Queenstown Moonscape Tours – once was temperate rainforest
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A wee ‘tea and scones’ tourism boom could be encouraged in Tasmania, treating visitors to Tasmanian reality art exhibitions – with themes such as:
‘Convict Tourism’ – Cannibal Alexander Pearce at it, days in the life at Maria Island, Cascades, Port Arthur, Martin Bryant’s gun collection, Risdon’s worst.
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‘Ecoterrorism Tourism’ – See Forestry Tasmania at it in the Florentine Valley, See Stihl at work felling old growth, take Clearfell Tours, watch the wildlife scurry, see a ‘Scorched Earthing‘ photographic exhibition.
Watch loggers Rodney Howells, Jeremy Eizell and Terrence Pearce ecoterrorism videos: Sample video below on 21st October 2008, shows these Tasmanian loggers attacking two young forest defenders in a car, using sledge hammers. [^Read More]
WARNING ! THIS FOOTAGE CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND MAY BE DISTRESSING
(Turn sound up)
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‘Grenade Fishing’ – see it demonstrated on Tasmania’s Penstock Lagoon, now that petrol outboards are banned.
‘Wildlife Bagging’ – see the live action on Tasmania’s Moulting Lagoon – Black Swans and Pied Oystercatchers – shot plucked and gutted. Fun for all the family!
‘Mutton birding’ Tourism – Visit Flinders Island. Watch them rip the native Short-tailed Shearwater chicks out from their burrows and throttle their necks – give it a go yourself – it’s easy!
[Source: Gourmet Farmer 6th October, Flinders Island, Series 2, Episode 7, SBS Television].
“Hi Everyone, Just a quick reminder that mutton bird season is open from the 2nd April 2011 until 17th April 2011 on Flinders Island…
Just remember if you don’t have a mutton birding licence then please visit your nearest Service Tasmania Shop or their website to obtain one. A mutton birding licence will set you back $27.20 for a full fee or $21.75 of a concession fee.”
Or try Flinders Island Wallaby…”Bennetts Wallaby and Pademelon Wallaby are found in large numbers on the Island. The gathering of wallabies are restricted on a quota basis that is reviewed annually and is independent of market demand.” [Source: ^http://www.flindersislandmeat.com.au/]
Bennetts Wallaby
Native to Tasmania and surrounding islands such as Flinders Island
[Source: ^http://www.davidcook.com.au/images/images_mammals/bennetts_wallaby.jpg]
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“Native animals are considered pests by the Tasmanian rural community and their control a wasteful cost. Lenah Game Meats of Tasmania..”is attempting to turn this situation around so that with time and market development it is hoped the rural community will come to see the animals adapted to the Australian landscape as ‘friends’ rather than foe….Lenah were the first people to harvest and process wallaby and market it to the restaurant trade.” [^Read More]
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‘1080’ PoisonTours – how it works, watch it in action, proof exhibits, discount taxidermy home delivered
‘Queenstown Memories’ – Mount Lyell moonscape tours, Queen River cruises, spot the three eyed fish games, sample Macquarie Harbour cuisine
See the copper flows in the once pristine Queen and King RiversIf the copper doesn’t kill you, then the cadmium, lead, cobalt, silver or chromium will.
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‘Self-drive Tourism’ – play ‘I spy with my little eye’, or ‘count the roadkill’, or dodge the log trucks
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Photo taken by Editor while driving along the Tasman Highway, Tasmania 20110927, free in public domain
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Cape Grim Heritage Tourism – discover its namesake (massacre of Tasmanian Aborigines on 10th February 1828) – learn about early colonial hunting. [^Read More]
‘Burn offs by Air’ – see the smoke by air
‘Tassie Holes’ – see the mines by air
‘Scarefaces by Air’ – see the native forest clearfells by air
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All such Tasmanian Reality Tourism can be delivered direct from the window, and what better than with home made piping hot Tassie tea and scones!
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“The Styx State Forest will continue to be sustainably managed, providing the public with Australia’s finest timbers, protection for Tasmania’s unique biodiversity, and a popular recreation resource. Tours of the surrounding forests are available from the Maydena Adventure Hub.”
~ Forestry Tasmania
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Wilfred Batty of Mawbanna, Tasmania, with the last Tasmanian Tiger known to have been shot in the wild.
He shot the tiger in May, 1930 after it was discovered in his hen house.
Source: State Library of Tasmania eHeritage
‘A man has been fined after being stopped by police for allegedly speeding in the state’s Southern Highlands.
About 5.44am yesterday (Monday 5 March 2012), police were patrolling the (6-laned) Hume Highway at Mittagong, when they allegedly detected a white B-double (truck) travelling at a speed of 142kph in an 110kmh zone. They stopped the vehicle a short distance away and issued the 41-year-old male driver with a traffic infringement for exceed speed over 30km/h.
The fine for the offence is $1112.
[Ed: A poultry slap on the wrist fine? When 60+ tonnes is hurtling along the road at 142kph, how is this not attempted murder?]
Killer on the Road
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Mar 2012: ‘Fatal head-on in NSW’ (south of Oberon)
[Source: ‘Fatal head-on in NSW’, bigpondnews, Saturday, March 31, 2012, ^http://bigpondnews.com/articles/National/2012/03/31/Fatal_head-on_in_NSW_734843.html]
‘A truck driver has been killed, and three men have been airlifted to hospital, after two trucks collided head-on near Oberon, west of Sydney.
Police say the Isuzu table top truck and Mack prime mover logging truck crashed on Abercrombie Road, at Black Springs just before midnight (AEDT).
The Isuzu driver, aged in his 30s, died at the scene. Two other men inside suffered head and chest injuries, while the driver of the other truck, aged in his 60s, has an injury to his leg. Abercrombie Road is expected to remain closed until around 7am (AEDT).’
Typical prime mover logging truck (empty)
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Jul 2009: Recall the fatal truck crash east of Oberon three years ago…
‘One man died and another was airlifted to a Sydney hospital after a car and truck crashed head-on near Oberon yesterday afternoon.
Emergency services received reports about 1.12pm of a car hitting a truck on the Duckmaloi Road near Fearndale Road on the Sydney side of Oberon. Ambulance officers arrived and began treating the men involved in the accident. The passenger of the car was declared dead at the scene.
The 20-year-old male driver of the car was airlifted to Westmead Hospital with multiple fractures to his legs, arms and chest as well as head injuries. The truck driver was assessed by ambulance officers and did not require hospitalisation. Late last night the Duckmaloi Road was still close to non-residential traffic as spilt fuel and debris was cleaned from the site.
An Oberon trucker driver, who wished to remain anonymous, later said the Duckmaloi Road needed to be seriously looked at due to the large amount of traffic it carried.
“Along with the Bathurst road it is one of the two main veins into Oberon,” he said. “I believe around 200 trucks a day would use that road to get from Oberon to Sydney and back again.”
The truck driver added that for people who did not frequently use the Duckmaloi Road it could be very dangerous. “It can be bloody treacherous if you don’t know it,” he said.
“In one day I think we send about 50 trucks out and have 50 trucks come back in on it [the Duckmaloi Road]. “If you also add in the log trucks and the chip trucks than you would easily have 200 trucks a day on that road.”
[Ed: Two years later, $395,000 from the Australia Government went into widening the Duckmaloi Road. ^Read More]
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Fatal truck head-on near Oberon, NSW (2009)
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2012: Great Western Highway – Wentworth Falls East ‘trucking upgrade’
No 1 Feature: “Widening the highway to four lanes with sealed shoulders“!
No 1 Benefit: “Quicker journeys – in the region and to Sydney“!
‘Delays are expected today on a section of the Hume Highway in NSW after a crash involving two trucks near Marulan. NSW Police says a B-double carrying furniture rolled about 5km south of Marulan at 12.45am, spilling its load and blocking all northbound lanes. A semi-trailer travelling behind crashed into the rear of the truck…’
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Jul 2011: Near the same spot a year before..’Fatal crash near Marulan’
‘A report will be prepared for the coroner following a fatal highway crash near Marulan in the early hours of the morning.
About 12.45am this morning a B-double truck travelling north on the Hume Highway left the road and plunged into a deep roadside gully, rolling on to its side and taking out trees and a 10-meter section of guard rail in the process. The cause of the crash is still unknown and police investigations are continuing. No one else was injured in the crash.
The driver, a 47-year-old man from Glenfield, suffered severe injuries and died at the scene. He was travelling from Albury to Sydney when the accident occurred approximately 15km north of Goulburn.
[Ed: All night 60+ tonne all night bats out of hell and 60+ tonne all night zombies being driven to death by greedy retailers demanding pre-dawn delivery times. Overnight linehaul is al about unnatural sleep depravation. It is death waiting to happen. Driving on Australian highways aafter midnight has become Russian Roulette death wish to all road users. Meanwhile, Australian Truckers Association chairman David Simon says the government should also be encouraging more “AB-triples” — which are 51m long — and “BAB-quads”, which are two connected B-doubles.” [Read More]
Why have railway tracks, when trucking companies keep adding carriages and ring feeders?
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Mar 2012: B-Double truckers tampering with speed governors
[Source: ‘Police blitz on trucks widens’, by AAP, 20120307, ^http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/03/07/453455_machine.html]
“Faster, faster..you’re a good operator!”
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‘New South Wales police have seized two South Australian trucks as part of a crackdown on unsafe practices in the road transport industry. Officers in NSW had intercepted 13 trucks from Scott’s Transport Industries as of today in a nationwide blitz on the Mt Gambier-based firm, which operates a fleet of 322 trucks and is suspected of serious safety breaches.
NSW police launched Operation Overland after one of the company’s B-doubles was detected travelling at 142kph on Monday.
An analysis of the company’s trucks’ movements has shown speeding by 32 of them.
Superintendent Stuart Smith said the two trucks were stopped after being identified as having defects, but it was too early to say if the defects were the result of tampering.
He said more of the company’s vehicles would be targeted for interception and comprehensive mechanical inspections.
“It’s not the 300, but it’s a large number,” Superintendent Smith said. “There’s a large number to go and the operation will continue for a number of days.”
Further actions by NSW Roads and Maritime Services will likely lead to a prosecution and significant fines.
Premier Barry O’Farrell said transport companies had been warned checks would become more regular. “Trucking companies should understand that what was then unprecedented action would become more regular if we had suspicions that there were cowboys driving trucks across the state’s roads, that it was likely to cause safety concerns for motorists,” Mr O’Farrell told reporters in Sydney.
Police have said an investigation of Lennons Transport Services, based in Sydney’s inner west, found eight trucks had been tampered with, including seven that had been modified to exceed the maximum speed of 100km/h. They have also charged a Lennons’ driver with dangerous driving causing the deaths of three members of one family on January 24.
Calvyn Logan, 59, and his elderly parents Donald and Patricia Logan, in their 80s, were killed when a Lennons‘ B-double truck careered onto the wrong side of the Hume Highway, near Menangle in southwest Sydney.
B-double truck driver Vincent Samuel George (33) killed three members of one family with his B-Double.
Court records also revealed that between 1998 and last year, George had his licence suspended five times and he has been convicted of 17 offences, including speeding and drink driving.
[^http://www.truckinlife.com.au/articles/2012/truck-collision-menangle-bridge]
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Police allege the driver’s truck had been tampered with to make it go faster.
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The RMS has also filed a series of summons in the NSW Supreme Court relating to driver fatigue at South Penrith Sand and Soil.
RMS alleges a series of offences relating to drivers’ work hours, rest hours and fatigue management. A cyclist was killed and three were injured after a truck driver working for the company veered into a breakdown lane and hit them on the M4 motorway on April 10, 2010.
The driver pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter.
Sydney’s M4: this is supposedly an RMS cycle lane
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Recall, RMS ‘upgrade features‘ at its Great Western Highway Wentworth Falls East section include:
“Improved cyclist access and safety – access for commuter and long distance cyclists will be provided by a 2.5 metre shoulder between Nelson and Dalrymple avenues.”
Try riding a bicycle through the Leura section, just up the Great Western Highway from Wentworth Falls
Spot the cycle lane…Russian Roulette anyone?
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Great Western Highway – being transformed into a trucking expressway so that bigger and more trucks can travel faster, all night long..Trucking Expressways are the antithesis of road safety
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Mar 2012: ‘Twelve more trucks had speeds tampered’
Another 12 trucks have been discovered with tampered speed limiters during a two-state police probe into dodgy practices (Ed: read ‘criminally culpable‘) in the industry.
Police inspecting Lennons Transport Services B-Double truck
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‘Operation Overland’
Operation Overland was launched into Scott’s Transport Industries on Monday. Ninety-eight of the South Australian transport company’s fleet of 322 heavy vehicles have since been intercepted for mechanical inspection.
On Thursday, police said they had found six trucks with tampered speed limiters. A day later, 12 more had been discovered, taking the total to 18.
Overall, 71 offences have been identified, including two trucks found to be overloaded.
Almost 70 defect notices have been issued. The probe into Scott’s Transport Industries began after one of its drivers was clocked travelling at 142km/h on the Hume Highway at Mittagong about 5.45am (AEDT) on Monday.
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Earlier this year, police swooped on Lennons Transport Services, in Sydney’s inner-west, where they discovered eight tampered trucks, including seven modified to exceed the 100km/h maximum.
Police Blitz at Lennons Transport Services
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It came after a Lennons driver was charged with dangerous driving causing the deaths of Calvyn Logan, 59, and his elderly parents Donald and Patricia Logan, in their 80s.
The truckie’s B-double allegedly careered onto the wrong side of the Hume Highway near Menangle and crashed into the trio’s car.
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Feb 2011: ‘Man dies after trucks collide on Hume Freeway, Baddaginnie’
Six-laned Hume Freeway – the wider and faster the expressway…All night trucking zombies
[Photo: Jon Hargest, Herald Sun]
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‘A man has died following a collision between two trucks on the Hume Freeway in Baddaginnie (Ed: Victoria, just south of the NSW border) just after midnight.
It’s believed one driver lost control of his truck which rolled onto the freeway moments before a second truck collided with it at 12.08am.
The driver of the second truck died and police are investigating the cause of the collision. The identity of the dead man is yet to be established.
The Hume Freeway is closed northbound at Violet Town and diversions are in place.’
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Comments:
Patrick of Rooney (20110215):
“Wake up and sip the coffee Victoria! We need thousands more speed cameras out there!”
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Andrew of Flemington (20110215):
“Worksafe Victoria, where are you?? Another tragic death caused by unsafe work practices. How many more deaths and injuries must occur before you finally step in?
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Feb 2011: ‘Logging truck driver kills car driver stopped at traffic lights outside Bathurst’
[Source: ‘One killed in truck crash‘, by Jo Johnson, Western Advocate, 20110201, ^http://www.westernadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/general/one-killed-in-truck-crash/2062626.aspx]
Media news often doesn’t travel outside one’s local area, so other Australians don’t realise the extent of the trucking carnage being inflicted across the country..Who says truck drivers are ‘professionals’?
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‘A 59-year-old local man is dead and two others seriously injured after a truck ploughed into three cars stopped at roadworks traffic lights on the O’Connell Road yesterday. The tragedy occurred at lunchtime, about 15 kilometres south of Bathurst.
Emergency services rushed to the scene to find people trapped in their cars. The road was immediately closed to traffic in both directions. Initial investigations have revealed that an unladen logging truck struck the vehicles, which were all making their way towards Bathurst at the time.
Police, ambulance and fire and rescue crews were called to the crash site at about 12.30pm. An air ambulance helicopter landed on the road near the accident to provide additional assistance.
Bathurst police Inspector Ross Wilkinson confirmed the driver of a red Toyota Camry died at the scene. He was a 59-year-old male from the O’Connell region.
The logging truck was travelling north when it slammed into the rear of the Toyota Camry, killing the man and seriously injuring a female passenger.
The driver of the next car in line, a silver Mazda Astina, was also in a serious condition yesterday afternoon, while the driver of a bronze Holden Rodeo was taken to Bathurst Base Hospital for observation.
Inspector Wilkinson said Chifley Local Area Command’s crash investigation unit attended the scene and investigations into the fatality would continue. The driver of the logging truck was uninjured and is helping police with their inquiries.
Traffic was diverted via Brewongle and The Lagoon and drivers heading to Oberon from Bathurst late yesterday afternoon were advised to divert at Hartley via Jenolan Caves Road.
The roadworks were being carried out by the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (Ed: recently rebranded ‘RMS’) , between the Wests Lane turn-off to Brewongle and Ridge Road.
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Feb 2010: ‘Speeding B-Double Blayney Cattle Truck Rolls Over – kills/maims 21 cattle’
Injured cattle shot after speeding cattle truck overturned on bend near Blayney (Central NSW)
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Traffic between Blayney and Bathurst was detoured through Millthorpe yesterday after a semi-trailer cattle truck overturned while negotiating a sharp left bend about three kilometres out of Blayney.
Drivers on the Mid Western Highway had to slow to avoid runaway cattle after the accident on the outskirts of Blayney shortly after 11am.
Inspector Ross Wilkinson from Chifley Area Command said that police were continuing their investigations into the cause of the accident that disrupted highway traffic for four hours and killed 21 of the 96 cattle on board the truck.
“Police will issue an infringement notice to the truck driver at a later stage,” he said. “It’s a timely reminder for drivers to take care when driving in the changing weather conditions.” [Ed: Yet another dangerous coyboy truckie gets but a slap on the wrist. The driver deserves a custodial sentence for recklessly causing pain and suffering to the cattle, and barred from cattle truck driving for life].
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The road between Bathurst and Blayney was closed for 30 minutes while cranes were brought in to lift the truck back onto the road. RTA workers, who were among the first at the accident scene, began directing traffic and slowing motorists down to avoid the cattle before police arrived.
“We’ve been trying to keep things flowing,” one RTA worker said. “A couple of steers got away but they’ve pretty well got them under control.”
Blayney Shire Council overseer, Paul Wade, said that Blayney Shire Council staff were working with the RTA to divert Bathurst bound traffic through Millthorpe. Mr Wade said that council staff worked with the emergency services and the truck’s driver to help control the traffic and move the surviving cattle into a nearby paddock. The council’s ranger euthanized a number of cattle at the scene…
Yesterday’s accident is the second time a semi-trailer has overturned on the same winding stretch of road on the outskirts of Blayney in recent months. On January 28 traffic on the highway was disrupted for four hours when a semi-trailer travelling towards Blayney overturned while negotiating a left bend near yesterday’s accident scene.
Play Video (Prime News):
Click image to play video
(when running, double click on video to enlarge)
NB. The Rural Fire Service at Canobolas have since deleted the above video, so here is one from Channel 9:
All night truck driving solo – another dead truck driver
The driver of this B-Double was killed when it hit an embankment on the Pacific Highway near Corindi (Ed: north of Coffs Harbour) on Friday night
[Photo by Frank Reward]
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A man was killed in an horrific crash near Dirty Creek, west of Corindi, on Friday night in what is amounting to a horror weekend on NSW roads.
A B-Double being driven by the 48-year-old man, from Queensland, had been travelling south on the Pacific Highway when it appears to have left the road and crashed into an embankment.
According to a police statement, police and emergency services were called to the crash just after 11pm where the driver, the sole occupant of the truck, had suffered serious injuries and died at the scene. According to the statement, the impact of the crash had detached the two trailers from the prime mover, but no further details were available last night…
This crash adds another death to the mounting NSW road toll with the number rising to eight since the start of the long weekend, five more than for the same long weekend last year.
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Mar 2007: Hume Highway again.. ‘head-on truck crash kills driver’
A fatal truck crash has closed the Hume Highway near Coolac, in southern NSW. Two trucks collided head-on on the highway, sparking fires in both cabs, about 6.15am (AEDT) today, police said. The driver of a semi-trailer, carrying groceries north on the highway, died at the scene after rescue efforts failed to save him. The driver of a southbound truck, carrying metal, escaped with minor injuries…
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Ed: The Truck Menace is blatantly out of control. ‘Industry self-regulation’ never works and is nothing but a costing cutting government cop out. Meanwhile Australian Liberal Labor governments continue to pour billions of taxpayers’s money into building bigger and faster dedicated trucking expressways. And so the trucks get bigger and faster and Australia’s highway carnage of families continues unabated…
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Watch video:
(includes sound)
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Postcript:
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Well we didn’t have to wait bloody long. The day after posting this article there was another B-double multiple fatality…dead driver, dead and maimed cattle under his care…
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Speeding truckie hooning a fully laden B-Double cattle truck, loses it on bend – kills himself and the cattle
‘A salvage operation continued into last night to remove a laden cattle truck that crashed into the Tangaratta Creek Bridge near Tamworth yesterday, claiming the life of the driver.
Oxley Highway was closed for hours as emergency crews worked at the scene, first freeing the driver’s body from the truck’s cabin, which had been crushed against the bridge pylons, and then removing dead cattle and the truck from the scene.
The B-double truck left the road and rolled at the bridge on the Oxley Highway, about 10km west of the city, about 3pm. Police believe the truck was travelling south, bound for Cargill abattoir at Tamworth, when it lost control on a sweeping bend that has been the scene of other serious accidents over the years. [Sky News: Police said the vehicle failed to negotiate a right-hand bend near Tangaratta Bridge, causing it to roll down an embankment.]
An off-duty police officer was first on the scene.
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Police officers euthanased distressed cattle that had been crushed or injured in the trailers, which rested on their sides near the creek.
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Oxley Local Area Command duty officer, Inspector Jeff Budd, said the recovery effort was expected to continue late into last night. He said firefighters had set up booms to contain the diesel spill in the creek.
…Yesterday’s fatal crash happened at the same bridge where a horrific bus accident occurred on January 5, 1992, claiming the lives of five people. A double-decker Pioneer bus en route from Brisbane to Melbourne slammed into the bridge on a Saturday night. The crash claimed the lives of an eight-year-old girl, as well as three women and a man.
Inspector Budd said police were continuing their investigations into the cause of yesterday’s crash and a report would be prepared for the coroner.’
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Meanwhile pig carcasses have been scattered over a motorway in Sydney’s southwest after two trucks collided early today. Police say the heavy vehicles crashed shortly after 2am on the M7 westlink motorway at Prestons, near the Bernera Road off-ramp. The truck carrying the pig carcasses rolled, throwing the meat all over the road.
Pig carcasses picked up off M7
http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=735802&vId=
This article was initially written by this editor and published in the Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper on 20051005 as a letter to the editor, entitled ‘RFS strategy misguided‘.
.19th Century heritage-listed ‘Six Foot Track’
..bulldozed by the Rural Fire Service in July 2005, widened into a convenient Fire Trail for its fire truck crews.
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It has been revealed that the June bulldozing or grading of the Six Foot Track near Megalong Creek (Blue Mountains, New South Wales) was a mere drop in the Rural Fire Service (RFS) Bushfire Mitigation Programme.
Across the Blue Mountains, some twenty natural reserves including the Six Foot Track were targeted under the RFS 2004-05 Fire Trail Strategy:
Edith Falls
McMahons Point
Back Creek
Cripple Creek
Plus some 95 hectares inside the Blue Mountains National Park.
According to the Australian Government’s (then) Department of Transport and Regional Services (DOTARS) website, some $151,195 was granted to the RFS in the Blue Mountains alone, for it to bulldoze and burn 144 hectares of native bushland under the euphemism of “addressing bushfire mitigation risk priorities” (Ed: Read ‘bush arson‘)
‘The Six Foot Track Conservation and Management Plan 1997, Vol II’ lists numerous vulnerable species of fauna recorded near Megalong Creek – the Glossy Black-Cockatoo (Clyptorhynchus lathami), Giant Burrowing Frog (Heleioporus australiacus), Spotted-tailed Quoll (Dasyurus maculatus).
Spotted-tailed Quoll
(Dasyurus maculatus)
Blue Mountains top order predator, competing with the Dingo
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The RFS contractors wouldn’t have had a clue if they were within 100 metres or 1 metre of rare, vulnerable or threatened species.
The RFS is not exempt from destroying important ecological habitat; rather it is required to have regard to the principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD).
The ‘Rationale‘ of this RFS ESD policy states at Clause 1.2:
‘The Bush Fire Coordinating Committee, under the Rural Fires Act 1997 Sec 3 (d), is required to have regard to ESD as outlined in the Protection of the Environment Administration Act 1991, which sets out the following principles:
a) The precautionary principle namely, that if there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation. In the application of the precautionary principle, public and private decisions should be guided by:
i. careful evaluation to avoid, wherever practicable, serious or irreversible damage to the environment, and ii. an assessment of the risk-weighted consequences of various options.
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b) Inter-generational equity namely, that the present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment are maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations
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c) Conservation of biological diversity and ecological integrity should be a fundamental consideration in all decisions.
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d) Recognising the economic values that the natural environment provides. The natural environment has values that are often hard to quantify but provide a benefit to the entire community. By recognising that the natural environment does have significant economic and social values we can improve decision making for the present and future generations.’
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Yet the RFS policy on hazard reduction is woefully loose in the ‘Bushfire Co-ordinating Committee Policy 2 /03 on ESD‘ – which (on paper) advocates protecting environmental values and ensuring that ESD commitments are adopted and adhered to by contractors.
Experience now confirms this policy is nothing more than ‘greenwashing’. The RFS wouldn’t know what environmental values were if they drove their fire truck into a Blkue Mountains upland swamp. There is not one ecologist among them.
While the critical value of dedicated RFS volunteer fire-fighters fighting fires is without question, what deserves questioning is the unsustainable response of the RFS ‘old guard’ to fire trails and hazard reduction with token regard for sensitive habitat. Repeated bushfire research confirms that bushfires are mostly now caused by:
Bush arson (hazard reduction included, escaped or otherwise)
More residential communities encroaching upon bushland.
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Under the ‘Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee Bushfire Risk Management Plan’(Ed: their bureaucratic name), key objectives are patently ignored:
‘Ensure that public and private land owners and occupiers understand their bushfire management responsibilities’
‘Ensure that the community is well informed about bushfire protection measures and prepared for bushfire events through Community Fireguard programs’
‘Manage bushfires for the protection and conservation of the natural, cultural, scenic and recreational features , including tourism values, of the area’.
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Instead, the Rural Fire Service is content to look busy by burning and bulldozing native bushland. The RFS actively demonises native vegetation as a ‘fuel hazard‘, in the much the same way that ignorant colonists of the 18th and 19th centuries demonised Australia’s unique wildlife as ‘vermin‘ and ‘game‘.
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Further Reading:
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[1] Previous article on The Habitat Advocate: ‘RFS Bulldozes Six Foot Track‘ (published 20101220): [>Read Article]
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[2] Tip of the Bush-Arson Iceberg
What these government funded and State-sanctioned bush-arsonists get up to, deliberately setting fire to wildlife habitat, is an ecological disgrace.
The following list is from just 2005 of the vast areas of native vegetation deliberately burnt across New South Wales in just this one year. [Source: DOTARS].
Not surprisingly, this State-sanctioned bush-arson information is no longer published by government each year for obvious clandestine reasons, as the bush-arson continues out of the public eye.
The hazard reduction cult is similarly perpetuated across other Australian states – Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, West Australia as well as Northern Territory and the ACT. No wonder Australia’s record of wildlife extinctions tragically leads the world! There is little precious rich wildlife habitat left.
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National Park and Wildlife Service (NSW) Bush Arson:
(Note: ‘NR’ = Nature Reserve, ‘NP’ = National Park, ‘SCA’ = State Conservation Area… as if these bastards care)
Reserve / Activity Name
Treatment Area (km2)
Baalingen NR
5
Baalingen NR
6
Bald Rock NP
7
Banyabba NR
0.5
BANYABBA NR
3
BANYABBA NR
24
BANYABBA NR
8
Barakee NP
6
Barool NP
20
Barool NP
6
Barool NP
5
Barool NP
4
Barool NP
2
Barool NP
5
Barrington Tops NP
2.5
Barrington Tops NP
2
Barrington Tops NP
6
Barrington Tops NP
18
Barrington Tops NP
6
Barrington Tops NP
16
Barrington Tops NP
11
Barrington Tops NP
1
Barrington Tops NP
4
Barrington Tops NP
2
Barrington Tops NP
1
Barrington Tops NP
3
Basket Swamp NP
1
Basket Swamp NP
12
Basket Swamp NP
2
Basket Swamp NP
4
Bellinger River NP
1
Ben Boyd NP
0.8
Ben Boyd NP
3
Ben Boyd NP
0.9
Ben Boyd NP
0.9
Ben Boyd NP
5
Ben Boyd NP
13
Ben Boyd NP
5
Ben Boyd NP
0.4
Ben Boyd NP
1
Ben Boyd NP
2
Ben Boyd NP
3
Ben Boyd NP
5
Ben Boyd NP
3.6
Ben Boyd NP
1.9
Ben Boyd NP
1.6
Ben Halls Gap NP
3
Bindarri NP
2
Black Bulga SCA
8
Black Bulga SCA
12
Black Bulga SCA
21
Blue Mountains NP
42
Blue Mountains NP
8.3
Blue Mountains NP
23
Blue Mountains NP
10
Blue Mountains NP
12
Bogendyra NR
Bolivia NR
1
BOLLONOLLA NR
2
Bondi Gulf NR
8
Bondi Gulf NR
6
Bondi Gulf NR
10
BONGIL BONGIL NP
0.3
BONGIL BONGIL NP
0.5
Boonoo Boonoo NP
9
Boonoo Boonoo NP
10
Booti Booti NP
0.5
Booti Booti NP
0.3
Booti Booti NP
3
Booti Booti NP
0.3
Booti Booti NP
3
Border Range NP
6
Border Ranges NP
4
Border Ranges NP
3
Border Ranges NP
4
Border Ranges NP
2.8
Bouddi NP
0.5
Bouddi NP
0.3
Bouddi NP
0.9
Bouddi NP
0.9
Bouddi NP
0.5
Bouddi NP
1.1
Bouddi NP
0.5
Bouddi NP
1.9
Bouddi NP
1.1
Bouddi NP
0.6
Bouddi NP
2.3
Bournda NR
10
Bournda NR
5
Bournda NR
0.5
Bournda NR
0.5
Bournda NR
0.5
Brindabella NP
20
Brisbane Water NP
4.4
Brisbane Water NP
2.4
Brisbane Water NP
3.7
Brisbane Water NP
3.6
Brisbane Water NP
0.3
Brisbane Water NP
3.1
Brisbane Water NP
0.6
Budawang NP
4.8
Budderoo NP
10
Bugong NP
3.1
Bundgalung NP
2
BUNDJALUNG NP
7
BUNDJALUNG NP
4.5
BUNDJALUNG NP
8
BUNDJALUNG NP
1.5
BUNDJALUNG NP
0.5
BUNDJALUNG NP
6
BUNDJALUNG NP
3
BUNDJALUNG NP
3
BUNDJALUNG NP
4
BUNDJALUNG NP
2
BUNDJALUNG NP
1
Bundundah Reserve
1.94
Bundundah Reserve/Morton NP
4.7
Bungawalbyn NP
2
Bungawalbyn NP
2.25
Bungawalbyn NP
4
Bungawalbyn NP
5
Bungawalbyn NP
3
Bungawalbyn NP
4.5
Bungawalbyn NP
6.5
Bungawalbyn NP
5
Bungawalbyn NP
1.65
Bungawalbyn NP
1.5
Burnt Down Scrub NR
2
Burnt School NR
2
Burrinjuck NR
8
Burrinjuck NR
15
Burrinjuck NR
3
Butterleaf NP
Butterleaf NP
3
Butterleaf NP
3.2
Butterleaf NP
1.2
Butterleaf NP
1.6
Butterleaf NP
1.2
Butterleaf NP
2
Butterleaf NP
1.8
Butterleaf NP
1.4
Butterleaf NP
0.5
Butterleaf NP
2.3
Butterleaf NP
3.3
Butterleaf NP
3.9
Butterleaf NP
5.3
Butterleaf NP
0.4
Butterleaf NP
0.5
Butterleaf NP
1.5
Butterleaf NP
2.9
Butterleaf NP
5.3
Butterleaf NP
4
Butterleaf NP
3.3
Butterleaf NP
3.6
Butterleaf NP
1.5
Butterleaf NP
8.8
Butterleaf NP
0.5
Capoompeta NP
10
Cataract NP
Cataract NP
1.5
Cataract NP
2
Cataract NP
2
Cataract NP
1.5
Cataract NP
2
Cataract NP
1
Clayton Chase
5
Clayton Chase
10
Clayton Chase
3.5
Clayton Chase
4
Clayton Chase
3
Clayton Chase
3
Clayton Chase
4
Conjola NP
5.7
Conjola NP
1.8
Conjola NP
8.3
Conjola NP
4.8
Conjola NP
2.9
Conjola NP
4.5
Conjola NP
6.5
Coolah Tops NR
28
Coolah Tops NR
1
Coolah Tops NR
6
Copeland Tops SCA
3
Copeland Tops SCA
3.5
Corramy SCA
0.7
Cottan-bimbang NP
6
Cottan-bimbang NP
16
Cottan-bimbang NP
15
Culgoa NP
30
Curramore NP
Curramore NP
8
Curramore NP
8.9
Curramore NP
11
Curramore NP
5.5
Dapper NR
10
Deua NP
15.2
Deua NP
1.4
Deua NP
1
Deua NP
4
Deua NP
21.5
Deua NP
2.1
Deua NP
1.4
Deua NP
3.3
Deua NP
8.5
Deua NP
20.8
Deua NP
5.3
Deua NP
6.6
Deua NP
28.2
Deua NP
5.65
DUNGGIR NP
4
Eurobodalla NP
0.8
Eurobodalla NP
2.5
Eurobodalla NP
0.8
Eurobodalla NP
2.4
Eurobodalla NP
2
Flaggy creekNR
3
Flaggy creekNR
1.8
GANAY NR
2
GANAY NR
2
Garawarra SCA
Garby NR
2
Gardens of Stone NP
18
Gibraltar NP
14
Goobang NP
5
Goobang NP
25
GUMBAYNGIR SCA
12
GUMBAYNGIR SCA
7
GUMBAYNGIR SCA
6
Ironbark NR
13.5
Jerrawangala NP
6.83
Jervis Bay NP
2.37
Jervis Bay NP
5.42
Jervis Bay NP
0.56
Jervis Bay NP
0.82
Jervis Bay NP
1.45
Jervis Bay NP
1.72
Jervis Bay NP
0.21
Jervis Bay NP
0.32
Jervis Bay NP
0.7
Jervis Bay NP
0.4
Jervis Bay NP
0.35
Jervis Bay NP
0.35
Jervis Bay NP
0.48
Jervis Bay NP
1.03
Jervis Bay NP
0.65
Jervis Bay NP
1.91
Jervis Bay NP
0.34
Jervis Bay NP
0.95
Jervis Bay NP
1.46
Jervis Bay NP
0.71
Jervis Bay NP
1.07
Jingellic NR
20
Karuah NR
10
Karuah NR
28
Karuah NR
10
Karuah NR
12
Karuah NR
1
Kings Plains NP
7
Kings Plains NP
0
Kings Plains NP
4
Koreelah NP
6
Kosciuszko NP
30
Kosciuszko NP
9.5
Kosciuszko NP
22
Kosciuszko NP
22
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
12
Kosciuszko NP
12
Kosciuszko NP
17
Kosciuszko NP
5
Kosciuszko NP
28
Kosciuszko NP
9
Kosciuszko NP
6
Kosciuszko NP
6
Kosciuszko NP
26
Kosciuszko NP
8.9
Kosciuszko NP
15
Kosciuszko NP
15
Kosciuszko NP
2.5
Kosciuszko NP
8.9
Kosciuszko NP
10
Kosciuszko NP
11
Kosciuszko NP
4.8
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
19
Kosciuszko NP
7.2
Kosciuszko NP
7.2
Kosciuszko NP
13
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
15
Kosciuszko NP
12
Kwiambal NP
7
Kwiambal NP
3
Kwiambal NP
2
Kwiambal NP
2.25
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.3
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.4
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.4
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.4
Ledknapper NR
15
Linton NR
12.5
Meroo NP
2.4
Meroo NP
0.9
Meroo NP
0.6
Meroo NP
3.3
Meroo NP
3.9
Meroo NP
3.5
Meroo NP
0.5
Morton NP
5.9
Morton NP
8.3
Morton NP
3.8
Morton NP
6
Morton NP
13
Morton NP
0.4
Morton NP
4.5
Morton NP
5
Morton NP
2.7
Morton NP
0.7
Morton NP
2.1
Morton NP
1
Morton NP
6
Mt Canobolas SCA
1
Mt Clunnie NP
6.5
Mt Dowling NR
2
MT NEVILLE NR
11
MT NEVILLE NR
1
MT NEVILLE NR
1.5
MT NEVILLE NR
11
MT NEVILLE NR
1.5
MT NEVILLE NR
3.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
4
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
1.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
1.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
4
MT PIKAPENE NP
7
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
6
MT PIKAPENE NP
3
MT PIKAPENE NP
0.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
0.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
1
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
6
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
1
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
1.5
Mummell Gulf NP
3
Mummell Gulf NP
7
Mummell Gulf NP
5
Munmorah SRA
0.7
Munmorah SRA
0.8
Munmorah SRA
0.45
Munmorah SRA
1
Munmorah SRA
2
Munmorah SRA
0.9
Munmorah SRA
1.6
Muogamarra NR
1
Murramarang NP
0.9
Murramarang NP
8
Murramarang NP
1
Murramarang NP
5.1
Murramarang NP
8.2
Murramarang NP
3.1
Murramarang NP
6.8
Murramarang NP
16
Murramarang NP
4.3
Murramarang NP
4
Myall Lakes NP
5
Myall Lakes NP
5
Myall Lakes NP
1.5
Myall Lakes NP
2
Myall Lakes NP
1
Myall Lakes NP
5
NGAMBAA NR
2
NGAMBAA NR
5
Nombinnie NR
10
Nymboida NP
6
Nymboida NP
12
Nymboida NP
3
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
1
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
3.2
Nymboida NP
4.5
Nymboida NP
2
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
2.8
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
7
Nymboida NP
6
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
10.7
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
19.1
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
13.4
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
18
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
18
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
15
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
33
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
33
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
5
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
5
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
4
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
3
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
7
Parma Creek NR
0.21
Parma Creek NR
0.07
Parma Creek NR
0.3
Parma Creek NR
0.01
Parma Creek NR
0.29
Parma Creek NR
5
Paroo Darling NP
60
Policemans Cap
10
Razorback NR
17
Richmond Range NP
3.9
Richmond Range NP
6.5
Richmond Range NP
3.8
Richmond Range NP
4.5
Richmond Range NP
5.5
Richmond Range NP
9
Royal NP
1
Seven Mile Beach NP
1.09
Seven Mile Beach NP
1.79
Seven Mile Beach NP
2.24
Seven Mile Beach NP
0.74
Seven Mile Beach NP
2.03
Severn River NR
6
Single NP
21
South East Forest NP
5
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
2.6
South East Forest NP
3
South East Forest NP
10.9
South East Forest NP
1.3
South East Forest NP
1
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
2.8
South East Forest NP
2
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
2
South East Forest NP
5.1
South East Forest NP
3.5
South East Forest NP
0.5
South East Forest NP
6
South East Forest NP
3
South East Forest NP
1
South East Forest NP
5.5
South East Forest NP
0.8
Stoney Batter NR
6
Tapitallee NR
0.52
Tapitallee NR
0.33
Tapitallee NR
0.36
Tapitallee NR
0.32
Tarlo River NP
3.8
Tarlo River NP
2.1
Tarlo River NP
2.9
Tarlo River NP
5.9
Tarlo River NP
6.5
Tarlo River NP
2.7
Tarlo River NP
2.1
Tarlo River NP
6
Tollingo NR
150
Tomaree NP
1.8
Tooloom NP
3
Toonumbar NP
31.9
Toonumbar NP
8.5
Toonumbar NP
17
Toonumbar NP
21.5
Triplarina NR
0.71
Triplarina NR
0.32
Triplarina NR
0.66
Triplarina NR
0.75
Triplarina NR
1.34
Triplarina NR
0.31
Triplarina NR
1.24
Triplarina NR
1.35
Ungazetted (Kalyarr NP)
48
Ungazetted (Kalyarr NP)
26
Unknown
7
Wa Hou NR
10
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
7
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
11
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
7
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
1
Wallaroo NR
3
Wallaroo NR
1.5
Wallaroo NR
8
Wallaroo NR
5
Wallaroo NR
11
Wallaroo NR
7
Wallaroo NR
7
Wallaroo NR
16
Wallaroo NR
6
Wallingat NP
2
Wallingat NP
1.3
Wallingat NP
3.6
Wallingat NP
3.3
Washpool Np
18
Washpool NP
5.3
Washpool NP
5.6
Washpool NP
7.1
Washpool NP
6.4
Washpool NP
1.6
Washpool NP
7
Washpool NP
2.8
Watson’s Creek NR
5
Wereboldera SCA
9
Woggoon NR
144
Wollemi NP
21
Wollemi NP
12
Wollemi NP
10
Wollemi NP
30
Wollemi NP
7
Wollemi NP
11
Wollemi NP
7
Wollemi NP
16
Wollemi NP
2
Wollemi NP
8
Wollemi NP
5
Woodford Island NR
1.5
Woodford Island NR
2
Woodford Island NR
3
Woodford Island NR
3
Woollamia NR
1.51
Woollamia NR
0.77
Woollamia NR
1.95
Woollamia NR
1.88
Woollamia NR
0.74
Woomargama NP
15
Yabbra NP
8
Yabbra NP
45
Yango NP
0.45
Yanununbeyan NP
11
YARRIABINNI NP
2
YARRIABINNI NP
3
YARRIABINNI NP
5
YARRIABINNI NP
6
YARRIABINNI NP
4
Yuraygir NP
4
Yuraygir NP
3.5
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
1
YURAYGIR NP
0.03
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
3.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
28
Yuraygir NP
10
Yuraygir NP
12
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
4
Yuraygir NP
3.5
3,785.10 Ha
i.e. An area 6km x 6km
.
NSW Local Government Areas (LGAs)
Bush Fire Management Committee / LGA
Reserve / Activity Name
Treatment Area (km2)
Blue Mountains
Northern Strategic Line -Primary
8
Blue Mountains
De Faurs Trail – Mt Wilson -Primary
2.8
Blue Mountains
Mitchell’s Creek Fire Trail – Primary
3.5
Blue Mountains
Nellies Glen Fire Trail
2.8
Blue Mountains
Back Creek Fire Trail – Primary
3.2
Blue Mountains
Mt Piddington Trail – Hornes Point
N/A
Bombala
Gibraltar Ridge Fire Trail (2) (PT)
20
Bombala
Mt Rixs Fire Trail (PT)
6
Bombala
Roaring Camp Fire Trail (PT)
12
Cooma-Monaro
Brest Fire Trail (2) (PT)
15
Cooma-Monaro
Calabash Fire Trail (2) (PT)
22
Cooma-Monaro
Murrumbucca Fire Trail (2) (ST)
15
Cooma-Monaro
Bridge Fire Trail (2) (PT)
6
Cooma-Monaro
Log In Hole Fire Trail (2) (PT)
5
Gloucester
Upper Avon Fire Trail
11
Greater Argyle
Mountain Ash Fire Trail
10
Greater Argyle
Mootwingee Fire Trail
6
Greater Hume
Murphy’s Fire Trail
0.2
Greater Hume
Mandaring Fire Trail
1
Greater Queanbeyan City
Queanbeyan River Fire Trail
5.5
Greater Queanbeyan City
Gourock Fire Trail
5.8
Hawkesbury District
Jacks Trail
1.6
Hawkesbury District
Duffys Trail (2) ?tenure
3
Mallee
Various Fire Trails
N/A
Mallee
No 21 Fire Trail
20
Namoi/Gwydir
Warialda State Forest
6.5
Namoi/Gwydir
Zaba-Kaiwarra-Kiora Fire Trail (check)
10
Namoi/Gwydr
Blue Nobby Fire Trail (check)
8
Namoi/Gwydr
Araluen Fire Trail (check)
6
Snowy River
Snowy Plain Fire Trail (2) (PT)
18
Snowy River
Crackenback Fire Trail (PT)
10
Snowy River
Devils Hole Fire Trail (PT)
18
Snowy River
Golden Age Fire Trail (2) (PT)
8
Sutherland
Sabugal Pass Fire Trail
N/A
SW Mallee
Various Fire Trails
N/A
SW Mallee
Oberwells Fire Trail
28
SW Mallee
Mandleman Fire Trail
40
Upper Lachlan
Johnsons Creek Fire Trail
15
Warringah/Pittwater
Lovett Bay Trail (2)
2.5
Warringah/Pittwater
Elvina Bay Trail (2)
1.5
Yass Valley
Nelanglo Fire Trail
21
Yass Valley
Hayshed Fire Trail 1
7
Yass Valley
Hayshed Fire Trail 2
7
391.90 km2
i.e. An area 20km x 20km
.
Forests NSW (government’s industrial logger of NSW remnant forests).
(Forests NSW did not publish the area burnt, only the cost. As a rule of thumb use $3000/square km)
Bush Fire Management Committee
Reserve / Activity Name
NSW Allocation
Clarence Zone
Dalmorton SF
$30,000
Future Forests
Swan
$20,050
Future Forests
Tindall
$10,680
Future Forests
Tooloom
$10,425
Future Forests
Mazzer
$7,341
Future Forests
Kungurrabah
$4,435
Future Forests
Morpeth Park
$3,773
Future Forests
Loughnan
$3,155
Future Forests
Inglebar
$3,000
Future Forests
Lattimore
$2,604
Future Forests
Byrne
$1,755
Future Forests
Ziull 4
$1,677
Future Forests
Lejag
$1,670
Future Forests
Ziull 2
$1,600
Future Forests
Bates
$1,563
Future Forests
Ziull 3
$1,454
Future Forests
Envirocom
$1,410
Future Forests
Morgan
$1,361
Future Forests
McNamara
$1,279
Future Forests
Neaves
$967
Future Forests
Zuill
$872
Future Forests
Boyle
$807
Future Forests
Fitzpatrick
$791
Future Forests
Morrow
$785
Future Forests
Morrow
$785
Future Forests
Morrow
$785
Future Forests
Wallwork
$665
Future Forests
Smith
$665
Future Forests
Wilson
$622
Future Forests
Jarramarumba
$600
Future Forests
Hession
$597
Future Forests
Edwards
$563
Future Forests
Maunder
$558
Future Forests
Kuantan
$515
Future Forests
Billins
$484
Future Forests
Cox
$475
Future Forests
Paterson
$461
Future Forests
Gladys
$415
Future Forests
O’Keefe
$371
Future Forests
Woodcock
$369
Future Forests
Pratten
$346
Future Forests
Truswell
$323
Future Forests
Divine
$323
Future Forests
Hastings
$323
Future Forests
White
$300
Future Forests
Miller
$300
Future Forests
Koop
$300
Future Forests
Lacy
$277
Future Forests
Nosrac
$277
Future Forests
Tully
$277
Future Forests
Baker
$277
Future Forests
Yaganegi
$277
Future Forests
Siezowski
$254
Future Forests
Zuill
$254
Future Forests
Atcheson
$254
Future Forests
Dissevelt
$254
Future Forests
Hoy
$254
Future Forests
Woods
$254
Future Forests
Dawson
$254
Future Forests
Hagan
$254
Future Forests
Skelly
$231
Future Forests
Robards
$231
Future Forests
Maunder
$231
Future Forests
Day
$231
Future Forests
O’Connell
$231
Future Forests
Kompara
$231
Future Forests
Carmen
$231
Future Forests
Maurer
$231
Future Forests
Cunin
$208
Future Forests
GCC
$208
Future Forests
White
$208
Future Forests
Hayer
$208
Future Forests
Southgate
$208
Future Forests
Peck
$208
Greater Taree
Kiwarrak SF
$40,000
Hastings
Cowarra SF
$30,000
Hastings
Caincross SF
$4,000
Hume
Clearing fire trails
$100,000
Hume
New FT
$6,000
Hunter
Pokolbin SF
$13,600
Hunter
Myall River SF
$12,800
Hunter
Myall River SF
$12,800
Hunter
Heaton SF
$12,400
Hunter
Bulahdelah SF
$6,100
Hunter
Watagan SF
$3,200
Hunter
Awaba SF
$3,200
Hunter
Myall River SF
$3,100
Macquarie
Warrengong
$16,250
Macquarie
Vulcan & Gurnang
$11,519
Macquarie
Kinross SF
$8,800
Macquarie
Mount David
$6,101
Macquarie
Newnes SF
$5,199
Macquarie
Printing 25 fire atlas’
$2,048
Macquarie
Black Rock Ridge
$447
Mid-Nth Coast – Taree
Knorrit SF
$36,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Taree
Yarratt SF
$16,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Boonanghi SF
$37,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Northern Break
$9,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Caincross SF
$3,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Western Break
$2,000
Monaro
Clearing fire trails
$114,685
North East
Thumb Creek SF
$46,000
North East
Candole SF
$29,535
North East
Various State Forests
$20,000
North East
Mt Belmore SF
$12,115
North East
Candole SF
$8,900
North East
Lower Bucca SF
$5,500
North East
All North Region
$3,300
North East
Wild Cattle SF
$3,000
North East
Orara East SF
$1,900
Northern -Casino
Barragunda
$11,522
Northern -Casino
Yaraldi 2003
$8,847
Northern -Casino
Yaraldi 2004
$3,207
Richmond Valley
Bates
$20,000
Richmond Valley
Whiporie SF
$13,154
Richmond Valley
Swanson
$12,000
Richmond Valley
McNamara
$10,180
Richmond Valley
Whiporie SF
$9,582
Southern
Pollwombra FT
$6,360
Southern-Eden
Various – whole district
$112,019
Tamworth
Nundle SF
$40,000
Walcha
Nowendoc SF
$30,000
Walcha
Styx River SF
$20,000
$1,073,482
i.e. Approximately an area 20km x 20km
.
NSW Department of Lands (what native vegetation’s left).
Bush Fire Management Committee
Reserve / Activity Name
Treatment Area Ha / Other
Treatment Area (km2)
Baulkham Hills
Porters Rd / Cranstons Rd
5
Baulkham Hills
Porters Rd / Cranstons Rd (2)
4
Baulkham Hills
Pauls Road Trail
5
Baulkham Hills
Mount View Trail
1
Baulkham Hills
Idlewild
2
Baulkham Hills
Maroota Tracks Trail
7
Baulkham Hills
Yoothamurra Trail
1
Baulkham Hills
Kellys Arm Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Dargle Ridge Trail
5
Baulkham Hills
Dargle Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Days Road Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Dickinsons Trail
6
Baulkham Hills
Fingerboard Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Floyds Road Trail
8
Baulkham Hills
Neichs Road Trail
4
Bega
Eden Strategic Fire Trail
3
Bega
Illawambera Fire Trail
1
Bega
Merimbula/Turu Beach Strategic Protection
2
Bega
Yankees Gap
2
Bega
Millingandi Special Protection (Trail)
1
Bega
Wallagoot Strategic Protection (Trail)
1.2
Bega
South Eden Strategic Protection (Trail)
1
Bega
Merimbula/Pambula Strategic Protection (APZ)
1
Bega
Pacific St Tathra
0.5
Bland
Bland Villages (FTM)
2
Bland
Water Tower Reserve FTM
3
Blue Mountains
Cripple Creek Fire Trail Stage 2
5
Blue Mountains
Cripple Creek Fire Trail Complex
5
Blue Mountains
Caves Creek Trail
0.4
Blue Mountains
Edith Falls Trail
2
Blue Mountains
Boronia Rd – Albert Rd Trails
1
Blue Mountains
Perimeter Trail – North Hazelbrook
1.5
Blue Mountains
McMahons Point Trail – Kings Tableland
7
Blue Mountains
Back Creek Fire Trail
3.2
Blue Mountains
Mitchell’s Creek Fire Trail
3.5
Bombala
Gibraltar Ridge Fire Trail
11
Bombala
Burnt Hut Fire Trail
5
Bombala
Merriangah East Fire Trail
12
Bombala
Bombala Towns & Villages (Trails)
10
Campbelltown
St Helens Park – Wedderburn Rd (Barriers)
0.3
Campbelltown
Barrier / Gate
Campbelltown
Riverview Rd Fire Trail
0.65
Canobolas
Calula Range FTM
Canobolas
Spring Glen Estate FTM
Cessnock
Neath South West Fire Trail
2
Cessnock
Neath South East Fire Trail
1.5
Cessnock
Neath North Fire Trail (2)
1
Cessnock
Gates – Asset Protection Zones
Cessnock
Signs – Asset Protection Zones
Cessnock
Signs – Fire Trails
Cessnock
Kearsley Fire Trail
0.5
Cessnock
Neath – South (Trail)
4
Cessnock
Neath – North (Trail)
2
Clarence Valley
Bowling Club Fire Trail
1
Clarence Valley
Brooms Head Fire Trail
0.2
Clarence Valley
Ilarwill Village
0.3
Cooma-Monaro
Chakola Fire Trail
21
Cooma-Monaro
Good Good Fire Trail
12
Cooma-Monaro
Inaloy Fire Trail
19
Cooma-Monaro
Cowra Creek Fire Trail
4
Cooma-Monaro
David’s Fire Trail
2.1
Cooma-Monaro
Clear Hills Fire Trail
5
Cooma-Monaro
Mt Dowling Fire Trail
16
Cooma-Monaro
Towneys Ridge Fire Trail
6
Cunningham
Warialda Periphery 2
20
Cunningham
Upper Bingara Fire Trail
Dungog
Dungog Fire Trail Signs
Far North Coast
Byrangary Fire Trail
1
Far North Coast
Main Arm Fire Trail (NC67)
2
Far North Coast
Burringbar Fire Trail (NC69)
1
Far North Coast
Mill Rd Fire Trail (NC95)
1
Far North Coast
Broken Head Fire Trail (NC68)
0.5
Far North Coast
New Brighton Fire Trail (NC44)
0.5
Far North Coast
Mooball Spur Fire Trail
1
Far North Coast
Palmwoods Fire Trail (NC06)
0.5
Gloucester
Coneac Trail
6
Gloucester
Moores Trail
6
Gloucester
Mt Mooney Fire Trail
6
Gosford District
Signs – Fire Trails
Great Lakes
Ebsworth Fire Trail
1
Great Lakes
Tuncurry High Fire Trail
0.6
Great Lakes
Monterra Ave Trail – Hawks Nest
0.7
Greater Argyle
Browns Rd Komungla
12
Greater Argyle
Greater Argyle Fire Trail Maintenance
Greater Argyle
Cookbundoon Fire Trail
2
Greater Taree District
Tinonee St Road Reserve
0.25
Greater Taree District
Beach St SFAZ – Wallabi Point
0.35
Greater Taree District
Sth Woodlands Dr – SFAZ
1.3
Greater Taree District
Cedar Party Rd – Taree
2
Hawkesbury District
Sargents Road (2)?tenure
0.75
Hawkesbury District
Parallel Trail (2)
2.5
Hawkesbury District
Parallel Trail (1)
1.1
Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai
Tunks Ridge, Dural
1
Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai
Radnor & Cairnes Fire Trail
0.5
Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai
Binya Cl, Hornsby Heights
1.5
Shellharbour District
Saddleback – Hoddles Trail
3
Shellharbour District
Rough Range Trail
1
Lake Macquarie District
Kilaben Bay Fire Trail
1.5
Lake Macquarie District
Gates – Access Management
Lake Macquarie District
Signs – APZ
Lake Macquarie District
Signs – Fire Trails
Lithgow
Wilsons Glen Trail
6.1
Lithgow
Kanimbla Fire Trail No 314
7.8
Lithgow
Camels Back Trail No 312
4.5
Lithgow
Crown Creek Trail No 206
7
Lithgow
Capertee Common Trail No 203
3
Lower Hunter Zone
Access Infrastructure – All Districts
Lower North Coast
Cabbage Tree Lane Fire Trail, Kempsey
1.5
Lower North Coast
Bullocks Quarry Fire Trail
0.66
Lower North Coast
Perimeter Protection, Main St, Eungai Creek, Nambucca
To many ancestral Australians, particularly Eastern Victorians, ‘The Snowy’ is a legendary, wild river.
To the traditional Ngarigo, Walgalu and Southern Ngunnawal people – who asked their opinion, requested their approval?
Would traditional owner’s approval been given? Likely, if open and honest, no bloody way!
The Snowy represents the untamed heart and soul of Australia’s cold frontier High Country
It is a mighty, wild river demanding respect.
But in 1950s Australia, when the colonist Government built its Hydro Scheme, it set out with disrespect to castrate this thundering stallion of a river down to a humiliating prostate trickle.’
~ Ed.
.
Our (stolen) Snowy River, reduced to a trickle
.
.
“Gone are the days When the Snowy was a river not just a creek. When the snow water flushed out the entire river. When the river was deep enough to take large sized boats and ships. When as a youngster I had picnics on the Curlip paddle-steamer up and down the Snowy River. When the river bank had several landings to load and unload goods and produce. When the entrance was deep enough to be safe for all who wished to use it. The Snowy is just like a ship that has run aground. Both are no longer able to do what was required of them. Having lived in Orbost – Marlo all my life It’s a sad sight to see our Snowy water vanish over the hills to the other side.”
~ bush poem by W. B. Dreverman, born Orbost 12-1-1910.
.PS. I have worked in Orbost all my life; moved from Orbost to Marlo during 1965; now retired; my wife and I enjoy looking at the ocean and the Snowy when the tide comes in. During our lives we have seen the Snowy change from a beautiful river to a sandy bottom creek.
Account by Charlie Robertson, born in 1919 at Dalgety:
.
“I lived one kilometre from the Snowy River for most of my life.
We could always hear the Snowy singing from home. That is how I used to describe the sound of the river. It used to be quieter in the summer. Now we don’t hear it at all. You wouldn’t know there was a river there now. It was a clear river most of the time, 99 per cent pure. It’s hard water now. Before it was soft.
The river had a gravelly sandy bed with rocks and boulders but they’re overgrown now and you can’t see them. During the spring thaw it used to flow for three months at least in a good strong flow, bank to bank. The level used to be up into the first ring on the pylon for that period.”
…It was a very popular river for fishing. You could see the fish from the bridge. You could just about get to the river anywhere you wanted with some exceptions. Now you can hardly get to it for the weeds, willows and blackberries.
When the river was dammed there was nothing to fish. There was no fish in the dams just after they were built. I have been up there and it doesn’t interest me at all, especially when you’ve spent much of your life fishing the river. It’s a different kind of fishing all together. I used to fish at night for native fish.
They are all gone now. I gave up fishing when they dammed the river. “
The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme is the most complex, multi-purpose, multi-reservoir hydro scheme in the world with 80 kilometres of aqueducts, 140 kilometres of tunnels, 16 large dams and seven power stations, two of which are underground. The project was drievn by then Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley. It commenced under an Act of Federal Parliament in October 1949 with the goal of diverting the Murrumbidgee, Snowy and Tumut Rivers in south western NSW essentially to provide irrigation water for the western side of the Great Dividing Range, and in the process generate hydro-electric power. This irrigation facilitated settlement of mass immigration.
.
Account by Pip Cogan, born in 1913 at Dalgety and resident 85 years, a grazier:
.
“The Snowy River was part of my life until it was dammed.
I had fished the river since I was a young fellow action against the NSW Government for failing to honour a five-year review of the Snowy Hydro Corporation’s water licence. The Alliance is arguing the legal provisions allowing the Mowamba water flow to be increased without compensationary payments.
It is clear from reading the Snowy Scientific Committee’s three reports so far that the Snowy upper reaches are sick, despite the $425 million agreement in 2002 by three governments to restore it. Sacrificed long ago to humanity’s needs for hydroelectricity and irrigation water for the Murray Darling food bowl, in drought the river has become so deprived of lusty water flow that its cobbles do not turn over. Its deep pools alienate life forms, forbiddingly hot on top and cold on the bottom.
Last month the scientific committee warned the NSW Government that the limited environmental flows allowed from Snowy Hydro dams provide mere ”life support” for plants and animals in the river.”
The continued demise of the magnificent Snowy River is attributed to the political influence of the long downstream self-interested rice growers, cotton growers and citrus and grape growers, all wholly artifically dependent on irrigation from the Murray River, fed by the Snowy River upstream.
But such exploitive irrigation-dependent industries have powerful political friends like the Australian Government Rural Industries Research and Dever the way that it was and it to look at it today is simply heartbreaking.”
The Snowy River was dry as a bone at Island Bend Dam in February 2010.
(Snowy River Alliance: Louise Crisp)
.
Account by Kevin Schaefer, born 1925 at Dalgety, resident for 73 years:
.
“The Snowy River was a real river.
In the spring the river flowed very strong after the snow melt. This strong flow existed for many months, usually from August to November. Whilst the spring was characterised by strong flows, the Snowy River could have heavy flows or flooding any time of the year.For example the biggest flood in my lifetime occurred in the summer of 1934.
All the mountain water came down here. The Snowy River’s water was clean and pure.
In fact when you drank it, you couldn’t get enough of it. I can remember the years between 1949 and 1956 as being particularly wet, with a peak in river flow in March 1950 when it flooded. The river could rise and fall all year round depending on the rainfall.
In my lifetime I never saw the river any where near as low as it has been since the damming. …I haven’t seen the platypus like I used to. You could see colonies of platypus along the river before.
Now you’re lucky to see one.”
.
Talbingo Dam artificially flooded the Snowy River
(‘Tumut 3’ Power Station below)
.
The Snowy River Alliance down here in Victoria is right. Australia’s most famous wild river, the Snowy River, deserves to have its natural flows restored.
The Alliance argues that if the Hydro schemers release just a third of the Snowy’s original flows, its ecology could be restored. But the current life sucking 5% dished out by the Snowy Hydro Ltd corporation is exploitative, selfish and wrong.
The Snowy River Alliance, according to Glenice White of Orbost, deep in Victoria’s East Gippsland, started off back in 1971 as a reaction to the Snowy’s “pronounced signs of degradation“. This local community reaction culminated in the Snowy River Interstate Catchment Co-ordinating Committee Report, which outlined the problems of the river and its catchment and made a number of recommendations including that more water was required to improve the river’s ecology.
It soon became apparent to the Snowy River community that the Snowy Hydro was steering the river’s water to the irrigation agriculturalists down the Murray River, trying to artificially grow rice, citrus and grapes in an otherwise parched hot semi-arid climate.
.
Whereas the much hyped electricity generation in reality became a small part of the operation.
Instead of supplying 17% of the South Eastern Grid as the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority would want the public to believe,
it supplies only 4-5%.
.
The propaganda from the Authority is not only misleading but downright wrong.
Since the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme of the 1950s, the choice of water allocation has always been political. The construction of the Jindabyne Dam in 1967 destroyed the 150 year old local community of Dalgety, which had the Snowy running wild through the town.
.
Dalgety’s fresh water supply was reduced to a token 1% flow!
The township of Dalgety has not recovered to this day.
The original townships of Adaminaby, Jindabyne and Talbingo were inundated by the Hydro Scheme.
These communities deserve not to be forgotten
Nor the millions of hectares of dismissed wildlife habitat, flooded for irrigation of exotic crops.
.
In 1996 a report commissioned and prepared by the NSW Department of Land and Water Conservation, Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment (now the Department of Sustainability and Environment) and the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority recommended that a minimum of 28% of the original flow that passed Jindabyne before the dams were built, be reinstated to the river.
A key perception problem is that Hydro industrialists argue that any water not piped to hydro-electricity or to fill dams is wasted water flow that just runs into the sea. These water industrialists reject the concept of ecological river flows as barbarian. Then recently, the Snowy River Alliance has flagged the opening of the Mowamba River which is a headwater tributary to the Snowy. Currently, it is captured by a weir where it is whipped away via an aqueduct to Lake Jindabyne.
Lake Jindbyne is a flooded Snowy River
.
An article, ‘Standoff over the Snowy’ by Debra Jopson, 30-Jan-10, (Fairfax media) has highlighted that the Snowy River Alliance plans legal action against the NSW Government for failing to honour a five-year review of the Snowy Hydro Corporation‘s water licence. The Alliance is arguing the legal provisions allowing the Mowamba water flow to be increased without compensationary payments.
It is clear from reading the Snowy Scientific Committee’s three reports so far that the Snowy upper reaches are sick, despite the $425 million agreement in 2002 by three governments to restore it.
Sacrificed long ago to humanity’s needs for hydroelectricity and irrigation water for the Murray Darling food bowl, in drought the river has become so deprived of lusty water flow that its cobbles do not turn over. Its deep pools alienate life forms, forbiddingly hot on top and cold on the bottom. Last month the scientific committee warned the NSW Government that the limited environmental flows allowed from Snowy Hydro dams provide mere ‘‘life support” for plants and animals in the river.
The continued demise of the magnificent Snowy River is attributed to the political influence of the long downstream self-interested rice growers, cotton growers and citrus and grape growers, all wholly artifically dependent on irrigation from the Murray River, fed by the Snowy River upstream.
A diverted river
.
But such exploitive irrigation-dependent industries have powerful political friends like:
The Australian Government Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation
The Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (whatever its latest political reincarnation)
Ricegrowers Association of Australia
SunRice
Rabobank
Wesfarmers Federation Insurance
CopRice
Rice Marketing Board of NSW
Go Grains Health & Nutrition Ltd
Coleambally Irrigation
Goulburn-Murray Water
Murray Irrigation Limited
Snowy Hydro
NSW Irrigators’ Council
Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation
The Kondinin (agricultural) Group
Cotton Australia
NSW Farmers’ Association
National Farmers’ Federation
The Australian Rural Leadership Program
amongst others.
Upper reaches of The Snowy
.
‘Dairy industry is a big environmental burden’
(comment by Milly on CanDoBetter.net, 20100131):
.
Dairy exports make Australia one of the world’s largest exporter of virtual water, despite it being one of the driest continents on the planet! Dairy production takes place in all states, but it is particularly significant in Victoria, where more than 60 per cent of all dairy farming enterprises are located. The number of dairy farms has declined steadily over recent decades, but the industry is trending towards larger and intensive farming.
Approximately 569 GL/year is transferred across from the Snowy River Basin and released to the Murray River upstream of Hume Reservoir. Fifty percent of this water is allocated to the Victorian River Murray diverters. The other fifty percent is allocated to New South Wales. Dairying is the heaviest user of irrigated water, often requiring irrigated pasture.
Hume Weir
..dammed and flooded the Murray and Mitta Rivers to create artificial Lake Hume for irrigation farming.
.
Constructed over a 17-year period from 28 November 1919 to 1936 with a workforce of thousands, a branch siding from the Wodonga – Cudgewa railway was built to supply materials. It was extended during the 1950s, and completed in 1961, necessitating the wholesale removal of Tallangatta township and its re-establishment at a new site eight kilometres west of the original, as well as railway and road diversions.
In 2007 Japanese beverage giant Kirin acquired dairy processor National Foods for $2.8 billion. The emergence of large multi-national companies as significant players in the Australian dairy industry was forcing producers to bulk up to larger farms. Dairy Australia’s managing director Mike Ginnivan said the industry would remain a major user of water in the Murray Darling Basin for at least the next 10 years and would necessitate continued improvements in water use efficiency. By banning the export of dairy products and reducing our own consumption we may have a chance to save our ailing river systems!
‘The Snowy Hydro Con – it was all about mass irrigation and mass immigration’
.
Since Australia’s Gold boom and the exponential immigration growth it attracted, European colonists had dreamed of controlling the seasonally flooding rivers of the ranges along eastern Australia into dams, in order to provide reliable irrigation to harvest inland plains for agriculture and resist Australia’s periodic long droughts – i.e. provide for ‘drought security‘.
The wild Snowy River was long regarded by many European colonists as a wasted resource, because it flowed to the sea through country that was already well watered. Proposals to divert the river for irrigation and power generation were presented from as early as the 1880s but it was not until the 1940s that the necessary resources and technological capacity were realised with the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
In 1949, the Chifley Labor Government was enraptured with its post-War ‘populate or perish‘ mantra. It embarked on Australia’s greatest immigration scheme and channelled 100,000 migrant jobs into building the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme and designated the Riverina Region to mass agricultural settlement and production. The Government decided to dam the snow-fed headwaters of the east flowing Snowy River and divert them into the Murray River, which heads west through farmland along the NSW-Victoria border.
Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley (1945-49)
.
Construction started on 17 October 1949, when the Governor General Sir William McKell, Prime Minister Ben Chiffley and the Scheme’s first Commissioner, Sir William Hudson, fired the first blast at Adaminaby. The Snowy River was finally dammed twice: first at its headwaters at Island Bend in 1965, and again downstream at Jindabyne in 1967.
After Lake Jindabyne was created, 99% of the river’s water was retained and diverted for power generation and irrigation.
The Chifley Labor Government promised the Snowy Hydro Scheme would deliver ‘cheap hydro-electric power‘ but when completed in 1974, the Snowy Mountains Scheme had cost $1.16 Billion(Ed: equivalent to perhaps $5 Billion in 2012 money – ^http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm).
The Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme (since abbreviated to ‘Snowy Hydro‘) consists of 16 major dams; 7 power stations; a pumping station; and 225 kilometres of tunnels, pipelines and aqueducts in the high country of New South Wales and Victoria .
The amount of electricity Snowy Hydro generates has always depended upon winter rains and mountain snow falls. So, in times of drought, hydro output drops significantly. Snowy Hydro is dependent upon how much snow falls on the Australian Alps, and therefore how much water goes into predominantly lakes Eucumbene and Jindabyne. In 2004-05, Snowy Hydro’s output was just 4,388 GWh (13.5% capacity) during a time of prolonged drought.
Of the current 18,000 megawatts (MW) of installed electricity generation capacity of New South Wales, Snowy Hydro provides about 20% of NSW electricity, mainly to supply the additional power needed in morning and evening peak use. Victoria’s hydroelectricity is sourced from the state’s major dams, including Lake Eildon, Hume and Dartmouth. Overall, Snowy Hydro provides 17% of the electricity for south-eastern Australia and 5% of Australia’s total electricity generation (2007-08).
The Snowy Mountains Scheme diverted and stopped the natural flows of major rivers including the Snowy and Tumut rivers. It caused irrevocable damage to a natural cherished landscape. It created the Murray Irrigation Area and the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area which have collectively since been referred to as the Riverina, sustaining dozens of agricultural communities. In 1968 an entire town, Coleambally, was created as a result of the new flow of water. Main cropping includes stone fruit, grain, and rice.
Over the decades, deforestation and excessive irrigation of the region has raised the salt table and caused extensive to dry land salinity, undermining the viability of irrigated cropping.
Dry Land Salinity
..caused by clearfell deforestation and excessive irrigation
.
‘Beautiful memory of The Snowy’
Comment by ‘Quark’ on CanDoBetter.net, 20100131:
.
In 1975 I visited the Snowy with friends and camped in the area.
I remember swimming in the river. The water was about 1.5 metres deep, very clear with smooth white pebbles and rocks on the bottom. It was so clean and soft that I was drinking it as I swam and I remember thinking that my immersion in this element at that moment was sheer perfection. There was no-one else around.
This post dates the damming of the river but maybe they had let more water through and the irrigation demands were less than they are now.
More than a decade before when I was at school, one of our prescribed books was “Above the snow line”- a novel about the Snowy project and the immigrant workers. That was my introduction to this feat of engineering. I don’t recall the environmental impacts ever being discussed in class.
The following year my parents took me up to see the Snowy project on a guided motoring tour – I recall high dam walls turbines and things which meant little to me. I wouldn’t have known what had been lost in the creation of this scheme. I still have coloured photographs (slides) of this trip.
Comment by Tigerquoll on CanDoBetter.net, 20100201:
.
Thanks Milly & Quark for your feedback.
Agriculture that profits from robbing resources (like potable water) from one region is inequitable. The Murray Valley, Riverina and Murray Darling irrigation regions are robbing Australia’s Alpine region of its water for artificial agriculture that is out of synch with its climate and so wholly dependent on artificial resources – water, fertilizer insecticides and GM.
It is State-sanctioned river theft underwritten by corrupt cronyism where politicians meter out favours to influential lobbyists that justify their claim on providing Australian export revenue and jobs – be it drought rice growers, drought citrus growers, drought orchards, drought dairy farmers. And then they give us the dust storms as their topsoil is eroded. Why do we need so much milk, cheese and yoghurt on our supermarket shelves anyway? The supply is excessive to the extent that it is exported, so our primary industry policy has us ruining the Australian environment (river depletion, irrigation salinity/acidification) for export revenue. Primary Industry policy clearly has ripped up Triple Bottom Line accountability.
In 1975, I visited the Snowy with friends and camped in the area. I remember swimming in the river. The water was about 1.5 metres deep, very clear with smooth white pebbles and rocks on the bottom. It was so clean and soft that I was drinking it as I swam and I remember thinking that my immersion in this element at that moment was sheer perfection. There was no-one else around.
Spring Street will argue the food bowl utilitarian justification that river water from the bush is needed to feed the urban millions swelling from more arriving at Tullamarine like ants out of a nest. Only the human test is applied to resource allocation. The locals in the bush are ignored because the millions of votes are increasingly in the cities.
Quark, traditional Australian values like fresh stream water have been forgotten in urbane Australia. Melbourne’s water used to be the best. Now it is metallic with all the additives. Now they are ruining the Wonthaggi region and buggering its locals to cater for a desal plant for monstrous Melbourne.
The Snowy Scheme history should be re-written from the point of view of the promises versus the outcomes, and from the point of view of the benefits with the costs, and from the point of view of the national economy versus the local destruction.
.
Australian 1950s politicians just copied big brother America, to emulate its hydro ‘progress’.
.
Most of the employment went to immigrants. The sixteen dams were to provide irrigation to the Riverina and Murray-Goulburn to create a food bowl to feed a growing Melbourne and Sydney fuled by massive immigration. The turbine generated electricity was a secondary output. The seven power stations supply only 10% of the electricity for VIC and NSW, mush of which is lost over the hundreds of kilometres of transmission lines that have scarred many fragile ecosystems.
.
The justification that Hydro-electricity is clean, efficient and renewable energy is wrong.
The Snowy Hydro Scheme cost $820 million (‘billion’ in 2012 money) and destroyed vast river valleys.
.
Building a dam effectively decommissions a wild river and the ecosystems it supports. The environmental damage is irreversible. Irreversible damage is not clean and not renewable. The only renewable aspect of hydro is rain re-filling artificial dams. Rivers are a non-renewable resource and the classification of hydro as a “renewable” energy source is a misnomer.
It’s a bugger the bush mentality.
.
Tiger Quoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
(Note: Link since deleted by Snowy Hydro – this is what it read:
‘The Snowy Water Inquiry was commissioned in 1998 with a brief to recommend environmental water release options to the Commonwealth, Victorian, and NSW Governments so that corporatisation of the Snowy Mountains Scheme could proceed. These release options related to the Snowy River below Jindabyne, the Murray River and other rivers associated with the Scheme. The Inquiry objectives were that the recommendations would not adversely impact on water supplies to existing irrigators or the viability of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
The Commonwealth, Victorian and NSW governments will contribute $375 million over ten years to fund water-saving efficiency initiatives associated with the Murray and Murrumbidgee Irrigation Systems. These water-saving initiatives will subsequently reduce the amount of water to be released from the Scheme to the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers, thus allowing increased releases to the Snowy River below Jindabyne.
Environmental releases from the montane rivers will be equivalent to 150 GWh (gigawatt hours) of lost energy production from the Scheme each year. These releases are to be implemented at a similar rate to the releases to the Snowy River from Jindabyne. The combined impact of the Snowy, Murray and montane river releases will reduce generation from the Scheme by up to 540 GWh per year or an average of 11%.
Substantial outlet works have been built at Jindabyne and Tantangara Dams to allow for the environmental releases. Minor modifications to a number of aqueducts was also required to enable the environmental releases from the montane rivers to be implemented and measured.
Snowy Hydro is committed to the future of the Snowy Mountains Scheme and river health, while meeting the primary role of supplying renewable energy and water for irrigation.
Healthy rivers are vital to the Snowy Mountains Scheme for many reasons – our prosperity, our environment, our communities and our future depend on it.’
‘The massive floodwaters flowing out of Queensland into western New South Wales have revitalised the parched Murray Darling Basin – but the ailing snowy river in southern New South Wales won’t see a drop.’ .
Transcript: .
KERRY O’BRIEN, PRESENTER: The massive floodwaters flowing out of Queensland into Western New South Wales are in the process of revitalising parts of the parched Murray-Darling basin at least.
But the ailing Snowy River in southern New South Wales won’t see a drop. Its survival depends on water released from the massive Snowy Hydro system of dams, at the say-so of the New South Wales Government.
This past summer those flows have hit a high-water mark, with the biggest releases rushing down the Snowy since the hydro scheme was built in the 1960s. But conservation groups say it hasn’t made up for the years of political neglect and broken promises that they say have left the Snowy in dire straits.
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Emma Griffiths reports.
JOHN GALLARD, SNOWY ALLIANCE: They said they were going to fix it. They haven’t fixed it.
SAM WILLIAMSON, BUSINESSMAN: We haven’t got a lot of water and everybody wants it, so who gets it? That is the fight at the moment isn’t it? Who gets the water?
EMMA GRIFFITHS, REPORTER: The Snowy River starts with a trickle in the highest of Australia’s High Country. Its tributaries form rocky creeks that gather in pace until they hit the massive system of dams and weirs that form the Snowy Hydro scheme, but this year the river has roared again.
JOHN GALLARD: We need a lot more flows like this to make the whole process worthwhile.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: John is a former park ranger. In retirement, the Snowy River has become his obsession.
JOHN GALLARD: It will make a little bit of a difference but it’s only a very small amount of water by comparison with what is needed.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: For two days this year the water has burst free of Jindabyne Dam.
In the biggest release since the Snowy scheme was built, 870 megalitres each day have flowed down the river. The extraordinary release was prompted by dire scientific warnings that isolated pools downstream were in danger of becoming stagnant.
JOHN GALLARD: It would be beautiful to have it every day but I don’t think there is any likelihood of that happening in the near future.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: Those who want to protect the river thought they had already fought the battle to save the Snowy and won.
Eight years ago the Commonwealth, along with Victoria and New South Wales, promised to let more water flow down the river purely for environmental reasons. But since then, the activists say, that promise has been forgotten and the Snowy is in worse trouble than ever.
JOHN GALLARD: You’ve got sections of river up there now that are totally dry for a major part of the season.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: Back in 2002 the governments in charge of the Snowy made a major political announcement. They closed the weir on one of the river’s main tributaries, the Mowamba. With much fanfare, then Premiers Bob Carr and Steve Bracks donned waders, unveiled a plaque and inspected the outcome of their decision – freely flowing water.
But three years later the weir was back in operation. The authorities say that was always the plan and now the river is again but a dribble.
JOHN GALLARD: Everybody thought it was going to be gone forever and we were going to have a free flowing river eventually. So you know, we are back to square one.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: One man who was there that day had doubts from the start.
SAM WILLIAMSON: I think eight years ago they were probably dreaming that it may rain, that we might have record snow falls. Maybe it was worth the promise, maybe not.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: Steve Williamson has been casting a line into the waters of the Snowy Mountains for more than 35 years and he has built successful fishing business out of the hobby he loves.
He doesn’t blame the politicians for the river’s woes. He doesn’t blame the Snowy Hydro. For him, the culprit is the drought.
SAM WILLIAMSON: There is only so much water in the glass and everybody wants – needs to learn to share it.
PHILIP COSTA, NSW WATER MINISTER: The best solution is for it to rain then we will all be very happy. It will certainly make my job a lot easier.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: As the New South Wales Water Minister, Philip Costa is the man largely responsible for determining who gets what out of the Snowy River system.
PHILIP COSTA: Some critics sometimes don’t accept the fact that we are in a drought. We are in a very severe drought. The drought has been around for some time now and what we have been doing is we have been putting water – as is the case now – down through the system when we can. When we have the available water.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: That political pledge eight years ago also centred on a commitment to increase the Snowy’s water allocation to 15 per cent of its original flows by this year. But the reality has fallen far short.
We’re getting 4 per cent – that’s all we are getting. That’s all we’ve got for 7 years since they have made the first environmental releases.
Unfortunately all of the agreements that they’ve made, we’ve found out are non-binding agreements.
PHILIP COSTA: We haven’t met what all the expectations might be simply because there isn’t enough water but we have delivered water to all of those discrete users and we do levit (phonetic) it in an equitable way. No one is getting more water than their share.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: The Murray River is a key beneficiary of the Snowy Hydro Scheme and those on the Eastern fall can’t help feeling short changed.
JOHN GALLARD: They’ve forgotten about the Snowy and now they’re saying to everybody they’re going to fix the Murray Darling system.
My comments are, this was the litmus test. They haven’t fixed this one, how are they possibly going to fix the Murray Darling system? They couldn’t even get the Snowy right.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: The Snowy River campaigners are determined to keep on fighting. But they have long ago recognised that even with more water and promised political action, they will never see the Snowy return to its glory days.
JOHN GALLARD: It’s a different river altogether. It’s a senile, old geriatric river now, whereas once it was very dynamic and quite dramatic. But it can be a relatively healthy river again and it can be much better than it is now.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: For some, the only solution is a hope shared Australia wide
SAM WILLIAMSON: The positive is it is going to rain one day, hopefully.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: And that’s what you are praying for?
SAM WILLIAMSON: We’re praying for it. That’d keep everybody happy.
KERRY O’BRIEN: That report from Emma Griffiths.
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Blowering Dam of the Tumut River, New South Wales, part of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
Completed in 1968, the Blowering Dam holds 1,628,000 megalitres used for irrigation along the Murrumbidgee River, Yanco/Colombo/Billabong Creeks system, the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and the Colleambally Irrigation Area.
The Blowering Power Station delivers electricity generation capacity of just 80 megawatts (MW), which is 0.004% of the total electricity capacity of New South Wales (18,000 MW).
. ‘The Sydney Morning Herald Feb 18-19 carried a full page article on the fact that the flow in the Snowy River in February dropped from 275 megalitres to 70 overnight when the Hydro Scheme diverted the water from the Mowamba River back into their dams .
The SMH says no one new this was going to happen , but after doing some research and going to the site , ^http://www.snowyriveralliance.com.au/newsletter.htm#3 it appears that at least the people in the Snowy River Alliance new about it and had been making submissions to the Government to stop the flow being redirected in February .
Does anybody know the real story behind this ? Putting water back into the Snowy is a great project and I would like to try and help them somehow .
…”While most of the river runs through country that is largely uninhabited, the majority being protected by the Snowy River National Park, it’s flow was drastically reduced to less than 1% when the construction of The Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme was completed in the 1970′s.
Today the river is but a shallow of it’s former self.
It’s significance to Australian folk lore due to Banjo Patterson’s poem – The Man from Snowy River – establishes The Snowy River as a important part of our national identity.”
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The natural Snowy River
Circa 1890
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[8] The making of a legend…
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‘The Man from Snowy River’
by A.B. “Banjo” Paterson .
There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses – he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stockhorse snuffs the battle with delight. .
There was Harrison, who made his pile when Pardon won the cup,
The old man with his hair as white as snow;
But few could ride beside him when his blood was fairly up –
He would go wherever horse and man could go.
And Clancy of the Overflow came down to lend a hand,
No better horseman ever held the reins;
For never horse could throw him while the saddle girths would stand,
He learnt to ride while droving on the plains. .
And one was there, a stripling on a small and weedy beast,
He was something like a racehorse undersized,
With a touch of Timor pony – three parts thoroughbred at least –
And such as are by mountain horsemen prized.
He was hard and tough and wiry – just the sort that won’t say die –
There was courage in his quick impatient tread;
And he bore the badge of gameness in his bright and fiery eye,
And the proud and lofty carriage of his head. .
But still so slight and weedy, one would doubt his power to stay,
And the old man said, “That horse will never do
For a long a tiring gallop – lad, you’d better stop away,
Those hills are far too rough for such as you.”
So he waited sad and wistful – only Clancy stood his friend –
“I think we ought to let him come,” he said;
“I warrant he’ll be with us when he’s wanted at the end,
For both his horse and he are mountain bred. .
“He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko’s side,
Where the hills are twice as steep and twice as rough,
Where a horse’s hoofs strike firelight from the flint stones every stride,
The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home,
Where the river runs those giant hills between;
I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam,
But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen.” .
So he went – they found the horses by the big mimosa clump –
They raced away towards the mountain’s brow,
And the old man gave his orders, “Boys, go at them from the jump,
No use to try for fancy riding now.
And, Clancy, you must wheel them, try and wheel them to the right.
Ride boldly, lad, and never fear the spills,
For never yet was rider that could keep the mob in sight,
If once they gain the shelter of those hills.” .
So Clancy rode to wheel them – he was racing on the wing
Where the best and boldest riders take their place,
And he raced his stockhorse past them, and he made the ranges ring
With the stockwhip, as he met them face to face.
Then they halted for a moment, while he swung the dreaded lash,
But they saw their well-loved mountain full in view,
And they charged beneath the stockwhip with a sharp and sudden dash,
And off into the mountain scrub they flew. .
Then fast the horsemen followed, where the gorges deep and black
Resounded to the thunder of their tread,
And the stockwhips woke the echoes, and they fiercely answered back
From cliffs and crags that beetled overhead.
And upward, ever upward, the wild horses held their way,
Where mountain ash and kurrajong grew wide;
And the old man muttered fiercely, “We may bid the mob good day,
No man can hold them down the other side.” .
When they reached the mountain’s summit, even Clancy took a pull,
It well might make the boldest hold their breath,
The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full
Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.
But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,
And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear. .
He sent the flint stones flying, but the pony kept his feet,
He cleared the fallen timber in his stride,
And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat –
It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride.
Through the stringybarks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound,
At the bottom of that terrible descent. .
He was right among the horses as they climbed the further hill,
And the watchers on the mountain standing mute,
Saw him ply the stockwhip fiercely, he was right among them still,
As he raced across the clearing in pursuit.
Then they lost him for a moment, where two mountain gullies met
In the ranges, but a final glimpse reveals
On a dim and distant hillside the wild horses racing yet,
With the man from Snowy River at their heels. .
And he ran them single-handed till their sides were white with foam.
He followed like a bloodhound on their track,
Till they halted cowed and beaten, then he turned their heads for home,
And alone and unassisted brought them back.
But his hardy mountain pony he could scarcely raise a trot,
He was blood from hip to shoulder from the spur;
But his pluck was still undaunted, and his courage fiery hot,
For never yet was mountain horse a cur. .
And down by Kosciusko, where the pine-clad ridges raise
Their torn and rugged battlements on high,
Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze
At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,
And where around The Overflow the reed beds sweep and sway
To the breezes, and the rolling plains are wide,
The man from Snowy River is a household word today,
And the stockmen tell the story of his ride.
In November 2006, two separate bushfires that were allowed to burn out of control for a week as well extensive deliberate backburning, ended up causing some 14,070 hectares of the Blue Mountains National Park to be burnt.
This wiped out a significant area of the Grose Valley and burnt through the iconic Blue Gum Forest in the upper Blue Mountains of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area (GBMWHA).
In the mind of Rural Fire Service (RFS) and the National Parks and Wildlife Service of New South Wales (NPWS), National Parks and World Heritage do not figure as a natural asset worth protecting from bushfire, but rather as an expendable liability, a ‘fuel’ hazard, when it comes to bushfire fighting.
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This massive firestorm has since been branded the ‘Grose Valley Fires of 2006‘.
Pyrocumulous ‘carbon’ smoke cloud above the firestorm engulfing the Grose Valley 20061123
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About a month after the fire, on Tuesday 19th December 2006 there was apparently an ‘Inter-Agency Review‘ which took place at Katoomba behind closed doors by members of bushfire management and operating personnel involved in the fire fighting. Despite requests by this Editor, no minutes or reports of that meeting were ever forthcoming. The meeting was internal and secret.
Immediate local community outrage called for explanations and accountability from the Rural Fire Service (RFS) (the government agency responsible for rural fire fighting throughout the State of New South Wales) in charge of fighting the bushfires and for a review of bushfire management practices with a view to ensuring that the highly valued Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and iconic Blue Gum Forest in particular is protected from bushfire in future. Many members of the local community called for an independent and public review or enquiry.
One local resident wrote in the local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper:
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‘Questioning the RFS’
by Dr Jackie Janosi, Katoomba, 20061204
. ‘To start, this is directed at the upper levels of the RFS and not to the wonderful local volunteers – many of whom are loved and respected friends and colleagues.
To stop the loud community Chinese whispers and restore faith with the local community, could someone please respond with factual answers about the recent Grose Valley fire that are not reinterpreted with a political spin.
How many hectares of bush was burnt by the Grose Valley wildfire and how many was burnt by the RFS mitigation efforts?
How many houses and lives were at risk from the wildfire as versus to the RFS fire?
How many millions of dollars were spent on water bombing the RFS fire?
How many litres of precious water were used to put out the RFS fire?
Is it true that soil-holding rainforest was burnt and that the real reason for the Mt Tomah road block was erosion from the RFS removal of this natural fire-break?
Was local advice and expertise sought and followed or simply ignored?
If mistakes were made, what measures will be taken to ensure that this does not happen again?
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I sincerely hope that if mistakes were made then the upper levels of the RFS can show the humility and good future planning that is now required to restore it’s good reputation. I hope that the RFS can show that it is still a community group that cares for the safety of our Blue Mountains residents, is able to respect and respond to our very special local environment and is able to make sound decisions about valuable resources.’
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Ed: Her questions were never answered. With the RFS rejecting calls for a public or independent review, there was a general sense amongst many in the local community of a cover up and of gross incompetence going unaccounted for.
One of two ignitions that got out of control
– this one in ‘Lawson’s Long Alley‘, north of Mount Victoria
(Photo: Eric Berry, Rural Fire Service, 2006)
Community activists form ‘Grose Fire Group’ in protest
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Within days of the Grose Valley Fires finally coming under control, some 143 Blue Mountains concerned residents informally formed the ‘Grose Fire Group’ and collectively funded a full page letter in the local Blue Mountains Gazette 20061206 asking of the RFS a different set of questions:
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‘We call on the New South Wales government to:
1. Undertake a thorough, independent review of the Grose Valley fire, involving all stakeholders, with particular attention to the following questions:
Were fire detection and initial suppression timely and adequate?
Were resources adequate, appropriate and supported?
Were the adopted strategies the best available under the circumstances?
Could other strategies of closer containment have offered lower risk to the community, better firefighter safety, higher probabilities of success, lower costs and less impact on the environment?
Was existing knowledge and planning adequately utilised?
Is fire management funded in the most effective way?
2. Ensure adequate funding is available for post-fire restoration, including the rehabilitation of environmental damage. 3. Pay for more research to improve understanding of fire in the Blue Mountains landscape and methods for fire mitigation and suppression. 4. Improve training in strategies for controlling fires in large bushland areas. 5. Improve pre-fire planning to support decision-making during incidents. 6. Improve systems to ensure that local fire planning and expertise is fully utilised during incidents, and that the protection of the natural and cultural values of World Heritage areas and other bushland are fully considered.’
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On 20061220, my letter was published in the Blue Mountains Gazette on page 12:
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‘Blue Gum Lessons’
. ‘One of our most precious natural heritage assets, the Blue Gum Forest, has been allowed to be scorched by bushfire. This demands an independent enquiry into current fire fighting practices to ensure such a tragedy is not repeated.
Not a witch hunt, but what is needed is a constructive revision into improving bushfire fighting methods incorporating current research into the issue. The intensity and frequency of bushfires have become more prevalent due to disturbances by man, including climate change.
An enquiry should consider the assets worth saving; not just lives, homes and property but natural assets of the World Heritage Area. Fire fighting methods should seek to protect all these values. It seems back-burning, however well-intentioned, burnt out the Blue Gum. This is unacceptable. What went wrong? The future survival of our forests depends on how we manage fire.’
Blue Gum Forest shortly after the firestorm
(Photo: Nick Moir, Sydney Morning Herald 20061210)
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Ed: The above community questions and demands were ignored by the RFS and the New South Wales Government. Many within the ranks of the RFS came to its defence, as the following letters to the Blue Mountains Gazette reveal.
As letters to the editor continued over the Christmas holiday break, by January 2007, Local Member for the Blue Mountains and Minister for the Environment, Bob Debus MP finally responded by proposing that community members be given an opportunity to discuss their concerns with fire authorities and be encouraged to contribute to the development of revised fire management strategies, policies and procedures which may arise from the routine internal reviews of the 2006-07 fire season, and particularly the Grose Valley fire.
The ‘Grose Valley Fire Forum‘ was scheduled for Saturday 17th February 2007, but it was invitation only. I requested permission to attend, but by was rejected.
The incinerated remains of the Grose Valley
– now devoid of wildlife, also incinerated
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Grose Valley Fire Forum
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The following is an edited account of the official ‘Report on (the) Grose Valley Fire Forum‘, which was arranged and co-ordinated by the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute (BMWHI) and which took place at Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, Mount Tomah on Saturday 17th February 2007. The Report is dated 16 March 2007. ‘The content of this report reflects the Forum discussion and outcomes and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute‘ – BMWHI.
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The Grose Valley Fire Forum and report were undertaken by the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute at the request of the NSW Minister for the Environment, the Honourable Bob Debus MP.
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Forum Participants
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Associate Professor Sandy Booth – Forum Chairman and Facilitator (BMWH Institute)
Professor Ross Bradstock Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, University of Wollongong
Mr Ian Brown BM Conservation Society
Mr Don Cameron BM Conservation Society
Mr Matthew Chambers Environmental Scientist, Blue Mountains City Council (Observer)
Dr Rosalie Chapple Forum Co-Facilitator, BMWH Institute
Mr Bob Conroy Director Central, Parks and Wildlife Division, DEC
Ms Carol Cooper Darug and Gundungurra Nations (Observer)
Superintendent Mal Cronstedt Blue Mountains District, Rural Fire Service
Mr Grahame Douglas Acting Chair, BM Regional Advisory Committee
Group Captain John Fitzgerald Blue Mountains District, Rural Fire Service
Mr Shane Fitzsimmons Executive Director Operations, Rural Fire Service (Observer)
Mr Richard Kingswood Area Manager Blue Mountains, Parks and Wildlife Division, DEC
Mr Geoff Luscombe Regional Manager Blue Mountains, Parks and Wildlife Division, DEC
Dr Brian Marshall President, BM Conservation Society (Observer)
Mr Hugh Paterson BM Conservation Society & NSW Nature Conservation Council
Dr Judy Smith GBMWH Advisory Committee Member
Inspector Jack Tolhurst Blue Mountains District, Rural Fire Service
Mr Haydn Washington GBMWH Advisory Committee Member
Mr Pat Westwood Bushfire Program Coordinator, Nature Conservation Council
Members of the general public were not permitted to attend, including this Editor, who had requested permission to attend
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List of Acronyms used in this Report
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AFAC Australasian Fire Authorities Control ARC Australian Research Council BFCC Bush Fire Coordinating Committee BM Blue Mountains BMCC Blue Mountains City Council BMWHI Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute BFMC Blue Mountains District Bush Fire Management Committee BMCS Blue Mountains Conservation Society CERMB Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, Faculty of Science, University of Wollongong CRC Co-operative Research Centre DEC NSW Department of Environment & Conservation GBMWHA Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area GIS Geographic Information System NCC NSW Nature Conservation Council NPWS NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service, Department of Environment & Conservation RAFT Remote Area Fire-fighting Team CRAFT Catchment Remote Area Fire-fighting Team RFS NSW Rural Fire Service
The Grose Valley from Govetts Leap, Blackheath(Photo by Editor 20061209, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge)
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Forum Agenda
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10.00 Welcome to Country – Carol Cooper
Introduction by the Forum Chair -Sandy Booth:
Purpose
Process
Agreements
Outcomes
Reporting
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10.10 Introduction and opening statement by each participant without comment
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10.30 Presentations (10 mins each) by:
Mal Cronstedt (RFS) – report on agency debrief Dec 19
Richard Kingswood (NPWS) – national parks and fire management
Dr Brian Marshall President, Blue Mountains Conservation Society – local community perspective
Ross Bradstock (Wollongong University) – gaps and priorities in bushfire research for the BM
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11.10 Points of Clarification
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11.20 Grose Valley Fire Management
Issues not covered in RFS official Section 44 Debrief Report
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11.40 Fire Management and the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area (WHA) (Ed: the region affected by the fire)
Longer term and landscape scale management issues relating including climate change implications
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12.00 Grose Valley Fire Management
. 1.00-2.00 Lunch
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Grose Valley Fire Management and the WHA (continued)
Identification of agreed list of actions, with nominated organisations and recommended timeframes
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Close & Afternoon Tea (Ed: no specific time set. 5pm?)
Ed: Assuming that the forum concluded at around 5pm, the duration allocated for discussing and devising the ‘Actions’, including each Action’s Goal, Trends, Causes and Conditions, Delegation and Timeframe was just 3 hours, presuming the forum ended at 5pm.
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Since there are and remain some 50 listed Actions out of this forum within a 3 hour allocated period (2pm to 5pm), just 3.6 minutes was allowed for discussing and devising the details of each Action. It is highly implausible that this could have been completed at the forum. So the question remains: were many of the Forum’s 50 Actions in fact devised outside the forum either by the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute on its own or in consultation with some of the forum attendees?
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In any case none of the Actions has been undertaken. There has been no follow up report on the performance of the Actions.
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This Grose Valley Forum of 2007 was just a politically contrived token talk-fest behind closed doors. Its glossy motherhood report was designed to appease critics of the RFS management of this devastating fire.
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The forum was not open to the general public, nor was it independent of bushfire management’s selective bias.
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The only benefit was that bushfire management would appease the critics of its handling of the fire fighting by producing a report and that most would forget. Well the purpose of this article is, out of respect for the ecology and wildlife of the Grose Valley, to reveal that report and to help ensure people do not forget.
Forum Introduction
In November 2006, fire caused by lightning strikes burnt a significant area of the Grose Valley in the upper Blue Mountains of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area (GBMWHA). Like many areas throughout the GBMWHA, the Grose Valley is an area of high natural and cultural value, including the iconic Blue Gum Forest. The two original ignitions were designated as the Burrakorain Fire and the Lawson’s Long Alley Fire, and they came jointly under the jurisdiction of an emergency declaration under Section 44 of the Rural Fires Act.
Community members called on the State Government to undertake a thorough and independent review of the management of this fire, involving all stakeholders. Principal among the issues raised by the concerned residents were backburning, impacts of frequent fires, under-utilisation of local expertise, and economic costs. The community members also called for adequate funding for rehabilitation and environmental restoration works, to conduct more research and training in certain areas of fire management, to improve pre-fire planning
and to develop management systems to better capture and utilise local knowledge.
Local Member for the Blue Mountains and Minister for the Environment, Hon. Bob Debus responded to these concerns by proposing that community members be given an opportunity to discuss their concerns with fire authorities and be encouraged to contribute to the development of revised fire management strategies, policies and procedures which may arise from the routine internal reviews of the 2006-07 fire season, and particularly the Grose Valley fire. The Minister also noted the opportunity for the community to be informed of, and
contribute to, the development of future research projects concerning climate change and fire regimes.
The Minister invited the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute (BMWHI) to organise and chair a forum of representative community members and fire authorities. The Institute is an independent non-profit organisation that supports the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of the GBMWHA, with a key objective to “support the integration of science, management and policy within and adjoining the GBMWHA properties.
The purpose of the forum was to:
Brief the community on the management of the Grose Valley fire and the framework and context for the management of fire generally within the World Heritage Area
Identify any issues that relate specifically to the management of the Grose Valley fire, and that haven’t already been captured and/or responded to within the s.44 debrief report
Identify longer term and landscape scale issues relating to the management of fire in the Greater Blue Mountains WHA, particularly in this time of climate change
Develop an action plan, which responds to any unresolved issues identified above.
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In accordance with the Minister’s brief (Ed: Bob Debus), the following organisations were represented at the forum:
NSW Dept of Environment and Conservation;
NSW Rural Fire Service
Blue Mountains Conservation Society
Nature Conservation Council of NSW
Blue Mountains City Council
NPWS Regional Advisory Committee
GBMWHA Advisory Committee.
In addition to senior representatives of the agencies involved, representatives also came from the principal community-based organisations that had expressed concern and called for a review process. It should be noted that one of the main public calls for a review was made by an informal coalition of residents that was not formally represented at the forum, but a number of these residents were members of those organisations represented.
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(Ed: the general public were not permitted to attend, there was no public notice of the forum in advance, and this Editor was specifically excluded from attending.)
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Forum Process
An open invitation was given to the community organisations to identify the issues of community interest and concern to be discussed at the Forum.
From these issues, a consolidated list of 22 issues (Table 1.2) was prepared by the Institute, and then circulated to all participants prior to the forum. To facilitate the workshop discussions and the detailed consideration of the identified issues, the ‘5R Risk Management Framework‘ was used to group the issues.
Following a Gundungurra and Darug ‘Welcome to Country’ by Carol Cooper, and an introduction by the Forum Chair, self-introductions and personal opening statements were made by each participant without comment. These were followed by a series of briefins on management of the Grose Valley Fire and fire management generally within the World Heritage Area. The Forum began by acknowledging that fire management in the Blue Mountains is close to best practice in many ways.
It was unfortunate that copies of the Section 44 debrief report were not available for the forum as anticipated (Ed: a copy is provided in the ‘Further Reading‘ appendix below).
While this was partly overcome through verbal presentation and comment, it limited the ability to reach consensus on the factual basis of what happened on the fire ground and to move forward productively from this point of consensus. Community representatives expressed their dissatisfaction with this situation, and it must be noted that the forum was therefore not able to engage effectively on specific issues of the control strategies used on the Grose Valley Fires.
After a brief session on points of clarification, the issues presented to the forum were explored in detail by working through a problem orientation process that asked a series of questions about each issue, to reach consensus on the exact nature of the problem. As this work progressed, a series of agreed actions were identified to effectively address key aspects of the issues as these unfolded. It is noted that the issues addressed toward the end of the day were examined in less detail due to time constraints, but warrant further attention (e.g. the issue about remote area fire-fighting teams). The original list of 22 issues was consolidated into 11 goal statements, with 50 associated actions.
The main body of this report presents the goals and actions along with documentation of the discussion that took place on the day. It utilises the structured approach to systematically work through the issues, and identify the actions required to bring about more sustainable bushfire management for the Blue Mountains. Within a week of the Forum, the Institute circulated a copy of the forum proceedings to all participants for comment and clarification. The Institute also sought identification of responsibilities for the 50 Actions identified by the Fire Forum.
It is strongly recommended that implementation of the Action Plan be reviewed annually by the representative organisations, to assess progress and effectiveness of actions. It is proposed that the BMWH Institute co-ordinate this review process in partnership with the Nature Conservation Council, with a workshop held after the 2007/08 fire season, to re-address the issues and their progress. (Ed: This was never done)
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Forum Overview
.
A big challenge in bushfire management is how to better integrate valid community interests with those of fire management agencies. Over recent years, the public has come to demand and expect a greater say in decision-making processes that impact upon their local environment. The Grose Valley Fire Forum represents a step forward in this process of better integrating community knowledge and interests into local natural resource management.
The Forum also illustrated that the Blue Mountains community is both a great supporter of fire authorities, and of the role of volunteer firefighters for the outstanding effort that they are prepared to undertake on behalf of the community.
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The concerns and questions addressed at the forum included:
Identifying weaknesses and gaps in fire management plans and processes
How well are plans being implemented and what are the barriers to implementation e.g. financial, institutional, political?
How should fire authorities and land managers respond to climate change impacts?
.
Integrating scientific knowledge into fire management plans
How can bushfire management policy allow for the incomplete knowledge of complex ecological systems?
What roles should science and other research play in decision processes, given the uncertainty arising from incomplete understanding of ecosystem dynamics and insufficient scientific information?
.
The role of fire as an ecological process
How do we resolve the conflict between rapid fire suppression to reduce risk versus the fire-dependency of the ecosystem?
What does it take to more effectively mitigate against the risk?
.
Concern that fire control strategies do not compromise the significant natural and cultural heritage values of the Greater Blue Mountains region.
How can bushfire management policy better account for protection of World Heritage values?
How adaptive is bushfire management and policy to the specific circumstances of the Blue Mountains?
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The Forum recommended actions in relation to:
Better interpretation of ecological data into decision-making and practical fire-fighting procedures
Improvements in bushfire risk management planning
Better translation of legislated objectives for protection of natural and cultural values into operational guidelines
Improved information flow between fire authorities and the community during and after major fires, including more transparency and public involvement in the review processes
Increasing funding for fire-related research, planning, risk mitigation, and post-fire ecological rehabilitation
Enhancing the preparedness, detection and rapid fire response capacity of fire authorities in response to fire ignitions
Modelling the effects of different control strategies and suppression.
.
The Forum acknowledged the increasing and serious challenges arising from risks associated with liabilities and litigation. These trends are of principal concern to fire management agencies and the fire fighters themselves, and many in the general community share these concerns.
Bushfire management is a cultural phenomenon, inextricably bound up between nature and culture. It involves the interaction of multiple, complex systems, including:
organisational/institutional behaviour and decision-making
fire fighting strategies and technologies
science, research and ecosystem behaviour
variable fire behaviour and weather, including climate change
politics; and
personal values and attitudes.
.
The complexity is increasing, especially with climate change, along with pressure for bushfire management to be more adaptive and responsive to the needs of the present and the future.
Facilitating the necessary changes in the behaviour of any of these systems is highly challenging for both government and the community. These systems often have severe constraints including limited resources, threats of litigation, and limited data on which sound decisions can be confidently made. Where these systems are not continuing to learn and adapt, is where attention is needed, not on individual accountabilities. Sound decision-making at the time of a fire event is crucial and the process by which these decisions are made requires careful
analysis. The system should be able to support open reflection after a fire, without blame or litigation. This is where a process of scientific analysis should come into its own: what the fire did, what was done to control it, what worked, what didn’t, why or why not, and what can be done to make things better. How can the system be changed and improved to make success more likely?
Research and adaptive management are essential in helping to address both current challenges and the issues arising from climate change. But alone, these will not bring about the required changes as neither of these domains explicitly addresses the overall policy process or the political realm in which bushfire management happens. Conflict and uncertainty are becoming increasingly common, as evidenced by the Four Corners Program “Firestorm” broadcast on Monday 12th March. The program featured the 2004 Canberra Bushfires and also
raised the Grose Valley fire and resulting Fire Forum.
To overcome the key problems identified by the Grose Valley Fire Forum and achieve real and lasting triple bottom line outcomes, change and innovation need to take place in the realm of governance. This is particularly the case in the areas of science, policy and decision-making.
The Grose Valley Fire Forum has brought fire management agencies and interested representatives of the community together in a spirit of co-operation to consider issues critical to the management of bushfires. Driven by the high conservation values of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, the implications of the issues raised at this Forum have obvious relevance to other regions and states. Protecting people as well as the environment should not be mutually exclusive. Our efforts to address this challenge in the Blue Mountains will increasingly come in for close scrutiny.
Notwithstanding the existing mechanisms of review and community consultation surrounding bushfire management, the Institute recommends to the Minister that the issues and actions identified herein by the Grose Valley Fire Forum warrant special consideration and support.
Properly pursued with senior political and agency commitment and support, they offer key insights and potential pathways for the continued adaptive development and implementation of state of the art fire fighting for which NSW, and in particular, the Blue Mountains are justifiably renowned.
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Issues of Community Interest and Concern
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A. Research, information and analysis
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1. Commitment in fire management to conservation of natural and cultural values of World Heritage Area as well as human life and property.
2. Understanding and consideration (including on-ground knowledge) both by those involved in pre-fire planning and those required to make operational decisions during fire events -of the WH values for which the GBMWHA was inscribed on the world heritage list, and of other values, such as geodiversity, cultural values and beauty, which have the potential to be nominated for World Heritage listing in the future.
3. Biodiversity impacts of frequent fires in Grose Valley for last 40 years, including impacts of the recent fire on World Heritage values.
4. The ecological basis for fire policy (knowledge base for response of local biota to fire regimes) e.g. biodiversity loss associated both with high fire frequency and intensity, and with fire exclusion.
5. Translation of NPWS Blue Mountains Fire Management Plan (e.g. risks to natural heritage particularly World Heritage values) to S.52 operational plans during Grose Valley fire.
6. Effectiveness of review processes in generating real improvements for the future; current debriefing process performed by BFMCs [i.e. BFCC Policy 2/2006].
7. Assessment of community values – protection of property versus protection of the natural environment.
8. Implications of climate change for increased fire frequency and intensity.
9. Adequate funds for fire suppression versus inadequate funds for research, planning and fire mitigation.
. B. Risk modification
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10. Effectiveness of current risk strategies in managing fire regimes for biodiversity and community/asset protection (e.g. upper Grose Valley).
11. Implications of climate change for risk modification (e.g. fuel reduction).
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C. Readiness
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12. Skills in implementing fire control strategies for large bushland areas e.g. back-burning.
13. Ecological sustainability of current responses to fire (both suppression & bushfire risk management) e.g. knowledge and skill of plant operators in sensitive environments (environmental damage from machine work e.g. bulldozer lines).
14. Community understanding of control strategies used.
15. RAFT capacity (e.g. for night-time work).
16. Efficiency of fire detection technologies.
.
D. Response
.
17. Back-burn control strategy from “Northern Strategic Line” and Bell’s Line of Road in large bushland area: overriding consideration for asset protection versus lack of consideration and recognition of impacts on ecological values.
18. Application of planning, guidelines, procedures & local information & expertise during fire suppression.
19. Rapid containment of lightning strike or arson fires.
20. Aerial attack efficiency and effectiveness.
21. Media – inaccurate and misleading use of language and presentation of information.
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E. Recovery
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22. Funding for post-fire assessment, strategy review and ecological restoration including addressing activation of weed seed banks.
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Problem Orientation Process
(Problem Solving Methodology applied by the BMWHI to the Forum)
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1. Clarify goals in relation to the issue
What goals or ends do we want?
Are people’s values clear? (there may be an over-riding goal and then more specific goals to operationalise the over-riding goal)
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2. Describe trends
Looking back at the history of the issue, what are the key trends?
Have events moved toward or away from the specified goals? Describe both past and current trends.
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3. Analyse causes and conditions
What factors, relationships, and conditions created these trends, including the complex interplay of factors that affected prior decisions? (e.g. environmental, social, political factors) i.e. what explanations are there for the trends?
What management activities have affected the trends?
What are the conflicts about different approaches to address the issue?
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4. Projection of developments (e.g. if no action is taken to address the issue)
Based on trends and conditions, what is likely to happen in the future (e.g. if nothing is done differently).
If past trends continue, what can we expect?
Is the likely future the one that will achieve the goals?
What future possible developments are there (e.g. politically, environmentally e.g. how will climate change affect the problem)?
5. Decide on any Actions to address the problem
If trends are not moving toward the goal, then a problem exists and actions need to be considered.
What other policies, institutional structures, and procedures might move toward the goal?
What research, analysis, or public education may be needed?
* Adapted from Clark, T.W. 2002. “The Policy Process: a practical guide for natural resource professionals.” Yale University Press. U.S.Vast hectares of the Blue Mountains’ native vegetation was either left to burn uncontrolled or else deliberately burned by the RFS and NPWS
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Action Plan
~ a consolidated list of goals and actions [organisations delegated for executing ‘Actions’ are shown in brackets […]
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1. Protection of Natural and Cultural Values
.
GOAL:
.
To protect natural and cultural heritage values, consistent with the protection of human life and property, by ensuring that bushfire management strategies:
• take a risk management approach toward protection of these values
• improve access to and interpretation of natural and cultural heritage values when deciding on fire suppression strategies and tactics
• ensure that these natural and cultural heritage guidelines for fire management are integrated throughout the entire planning framework for short, medium and long-term bushfire management and operational strategies.
.
ACTIONS:
.
1. Data collected within the “Managing ecosystem change in the GBMWHA” project, including the new GIS, to be effectively interpreted into decision-making and practical fire-fighting terms. [Responsibility for action: BMWHI & CERMB – ARC Linkage project, NPWS, BMCC, BMCS]
2. Monitor impacts of fires on Aboriginal cultural heritage values, and undertake opportunistic mapping of these values post-fire. Translate findings into decision-making and practical fire fighting terms. As a priority, undertake an opportunistic survey of Aboriginal cultural heritage post-Grose fire. [Aboriginal communities, BMWHI, NPWS]
3. Greater effort in general to be made in translating and interpreting research and other relevant information on the protection of ecological and cultural values to better inform decision-making and into practical fire-fighting terms wherever required. [CERMB, BMWHI, NPWS, BMCC, BMCS]
4. Consider further developments in environmental risk management planning by the BFCC for inclusion in the Bush Fire Risk Management Plan model template. [BFMC]
5. Effectively integrate the strategic hazard reduction plan being developed by BMCC, into the risk management plan and the operations plans. [BMCC, BFMC]
6. Translate the NPWS Fire Management Strategies objectives for protection of natural and cultural values into operational guidelines across the entire planning framework at all levels, using a risk management approach. [NPWS, BFMC]
7. Continue to identify the best mix of treatments i.e. prevention, mitigation, suppression and recovery, to achieve both fire management and land management objectives. [NPWS, RFS, BFMC]
8. Review risk management and operational plans to include relevant reserve fire management plan information, including aspects of mitigation and appropriate fire management guidelines from the RFS Environmental Code [BFMC].
9. Develop a single map-based approach for interagency use that depicts all relevant information in a user-friendly way and enables optimal use and consideration of this information under operational conditions. [NPWS, RFS, BMCC, BFCC, BFMC, BMCS]
10. Provide the outcomes of this forum to the BFCC for consideration in developing and reviewing policies and procedures such as for the Bush Fire Risk Management Policy and Bush Fire Risk Management Plan Model template. [NPWS, RFS]
11. Develop a quantitative framework for risk management: undertake research to evaluate the effectiveness of current strategies to inform the resources and strategies required to achieve integrated life, property, cultural and natural value protection outcomes. The research should identify what is the return on current ‘investment’ and the results then linked back to budgeting systems [BMWHI].
12. Undertake and improve community liaison and surveys to better capture community values within fire management plans [BFMC].
.
2. The Role of Fire as an ‘Ecological Process’
.
GOAL:
(2?) To better understand the role of fire as an ecological process, including the long-term ecological effects of fire regimes on fauna and flora, as a basis for identifying fire regimes that sustain the ecology both locally and across the landscape.
.
ACTIONS:
13. Undertake a research project using the Grose Valley fire as a case study, to ascertain and explore the opportunities to improve fire management for protection of ecological impacts [NPWS, BMCC, CERMB, BMWHI].
14. Development of a threat abatement plan for the ecological consequences of high frequency fires. [DEC]
15. Use the Blue Mountains as a case study for modelling different control strategies and suppression (e.g. analysis of suppression operations) utilising historical raw data for retrospective mapping. [RBradstock/CERMB]
16. Source external funds for priority research and investigation projects [NPWS, RFS, BMCC].
17. Undertake ecological research into the impacts of fire regimes including intervals between fires, ensuring an appropriate focus on large-scale transformation [NPWS, BMCC, CERMB, BMWHI].
18. Undertake the necessary ground-truthing investigations to ascertain whether ecological predictions are being played out. That is, are observed trends in ecosystems matching the predictions from the models? Other research and investigation priorities include:
a. Threatened species and communities, including mapping of successional processes (e.g. woodland to heathland shifts and changes to hanging swamp boundaries) and wet sclerophyll forest (e.g. Blue Gum Forest, E. oreades) and warm temperate rainforest regeneration;
b. Species composition and structure comparison of those areas burnt in 2002;
c. Species composition and structure comparison of those fires burnt with high frequency;
d. Document / map / audit weed plumes that have occurred after past fires, and similarly for the weed plumes that will already be occurring after the 2006 Grose Valley fire;
e. Build upon current research results to further elucidate how the Grose Valley responded to the ‘94 fire. [CERMB, NPWS, BMCC & BMWHI via ARC Linkage Grant]
19. Initiate appropriate involvement of the broader community in research and particularly Aboriginal people for Aboriginal cultural heritage research, in all relevant research projects. [BMWHI, NPWS, BMCC]
20. Develop mechanisms to effectively and promptly communicate research outcomes to agencies, fire-fighters and communities, and for application of these to risk management planning and human resource planning and assessment during fires. [BFMC]
.
3. Review Processes and Public Communication
.
GOAL:
.
To ensure effectiveness of fire review and debriefing processes and their communication to the public by:
Communicating to the community the results of interagency review processesincluding an analysis of fire strategies and environmental impacts within major debriefs and review
Enabling greater community participation in major fire debriefs and fire reviews.
.
ACTIONS:
.
21 Urgent distribution of the section 44 debrief report to all participants in the forum. [RFS]
22 Greater provision for earlier feedback to and from the community after a major fire, regarding fire control strategies, prior to release of formal report. Also address what the barriers are to increasing community knowledge and what approaches are most effective. [RFS, BFMC]
23 Request the Coordinating Committee to revisit the s44 debrief policy and procedures and/or other appropriate mechanisms to develop an appropriate means for getting feedback from the community via a system that enables issues to be raised and feedback to be provided. The development of a policy and procedural framework for Incident Controllers may assist here. [NCC/NPWS, BMCS]
24 Undertake promotion and community education programs to familiarise the community with the framework that exists for debriefing processes and the arising information flows and decision-making processes. Incorporate this into existing Firewise program. [BFMC, RFS]
25 Encourage a culture of openness, learning and evidence-based decision-making, including understanding by volunteer fire fighters that criticism is of the process not of the implementer. [All organisations represented at forum]
26. Continue to undertake interpretation / education / media and fire-related Discovery activities. [NPWS]
.
4. Climate Change and Risk Mitigation
.
GOAL:
To prepare for the more extreme conditions associated with climate change, by addressing the policy and management implications for control strategies and landscape management.
.
ACTIONS:
27. Research priorities include:
Investigate efficacy of current risk mitigation in the Blue Mountains. [NPWS, CERMB]
Climate change impacts on hanging swamps.
Build understanding of underlying shifts in environmental conditions and their effects on fire occurrence and fire behaviour.
Implications of climate change for fire behaviour and invasive species. [CERMB, BMWHI & ARC Linkage project]
Investigate plant dispersal in relation to climate change, quantifying ecological processes and habitat requirements critical to species persistence and their ability to move to new habitats given climate change. [CERMB, BMWHI & ARC Linkage project]
28. The results of this Forum should be used to advocate and lead improved dialogue and action to address the key issues pertaining to climate change and start to influence policy change. [NCC, BMWHI, CERMB, BMCS, NPWS, RFS, BMCC]
29. Investigate opportunities for increased resourcing for risk mitigation and for bushfire behaviour research. [NPWS, RFS, CERMB, BMWHI]
30. Enhance the preparedness, detection and rapid fire response capacity of fire authorities in response to fire ignitions. [Fire authorities]
31. Deliver a presentation about this forum, at the May 2007 conference of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW on bushfire and climate change. [DEC, BMWHI, NCC; 31 May-1 June 2007]
.
5. Resourcing and Investment
.
GOAL:
Increase the availability of resources for fire-related research, planning and fire mitigation.
.
ACTIONS:
32. Formally approach the Environmental Trust to consider the allocation of Environmental Trust funds for use in fire related research including investigation of fire impacts. [NPWS]
33. Raise the needs and investigate the opportunities for increased commitment to rehabilitation following fire with the Catchment Management Authorities. [BFMC]
34. Allocation of additional resources for the BFMC to implement the recommendations in this document, particularly for actions resulting in strengthening risk management objectives. [BFMC members]
.
6. Risk Management Strategies for Multiple Outcomes
.
GOAL:
.
To develop effective fire risk management strategies for mitigation and suppression in large bushland areas through:
Evidence-based plans and strategies;
Ensuring that fire fighters in wilderness and other remote areas have adequate support and training for safe and effective implementation of fire control strategies.
.
ACTIONS:
.
35. Address the issue of risk management planning, including investigating use of corridors for hazard reductions as part of an integrated approach that allows for ecological considerations. [Land managers/NPWS]
36. Seek more funding for community involvement in Local Government Area fire management (i.e. liaison officer position for community engagement prior to release of plan), which will assist administration/enforcement of regulatory processes. [BMCC]
37. Workshops held to provide further information regarding fire suppression in remote/wilderness areas, and BFMC to list potential contractors that could be eligible for such ecologically sound, operational training in fire control strategies for remote/wilderness areas including back-burning and bulldozer lines. [BFMC, NPWS]
.
7. RAFT Capacity
.
GOAL:
.
To improve RAFT (Remote Area Firefigfting Team) capacity to deal effectively with most remote ignitions.
.
ACTIONS:
.
38. Facilitate and support more RFS people to participate in RAFT [RFS]
39. Review and combine NPWS and RFS RAFT policy and procedures, including consideration for nighttime RAFT deployment [NPWS, RFS].
40. Address pre-deployment capacity in context of return on investment i.e. economically model across landscape to see how it meets needs and model against suppression costs [NPWS, RFS].
.
8. Fire Detection Technologies
.
GOAL:
.
To explore the potential of emerging technologies for higher efficiency in fire detection.
.
ACTIONS:
.
41. Consider the new technologies where appropriate and consider the benefits of Blue Mountains piloting new technologies for broad-scale remote surveillance, and evaluate cost effectiveness. [BF Coordinating Committee and NPWS]
.
9. Aerial Attack
.
GOAL:
.
Continue to optimise effectiveness of aerial attack strategies and operations.
.
ACTIONS:
.
42. Practically strengthen record keeping during operations to assist analysis by identifying a system that is capable of catching data in real-time. [DBFMA, BFCC]
43. Identify and use some simple decision rules for aircraft deployment to maximise aircraft cost-effectiveness. [BFMC]
.
10. Role of the Media
.
GOAL:
.
To have better processes in place to ensure accurate presentation of fire incident information through the media.
.
ACTIONS:
.
44. Work with the tourism industry to develop their risk management strategy. [BFMC]
45. Before/during a fire, convey explanations of what control strategies and why, to inform community. [BFMC]
46. Undertake pre-season briefs to journalists; discourage use of sensitised language (e.g. National Parks destroyed, trashed, destruction and horror, fire hell etc). [District Committee, RFS, NPWS, BFMC]
47. Engage local media in communicating exactly which areas are out of bounds, so they people don’t stop coming to remaining open areas. [BFMC]
.
11. Post Fire Recovery
.
GOAL:
.
To adequately fund ecological restoration after a large wildfire.
.
ACTIONS:
.
48. Approach the Environmental Trust regarding the establishment of a delineated fund (possibly from Trust Funds) to support ecological restoration which could be needed for several years post-fire and ensure initiative is appropriately linked to Section 44 state level response and also the SCA for post fire ecological funding to protect catchment values. [NPWS]
49. Ensure a strategic approach to site rehabilitation e.g. by placing an emphasis on rehabilitation of weedy sites that are a threat to natural values downstream. [Land managers]
50. NPWS to consider establishing a new dedicated staff position to coordinate and manage volunteers undertaking rehabilitation projects and activities within the Blue Mountains region of DEC. [NPWS]
.
This Forum was a Farce
.
None of these 50 Actions has been acted upon nor implemented since 2007; now five years ago.
.
The entire forum process was a farce from the outset. It only served to allow those responsible to escape accountability and responsibility for incompetence and mass bush arson without reputational blemish.
.
RFS Incident Controller, Mal Cronstedt, relocated himself back to West Australia (Fire & Emergency Services Authority), where he was from. NPWS Blue Mountains Manager, Richard Kindswood, went on extended leave. RFS Commissioner, Phil Koperberg, was seconded by the NSW Labor Party to become Minister for Blue Mountains (i.e. promoted). Bob Debus was seconded by the Federal Labor Party to become Federal Member for Macquarie (i.e. promoted). Blue Mountains Councillor Chris van der Kley stayed on as Chair of the Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee.
.
Blue Mountains Bushfire Fighting practice, strategy, management, culture remains ‘RFS Business-as-usual’ status and similarly ill-equipped for the next bushfire catastrophe.
.
No lessons were learnt. More tragically, no lessons want to be learnt.
.
RFS: …’we know what we are doing and how dare anyone criticise us and our hard working bushfire fighting volunteers!
How it all started...as a small ignition ten days prior.
[3] ‘Grose Valley Fire Forum Report – FINAL (BMWHI 20070402).pdf‘, >[Read Report] (4.2 mb)
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[4] Rural Fire Service’s official report of Grose Valley Bushfires, report by Incident Controller Mal Cronstedt, Rural Fire Service, 20070208, >’Lawsons Long Alley Section 44 Report‘
[6] ‘Blue Mountains World Heritage’, by Alex Colley (text) and Henry Gold (photography), published by The Colong Foundation for Wilderness, 2004, Foreward: “This book celebrates one of the greatest achievements of the Australian conservation movement – the creation of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area” ~ Bob Carr, Premier of New South Wales, March 2004. ^http://www.colongwilderness.org.au/BMWH_book/BMWH_book.htm, ^http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/917
‘Everyone has been to the lookouts. Many have been to the Blue Gum Forest, deep in the valley – but few know the remote and hiden recesses of the labyrinth beyond. Here, an hour or two from Sydney, is a very wild place.
The Grose has escaped development. There have been schemes for roads, railways, dams, mines and forestry (Ed: ‘logging’), but the bulldozers have been kept out. Instead, the valley became the ‘Cradle of Conservation’ in New South Wales when it was reserved from sale in 1875 – an event magnificently reinforced in 1931 when a group of bushwalkers were moved to save Blue Gum Forest from the axe.
This is story of the whole Grose Wilderness, and of the Blue Gum Forest in particular. It is the story of people who have visited the wilderness: Aborigines, explorers, engineers, miners, track-builders, bushwalkers, conyoners, climbers…those who have loved it, and those who have threatened it.’
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[8] ‘Battle for the Bush: The Blue Mountains, the Australian Alps and the origins of the wilderness movement‘, book by Geoff Mosley, 1999, published by Envirobook in conjunction with The Colong Foundation for Wilderness Limited. ^http://themountainjournal.wordpress.com/interviews-profiles/geoff-mosley/
This article by the Editor was first published as a letter entitled ‘Premises at Risk’ in the Blue Mountains Gazette 20051116.
Flogging the bush for housing, undefendable in the event of a bushfire
Stuarts Road, Katoomba – a house has since been approved by Council and subsequently built on this site, killing the wildlife habitat in the process.
(Photo by Editor 20070922, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge)
.
Part and parcel of choosing to live in the Blue Mountains is that, by being on ridgelines surrounded by Eucalypt forests, many properties are inherently exposed to bushfire threat. Whether bushfires be caused by lightning (rarely), accidentally by people, RFS-prescribed, or by arson (usually); bushfire risk management is a community responsibility – not just the lot of Rural Fire Service volunteers.
The arson threat aside,
“residents, land owners and land managers of the Blue Mountains need to accept that they are in a bushfire prone area and their properties may be subject to ember attack when threatened by bushfire.”
[Blue Mountains Conservation Society Bushfire Policy].
.
To dispel a rural myth, not all native habitats recover from bushfire. Certain species exist only in ecosystems that are never burnt. Post-bushfire regrowth often sporns dominant species like Eucalypt and Acacia, whereas original biodiversity may take centuries to recover. Bushfire is often a precursor to infestations of grass and weeds, and if followed by intense
rain, also a catalyst for eroding irreplaceable native soils.
The antique premise ‘hazard reduction’ has become spin for pre-emptive burning that is prone to escaping out of control and so itself a hazard.
Slashing and bulldozing under the premise of ‘Asset Protection Zone’ is also proving ineffective against ember attack and wildfire. But like arson, the Hazard Reduction and APZ theories contribute to the net loss of important habitat.
Proven effective and sustainable is early detection & response to spot fires.
Most artificial fires start on developed land, so this is where control measures should be focused – maintenance of gardens and guttering, retrofitting houses with materials and defences to resist fire, planting fire-retardant hedging around houses and implementing countermeasures recommended by Australian Standard 3959.
The future of sustainable bushfire risk management starts by preventing houses being built where they cannot be safely protected from bushfires.
Effective ‘hazard reduction’ is investigating and catching the arsonists.
The tree is gone. The developers have got their way.
18th January 2012
^http://savethetree.org/
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The Faulconbridge Tree – stood before humans, killed by them
(Photo by Editor 20111226, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge, then click again to enlarge again)
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They May Rail at this Life
.
They may rail at this life — from the hour I began it
I found it a life full of kindness and bliss;
And, until they can show me some happier planet,
More social and bright, I’ll content me with this.
As long as the world has such lips and such eyes
As before me this moment enraptured I see,
They may say what they will of their orbs in the skies,
But this earth is the planet for you, love, and me.
In Mercury’s star, where each moment can bring them
New sunshine and wit from the fountain on high,
Though the nymphs may have livelier poets to sing them,
They’ve none, even there, more enamour’d than I.
And, as long as this harp can be waken’d to love,
And that eye its divine inspiration shall be,
They may talk as they will of their Edens above,
But this earth is the planet for you, love, and me.
In that star of the west, by whose shadowy splendour,
At twilight so often we’ve roam’d through the dew,
There are maidens, perhaps, who have bosoms as tender,
And look, in their twilights, as lovely as you.
But though they were even more bright than the queen
Of that Isle they inhabit in heaven’s blue sea,
As I never those fair young celestials have seen,
Why — this earth is the planet for you, love, and me.
As for those chilly orbs on the verge of creation,
Where sunshine and smiles must be equally rare,
Did they want a supply of cold hearts for that station,
Heaven knows we have plenty on earth we could spare,
Oh! think what a world we should have of it here,
If the haters of peace, of affection and glee,
Were to fly up to Saturn’s comfortless sphere,
And leave earth to such spirits as you, love, and me.
~ Thomas Moore
.
A brief history on the fight to save the forest elder
.
August 1985
This native Scribbly Gum tree was listed on the Blue Mountains Council’s Register of Significant Trees. .
2010
A Development Application for two dwellings was submitted to council. This development would require the removal of the “Significant Tree” .
2010
Numerous residents submitted objections to the Development Application
.
June 2011
Consent to develop refused by Blue Mountains City Council (unanimous) .
The owners appealed against the decision. .
September 2011
The case was heard by The Land & Environment Court. Specialists gave conflicting reports on the health and viability of the tree. [Ed: The tree is labelled by the NSW Land and Environment Court as “The Hybrid” – a form of half caste tree]. In the interim findings, the Acting Senior Commissioner agreed that the tree could be removed. A final ruling on the case will be made after the applicants have submitted a complying landscape plan.
.
October 2011 onwards
Local residents decided to attempt to save the tree. We are not against development of the site. However we feel that the current proposal is an overdevelopment of the site. Ideally we would like to reach a compromise where the tree can be retained.
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January 2012
The tree is killed. [Ed: What is the bet the developers have the two dwellings up for sale in a year’s time, confirming it was all about land grab profiteering from the bush?]
The tree’s fate determined by ‘Darkside Ecologists’
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The Court Case: ‘Barrett and ors v Blue Mountains City Council‘ (Decided 13 October 2011)
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‘The Hybrid‘ – findings:
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Paragraph 20:
“..Dr Daniel McDonald, an ecologist and Mr Frederick Janes, an arborist provided evidence for the applicant.”
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Paragraph 42:
” The 2008 (Picus Sonic Tomograph) test that there was a considerable percentage of internal decay and recommended that the tree be removed if the site was to be developed. The 2010 test concluded that there is very little sound wood remaining in the base of the tree due to the large percentage of decay in the lower truck area. Also, it was noted that (the) tree has many defects from decay to the base in at least two of the three main trunk of the tree; one which is being supported by an adjoining tree. The report also described the tree as being mature to over mature and requiring susbstantial remedial care and only being suitable for retention in teh short term. the recommendation of the 2010 report was the tree be removed (Ed: ‘killed’) and replaced with another long living Eucalypt species.”
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Council’s representative ecologist, arborist and landscape designer, Ms Susan Hobley, did not concur with the findings of both Tomograph tests.
Paragraph 45:
“In her opinion (Ms Hobley), the tree is a healthy, mature specimen of very large dimensions. It has a full crown with no signs of major dieback. Its structural condition is considered good for such a large old tree, and in the context of this site; it still has primary lateral branches and the branch losses that have occurred, in terms of secondary and tertiary branches; are typical of the attrition that occurs dues to intra-canopy competition associated with tree growth and development.
Its major branch unions appear healthy and structurally sound. While one branch is interacting with a nearby tree, the situation needs to be monitored but the failure zone for this branch is the low use landscape zone of the nature strip.
Ms Hobley states that old trees of this genus typically contain large cavities and this does not mean they are likely to fall over and die in the near future. Ms Hobley is also of the opinion that it may be possible for a dwelling to be constructed outside the area of the canopy or even under the canopy, subject to specific engineering requirements to protect the root system and monitoring of the condition of the Hybrid.”
Based on the decision of the Acting Senior Commissioner of the NSW Land and Environment Court, G. T. Brown, the tree was condemned and consequently killed on 18th January 2012.
The following photo below of the trunk of the tree shows that less than 10% decay had occurred in the tree. The tree otherwise shows no signed of decay and is healthy and could have lived for many more decades. This contradicts the ecologist Dr Daniel McDonald’s view that the tree had ” considerable percentage of internal decay”.
Chainsaw Post MortumNormal internal decay but less than 10%, meaning the tree was in fact healthy and had many years of growth left in it
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Ed: The defending ecologist, Ms Hobley was right. This Scribbly Gum was indeed healthy and structurally sound. Small internal cavities as detected by the tomograph, are completely normal characteristic of this genus. The tree need not have been killed.
The opinion by the developer’s ecologist and arborist were wrong, exaggerated and clearly biased in favour of the wishes of the developer to kill the tree in order that the developer may present a case for safety to the Court and so build the two dwellings they want. This case is a classic recurring example of darkside ecologists, whose prefession one would assume is to respect and conserve ecology, instead being used for the dark destructive cause of development.
There more money to be made from Darkside Ecology, since developers have the money to develop and so paying biased ecologists and arborists to condemn trees as unsafe, decayed and diseased is such a minor cost in the overall cost of the development. ‘Darkside ecologists‘ typically also dismiss the value of rare and treatened native vegetation situated on a bushland site, justifying the presence of other rare and threatened examples of that same vegetation nearby. Such a dismissive attitude fails to respect the cumulative impacts of destruction one site at a time, one tree at a time.
One of the few remaining clusters of mature Blue Mountains Ash (Eucalytus oreades)
endemic to the Upper Blue Mountains
[They are listed on BMCC’s Significant Tree Register
..including the dozen or so killed to widen the highway]
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What a steaming crock Blue Mountains Council’s (BMCC) Significant Tree Register is!
The 73 listed trees or listed tree communities on BMCC’s register listed as ‘significant‘ means exactly what? ‘BMCC significant’ is a lying euphemism for ‘big‘ and ‘expendable‘, confirmed by the fact that every time anyone wants to kill one of the listed trees, they can.
The ‘Register‘ should be renamed a ‘Remnant‘, reflecting the reducing remnancy of the Blue Mountains forests under the control of BMCC.
And many trees on the Register are indeed exotic, if not weeds. For instance, listed tree #3 is an exotic Rhododendron, #18 is an exotic cherry tree, #28 is a Radiata Pine – a listed environmental weed in another department of BMCC.
BMCC’s Significant Tree Register?
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BMCC’s Significant Tree Register dates back to 1988, probably because of Australia’s bicentennial heritage goodwill of that year, and the likelihood of BMCC getting grant recognition for its register. That would have been a purely political froth event of no substance nor perpetuity.
‘This Development Control Plan has been prepared pursuant to Council’s resolution of 17th November, 1987 and was adopted on 21st June, 1988. The Plan encompasses the Register of Significant Trees, established in 1984. (BMCC File 7717C-4)…This Development Control Plan is to apply to all land within the boundaries of the City of the Blue Mountains.’
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Objectives of Significant Tree Register
. The purpose of this Development Control Plan is to:
(a) identify and protect those trees listed on the Register;
(b) promote greater public awareness of the existence of the Register, and the individual items listed;
(c) ensure existing and, importantly, prospective land owners, are made aware of the Significant Trees which may be located on their property; and
(d) ensure correct on-going care and maintenance of those trees listed, through the recommendations included with the significant tree register.’
What disingenuous lying crap!
(a) None of the listed trees is afforded any legal protection. Worse, BMCC does not raise a finger to expend effort or cost to challenge anyone wishing to kill any of the listed trees.
(b) Since 1988, BMCC has done diddly squat to promote any public awareness of either its register or any of its listed trees. Yet, BMCC certainly has killed a few of them. The last time a tree was added to the register was 1991, reflecting the three year extent of Council’s interest, memory and planning,
(c) see (a)
(d) I challenge BMCC to present any record of any “on-going care and maintenance of those trees listed”. Obviously this object clause was drafted by a naive external consultant.
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Listed Trees – Cases in Point
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#5 Blue Mountains Ash
(Eucalyptus oreades)
(Opposite 252 Old Bathurst Rd. Katoomba Opposite Lot 2 DP707, listed 6.5.84, since chainsawed)
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#29 Smooth Barked Apple, Red Gum
(Angophora costata)
(Opposite 363 Great Western Highway, Bullaburra, opposite Lot 173, DP13407, Listed 17.7.85,
condemned by the Roads & Traffic Authority in September 2008 to widen the highway into a 4 laned Trucking Expressway)
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New South Wales Government sentence imposed upon this Angophora:
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“The Angophora (Sydney red gum) tree: the large tree is situated to the east of Boronia Road.
To retain the Angophora tree the highway would have to be widened either towards the railway line or the private properties. In both cases, land would have to be acquired, either from RailCorp or private land owners. The tree’s overhanging branches would have to be trimmed and there would be construction activities around the tree.
Arborist advice is that the consequent loss of tree roots and the pruning would instigate the decline of the tree. Angophora are highly sensitive to construction impacts such as changes to draining patterns and soil compaction. For road construction and safety reasons the tree will have to be removed.”
[Source: ‘Great Western Highway Upgrade – Community Update September 2008, ‘Bullaburra East – Ridge Street, Lawson to Genevieve Road Bullaburra, by Roads and Traffic Authority]
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Ed: Well, humans can find ways of justifying anything when it suits them – ecological destruction, genocide, wars, anything. Governments and road making organisations like the RTA are collectives of people with mandates that are self-serving.
The RTA (since rebranded) does not have to widen the highway through Bullaburra. It is only doing so to encourage greater truck and car traffic and so that such road traffic can flow faster. Bigger and more roads is the mandate for this road maker. The tradition of slowing down through local towns and villages has been dismissed. Utilitarian convenience is supplanting local rights and values. Other options have been deliberately ignored such as upgrading rail freight logistics and public transport (the rail runs adjacent to and follows the same route as this highway). Land acquistion is an easy process for the RTA. It’s management is just choosing not to take this option because it sees no value in the tree nor in Bullaburra’s amenity.
The tree’s overhanging branches would not have to be trimmed and construction activities could be well away from the tree, if the RTA management so choosed.
The RTA’s standard justification “safety reasons” had to be the clincher. the RTA relies on the ‘safety justification’ as its fallback to get its way, because it has convinced that no-one can reasonably challenge such a justification. That the M4 Motorway with its six lanes has become one of the most deadly RTA roads in New South Wales does not seem to trouble the RTA sufficiently to invest in making the M4 safer.The RTA is hypocritical about road safety.
The value of encouraging faster and bigger trucks and more cars to race through Bullaburra at 80+kph is more important to it than conserving some tree. That this particular tree has been dated by a specialist arborist as being older than300 years and so would have stood when the Three Explorers first crossed the Blue Mountains in 1813, is dismissed as worthless by the RTA and the New South Wales Government. Labor and Liberal are no different in this world view of ‘progress’. Bullaburra is set to be transformed into a Blaxland with bigger trucks racing through it. Bullaburra will become even more divided that what it is now.
If this tree were a war cemetery, there is no question that the cemetery value would be respected and a trucking expressway would not be carved through it.
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Les Wielinga
NSW Roads and Traffic Authority Chief (2006-2012)
Executioner of Bullaburra’s Angophora
and Strategic Planner of the Trucking Expressway juggernaut through the Blue Mountains
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#33 Scribbly Gum
(Eucalyptus sclerophylla/Eucalyptus piperita hybrid)
(Cnr St Georges Cres. & Adeline St. Faulconbridge, Lot 5 DP8526 , Listed 24.8.85,
condemned in Sep 2011 for selfish dual occupancy housing development)
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Blue Mountains Council arborist has condemned the tree as having ‘extensive decay’.
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Trial by Ordeal?
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Local residents protesting to save the tree, believe this native Scribbly Gum to be quite healthy and that the arborist’s so-called ‘decay‘ is in fact a natural fungus. The residents believe that Council’s arborist’s assessment has incorrectly condemned the tree and that only after the tree trunk is chainsawed will the proof of the tree’s health be revealed.
It will be akin to being a Medieval Trial by Ordeal imposed on those suspected of being a witch. An example is where a priest would demand a suspect to place his hand in the boiling water. If after three days, God had not healed his wounds, the suspect was guilty of the crime.
In the case of this Scribbly Gum, if after chainsawing it, the trunk shows no signs of internal decay, then it can be confirmed as having being healthy, but by then it will be dead.
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The Council’s assessment:
“It should also be noted that the significant tree has been assessed as not being viable for retention in any case as the result of extensive decay throughout the trunk. This matter isdiscussed in more detail in the body of the report.”
[Source: Blue Mountain Council, Business Paper, Using Land for Living Item 20, Ordinary Meeting, 20110628, Development Application No. X/443/2010 for a detached dual occupancyconsisting of a singe storey dwelling and a two storey dwelling on Lot 5 SEC. 2 DP 8526, 47 St Georges Crescent, Faulconbridge, File No: F06738 – X/443/2010 – 11/85977, Clause 44, p.214]
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#61 Blue Mountains Ash
(Eucalyptus oreades – once was a ridgetop forest)
(Railway Reserve opposite Katoomba Hospital, Listed 6.11.89,
half the trees chainsawed in 2008 to widen the highway into a Trucking Expressway.
What’s left is a token coppice so that the RTA can claim on paper that it respected the ‘significant’ status.)
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Relevance and future of the Significant Tree Register
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In November 2011, Blue Mountains Councillor Janet Mays presented a Notice of Motion to Council:
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“That the Council receives a report detailing the role and relevance of Council’s Significant Tree Register, including the cost of both managing and maintaining that Register.”
Background
The recent decision by the Land & Environment Court, to uphold an appeal by the applicants at 47 St Georges Crescent, Faulconbridge, includes permission to remove a tree that is listedon Council’s Significant Tree Register that decision brings into question the relevance of this Register.
The report should outline the role and relevance of the Register in providing decision-making capability to Council’s Planning Officers. The role and relevance of the Register should then be considered in terms of benefits and cost of maintaining this Register. Dependant on the benefits and the costs, the future utility of the Register should also be discussed.”
[Source: Blue Mountains Council, Business Paper, Notices of Motion, Item 26, Ordinary Meeting, 20111122, Subject: Council’s Significant Tree Register, File No: F06745 – 11/178956, p.173]
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Ed: Meanwhile, anthropocentric prejudice sees the National Trust of Australia (an organisation supposedly committed to promoting and conserving Australia’s indigenous, natural and historic heritage) recognise people as ‘National Living Treasures’. No thought is given to Australian native trees, many which have stood longer than any colonist set foot on Australian soil. Surely, a 300+ year old native tree has more claim to being a national living treasure.
On 4 March 2012, two days ago, we hear that Queensland mining magnate Clive Palmer has been named a National Living Treasure. Palmer has made is fortune exploiting Australia’s landscape for his personal gain. Clearly, Australian Governments continued to be dominated by 20th Century Baby Boomer exploitative world views.
"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."
Queenstown Moonscape Tours – once was temperate rainforest
[Source: ^http://www.smh.com.au/environment/tasmania-kicks-off-duck-hunting-20090305-8pdc.html]
[Source: ^http://www.aact.org.au/ducks.htm]
[Source: Gourmet Farmer 6th October, Flinders Island, Series 2, Episode 7, SBS Television]
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Bennetts Wallaby
Native to Tasmania and surrounding islands such as Flinders Island
[Source: ^http://www.davidcook.com.au/images/images_mammals/bennetts_wallaby.jpg]
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This photo is taken from the main road down to Cockle Creek, at the start of
See the copper flows in the once pristine Queen and King Rivers
If the copper doesn’t kill you, then the cadmium, lead, cobalt, silver or chromium will.
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Photo taken by Editor while driving along the Tasman Highway, Tasmania 20110927, free in public domain
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Wilfred Batty of Mawbanna, Tasmania, with the last Tasmanian Tiger known to have been shot in the wild.
He shot the tiger in May, 1930 after it was discovered in his hen house.
Source: State Library of Tasmania eHeritage
