that provide opportunities for public appreciation and inspiration and sustainable visitor use.
<<Under the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Act national parks are managed to:
Conserve biodiversity, maintain ecosystem functions, protect geological and geomorphological features and natural phenomena and maintain natural landscapes;
Conserve places, objects, features and landscapes of cultural value;
Protect the ecological integrity of one or more ecosystems for present and future generations;
Promote public appreciation and understanding of the park’s natural and cultural values;
Provide for sustainable visitor use and enjoyment that is compatible with conservation of natural and cultural values;
Provide for sustainable use (including adaptive reuse) of any buildings or structures or modified natural areas having regard to conservation of natural and cultural values; and
Provide for appropriate research and monitoring.>>
This environmental law applies to Abercrombie River National Park.
Yet strategic under-funding, under-resourcing and under-staffing forces the service to neglect these core responsibilities. Hoons run riot and the park is abused. What a disgrace! The environmental law is weak because there are no standards, measures or breach penalties. It was drafted to be a motherhood statement to appease malleable conservationists.
Since being gazetted in 1995, Abercrombie River National Park has been treated as a recreation park, not as a wildlife sanctuary in any way, except on paper to pretend the government actual has a conservation bone in its body. It’s called ‘Greenwashing’. NPWS works very closely with the Upper Lachlan Tourist Association, and the Rural Fire Service.
In 2010, National Parks and Wildlife staff carried out a 520 hectare hazard reduction burn in the north of Abercrombie River National Park, with the RFS in tow. Kanangra Boyd area manager Kim de Govrik said at the time the burn off took place in the Felled Timber Creek area.
<<The park is now open and ready for the influx of eastern campers,” Mr de Govrik said. “The operation was a great success thanks to the assistance of the local RFS brigades. RFS volunteers from Jerrong/Paling Yards, Gurnang and Black Springs helped in putting in the 11km of fire edge.>>
During 2009, National Parks and Wildlife completed a record 230 burns, covering nearly 80,000 hectares of native habitat.
NPWS is targeting the state’s 225 national parks and reserves for programmatic habitat reduction under its current $76 million programme:
[6] ‘The Story of Silent Spring – How a courageous woman took on the chemical industry and raised important questions about humankind’s impact on nature‘, by the Natural Resources Defense Council, ^https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring
Thomson River from Walhalla Road Bridge, Victoria, Australia.
(Photo by editor 20170322 looking north)
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Walhalla Mizzle
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It’s been raining gentle all night
In crisp mountain air
I sit on my dawn porch
I gaze through the grey mizzle
To the thick treed ridge
Covering the steep spur
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Across Stringers Creek
The creek babbles far below
Feeding the mighty Thomson
Low heavy cloud envelops
Robins, larks, parrots, finches, firetails, martins or currawongs
Greet the daylight
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Walhalla’s quiet now
As it should be up here
In the wild ranges steep
The 50 year army of gold reefers
Has long been and gone
Shafters taken their bargains and fortunes
Till the ground lay barren, the hills denuded, the Thomson damned
The batteries, the boilers and engines and waterwheel are gone
The miners, drinkers, shop keepers, the shafted
The school kids who played in bad soil
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The long tunnels lie empty and dank
The dark shafts abandoned to victim ghosts
The slag heap lies as a mountainous waste
Still laced with arsenic
Stringers choked by discarded tailings
They all went back up over Little Joe, the twenty-five hundred
Back to their big smoke
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The rail remains as industrious memory
To the heyday of industry and hardship
Fifteen tons of gold taken
On the marble column count
Dividends paid out
Two fires, a flood, disease and arsenic
Dozens perished for the gold fever
As the slain to Odin
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The mizzle is pure till it touches the ground
Surrounding forest seems back
The creek tries flow as it did, crystal but dead
A heritage cancer cluster
A new breed of shafters.
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Stringers Creek, from Main Road, Walhalla
(Photo by editor 20170322)
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Further Reading:
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[1] “Elevated arsenic values can be detected up to 15 metres from the mineralised zone” – in ‘Nature of gold mineralisation in the Walhalla Goldfield, eastern Victoria, Australia‘, 2007, by Megan A. Hough, Laurent Ailleres (School of Geosciences, Monash University), Frank P. Bierlein (Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia, Adele Seymon (Geoscience Victoria) and Stuart Hutchin (Goldstar Resources, Rawson), ^https://www.smedg.org.au/HoughOct07.html
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[2] ‘Approaching a century-old legacy of arsenic and mercury contamination’, 2016, by Dr. Linda Campbell, Senior Research Fellow at Environmental Science, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ^http://ap.smu.ca/~lcampbel/Gold.html
[8] ‘Thallium and Arsenic Poisoning in a Small Midwestern Town’, 2002, by Daniel E Rusyniak at Department of Emergency Medicine and Division of Medical Toxicology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA, and R. Brent Furbee and Mark A Kirk, ^https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/articles/11867986/
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[9] ‘Cancer incidence and soil arsenic exposure in a historical gold mining area in Victoria, Australia: A geospatial analysis‘, 2012, by Dora Claire (University of Ballarat and Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne), Kim Dowling (Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne) and Malcolm Ross Sim (Monash University) in Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology (2012) 22, 248–257, ^http://www.nature.com/jes/journal/v22/n3/full/jes201215a.html
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[10] ‘A cross-sectional survey on knowledge and perceptions of health risks associated with arsenic and mercury contamination from artisanal gold mining in Tanzania’, 20130125, by Elias Charles, Deborah SK Thomas, Deborah Dewey, Mark Davey, Sospatro E Ngallaba and Eveline Konje, at BMC Public Health, BioMed Central, London UK, ^https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-13-74
There remains a termite-ridden industry needing eradicating in Gippsland Victoria and it is the old Heyfield Sawmill. From the outside, the incidious business goes by the innocuous name Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, but like termite damage, it is rotten on the inside.
It’s website claims that the rare and disappearing “Victorian Ash is a beautiful hardwood that is dense, versatile, readily available and sustainably managed.”
Well, that’s why ASH have clear-felled logged it near to extinction?
ASH brands its products ‘Goodwood’, ‘Iron Ash’, ‘Alpine Oak’, ‘Supa Span’, but it’s all the same old growth Victorian Ash native forests older than any of the lumberjacks employed. The only way these loggers could be sustainable would be if they planted the species, but then to get to a commercial size they would have to wait until their grand-kids grew up to use a chainsaw, the liars.
ASH exports Victorian Ash to China, Japan, South East Asia, Europe the Middle East and the USA. Why? Let these countries wreck their own forests.
So the 200 greedy timber workers at Heyfield Sawmill need to pack their utes and transition to a real job. If their industry was as sustainable as they claim then they wouldn’t have run out of trees to chop down, but some are just slow on the uptake.
If renovators want fancy timber floors then they need to pay for the plantation laminates.
Heyfield has a continual history of environmental exploitation since the 1840s. They’ve been clear-felling Gippsland since 1939. What did the greedy loggers expect? That ASH needs a $40 million subsidy from Victorian taxpayers to refit the mill, so that it can process the smaller logs from newer regrowth forests, exposes the lie that logger John Tyquin at Heyfield Sawmill claims:
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“It’s just like farming – we cut a tree down, we replace it with two more. The timber is there, we want to keep working.”
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So go to your plantations John! How high are the trees? Twenty foot? If there are less suitable trees left whose fault is that?
You should have put out the bushfires and saved the swathe of Alpine forests, rather than just watch them burn to ash.
ASH has been told they can’t have the logs they haven’t planted. Nathan Trushall, General Manager of VicForests, has stated publicly that there are simply not the logs there to supply their customers.
This is a serious admission of a major calculation goof-up and/or years of lying. Incompetent wood supply modelling can’t be blamed on possums or bushfires. The writing has been on the wall for years with every report and enquiry pointing to ongoing over-logging.
That future is now here. The bosses have geed up workers to blame ‘the greenies inside Labor’ and ‘the latte-sipping greenies in the city’. They are of course reluctant to admit their industry’s criminal waste and abuse of forests since 1939.
Chief executive Vince Hurley says supply in the pipeline forecasts ASH is set to lose $12 million over three years. “Having done the analysis we have no alternative but to close the mill.”
So once again they’re screaming job losses, town closures, families starving, and no more footy club. The bosses will receive massive tax-payer funded payouts and nothing changes. 150,000 cubic metres and 130,000 hectares may be critical mass for 260 mill jobs, but if the plantations aren’t ready, then 260 mill jobs are not sustainable.
Who did all the recent hiring on false pretences? Try 26 jobs! Tick toc, tick toc.
Forests are not a Magic Pudding and this fact finally caught up with the government and VicForests in January 2017. Knocking down forests faster than they can regrow has been the management standard for decades by every logging agency and overseen and excused by every government (Liberal and Labor). After such cut-throat management, the industry and workers are now screaming that their throats have been cut because the limit has been reached; forests can no longer provide the sawlogs demanded.
The acronym ‘ASH’ is about the scorched earth attitude and result and nothing about ‘sustainable’. That ‘hardwoods’ are critical to the Australian Sustainable Hardwoods business model at Heyfield, was always short termism without eco-plantings staying ahead of a 150,000 cubic metre sawmill throughput to sustain 200 workers. Google Maps shows not much native forest is left. The writing has been on the wall for decades.
These forestry hard heads are the Easter Islanders of Heyfield. They even call themselves “an endangered species”.
If ASH wants to refit it’s Heyfield Sawmill to scale down to smaller logs, then use the $40 million out of the profits of your profitable business if it’s as viable as claimed. But thieving from the Victorian taxpayer else shows up your business to be the unprofitable scam that it is – existing not as a viable business but as a charity for loggers too lazy to get out of a 19th Century rort.
ASH says it plans to transition to plantation timber within 20 years. That’s what it said 20 years ago. The game is up.
Heyfield sawmilling is a 19th Century mentality of environmental exploitation. The diehards can pretend with euphemisms like ‘sustainable’ and ‘good wood’ all they like. Like a house of sand below high tide, next month is a forestry king tide.
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Why Aren’t the Logs There?
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Along with the historic malpractice of unrestricted clearfell logging, another industry crime is the illegal downgrading and chipping of good quality sawlogs for a quick buck. This has helped drain the landscape of forests that can provide sawlogs. Today we also see VicForests selling whole logs to China, a practice that was illegal not long ago. Logs needed to be ‘processed’ before being exported, so the ends were simply cut off to fit them into the containers – hey presto, processed log!
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What About Australian Paper?
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The AP mill at Maryvale (makers of Reflex paper) has been a favoured political donor with considerable influence. Decades ago it was granted long-term access to the beautiful Mountain Ash forests of the Central Highlands with their contract for Mountain Ash logs secure until 2030. They are VicForests biggest customer alongside ASH. But to cut trees down to put through a shredder to make paper, they have to be deemed ‘waste’. For this they need a token sawmill as the fig-leaf to hide behind that takes the odd sawlog. Then the rest of the forest can be defined as logging ‘waste’. Without a sawmill, VicForests will find it hard to justify clearfelling solely for woodchips.
But even with all the millions this paper mill receives as ‘industry assistance’, various other handouts and dirt cheap quality logs, it still hasn’t made a profit for four years. It is up against cheap imported paper, a boycott campaign and increasing demand for certified forest-friendly paper by customers. Its owner Nippon paper in Japan, has been considering the mill’s viability for some time.
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What was VicForests’ Brainwave?
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The result of all this is that the industry has finally hit the brick wall.
VicForests has been buying logs from NSW forests to meet its contracts with the bigger customers like Auswest and ASH to stave off the inevitable. Smaller mills have closed after being starved of logs needed to feed the bigger mills.
VicForests has also been caught smashing down rainforests and key habitats regularly; it has been desperate to find every extra tonne of wood it can glean – legally or illegally.
But now VicForests finally admits there are far fewer logs out there. It has been caught illegally logging more times than we have changed our socks. The government can’t pretend to not notice or act. So VicForests is now fessing up and offering contracts of ‘only’ 80,000 m3 next year and 60,000 for each of the two following years.
But ASH states that it would not be commercially viable at that reduced level.
We understand there is also a bit of haggling over VicForests wanting higher prices for the fewer logs.
The industry has over-logged itself into a terminal mess.
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What is the Real Solution?
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Since the early 1970s woodchipping has driven this industry.
If it is to continue it would be at a vastly reduced size with a vastly different product output. As the forests have been scraped to the bone and left struggling to regrow as healthy forests, what is taken now should only be used for very high-value end products using selective logging.
However even this is unlikely to be viable, as markets, products and competitors have changed. Plantations meet about 85% of all our building and furniture needs and this proportion is growing as technology finds ways to create stronger and better appearance timbers from pine.
Our forebears were resilient tough people and moved with the times – maybe this should be something the logging industry aspires to as well. The future is in nature tourism, outdoor recreation, the foodie trails, agriculture, enviro land management and who knows what else.
As Professor David Lindenmayer explained in a recent article, crunch time has come. The only solution is a very rapid transition to plantation timber processing. The plantations are there, ready and waiting. We can’t stall this shift any longer while certain players position themselves for a massive payout in the next year or two.
In the Central Highlands, water and tourism (sustainable products our forests provide) are worth $260M value-added contribution to the economy. The equivalent value of logging is just $9M at best.
These are the kinds of economic data government needs to look at to make sensible decisions. It must maximise our forests’ assets and benefits, to get the best value for the people of Victoria who own these forests and create long-term, secure and conflict-free employment.
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Where does the state Taskforce fit in?
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The Victorian Forest Taskforce was set up in late 2015 to sort out how forests should be managed for timber and conservation into the future. It comprises reps from industry and the enviro movement, but no government reps are in the room.
And if you think Dan Andrews is extending the umpteenth deadline again and may even buy the mill, keep dreaming. He’d hanging you lot out to dry. You are about to be the largest hardwood ex-processor in Australia. The Andrews government was aware of this looming cliff.
With the above realities and when the VEAC reports are handed to government, we look forward to seeing Daniel Andrews assist – not the bosses and mill owners – but towns and workers to transition into new growth areas; outdoor work to put in walking trails, picnic areas, maintain park facilities, revegetation, catchment management, feral animal control – there is endless work to be done repairing and maintaining the environment. If $50M a year can be found to pay VicForests to knock down forests with immense natural values, surely it can find $50M a year to assist the dawning of a new era for Gippsland’s forests.
Katie Ball, Saving Goolengook Old Growth by Bipod Blockade, 22nd August 1997
R.I.P – Katie Ball (1965-2004)
<<Katie was a staunch social and environmental activist who gave her all in any campaign she was involved in. Who can forget Katies wheel chair in bipod and tripod blockades?
A disability rights campaigner Kathleen (Katie) Ball died in Melbourne on June 25, 2004 from pneumonia at the age of 39. Katie was a qualified secondary teacher, a community development worker and a grassroots activist, who never shied away from taking direct action, whether it be in highlighting the social and sexual inequalities in the treatment of disabled people or protesting the logging of East Gippsland forests.
A disability rights campaigner from her late teens, Katie had Kugelberg Welander Syndrome (juvenile spinal muscular atrophy) and used an electric wheelchair for mobility.
Involved in the phone sex industry, she also taught the “politics of disablement” at the Kangan-Batman TAFE. Katie was featured in the award-winning 1994 documentary film Untold Desires and her photos have been published in Picture magazine. She was featured on the ABC Radio National program, Earshot (“In the hoist with Katie Ball”), in 2000.
Kate was a founding member of the DLF, which continues to campaign for rights for people with disabilities, and for funding to be used for services for greater access for people with disabilities. She spoke at many forums and wrote a library-based dissertation on the sociological analysis of sexuality and the disability rights movement.
In 1998 at the ska TV Activist Awards, Katie accepted the Most Daring Action award on behalf of the Disability Liberation Front for the DSF’s gate-crashing in September 1997 of the launch of the Disability Services Directory for the City of Brimbank by youth and community minister Denis Napthine.
In a very candid essay titled “Who’d Fuck an Ableist”, published in the US Disability Studies Quarterly (Fall 2002, Volume 22, No. 4). Katie explained her fascination with human sexuality and the extent of discrimination against the sexual expression of disabled people.
Katie left behind her loving partner Peter Vanderfeen and their two young children. She continues to be remembered, missed and celebrated by many people in the social change movements whom she worked with and inspired.>>
The Federal Coalition Government has declared the forests open for business and tried to strip World Heritage listing from Tasmanian forests to permit yet more clearfell logging and woodchipping.
It has also passed new laws adding native forest wood to the clean energy sources under the Renewable Energy Target, effectively giving the logging industry a public subsidy to burn forests for electricity.
The move potentially creates a massive new ‘woodchip’ industry as forests are felled to fuel domestic power stations and huge amounts of whole logs or pellets are shipped to North Asia for power plants and domestic heating. These changes have been strongly supported by State governments and State Forestry agencies are now scrambling to identify massive new wood resources for long term contracts to supply biomass fuel from the forests.
In NSW there are nearly two million hectares of native forests subject to intensive industrial logging and woodchip operations. The South Coast, the North Coast as well as Pilliga and other western State Forests will be likely targets for the dense hardwood eucalypt species presently not suitable for pulp making and possibly also the White Cypress Pine.
These State Forests are supposedly managed “sustainably” for both timber resource and the conservation of nature, especially the wildlife. As such they form an essential part of the biodiversity reserve system.
It is a nonsense on both counts – the State’s Forestry Corporation has overestimated the resource available and cannot meet various contract commitments. Worse, the intensive logging and clearfelling can in no way sustain the required habitat for most forest wildlife.
On the South Coast from Nowra to Eden there are less than 100 surviving Koalas after 40 years of intensive logging and woodchipping and this is just the tip of a massive biodiversity crash in our forests.
In NSW, complimentary legislation to allow forests to be burnt for electricity was passed last year and the Liberal Government is proceeding to change the logging rules all along the east coast to permit access to areas previously off limits such as rainforest and old growth remnants, streamside buffers, endangered species exclusion areas and very steep land, including cable logging for slopes over 30 degrees.
Twenty year forestry agreements (Regional Forestry Agreements) around the country are set to be renewed over the next few years and negotiations between the Federal and state Governments for renewal of the five NSW agreements have already begun. These agreements suspend almost all environmental protection laws for forests with the result that the forests have been mercilessly over logged at unsustainable supply levels and with massive damage to biodiversity. On the South Coast from Nowra to Eden there are less than 100 surviving Koalas after 40 years of intensive logging and woodchipping.
Both Federal and State Labor profess to oppose the burning of forests for electricity but Federal Labor refused to block the passage of the new RET laws allowing forests to be burnt for electricity. The NSW labor Party opposes cable logging. However, both Federal and State Labor are still in support of continuing intensive logging and woodchipping of native forests. WE have to change the position of one of the two big parties and Labor at this stage seems the best prospect.
If you would like to support the Log Off campaign to put an end to native forest logging once and for all, please contact ChipBusters at chipbusters@iinet.net.au or phone 0425 23 83 03.
Footnote
Sydney conservationist Richard Green, his wife Carolyn and passenger John Davis were found in the helicopter’s wreckage in mountainous terrain, south of Cessnock, in the Watagans National Park on Monday. The aircraft, which took off from Breeza in northern NSW on Saturday, had been reported missing on Monday after it failed to arrive at its destination, Mona Vale.
Smoking Ceremony or Smoke and Mirrors?Staged for the delegates by National Parks and Wildlife Service of New South Wales (NPWS), somewhere outside Sydney, Australia
[Source: ‘Global First Nations environmentalists share stories at the World Parks Congress in Sydney.5:30’, ^https://twitter.com/nitvnews, 20141113]
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Every ten years a World Parks Congress is a forum staged by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to discuss the effectiveness of World Heritage Listed Protected Areas. For 2014, Parks Australia put up Sydney’s hand to host and fund it.
<<“We (Parks Australia) are delighted to be co-hosting the IUCN World Parks Congress with our colleagues in the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service – and look forward to welcoming inspiring leaders from around the world.”>>
IUCN’s vision is a “just world that values and conserves nature.” The theme for the 2014 conference is “Parks, people, planet: inspiring solutions”.
The last congress was in Durban, South Africa eleven years ago in 2003 and significant messages from that congress were that:
Considerable progress has been made in the establishment of protected areas although significant gaps remain
Protected areas face many challenges, and management effectiveness must be strengthened
Protected areas play a vital role in biodiversity conservation and sustainable development
A new deal is needed for protected areas, local communities and indigenous peoples
There is a need to apply new and innovative approaches for protected areas, linked to broader agendas
Protected areas require a significant boost in financial investment
Protected areas management must involve young people
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Congress Cost Benefits ?
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The obvious first question for the 2014 Sydney Congress is what are the outcomes from these seven messages of 2003?
The second question is what is to be the conservation return on investment of staging the 2014 congress in Sydney? That starts with Parks Australia and NPWS disclosing the full costs of the congress. How much will it have cost by the time this week is over? Five million? Ten million? Twenty million? More? That also involves disclosure of the onground conservation outcomes, if any. The congress hosts more than 5000 delegates for a week-long event in Sydney.
If the answers are not forthcoming and/or the performances less than satisfactory, then perhaps the money could have been better spent (invested) by Parks Australia and NPWS on specific onground conservation of current and worthy Protected Areas in Australia. So the third question is what is the opportunity cost of the 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress which could have delivered the IUCN vision of a “just world that values and conserves nature”?
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Congress Opportunity Costs
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According to IUCN director general, Julia Marton-Lefevre, assessments during the past decade have found that half of the world’s protected areas at best — and possibly as few as 20 per cent — are managed effectively. “Some are what we refer to as ‘paper parks’ ” – parks just on paper.
The Australian Government’s $180 million allocation to expand the park reserve system expired last year.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is a case in point. It is the iconic Protected Area in Australia. Its World Heritage listing along with various national zoning, management plans, permits, education and incentives are supposed to protect and conserve the marine ecosystems and migratory species from human threats. But farm and urban runoff continues to contaminate the rivers that flow into the Reef.
In 2009 and 2011, mining company Queensland Nickel discharged nitrogen-laden water and 516 tonnes of toxic waste water into the Great Barrier Reef.
On 21 July 2013, on the second day of the biennial joint training exercise Talisman Saber, two American AV-8B Harrier fighter jets launched from aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) dropped four bombs, weighing a total 1.8 metric tons (4,000 pounds), into more than 50 metres (164 ft) of water. On 3rd April 2010, The Shen Neng 1, a Chinese ship carrying 950 tonnes of oil, ran aground, causing the 2010 Great Barrier Reef oil spill.
In December 2013, Greg Hunt, the Australian environment minister, approved a plan for dredging to create three shipping terminals as part of the expansion of an existing coal port. According to corresponding approval documents, the process will create around 3 million cubic metres of dredged seabed that will be dumped within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
On 31 January 2014, a permit was issued to allow three million cubic metres of sea bed from Abbot Point, north of Bowen, to be transported and unloaded in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, just outside of Abbot Bay. The dredge spoil will cloud the water and block sunlight, thereby starving sea grass and coral up to distances of 80 km away from the point of origin due to the actions of wind and currents. The dredge spoil will smother reef or sea grass to death, while storms can repeatedly resuspend these particles so that the harm caused is ongoing; secondly, disturbed sea floor can release toxic substances into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
Dredging the Great Barrier Reef for bulk export shipping
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The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has become just a blue line on a map. The trickle of funds for Australia’s national parks betrays a lack of appreciation of their economic contribution. Annual funding for the authority that runs Australia’s most famous reserve, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, is about 1 per cent of the $5.2bn it earns the country in tourism revenue.
Yet if the IUCN World Parks Congress cost a conservative $20 million to stage then a key opportunity cost would be the June 2014 Federal budget cuts to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
The budget axed 17 staff including five of its’ directors positions. These positions included the director of heritage conservation, the director of policy and governance and the director of coastal ecosystems and water quality as part of an internal restructure. It’s being described as the greatest loss of expertise from Australia’s most important natural wonder and it comes at the very time the Great Barrier Reef is facing the greatest threat to its survival.
The Greater Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has been reduced by the Australian Government to being in name only and ineffective at protecting the reef.
Until recently, one of those five directors, Adam Smith, was charged with dealing with the contentious Abbot Point coal terminal development and the proposal to dump three million cubic metres of dredge spoil into the marine park. Despite Dr Smith’s concerns, the sea dumping was approved by the Marine Park Authority.
Dr Smith has since accepted voluntary redundancy and moved on after disagreeing with the Authority’s new economic leadership and values. Heritage conservation director Jon Day has left after 21 years, disillusioned too with the direction the Authority has taken to compromise the reef.
Next year UNESCO will decide whether to put the reef on its world heritage in danger list. Native Dugongs are already endangered. The deliberate extermination of the dugong and turtles which habituated the Gladstone area is a national tragedy. Dugongs are species listed under the Federal Environment Protection Biodiversity & Conservation Act, which requires the Federal government to legally protect these animals.
Prior to the massive dredging operation of 52 million cubic metres of seabed for the development of the world’s largest LNG Terminal, ( which is 62% completed) a study commissioned by the Gladstone Ports Corporation found that a take, or a quota, of more than zero dugongs would be unsustainable.
In the face of massive mortality of dugongs, turtles and inshore dolphins during the ongoing massive dredging, both the Federal and Queensland governments ignored the slaughter.
Look at the stranding data from the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management. Monthly cumulative Dugong strandings by year for Queensland, up to 31 January 2012.
There are 22,000 vessel movements a month in Gladstone Harbour. No ship strikes of Dugongs or of Green Turtles need to be reported. No audit of environmental conditions has been undertaken by the Queensland or Federal Governments. The wholesale slaughter of our marine wildlife is the price Australians are paying for the transformation of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area into the world’s largest unregulated quarry.
Mass tourism operators good for the economy Getting up close to protected Humpback Whales within their 100 metre Protected Area
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Australian protected areas have seen rule changes in the eastern states have allowed cattle to graze, recreational shooters to hunt and hotel developers to build in national parks. Shore-based recreational fishing has been allowed in areas of NSW marine parks previously zoned as no-take sanctuaries. National parks on land and in the ocean are dying a death of a thousand cuts, in the form of bullets, hooks, hotels, logging concessions and grazing licences.
Yet as host of the 2014 World Parks Congress, Australia is showcasing “our own inspiring places, inspiring people and inspiring solutions.” The Global Eco Forum within the Congress programme focuses on tourism exploitation of Protected Areas because like the new Greater Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the new values are not about conservation by the billions in revenue opportunity to Australia’s economy.
The October 2006 issue of National Geographic published an article “The Future of Parks: Hallowed Ground – Nothing is Ever Safe”.
It stated:
“Landscape and memory combine to tell us certain places are special, sanctified by their extraordinary natural merits and by social consensus.
We call those places parks, and we take them for granted.”
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Sydney’s 2014 World Parks Congress appears to be expensive window dressing, showcasing fraudulent conservation of Protected Areas in Australia.
It’s termed Greenwashing. The opportunity cost of the 2014 Congress could have instead funded the retention of the previously effective Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and so done more for Protected Areas than all the pomp, promising, luncheons, showcasing, and talk-festing of the congress combined.
White Lemuroid Possum(Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area in Danger)Has the white lemuroid possum become the first mammal to go extinct due to global warming?
The species, normally found above 1000m, has not been sighted during any nighttime spotlighting expedition since 2005. Experts fear a temperature rise of 0.8 degrees Celsius may be to blame for the animal’s disappearance. [Source: ^http://www.wherelightmeetsdark.com/index.php?module=newswatch&NW_user_op=view&NW_id=453]
At an informal community meeting at ATLAS (a 200+ year old endemic Blue Mountains Ash) today, it has been made public that Blue Mountains Council’s tree officer had been inappropriately coerced by a councillor in 2010 to have this magnificent iconic tree conveniently killed. According to the officer it is because of a (very) close association with a property developer of the adjoining site.
Fortunately the tree officer, out of respect for this heritage tree and out of respect for the rule of law and for due process, personally stood up to the councillor’s intimidation and so appropriately arranged for an independent arborist to evaluate the viable health of this tree.
That independent arborist reported that the tree was healthy and ought to be retained, and so it has.
All credit to Council’s Public Tree Officer for resolutely following due process. The developer has a track record of ignoring Blue Mountains Councils development consent conditions relating to this tree. DA consent conditions 61, 62, 63, and 68 have all been ignored or breached.
Despite Council’s requirement for Tree Protection Measures and a Tree Protection Plan, neither were supplied, yet the industrial development was allowed to proceed.
The developer has illegally lopped a healthy branch from the tree.
The developer furnished no Tree Protection Measures, Tree Protection Plan or Tree Protection Zone. In the mind of the developer, the tree is situated on Council land after all. He knew as such and was likely told that his environmental bond was a farce.
He is correct. So this is why a string of Council bureaucrats have gone running for cover. .
There exists a vast plateau unspoilt from the valley floor and it lies just west of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains.
It is Elphinstone Plateau, known mainly to locals and to informed bushwalkers. It’s deep gorges provide critical habitat to one of the world’s most endangered plants, Microstrobos fitzgeraldii, and to its integral waterfall spray dependent ecological community.
Elphinstone Plateau lies interconnected with the Cox’s Watershed traversing the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, connected to National Parks owned land, to Narrow Neck and to the Jamison Valley. The photo above shows how country is interconnected in the Blue Mountains and that Elphinstone Plateau remains one of the last surviving wild places of the Central Blue Mountains area. We value it.
Elphinstone Plateau is an integral continuum of the Blue Mountains Great Southern Escarpment. Elphinstone Plateau’s uniqueness and its dependent habitat and wild values deem that it should be integrated into the Blue Mountains National Park and the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
Elphinstone Plateau’s history contains stories, many sad and some a curse, and more recently of local community battles fought for years late into the night driven by a committed local few.
The website is about to embark on a protracted conservation campaign to “Save Elphinstone Plateau” from Developer Wars – Book 3. The Habitat Advocate has its origins within walking distance of Elphinstone Plateau. We have explored it, but we know little of its ecology, its history, its Aboriginal heritage, its recurring struggles against selfish developer exploitation. So we are about to research all this and share our research journey on this website in the months to follow.
In doing so, we shall be shining a light on the stories of battles that have come before, back to the 1980s. This promises to stir skeletons from closets and to reveal facts that some would prefer were forgotten. For those interested in documentaries and reading history, our series of articles pursuing this conservation campaign will be an epic ride connecting the present to the past.
So after months of online hibernation, The Habitat Advocate is back in conservation action, awoken by a conservation warrior, asking us for support.
Elphinstone Plateau is where this website and logo were conceived.
Residents of the Blue Mountains, Maureen and Peter Toy, were shocked to learn last month about an arbitrary claim for this magnificent tree (pictured) to be killed for what they consider can be no rational reason.
According to advice that the Toys received from local conservation consultancy The Habitat Advocate, this large Blue Mountains Ash (Eucalyptus oreades) is a native tree only found in the Upper Blue Mountains. This particular specimen probably dates to 19th Century colonial settlement in Australia.
Maureen says “It is a beautiful and rare specimen and Blue Mountains folk are fortunate that we have such a significant tree still growing right by Megalong Street in now an increasingly industrialised part of Katoomba.”
Over the many decades, this great tree has withstood fierce windstorms, bushfires, road-widening right up to its trunk and industrial development all around it. With a canopy about 40 metres high and a trunk girth of over 5 metres, the tree has become a recognised icon and reference point in the area. It is home to a flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos.
Maureen affectionately calls the tree, ‘Atlas’, after the Greek God, for its towering size and for being so enduring. There is no other quite like it perhaps throughout the world renown Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
Peter can’t understand why the tree is not on Council’s Significant Tree Register or why anyone would want to harm it. The tree is on community verge land and for the past few years there has been an industrial development constructed behind it. Peter and Maureen are vehemently opposed to any further harm being inflicted upon the tree and they have lodged a protest with council.
Several others in the local community have sided with the Toys and together have formed a local group ‘Friends of Atlas’ determined to protect the tree. Peter is looking to start a petition to garner local community recognition and support to protect the tree. He says “it is early days but he is ready for a sustained fight.”
A spokesperson from Blue Mountains (city?) Council has confirmed that the tree is situated on ‘Community Land‘ on the verdant verge strip between the street and the new industrial development at number 59 Megalong Street. The tree and its canopy and root system is not on private land, but on Community Land. Council has a duty as the community-delegated custodian of all community lands throughout the Blue Mountains Local Government Area. Council does not ‘own’ the tree per se, rather Council acts as the responsible custodian of this significant tree.
Council has stipulated in its development consent conditions for the adjoining industrial development application since 2010 that the tree must not be harmed by the current development activity.
But Peter disagrees. He says “guttering has been dug right into the tree roots system and just a month ago the developer had a bobcat grade the topsoil and roots around the tree for an entire day!.”
Council’s spokesperson says that council has not received any request for the tree to be destroyed.
<<The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area only exists today because of a 70-year campaign by conservationists to achieve a chain of reserves across the region. This culminated in the year 2000 with the acceptance of 10,000 square kilometres of wild bushland onto the World Heritage list – the ‘best of the best’.>>
"We're coming to you from the custodial lands of the Hairygowogulator and Tarantulawollygong, and pay respects to uncle and grandaddy elders past, present and emerging from their burrows. So wise to keep a distance out bush."
Looks natural, but decades of cattle have toxified the riparian zone’s soil and flora co-biology
Rachel Carson at Cape Cod in 1958
Booroolong Frog (Litoria booroolongensis). Locally indigenous to the Abercrombie River region, an endangered species 
Near Bummaroo Ford Abercrombie River (hoon park), 19th May 2015
Feral pigs thrive in the Australia bush and cause immense environmental damage especially to watercourses. 
