Posts Tagged ‘Blue Mountains wildlife’

The Blue Mountains have native wildlife?

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper on page 12 of 10th August 2011, written by Rose and Brett Everingham of Lapstone, Blue Mountains, Australia.

‘Native Wildlife Alert’

‘On the evening of Tuesday July 29 a beautiful Echidna was unfortunately hit by a car outside our house.

We would like to publicly thank the three lovely young gentlemen who stopped to assist us as we moved it off the road, and then rang WIRES.

It was a particularly upsetting experience, no one wants to see any creature hit by a car, especially our native wildlife. The young gentleman who hit the Echidna was understandably distressed, as it is not something you would usually expect to see, and we reassured him that it was simply an accident.

It is a timely reminder though to take care when driving at night, particularly on Governors Drive which is often used as a race track for some drivers. Unfortunately the Echidna could not be saved. Once again a thanks to the young gentleman who stayed with my husband and son whilst they buried it.

Whilst a sad experience, it brought relief to know that Lapstone still has such beautiful native wildlife existing amongst us in the bush.’
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Editor’s Comments:

1. The killing of a native echidna by a driver of a car is an horrific tragedy for the echidna and its likely dependent mate and offspring, which were not mentioned. Each killing of adult native wildlife harms the viability of the local population of that species in the area.

2. Rose and Brett are right to have done what they did and it is valuable to the local community that Rose has taken the trouble to share this tragic event via her letter in the local paper.

3. The cause of the Echidna’s death was that the car driver was driving too fast to prevent killing it on the road. Most drivers drive too fast and are not competently trained to drive for the conditions.

It could have been a child killed while running on to the road. I am sure the local paper would have had more than allowing Rose’s letter, which reflects our culture that human life holds selfishly somehow higher values than wildlife. One may call this ‘speciesism’, a term few are aware.

4. Echidna habitat was there many thousands of years before European colonists destroyed its environment and selfishly carved a road through its habitat, with no care for any native wildlife values.

5. Such roads as Governors Drive, whether constructed by local Blue Mountains Council or larger ones by the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA), not only destroy native vegetation and wildlife habitat in their construction, as well as allowing sediment pollution of downhill watercourses; no respect is paid to the inevitable road death consequences caused by vehicles using the road. The underlying reason is that human values for wildlife are so low across the community that there is hardly any call for wildlife protection from the threats of road making and its consequential traffic menace. Worse is that perverted attitudes toward wildlife and deviant behaviour prevail to the extent that the killing of wildlife on our roads is disparagingly dismissed as ‘roadkill’. If the same term were applied to pedestrian deaths on our roads, there would be an uproar by extreme humanists.

6. No attempt is made by road builders (local council or the RTA) to facilitate separation of ground dwelling native wildlife from the inevitable risk of death from introduced road traffic. Some roads across Australia have wildlife fencing to prevent native animals such as wallabies, wombat and Echidnas from accessing the road. Others factor wildlife corridors into the design of roads that destroy wildlife habitat. It is an indictment on both the Blue Mountains Council and the RTA that there are no wildlife fences or wildlife corridors throughout the Blue Mountains.

7. That Rose wrote “it is not something you would usually expect to see” is a sad indictment on the demise of wildlife populations across the Blue Mountains since colonial conquest, such that now people living in the Blue Mountains do not expect to see wildlife any longer. Villages like Lapstone have become so urbanised that they are all but outer suburbs of Sydney. The natural bush environment has been lost to a sterile parkland to suit the needs of humans. The values of native wildlife and their habitat continue to be ignored by humans who live and drive through the Blue Mountains and by custodial government authorities – Blue Mountains Council, NSW Department of Environment (etc), Australian Department of Environment (etc).

Yet, despite the arrogant disregard for wildlife values across the Blue Mountains, especially at the human interface, other regions take a more proactive view, such as in Sydney’s Northern Beaches region.

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Uncontrolled speeding on Australian roads

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‘Wallaby becomes roadkill after fence holed’

by Brenton Cherry, 20110112, Many Daily, ^http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/wallaby-becomes-roadkill-after-fence-holed/

Eira Battaglia, Mandy Beaumont, Niamh Kenny,

Cassie Thompson and Elvira Lanham at the damaged fence.

(Photo by Virginia Young)

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‘A hole has been cut in the wildlife-proof fence along Wakehurst Parkway at Oxford Falls, leading to at least one wallaby being killed. The death – discovered by Jacqui Marlow from the Northern Beaches Roadkill Prevention Group – was the first along the stretch of road since the fence was installed.

“Why would anyone cut a hole in the fence?” she said. “I found the hole after seeing a dead wallaby in the fence area.

“It’s the first one killed in the fence area since it was installed, which shows that it works.”

Ms Marlow said she had become disenchanted by the actions of some people.

“At the moment my opinion of humans is not very good, especially when it comes to their attitude to nature,” she said. “I’m really tired of dealing with it, the deaths are starting to get me down.”

Fellow group member Eira Battaglia said now more than ever motorists had to be aware of wildlife on our roads.

“Wallabies are around after the recent burn-off,” she said.

“Eight have been killed in the past week so please drive carefully, especially at dusk when the wallabies may be out searching for food.”

A spokesman for the RTA said a maintenance crew would permanently fix the hole as soon as possible. “A temporary repair has already been carried out,” he said.

RTA representatives yesterday met with the roadkill prevention group for a tour of local hot spots and potential sites for additional fauna fencing.’

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‘Peering down the corridor’

Source: ^http://www.coolmelbourne.org/articles/2009/07/peering-down-the-corridor/

Wildlife Corridors do exist and are effective where human communities

care enough to insist on them.

But don’t expect road designers and engineers in Australia to suggest the concept.

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‘Conservationists have long recognised the value of using wildlife corridors to connect wilderness areas, and there is mounting evidence to show that these corridors help many species, from the big to the small to the airborne to the aquatic.

But now ‘megacorridors’ are taking the wildlife corridor concept to a whole new level. Australia’s Great Eastern Ranges Initiative (GERI) is Australia’s answer to the megacorridor.

Aiming to create a 2800km wilderness megacorridor from North Queensland to Victoria, the initiative is about halfway towards completion of the first and most critical stage.saving-wilderness-geri-map-new-scientist.jpg

It is an extremely important move in the conservation of Australia’s biodiversity: after more than 200 years of development, the landscape of eastern Australia has changed significantly.

Fences, roads, dams, industrial and agricultural lands, powerlines, towns and cities cut across the country, isolating natural areas which have become ‘islands’ on which plants and animals have become isolated.

This means that many ecosystems have been fragmented, that the landscape’s capacity to maintain our unique plants, animals and Aboriginal cultural heritage has been reduced. It also means that remaining ecosystems are finding it harder to filter and clean our air, maintain the health of our soils, and produce unpolluted fresh water for the 93% of the Australian population that lives along Australia’s eastern seaboard.

This is no quick fix project however: climate change and the migration of human populations means it could take as long as 100 years before the project’s success can be measured.’

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‘Wildlife corridor from far south to far north’

by Mat Churchill, 20100716, ^ http://www.tourismportdouglas.com.au/Wildlife-corridor-from-far-south-to-far.4317.0.html

The Great Eastern Ranges Initiative, a proposed 2,800km long conservation corridor

Patches of state and national parks around the country just aren’t sufficient to protect Australia’s native plants and animals.

According to a report commissioned by the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water, a wildlife corridor 2,800km long stretching from Melbourne to the Atherton Tablelands would allow species to migrate when their habitat changes due to climate change.

”One of the impacts of climate change is that species will have to move around to find suitable habitat resources. We need to make the whole landscape more biodiversity friendly.” said Brendan Mackey, an environmental scientist who wrote the report.

Dubbed the Great Eastern Ranges Initiative, the corridor would be made up of public and privately owned land.

Ian Pulsford, from the Department of Climate Change and Water, said areas earmarked to become part of the corridor would see a person acting as a broker visit the private landholder to discuss the program.

”The corridor is voluntary but there has been a good response from private landholders, and there are incentives to make your land part of the conservation area,” said Mr Pulsford.

The corridor concept is a new way of thinking when it comes to conservation. And a change in the way we do things in Australia is clearly needed when nearly half of the world’s mammal extinctions in the last 200 years have happened here, along with 61 species of flowering plants among others. The world’s current extinction rate is 1,000 higher than nature intended.

”The conventional thinking is wait until things are really bad and then desperately try to save things at the last minute,” said Professor Mackey.

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In its annual misguided winter ritual, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (Wildlife Service), aided and abetted by the Rural Fire Service has deliberately setting fire to remote bushland across The Blue Mountains World Heritage Area – a ‘natural planet asset’ of which the Wildlife Service is international custodian.

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Linden Ridge HR Ops (May 2011)

On Wednesday afternoon 18th May 2011, the aerial incendiary bombing commenced at Linden Ridge and extended down to the Grose River inside the Blue Mountains National Park (within designated wilderness within the World Heritage Area). Bushfire management euphemistically call it ‘hazard reduction‘ (HR) ; rejecting any notion that bushland habitat is a natural asset, and instead demonising it as a ‘hazard’.

Massif Ridge HR Ops (May 2010)

The Linden Ridge ‘ops’ follows an almost identical HR ‘ops’ conducted the same time last year on 12 May 2010 in which aerial incendiary ‘ops’ commenced around Massif Ridge some 12 kilometres south of the town of Woodford in wild inaccessible forested area of the World Heritage Area. Some 2500 hectares of high conservation habitat bushland in a protected wilderness area called the ‘Blue Labyrinth’ was indiscriminately incinerated – ridgetops, gullies, everything. Refer to previous article on this website: >’National Parks burning biodiversity‘.

The same Blue Mountains National Park has been targeted by the same aerial incendiary bombing by the same Wildlife Service. Both the operations were carried out under the orders of the Blue Mountains regional manager, Geoff Luscombe.

This is reducing the ‘hazard’

Click photo to enlarge, then click again to enlarge again and look for anything living.

After a year look for the animals.

After two years look for the animals….

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Gross Valley Defacto HR Ops (Nov 2006)

Both the above HR Ops follow the massive conflagration of November 2006, infamously recalled across the Blue Mountains community as ‘The Grose Fire‘. Two abandoned lightning strikes coupled with HR Ops along the Hartley Vale Road and escaping backburns coalesced and incinerated an estimated 14,070 hectares of the Grose Valley and adjoining ridge lands, much of which is designated wilderness. Many consider the actions of the bushfire management response in hindsight to have been a defacto hazard reduction burn. With such an effective elimination of the natural ‘hazard’ that year, as well as the public outrage, HR Ops went quite for four years.

How many animals native to this beautiful Grose Valley suffered an horrific burning death?

How many of their kind have now perished forever from the Grose?

…ask your Wildlife Service at Blackheath!

Charles Darwin in 1836 counted platypus in the area.

The perverted rationalisation by bushfire lighting theorists who have infiltrated the Wildlife Service is that the natural bushland, forests and swamps of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area are perceived not as a valuable natural asset, but as a world ‘hazard’ area to be feared and ‘to be burned in case they burn‘.

These same bushfire lighting theorists have effectively infiltrated, appeased and silenced local conservation groups such as the otherwise very vocal Blue Mountains Conservation Society, the National Parks Association of New South Wales and the umbrella conservation group the New South Wales Conservation Council.

The local conservation movement’s complicity to sanction explicit broadscale ecological harm is a disgraceful and ignoble abandonment of cherished core values, and a breach of duty to faithful environmental membership.

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Broadscale indiscriminate ‘HR’ is no different to wildfire or bush arson

The Linden Ridge and Massif Ridge HR Ops were approved and executed by government in the name of ‘hazard reduction’ – to reduce the available ‘fuel’ (native vegetation) for potential future wildfires or bush arson. In both cases, the massive broadscale natural areas burnt were not careful mosaic low intensity burning around houses. This was broadscale indiscriminate fire bombing of remote natural bushland many miles from human settlement. How can the deliberate setting alight of bushland where no fire exists, where no human settlement requires protection from the risk of wildfire be construed but anything other than ‘government-sanctioned bush-arson‘?

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The ‘Ecological Burn’ Myth

When bushfire management can contrive no other excuse for setting fire to native vegetation, such as when that vegetation is many miles away from human settlement and so poses no direct threat, out comes the concocted theory of the ‘ecological burn’. The ‘ecological burn’ theory starts with the premise that because humans have observed that the Australian bush ‘grows back’ (eventually) after a bushfire, it may be concluded that the Australian bush can tolerate bushfires. This hypothesis relies on evidence that selected species of Australian germinate after smoke and fire and the example of epicormic growth of many Eucalypts after fire.

The first deductive fallacy of this theory is that all the Australian bush is bushfire tolerant. This deduction is then extended by unsupported assumption that since the Australian bush is bushfire-tolerant, bushfire must be an integral natural process to which the Australian bush has become adapted to bushfire. The assumption is then extrapolated to assert that bushfire is indeed beneficial to the Australian bush. The assumption is then stretched even further to conclude that without bushfire the Australian bush will be adversely affected. The ecological burn theory then prescribes that by burning the Australian bush, whether by natural or unnatural means, the biodiversity of the Australian bush will be improved.

The deductive fallacy goes further, to suit the motives of the fire-lighters. The outrageous generalisation is made that all the Australian bush must be burnt at some stage for its own ecological benefit. ‘So go forth and burn it. The bush will grow back. It will do it good.’

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The perverted irrational logic that Australia’s native vegetation has adapted to recover from fire, is akin to claiming the human body is adapted to recover from injury such as burns. A wound may heal but no-one seeks to be injured in the first place. And not all wounds heal. A third degree burn to more than 50% of a human body is almost a certain death sentence. What percentage of a wild animal’s body can be burnt and the animal still survive? That’s a perverted question for the fire-lighters.

Broadscale hazard reduction is not mosaic patch-work fire. It is not creating a small scale asset protection zone around the immediate boundary of a human settlement. It is wholesale bush arson that is driving local extinctions. Ever wonder why when bushwalking through the Australian bush so few native animals are seen these days? Their natural populations have been decimated through two centuries of human harm – mainly poaching, introduced predation and habitat destruction including by human-caused bushfires and human-abandoned bushfires.

The recent concept of the so-called ‘ecological burn’ is a contrivance, a myth. It is a false cause fallacy. Ecological fire a defunct scientific theory contrived by bushfire management engaging unemployed graduates to think up an idea for a PhD. It belongs in the same discarded bucket of defunct scientific theories from days of yore of such ilk as ‘alchemy‘, ‘phlogiston‘, ‘flat earth‘, ‘hollow earth‘ and ‘the birth cries of atoms’ theories. Yup, these were once believed.

[Source: http://www.shortopedia.com/O/B/Obsolete_scientific_theories].

The effect on wildlife habitat by broadscale ‘hazard’ reduction is no different than if it was caused by wildfire or bush arson. The hazard to wildlife habitat is the same. The broadscale blanketing of bushland with high intensity burns that reach into the tree tops and scorching ground cover and earth, present the same intense fire regime. The landscape is laid to waste in just the same way as wildfire or bush arson does. Habitat and the wildlife it accommodates become the innocent victims of horrific bushfire, no matter how caused.

There is no wildlife monitoring before, during or after one of these aerial incendiary ‘ops’. Aerial incendiary guarantees no discretion between fire sensitive habitat and fire-resilient habitat. It is a simplistic, convenient a cheap one-size-fits-all solution that re-colours the fire maps to appease political masters. The chopper boys are given their bombing co-ordinates and then do their search and destroy mission. These airborne lads should apply their skills to good and not evil. They should stick to improving their water bombing skills, not participating in this perverted fire-lighting culture.

When the rains follow, the thin yet vital topsoils get washed away into the gullies and streams. This erodes the landscape and prevents regrowth of many flora species due to the lack of vital nutrients. After both the Massif Ridge HR and the Linden Ridge HR, heavy rains did follow.

Only the species of flora adapted to bushfire recover. Fire sensitive species of flora are eliminated from the landscape. Name one species of fauna that is fire tolerant. Where are the zoologists in the Wildlife Service to tell of the impact of the HR? If this mob is providing a ‘service’, it certainly ain’t providing a service to wildlife.

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Wildlife Service chief boasts of mass incineration of 92,000 ha of National Parks

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And the Wildlife Service regional chief for the Blue Mountains region, Geoff Luscombe, in his media release 17th May 2011 boasted of his:

“3000 hectare burn” that “the NPWS carried out more than 92,000 hectares of hazard reduction in 269 burns in 2009/10 – its biggest ever program.”

To put this area into perspective, in terms of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area of about 1 million hectares, such a hazard reduction programme over a decade would decimate the Blue Mountains completely. And they call themselves a ‘Wildlife Service’?

Once again thousands of hectares of pristine flora and fauna habitat in deep inaccessible terrain, miles from houses and human property, has been incinerated from the air using contracted aircraft dropping indiscriminate aerial incendiaries. If only these boys had napalm!

Luscombe confirms in his media release…

“An aircraft will be used to manage the burn as most of the burn will take part in remote areas of the Blue Mountains.”

This incineration of natural wildlife habitat is justified by the Wildlife Service as ‘strategic‘ and ‘hazard reduction‘ operations are one of many being conducted by NPWS around the state making the most of the dry sunny winter conditions. This burn is part of the NPWS annual fire management program.

Luscombe again:

…“reducing the volume of fuels within strategic areas of the Park, can assist in limiting the intensity and rate of spread of a wildfire in the area.”

Then on Friday 20th May 2011, vertical plumes of smoke were seen rising from Cedar Valley south of the Jamison Valley ~ another one of these secret HR aerial incendiary black ops that the public is not supposed to know about? No notice on either the Blue Mountains Rural Fire Service site or the Wildlife Service site. Out of sight, out of mind.

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‘Strategic Fire Management Zones’ – a symptom of a bushphobic cult out of control

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Under the Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee which governs the Blue Mountains region, ‘environmental assets’ are restricted to “threatened species, populations and ecological communities and Ramsar wetlands, locally important species and ecological communities, such as species and ecological communities especially sensitive to fire.”

So how does aerial incendiary discriminate when setting fire to a contiguous 2500 hectares or 3000 hectares of wilderness?

Answer: It doesn’t , it doesn’t seek to, it doesn’t care. The guidelines are only to keep the greenies happy. It’s called ‘greenwashing’.

The Wildlife Service in its official Fire Management Strategy, has relegated 97.7% of the Blue Mountains National Park into either what it calls ‘Strategic Fire Advantage Zones’ or else ‘Heritage Zones. In essence, heritage Zones are valued natural areas that are protected from fire, whereas the Strategic Fire Advantage Zones are expendable. The Wildlife Service proclaims that …due to the ‘relative lack of practical fire control advantages’ (lack of access and resources), Strategic Fire Management Zones are ‘managed’ to protect community assets… to reduce fire intensity… assist in the strategic control… to contain bush fires and to strengthen existing fire control advantages.

All of which simply means is that it is expendable and can and should be burnt in case it burns. Strategic Fire Management Zones ‘are considered priority for ‘treatment‘ – read targeted for broadscale indiscriminate aerial incendiary. So 2500 hectares of wilderness around Massif Ridge copped it last winter and 3000 hectares of wilderness around Linden Ridge copped it this winter. If it’ red on the fire map, burn it!

What do these ecological vandals get up to deep in the wilderness at night with their matches and petrol drip torches out of the direct view of the public? They put up signs to deny public access to their nefarious activities. Out of the public view, they are out of sight out of mind.

A cult is a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. Starting large bushfires would seem to fit that definition. Fire-lighting is a cult of ecological deviance, just like any form of arson.

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Precautionary principle ignored

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“Where 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.” [Source: Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration (1992)] Such is the internationally agreed precautionary principle which Australia has adopted as a guiding principle of environmental management. The National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development (1992) adopts the precautionary principle as a “core element” of ESD as does the Inter-Governmental Agreement on the Environment, and the Wildlife Service is supposed to be bound by it in its management of National Parks.

The Wildlife Service once a trusted upholder of the science-based ‘precautionary principle‘ has of late succumbed to the more red neck bushphobic fear of the bush. What the general public hears about the Wildlife Service these days is its broadscale fire bombing of vast areas of vegetation in its ‘protected’ National Parks. This is confirmed these days by the wood smoke-filled air choking many communities and responsible for unknown volumes of smoke emissions contributing to net human-caused pollution to the planet – what many call ‘climate change’.

In the Wildlife Service’s Plan of Management for the Blue Mountains National Park the only reference to the precautionary principle is “Maximum levels of total commercial recreational use in the park will be set for particular activities and particular locations according to precautionary principles.” (p.84) In its Fire Management Strategy for the Blue Mountains, the only reference to the precautionary principle is “the precautionary approach will generally be applied in the absence of specific information.” (p.53)

Clearly the Wildlife Services respect for the precautionary principle is tokenistic, and wholeheartedly disregarded with its use of aerial incendiaries. The Blue Mountains delicate ecosystems are vulnerable to the indiscriminate fire regimes being imposed upon them. The burning into the tree canopy, the broadscale contiguous burning, the scorching of the landscape until bare earth can be seen is highly damaging to the many micro ecosystem across the Blue Mountains. When such burning occurs what happens to the micro-organisms, fungi species and the natural soil biota?

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

~ Michael Clarke (Associate Professor, Department of Zoology, La Trobe University, 2008)

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A discredited Wildlife Service

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The once trusted and respected Wildlife Service has lost its conservation way. It now spends more time, money and training on burning fragile ecosystems in its National Parks and exploiting those same parks for tourism exploitation, than it does on wildlife habitat rehabilitation. Sydney’s Taronga Zoo has become far more active and valuable in its urban wildlife recovery programmes than the Wildlife Service is in the wild.

At the carpark above Katoomba Falls within the Blue Mountains National Park, a rather old and deteriorating sign put up by the Wildlife Service years ago, conveys a conservation message to park users. The last two sentences are particularly poignant in light of the massive scale of broadscale bush arson repeatedly being inflicted by the protectorate of the National Park – the Wildlife Service. If only the Wildlife Service would “leave nothing but footprints” and follow its own maxim.

Indiscriminate bush arson of remote bushland in a National Park shows that the Wildlife Service has descended into a predatory wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s management cannot be trusted with its custodial responsibility to protect the unique treasure of the Blue Mountains.

Once I had a desire to embark on a career as a National Parks Ranger. Had I, in the end, I would have morally wrestled with the hypocritical politics and lasted less than the initial probationary period. I empathise with those who hold a personal commitment to ecology and environmentalism within the Wildlife Service.

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The key drivers of the ‘HR Culture’

The perverted and unquestioned rush to set fire to as much bushland as possible across the Blue Mountains and indeed across Australia is being driven by five cultural factors:

‘Ecological Fire’ Myth. (as described above) Certain ”fire ecologists’ (a self-described term for many seeking to make this a lucrative profession) who are funded by bushfire management agencies, not surprisingly have conjured the academic theory that burning the bush is good for it because it increase biodiversity – just what bushfire management with their cheque book want to hear! They have conjured the term ‘ecological fire‘, which as a euphemism sounds good, so it must be good. So those setting fire to the bush may have no moral qualms. Crap. Show me any native fauna that proliferate after fire – ‘ecological’ or otherwise!
Under-Resourced. Bushfire management is being repeatedly denied the necessary resources and technologies to quickly detect, respond to and suppress bushfore ignitions as and when they do occur, so there is a mindset of futile frustration that nothing can be done to stop bushfires frequently getting out of control.
Bushphobic Extremists have become effective in their fear campaign to influence natural land managers, politicians and the media in their one dimensional theory that if bushland is not burnt to remove ‘fuel loads’ catastrophic firestorms will inevitably bring forth Armageddon. They preach that only the wholesale removal of forests will prevent wildfire. (Replacement with concrete would prevent it too.) Their constant evangelising reaches such irrational hysteria, that in order to appease them, HR Ops are promised and executed just to keep them at bay.
False Sense of Security. ‘Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security’ (James Woodford, 8-9-2008). But how is burning remote bushland many kilometres from the human interface, allaying human security concerns? Yet hazard reduction is known to directly cause a sharp increase in fuel loads due to an unnaturally high and uniform germination of understory plants.
Winter Idleness. Fire fighting naturally quietens off during the cooler wetter month of winter, and since Australian bushfire management agencies in the main only do bushfire management rather than throw on an SES jacket, multi-task in complimentary emergency management; many bushfire agencies are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as being idle over winter. So HR gives ’em all something to do!

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The Wildlife Service must ‘love the smell of napalm (and smoke) in the morning’

The Wildlife Service undertaking these remote HR Ops, sending in the airborne firelighters, must be like watching the Huey helicopter beach attack scene in Francis Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now, based on Joseph Conrad’s novel ‘A Heart of Darkness’. Colonel Kilgore in his black Confederate cowboy hat shouts:

“We’ll come in low out of the rising sun, then about a mile out we’ll put on the music; scares the hell out of the slopes.”

Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” is played and the boys play war games with real aircraft and real fire and causing real death and destruction.

A giant napalm strike in the nearby jungle dramatically marks the climax of the battle. Kilgore exults to Willard, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning… The smell, you know that gasoline smell… Smells like … victory”, as he recalls a battle in which a hill was bombarded with napalm for over twelve hours.

The Wildlife Service aerial incendiary boys must think of themselves as Special Forces. Perhaps there is a Colonel Kurtz among them – like an insane killer operating deep inside Laos. Kurtz’ final lines in the film are “The horror! The horror!” How comparable with what is happening deep inside Australia’s wilderness areas, out of sight out of mind? …with extreme prejudice!

How comparable is the US secret war fire bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War with the out of sight fire bombing by the Wildlife service of vast areas of Australia’s natural landscape?

The legacy of the Wildlife Services’ aerial incendiary campaigns deep inside National Parks will be one remembered for fire bombing wildlife habitat from once natural and densely vegetated into a one unnatural, sterile and ghostly quiet.

When it is too late, hazard reduction will be acknowledged by our children as naiive threatening process of our generation that drove Australia’s remaining wildlife into extinction.

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Ben Esgate [1914-2003] from an interview in October 2002 [Jim Smith PhD]:

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“Birds and everything like that are getting scarcer.

I reckon that since I have grown up, the bird life on the Blue Mountains has receded by 80%.

Too many bushfires destroy the breeding grounds of many birds, particularly Kookaburras and birds that use hollows. Clearing of land unnecessarily, and always killing the big trees, not the little ones. The big ones make the nests of tomorrow. In the smaller bird line, feral cats are causing no end of trouble. Pardalotes and all that sort haven’t got a chance, anything that builds a nest low in the trees.

Burning off National Parks, and areas adjacent to National Parks, just because the mob squealed because they have gone a built a house near the National Park, and now you have to keep fire from getting it.

The first things that happens then is that you have got to keep burning off around where people live…It might only destroy a bit in this place and a bit in that place, but it is still destroying things.”

“I reckon that I shot every third fox that I ever saw, never mind the ones I went hunting for, in my life. One in every three bit the dust and I’ve shot dozens and dozens and dozens of them. That meant that, including the offspring, there were several hundred foxes less to feed on our native wild life and wipe them out.

I saw them wipe our Rock Wallabies out in the Megalong completely…I shot foxes for many years, right up until I was 80.

I was knocking over 20 a winter up there (Galong Bluffs), when I was 79.

I never shot in a National Park. They knew up there, the National Parks mob, they knew I was knocking them off and they thought it was wonderful.”

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[1] http://www.survival.org.au/birds_spotted_pardalote.php

[2] Blue Mountains Bird List, by Carole Proberts, http://www.bmbirding.com.au/bmlist07.pdf

[3] ‘The last of the Cox’s River men : Ben Esgate 1914-2003‘ / by Jim Smith, (NLA).

– end of article –

Tags: Ben Esgate, bird life, Blue Mountains wildlife, burning off, bushfires, feral cats, foxes, getting scarcer, hazard reduction, Jim Smith, Kookaburras, Megalong, Pardalote, Rock Wallabies, tree hollows
Posted in 07 Habitat Conservation!, 34 Wildlife Conservation!, Birds (Australian), Blue Mountains (AU), Threats from Bushfire, Threats from Poaching and Poisoning | No Comments »

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Forest habitat or fuel hazard?

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Australian native forests – are they valuable ecosystems and habitats for wildlife; or bushfire fuel hazards to be burned, before they burn?

Blue Mountains wet schlerophyl forest

Bushfire Management’s root problems

Bushfire Management which recognises wildlife habitat as an asset worth protecting makes the fire fighting task immensely complex. So moreover the more simplistic and cost saving rationale of ‘protecting life and property’ holds sway, where no thought is given to the conservation values or to the habitat needs of wildlife. The inculcated and unquestioned bushfire management attitude that native forests are the cause of bushfires, rather than being victims of bushfires, belies one of the three key root problems of why bushfire management is failing. Ignitions left to burn in inaccessible terrain time again have proved be devastating not just for nature and wildlife, but consequentially for human life and property. Wildfire does not discriminate.
Bushfire Management across Australia is so poorly equipped to detect and suppress ignitions when they do occur, that out of frustration, fear has been inculcated to encourage all native forests be dismissed as bushfire hazards and ‘prescribed burned’ as a precaution. Across the New South Wales Rural Fure Service, the term is quite unequivocal – ‘Hazard Reduction‘ . Broadscale hazard reduction, euphemistically labelled ‘strategic burns‘ or deceptively ‘ecological burns‘ and has become the greatest wildlife threatening process across Australia driving wildlife extinctions.’
Both the localised and regional impacts of bushfire and hazard reduction upon wildlife ecology are not fully understood by the relevant sciences – ecology, biology and zoology. Fire ecology is still an emerging field. The Precautionary Principle is well acknowledged across these earth sciences, yet continues to be dismissed by bushfire management. They know not what they do, but I do not forgive them.

Australia’s record of wildlife extinctions are the worst of any country in the past two hundred years.

‘Of the forty mammal species known to have vanished in the world in the last 200 years, almost half have been Australian. Our continent has the worst record of mammal extinctions, with over 65 mammal species having vanished in the last 50 000 years.’ [Chris Johnson, James Cook University, 2006]

‘Australia leads the world in mammal extinctions. Over the last two hundred years 22 mammal species have become extinct, and over 100 are now on the threatened and endangered species list, compiled as part of the federal government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.’ [Professor Iain Gordon, research scientist in CSIRO’s new Biodiversity Theme, 2009.]

Uncontrolled bushfires, broadscale and frequent hazard reduction, and land clearing are the key drivers causing Australia’s remaining wildlife to disappear. Once habitat is destroyed, the landscape becomes favourable to feral predators which kill the remaining unprotected fauna. Thousands of hectares of Australia’s native forests are being burnt every year and are becoming sterile park lands devoid of undergrowth habitat. Wave after wave of habitat threats continue to undermine the layers of resilience of native fauna, until fauna simply have no defences left and populations become reduced to one local extinction after another.

James Woodford in his article ‘The dangers of fighting fire with fire‘ in the Sydney Morning Herald, 8th September 2008, incitefully observed:

‘Fighting fires with fear is a depressing annual event and easy sport on slow news days. Usually the debate fails to ask two crucial questions: does hazard reduction really do anything to save homes, and what’s the cost to native plants and animals caught in burn offs? What we do know is a lot of precious wild places are set on fire, in large part to keep happy those householders whose kitchen windows look out on gum trees.

Hazard reduction burning is flying scientifically blind. Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security rather than to reduce fire risks, and the effect on wildlife is virtually unknown. An annual bum conducted each year on Montague Island, near Narooma on the NSW far South Coast has become a ritual in which countless animals,including nesting penguins, are roasted.

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

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‘Koalas may be extinct in seven years’

[Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 20070411]

‘Extreme drought, ferocious bushfires and urban development could make koalas extinct within seven years, environmentalists are warning. Alarms about the demise of the iconic and peculiar animal, which sleeps about 20 hours a day and eats only the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, have been raised before.

But Deborah Tabart, chief executive officer of the Australia Koala Foundation, believes the animal’s plight is as bad as she has seen it in her 20 years as a koala advocate.

“In South-East Queensland we had them listed as a vulnerable species which could go to extinction within 10 years. That could now be seven years,” she said. “The koala’s future is obviously bleak.”

South-East Queensland has the strongest koala populations in the vast country, meaning extinction in this area spells disaster for the future of the species, said Tabart.

The biggest threat is the loss of habitat due to road building and development on Australia’s east coast – traditional koala country. The joke, said Tabart, is that koalas enjoy good real estate and are often pushed out of their habitat by farming or development.

“I’ve driven pretty much the whole country and I just see environmental vandalism and destruction everywhere I go,” she said. “It’s a very sorry tale. There are [koala] management problems all over the country.”

Massive bushfires which raged in the country’s south for weeks during the summer, burning a million hectares of land, would also have killed thousands of koalas.’

[Read More]

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‘A Bushfire action plan which protects people, property and nature’

[Source: The wilderness Society, 20090219, http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/forests/bushfire-action-plan]

In the immediate aftermath of the devastating Victorian Bushfires of 2009, The Wilderness Society, in response to bushfire management’s quick blaming of the native forests for the bushfires; drafted a ‘Bushfire Action Plan‘ that sought to recognise the need to protect nature along with people and their property.

‘Bushfire remains one of the most complex and difficult aspects of our environment to deal with. Climate change is expected to make things even tougher, with increases in the number of high fire danger days and the number of people and houses at risk increasing with the tree/sea change phenomenon.

With the onset of climate change, mega-bushfires that burn massive areas are expected to occur more often.

A joint CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology study of the impact of climate change in bushfires found parts of Victoria faced up to 65% more days of extreme fire risk by 2020, and 230% more by mid-century.

Yet clearly we have a lot to learn and the Royal Commission will set a new agenda for land and fire management, prevention and response. Many challenges will remain but some aspects seem clear. We need more money and support for fire fighters if we are to successfully protect life, property and the environment. Two key areas are the early detection of fires including the use of aerial surveillance and remote sensing especially in remote areas, increasing rapid response capacity including more “Elvis” helicopters to fight bushfires as soon as they start.

The outstanding work of firefighters on the front line needs to be backed up with the best available knowledge, planning and resources to ensure operations are as effective as possible in protecting people, property and nature. There is an urgent need to increase investment in these areas and rapidly establish scientific underpinning to fire management, as well as properly resourcing implementation and fire operations.
We also need more information for government and community about how to deliver fire management in a way that also protects the natural environment and our unique wildlife.

Fuel reduction burning has an important place in the fire management toolbox, and we support its place in scientifically underpinned fire management for the protection of life, property and the environment.

The issue of fuel reduction burning often dominates the fire debate, as if it is the only fire management tool. But it’s important to remember that this is only one tool in fire management, and not the silver bullet that will fire proof the landscape.

Environmental groups want to see the science that supports the current fuel reduction program, including a scientific justification for so-called hazard reduction burns in specific areas and the scientific justification for the route and extent of fire break establishment. Environmental groups are particularly concerned about the lack of impact assessment of these programs on biodiversity, particularly given their uncertain benefits to reduce the extent, frequency and severity of fire.

Views on these measures tend towards two extremes. One extreme is that we should fuel reduction burn all forest areas every 20 years and carve out thousands of kilometres of fire breaks, the other is that all our forests are wilderness areas which should just be allowed to burn and not manage our forests for fire at all.

For the Australian bush to be healthy and to protect people, property and nature we need a scientifically based balance between these extremes.

Fire management is not ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to the Australian bush. It needs to be targeted and specific, because we know that different kinds of bush respond differently to fire and therefore need different management. For native plants and animals to survive, fire management needs to promote “good” fire at the right time of year, of the right type and size. And that varies with vegetation type and resident native animals. Grasslands will require more frequent fires compared with forests, while areas such as rainforest will need to be protected from fire altogether.

That’s why we need good ecological science informing fire management, which has come a long way in understanding what’s best for native plants, but we need a better understanding of what fire management is best for protecting wildlife and avoiding extinctions. Its critical that scientists, fire agencies and governments work together to understand how to best manage fire to protect habitat for endangered wildlife, because no one wants fire management to lead to extinctions.

Of course, the protection of life & property needs to come first in fire management – but we can do that while also protecting nature and wildlife. A balanced approach is to prioritise the protection of life and property in areas close to farms and townships, and to prioritise fire management for the environment in remote areas and national parks.

A continuation of the expansion in knowledge, resources and support for fire management and community preparedness will best ensure the protection of life, property and the environment into the future…

We have developed a 6-point plan to reduce the bushfire risk and help protect people, property, wildlife and their habitat.

Improve aerial surveillance to detect bushfires as soon as they start.
Ramp up hi-tech, quick response capability, including more ‘Elvis’ helicopters to fight bushfires as soon as they ignite.
More research into fire behaviour and the impact of fire on wildlife and their habitat.
Around towns and urban areas – prioritise the protection of life and property with fuel reduction and fire break management plans.
In remote areas and National Parks – prioritise the protection of wildlife and their habitat through scientifically-based fire management plans.
Make native forests resistant to mega-fires by protecting old-growth forests, rainforests and water catchments from woodchipping and moving logging into existing plantations.

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Critique of Roger Underwood’s Criticism of TWS ‘6-Point Plan‘

On 12th February 2009, Roger Underwood, a former rural firefighter and a forestry industry employee in Western Australia, had his article published in The Australian newspaper criticising the above recommendations of The Wilderness Society (TWS).

Regrettably, rather than offering constructive criticism and proposing counter arguments with supportive evidence, Underwood instead dismisses the Wilderness Society’s contribution, but disappointingly with empty rhetoric. Underwood states upfront:

“the trouble with the society’s action plan to reduce the risk of bushfires is that it won’t work.“

The Wilderness Society’s six-point action plan aims to counter the current bushfire management strategy that relies upon hazard reduction burning and the ecological damage this is causing – ‘destroying nature’, ‘pushing wildlife closer to extinction’, ‘increasing the fire risk to people and properties by making areas more fire prone’.

Underwood claims that statistics exist showing no massive increase in prescribed burning, but in fact that prescribed burning has declined. Yet Underwood fails to provide nor even reference any such statistics. He fails to recognise that both bushfires and prescribed burning collectively cause adverse impacts on wildlife. If all burning of native vegetation, however caused, is included in the assessment, then would statistics indeed show an increasing trend in the natural area affected by fire in Australia?

‘Burn it before it burns’ Theory

Underwood questions the wildlife extinction problem without any basis. He then adopts the ”old chestnut‘ theory of blaming the threat to wildlife on ‘killer bushfires‘. ‘Killer bushfires’ (the firestorm threat) has become the default justification by bushfire management for its policy of prescribed burning. This is the ‘Burn it before it burns!‘ defeatist attitude. If one burns the bush, there will be no bush to burn. Underwood’s claim that ‘killer bushfires’ are a “consequence of insufficient prescribed burning” is a self-serving slippery slope fallacy. If nature is an asset of value to be protected, then it is defeatist to damage it to prevent it from damage. The history of so-called ‘controlled burns‘ have an infamous reputation of getting out of control and becoming wildfires. If the attitude of burning as much of the bush as possible to avoid uncontrolled wildfire, then then paradoxically the implied incentive is to let controlled burns burn as much as possible to minimise the risk of unexpected fires in the same area.

In respect to each of The Wilderness Society’s (TWS) Six Point Plan, one counters Underwood’s responses as follows:

1: Improve aerial surveillance to detect bushfires as soon as they start

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Underwood supports aerial detection as “a first-rate resource and a comprehensive system” but says that it can fail completely under hot, unstable atmospheric conditions and when there are very high winds. However, fire towers and aircraft are not the means of bushfire surveillance today. Low orbiting geostationary satellites with infrared and high resolution cameras can now spot individual cars in real time and through cloud and smoke. Satellites are not affected by atmospheric conditions such as high winds or hot temperatures. Modis-Fire is one company that specialises in such satellite technologies.

In addition, the CSIRO, with the Department of Defence and Geoscience Australia, has developed an internet-based satellite mapping system called ‘Sentinel Hotspots‘. Sentinel Hotspots gives emergency service managers access to the latest fire location information using satellite data. Fire fighting organisations across Australia have used this new strategic management tool, since it was launched in 2002, to identify and zoom in on fire hotspots. [Read More]

In 2003, an article in the International Journal of Wildland Fire entitled ‘Feasibility of forest-fire smoke detection using lidar‘ extolled the virtues of forest fire detection by smoke sensing with single-wavelength lidar.

Such technologies are available if the political will was met with appropriate investment. Such technologies could be available to a military-controlled national body, but unlikely to be available to volunteer members of the public. It all depends on the standard of performance Australians expect from bushfire management.

2: Ramp up hi-tech, quick response capability, including more ‘Elvis’ helicopters to fight bushfires as soon as they ignite.

Underwood dismisses aerial fire-bombing as a “dream” that “has never succeeded in Australia, and not even in the US” and “next to useless“.

Well, it seems Underwood is contradicted by the recent decisions of Australia State Governments across Australia’s eastern seaboard to charter not just one Erikson Aircrane but three. Not only was Elvis contracted from the United States in Summer 2010 to Victoria, “Elvis” was based in Essendon, ‘Marty‘ was based in Gippsland and ‘Elsie‘ was based in Ballarat. Clearly, the Victorian State Government considers the cost of these three aircraft justifiably cost-effective in offering quick response capability to fight bushfires.

Dedicated Fire Fighting Erikson Aircrane ‘Elsie‘ based in Ballarat, Victoria during the 2010 Summer

In South Australia, the Country Fire Service (CFS) believes in the philosophy of hitting a fire ‘hard and fast’.

‘CFS volunteers and aerial firefighting aircraft are responded within minutes of a bushfire being reported and as many resources as possible are deployed to keep the fire small and reduce the chance of it getting out of control. It is not widely known that South Australia has a world class initial attack strategy of aerial firefighting. The value of a rapid aerial firefighting approach has been supported by Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre research. In their 2009 report titled ‘The cost-effectiveness of aerial fire fighting in Australia, the Research Centre wrote the following in their summary

The results of the analysis show that the use of ground resources with initial aerial support is the most economically efficient approach to fire suppression. Aircraft are economically efficient where they are able to reach and knock down a fire well before the ground crew arrives. This buys time for the ground forces to arrive and complete the containment. Rapid deployment of aerial suppression resources is important. This advantage is much greater in remote or otherwise inaccessible terrain. Where other suppression resources are unable to reach the fire event within a reasonable time period, sole use of aircraft is economically justified.’

[http://www.bushfirecrc.com.au/research/downloads/The-Cost-Effectiveness-of-Aerial-Fire-Fighting-in-Australia.pdf].

Underwood claims that: “Elvis-type aircranes cost a fortune, burn massive amounts of fossil fuel, use gigalitres of precious water and are ineffective in stopping the run of a crown fire that is throwing spot fires. Water bombers do good work protecting houses from small grass fires. But against a big, hot forest fire and during night-time they are next to useless.”

Underwood conveys a sense of dogged reliance in traditional fire truck centric thinking as if to preserve an old firie culture of ‘we know best‘ and ‘nothing is going to change our thinking‘ mindset. May be it is out of petty envy wherein many volunteer firies can command trucks but wouldn’t have a clue flying helicopters and so would feel sidelined.

Well, since the 2009 Victorian Bushfires, more than A$50 million worth of new initiatives have been introduced or are under development.

“Further changes are likely to be introduced as the Royal Commission, which was established to investigate the Black Saturday disaster, is ongoing. Aerial firefighting is set to be addressed by the commission. Among new initiatives in Victoria is a A$10 million trial of a very large air tanker (VLAT) – the first-ever such experiment in the country. On 14 December, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 Super Tanker, leased from US company 10 Tanker Air Carrier, arrived in Melbourne. Australian regulator, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, and underwent final compliance assessment to allow it to enter service in January.”

[Source : http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/02/09/338056/australia-puts-firefighting-tankers-to-the-test.html]

Underwood may well dismiss aerial suppression technology as ‘razzle-dazzle‘, but he is right to state that such investment requires governments to put more resources into research and into monitoring bushfire outcomes, including the environmental impacts of large, high-intensity bushfires and continuous feedback to management systems from real-world experience out in the forest.’

3: More research into fire behaviour and the impact of fire on wildlife and their habitat

While Underwood claims that he supports more research into fire behaviour and fire impacts, he is dismissive of the conclusions of much of the research already done, but offers no explanation. This seems an internal contradiction. What are the conclusions of the research?

Underwood claims the conclusions do not support the Wilderness Society’s agenda. How so? What is TWS agenda?

Underwood conveys an unsubstantiated bias against the Wilderness Society, only offering an ad hominem fallacious argument – attacking the messenger, not the argument.

The science on fire ecology is still emerging. The Wilderness Society validly states above that ‘bushfire remains one of the most complex and difficult aspects of our environment to deal with‘, that ‘there is an urgent need to increase investment in these areas and rapidly establish scientific underpinning to fire management, as well as properly resourcing implementation and fire operations‘ and ‘the lack of impact assessment of these programs on biodiversity, particularly given their uncertain benefits to reduce the extent, frequency and severity of fire‘.

4: Around towns and urban areas – prioritise the protection of life and property with fuel reduction and fire break management plans.

Underwood here perceives an inconsistency in TWS Action Plan – suggesting its support for fuel reduction around urban areas contradicts its claim that fuel reduction makes the burned areas “more fire prone”. However, this action item is about prioritising fuel reduction on a localised basis around the immediate areas where life and property are located.

Whereas broadscale hazard reduction that is carried out many miles from human settlements has become a new strategy of bushfire management. The excuse used is euphemistically termed a ‘strategic burn‘ or even an ‘ecological burn‘ in the name of encouraging biodiversity. Except that the practice seems to be a leftover habit from the Vietnam War in which helicopters are used to drop incendiaries indiscriminately into remote areas without any care for the consequences.

A so-called ‘ecological burn‘ of Mt Cloudmaker

This was conducted by helicopter incendiary by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (DECCW)

in the remote Krungle Bungle Range of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area

(Photo by editor from Hargraves Lookout, Shipley Plateau, 20080405 , free in public domain)

A recent example is the ‘strategic burn’ authorised and executed by the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (DECCW) in the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area on 12th May 2010. Some 2500 hectares of remote wilderness was deliberately set alight around Massif Ridge, some 12 kilometres south of the town of Woodford in wild inaccessible forested area of the World Heritage Area. The excuse was to reduce the available ‘fuel’ (native vegetation) for potential future wildfires. [>Read More: ‘National Parks burning biodiversity‘ ]

5: In remote areas and National Parks – prioritise the protection of wildlife and their habitat through scientifically-based fire management plans.

Underwood contends another stock standard industry claim that where native forests have been protected, they have naturally accumulated fuel loads in which sooner or later an uncontrollable landscape-level fire occurs. So his anthropocentric theory runs that is humanity’s responsibility not to let nature be nature, but to control nature and so to burn the bush before it burns. This theory is premised on the defeatist approach that in the event of a bushfire, bushfire management is not in a position to detect and suppress it.

And so Underwood, poses the standard industry response of “more frequent planned burning under mild conditions“. He assumes that leaving the overstorey and the soil intact will ensures a diversity of habitat for wildlife. Yet Underwood is not a zoologist and has no understanding of the vital role that dense ground vegetation provides to Australia’s native ground dwelling mammals (e.g.the Long-footed Potoroo, Spotted-tailed quoll, Eastern Pygmy Possum, the Petrogale penicillata, Broad-toothed Rat, Bolam’s Mouse, the Smoky Mouse, the Eastern Chestnut Mouse, the Long-nosed Bandicoot), as well as nexting birds, flightless birds, amphibians and reptiles.

Eastern Quoll – Dasyurus viverrinus – EXTINCT on mainland Australia

Underwood’s view reflects the simplistic misguided view of biodiversity of most of Australia’s bushfire management – that the presence of trees and regrowth of fire-tolerant plants equates to biodiversity.

Can Underwood name one species of Australian fauna that is fire tolerant?

Underwood misinterprets the text of TWS which advocates an holistic fire management system, not as a silver bullet or ‘one-size-fits- all’ convenient panacea that pretends to fire proof the landscape. The only guarantee of ‘one-size-fits- all’ hazard recution is a sterile forest devoid of biodiversity and causing local species extinctions. TWS argues for a scientifically-based and balance approach recognising that some forest ecosystems like rainforests are most definitively fire-intolerant.

6: Make native forests resistant to mega-fires by protecting old-growth forests, rainforests and water catchments from woodchipping and moving logging into existing plantations

Underwood challenges this last item stating there is no evidence that old growth forest is less likely to burn than the regrowth forests. This is false. Australian native forests that regrow after fire are those that are fire-resistant. Typically, these genus (Eucalypt and Acacia) regrow quickly and become dense mono-cultures. If a fire passes through again, the fire is often more intense and devastating. Old growth forests, rainforests and riparian vegetation around water catchments tend to be moist and so less prone to bushfires.

But this sixth item is not about the relative propensity of old growth forests to burn more readily than regrowth forests, so Underwood’s argument is a distracting red herring. TWS’ aim here is more about placing a higher value on old growth and rainforests due to their greater biodiversity and due to their increasing scarcity. Clearly, TWS is ideologically opposed to woodchipping and logging of old growth forests and rainforests. Logging operations typically involve follow up deliberate burning and such fires have frequently got out of control. Underwood’s needling criticism of TWS for having a lack of knowledge of fire physics or bushfire experience is a typical defensive criticism leveled at anyone who dares to challenge bushfire management. Conversely, if Underwood has the prerequisite knowledge of fire physics or bushfire experience, he is not very forthcoming except to defend the status quo of bushfire management.

The recent bushfire results are demonstrating that bushfire management is increasingly unable to cope with bushfire catastrophes nor meet the expectations of the public to protect life, property and nature.

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Tags: Australian native forests, Blue Mountains wildlife, broadscale burning, bushfire action plan, Bushfire-CRC, Chris Johnson, CSIRO, dangers of fighting fire with fire, eastern quoll, ecological burn, Erikson Aircrane, fire-intolerant, fuel reduction, fuel reduction program, ground dwelling mammals, hazard reduction, Henry Gold, koala extinction, mammal extinctions, Modis Fire, Montague Island hazard reduction, precautionary principle, precribed burning, Professor Iain Gordon, Roger Underwood, Rural Fire Service, Sentinel Hotspots, sterlisation of forests, strategic asset management, The Wilderness Society, threatening process, Victorian Bushfires 2009, wildfire, wildlife extinctions, wildlife habitat
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2006 Grose Valley Fire – a cover up?

Friday, December 17th, 2010

Burnt Blue Gum Forest

[Photo by Nick Moir, Sydney Morning Herald, 20-Dec-2006]

The catastrophic Grose Valley wildfire in the Blue Mountains between 13^th Nov to 3^rd Dec 2006 destroyed 14,070 hectares of high conservation value bushland in and around the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area including raging through the ecologically sacred Blue Gum Forest, regarded as the ‘birth of conservation‘ in Australia.

No one has since tried to estimate the loss of fauna, not even the National Parks and Wildlife Service charged with protecting this World Heritage.

Walking through the Grose Valley now no native animals can be seen because they are probably now locally extinct.

In the days that followed came natural human responses from many:

a mix of wanting to know what happened and why
of questioning the response
of questioning the delay in putting out those early fires
why the massive back burning that itself become more of a threat to property at Blackheath
to operational judgment and decision making
to over-ruling interference from bushfire command
to communications problems
why the precious Grose Valley was not defended?
to value judgments that reduced National Park values to a hazard reduction opportunity
why was the Zig Zag Railway station fire bombed during the operations?
why was hazard reduction along Hartley Vale Road initiated at the time?
Did it in fact get out of control, cross the Darling Causeway and become he main fire front contributing to the conflagration of 23rd November?
why were many volunteers too scared to come forward to tell the truth at the time ?
was bushfire management culture that intimidating?

The bushfire management authorities – the NPWS, RFS, NSW Fire Brigade and the Blue Mountains City Council convened an ‘internal review’ into the Grose Fire(s) at Katoomba on 17th December 2006 . The public were not invited nor permitted to attend. There were no publicised minutes nor notes nor action items.

Burning Issues / Fire and the Future

A number of concerned residents (143 to be exact) from Blackheath and across the Upper Blue Mountains met and drafted an open letter in the local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper.

It’s final draft of 29-Nov-2006 read as follows:

‘As long-term residents we are very familiar with the serious bush fire threat in the Blue Mountains. Fire will continue to be a part of the local environment and residents’ lives.

We gratefully acknowledge the efforts of everybody involved in working to control the recent Grose Valley fire – the volunteers, professionals and all agencies. We note that the overall Grose Valley fire operation was successful in protecting the community, that there have been many improvements in fire management and that no fire operation can be perfect.

We also love the World Heritage bushland in which we are so lucky to live. As a community we have undertaken an obligation to protect this unique World Heritage area and to manage it in a truly sustainable way for future generations.

The Grose Valley fire has highlighted some major fire management concerns for residents, the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and its fragile ecosystems.

Backburning

Fire suppression is a very complex and challenging task where judgments have to be made in what can be very difficult circumstances. Backburning can be one of those choices. We support well-planned backburning and appreciate that it can be a very useful tool.

However, we are concerned that large-scale backburning in severe fire weather can also be a highly dangerous option, spreading the fire, placing more lives at risk, swelling costs and causing wider damage to property and the environment.

Local involvement

Local knowledge and experience are vital to efficient and effective fire strategies and operations. Local volunteers and others should be given the involvement and support they deserve during fire events. The generosity of volunteers should be honoured with sound decision-making.

More fire

Large parts of the Grose Valley have now been burnt three times in 13 years and four times in 24 years. Most of these fires have been of human origin. The ecosystems cannot sustain such frequent fire without damage. This time the beautiful Blue Gum Forest has felt the full brunt of the crisis with the understorey and much of the tree canopy burnt.

Research and recent experience shows that severe fires are happening more often. If we don’t learn how to manage fires better in this landscape there will be increased threat to local communities and dire consequences for Blue Mountains ecosystems.

Cost

It has been stated that the cost of aircraft alone was $500,000 a day during the Grose Valley fire. The final cost will be at least $10 million – without including the ‘hidden’ costs for volunteers. The ongoing cost of the impacts, repairs and restoration will add more. This exceeds the total annual funding for the million-hectare World Heritage Area, and is many times the budget for fire planning and management across the Blue Mountains.

Looking to the future

Lessons can be learned from the Grose Valley fire. We must grasp this opportunity to review what was done, so improvements can continue for the Blue Mountains and other fire-prone areas.

We call on the New South Wales government to:

Undertake a thorough, independent review of the Grose Valley fire, with particular reference to the following points:
1. 1. whether initial suppression was timely and adequate,
  2. whether resources were used appropriately and supported properly,
  3. whether the strategies adopted were the best available under the circumstances,
  4. whether other strategies of closer containment could have offered lower risk to the community, better firefighter safety, higher probabilities of success, lower costs and less impact on the environment, and
  5. whether the costs were appropriate.
Fund more research for a better understanding of fire in the Blue Mountains landscape and methods for fire mitigation and suppression.
Improve training in strategies for controlling fires in large bushland areas.
Improve pre-fire planning to assist decision-making during incidents.
Ensure adequate funding is available for post-fire restoration, including the rehabilitation of critical damage in the World Heritage area.
Improve systems to ensure that local fire planning, knowledge and expertise is fully utilised during incidents, and that the protection of the natural and cultural values of World Heritage areas and other heritage assets are fully considered.

It’s easy to breathe a sigh of relief and just be grateful that it’s all over. That would be a mistake – because there will be a next time, perhaps sooner than we all hope.

Supported by the following citizens of the Blue Mountains’.

(143 citizens names were listed)

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Blue Gum Lessons

On 20-Dec-2006, the Editor published a letter to the editor in the local Blue Mountains Gazette as follows:

“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.”

Official Report by the Rural Fire Service of the Grose Valley Fire(s)

On 8-Feb-2007, RFS SuperIntendent Mal Cronstedt, released his official report into the fire. It conspicuously avoided detail and explanation of events from the first ignition on 13th November to 14th November inclusive. Instead, his report starts on Wednesday 15th November 2006.

A copy of the report entitled Lawsons Long Alley Section 44 Report, dated 8-Feb-07 may be viewed in the Habitat Reference Library, GoTo Ref. HT010005

Grose Valley Fire Forum

On Saturday, 17^th February 2007, the Grose Valley Fire Forum was held at Mt Tomah Botanical Gardens in the Blue Mountains not far from the Grose Valley. It was attended by bushfire industry representatives and selected others. Again the public was not invited. On 8th March 2006, a progress report was received by the Editor from the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute (BMWHI) . It included some 52 follow up recommended actions in relation to bushfire management in response to the Grose Fires. The Editor at the time contributed feedback to this report to the BMWHI ahead of the report’s public release. However, no response was ever received back from the BMWHI and none of the fedback information was included in the final report. It was a politically convenient white wash.

A copy of the ‘Grose Valley Fire Forum Report [Final]’ dated 2-Apr-07, may be viewed in the Habitat Reference Library, GoTo Ref. HT010006.

Contributory Input to the Progress Report of the Grose Valley Fire Forum

The following report was submitted by The Habitat Advocate to the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute co-ordinating the bushfire management review process. Progress Report extracts are shown in bold black text.

No response was ever received.

Lawson’s Long Alley Fire taken probably Tuesday 14-Nov-06 shown heading up Fairy Dell Creek toward the Darling Causeway (left of photo) east of an abandoned shack. On ground evidence just weeks afterwards confirmed the fire was hazard reduction.

This is 2km south of the official grid reference for the ignition reported in the Section 44 Report.

Source: http://www.bluemountains.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_more_info_latest.cfm?CON_ID=3578 [Accessed 17 Nov 2006]

[from Progress Report] “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.”

[Habitat Advocate:1] An assumed but unverified lightning strike on Monday 13^th November 2006 in the vicinity of Lawson’s Long Alley and a second presumed lightning strike on the eastern end of Burra Korain Ridge that same day, sparked what has become known as the Grose Fire of 2006 (s44 Report, p1).

[Habitat Advocate:2] The following report on the RFS website 17-Nov-06 is pertinent: “Dubbed the “Lawsons Long Alley Fire”, the main fire started on Tuesday afternoon near Hartley Vale, in the Lithgow District, and quickly spread up to the Darling Causeway – blown by strong westerly winds – and has now burned out around 1,370 hectares. A second fire, known as “Burra Korain Fire” is burning to the north of Blackheath and covering an area of approximately 100 hectares.”

[Habitat Advocate:3] The Bureau of Meteorology rainfall records show that the Mt Boyce weather station (situated 4km to the south west of Lawson’s Long Alley) shows no rainfall occurring on the reported date of ignition of this fire. [Refer Appendix 2] Dry lightning has been used as the presumed cause. However, ground truthing conducted by the author 22-Sep-07 still provides evidence of clearly delineated prescribed burning around an abandoned shack, her the fire was purportedly really started. The weather conditions on Saturday11th, Sunday 12^th a Monday 13^th November 2006 were conducive to hazard reduction burning. The maximum temperature was a mild 16-21 degrees Celsius and winds speeds were below 40kph. Given that Mt Boyce is situated at high altitude, the likely wind speed down near Hartley Vale would have been far less.

[Habitat Advocate:4] Two days later on 15^th November a Section 44 incident declaration was made by the fire authorities. (s44 Report, p1). Two weeks later on Monday 27^th November, some 14,470 hectares had been burnt, caused by both the escalated burning of the two wildfires and considerable front-burning and back-burning by the fire authorities. (s44 Report, p10).

“Community members called on the State Government to undertake a thorough and independent review of the management of this fire, involving all stakeholders.”

[Habitat Advocate:5] This statement seems to be a quote sourced from a statement by local resident, Ian Brown, in a local Gazette newspaper article by journalist Shane Desiatnik of 7-Feb-07 headed ‘Pollies fan the flames’. Brown was one of 143 residents who first called for an independent review of the bushfire.

[Habitat Advocate:6] Other members of the community, the author included, following the Grose Fire called on the State Government to undertake a public and independent review of the management of this fire, involving all stakeholders. The justification for this call was on the fact the burnt Grose Valley and its rare Blue Gum Forest are natural public assets and the fire authorities responsible and accountable for quelling the fire are entirely publicly funded. So any justification for denying public accountability has no merit. The fire response was a public operation that went wrong and the public has a right to know why and to be reassured that systemic changes are being put in place to safeguard against a similar recurrence in the Grose or elsewhere in the Blue Mountains region.

“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.”

[Habitat Advocate:7] Records show that in fact six community meetings were convened by the fire authorities in December at various locations around the mountains to discuss the fire operation [see Appendix 1]. This information has only recently become available to the author. However, the opportunity for community members to contribute to the development of revised fire management strategies, policies and procedures has still not been provided.

[Habitat Advocate:8] On 20-Dec-06 in the local Blue Mountains Gazette it was reported that: “An interagency debriefing will be conducted on December 19 to assess the response to the fire. Commissioner Koperberg expressed hope that lessons ill emerge as part of the service’s objective of continuous improvement.” The public were denied access to this debriefing and subsequent requests for minutes or a report of that meeting by the author to the Katoomba RFS and to RFS Headquarters at Homebush have received replies that none exist.

“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.”

[Habitat Advocate:9] Then NSW Environment Minister Bob Debus MP placed a public notice in the Gazette shortly after the fire notifying the Blue Mountains community that a follow up review process into the Grose Fire would be undertaken.

“The Minister invited the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute (BMWHI) to organise and chair a forum of representative community members and fire authorities.”

[Habitat Advocate:10] The Mt Tomah forum was closed to the members of the public from attending. Bob Debus is quoted in the BMG 20-Dec-06 in rejecting the need for an independent inquiry on the basis that “that would inescapably create the public perception of an investigation into significant operational or strategic failure on the part of fire-fighting agencies.” Environmentally it would be fair to argue that that is exactly what happened. Debus continued with a less committed stance, stating “there is every good reason to encourage dialogue between the agencies and the community to increase understanding and further development of fire-fighting methods.”

“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”;

[Habitat Advocate:11] How could this have been possible when members of the general public were denied access to the forum?

• “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”;

[Habitat Advocate:12] A prerequisite of the forum proceeding ought to have been the provision of the s.44 Incident Controllers Report [dated 8-Feb-07] to all forum participants. Indeed, propriety ought to have insisted that this official summary report into a major fire affecting public land should have been made available on the RFS’ own website once endorsed by RFS Head Office. There is no detail in this report, such as issues of privacy or confidentiality that would have prevented the report’s timely release. The benefit of releasing the report to forum participants is that in doing so it would have armed participants with knowledge about the specific events, actions and issues pertinent to the Grose Fire.

[Habitat Advocate:13] Many in the community, however, consider the main reason for the report not being released was politically motivated. It is likely that its release would have caused adverse publicity to the chances of the RFS Commissioner, Phil Koperberg, (who assumed ultimate responsibility for the Grose Fire) in his nomination for the seat of Blue Mountains in NSW State Election held just weeks later on 24 March 2007.

• “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. In accordance with the Minister’s (Debus) brief, the following organisations were represented at the forum:

1 NSW Dept of Environment and Conservation;

2 NSW Rural Fire Service; Blue Mountains Conservation Society;

3 Nature Conservation Council of NSW;

4 Blue Mountains City Council;

5 NPWS Regional Advisory;

6 Committee and the GBMWHA Advisory Committee.”

[Habitat Advocate:14] Additional participants of the forum as listed in Table 1.1 on page 10 included Professor Ross Bradstock of the Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, University of Wollongong and Carol Cooper, a local indigenous woman, her performed a welcome to country ceremony and which was listed as an observer. Professor Bradstock is a keen supporter of the risk management policy and practices of fire management, that is ‘hazard’ reduction. The fire authorities have relied upon Professor Bradstock’s advice over the past number of years. It could be that some of his research funding has been provided by the RFS. It could be fairly deduced that Professor Bradstock is a strong supporter of the RFS and the fire authorities.

[Habitat Advocate:15] More impartial and detached views ought to have been sought to participate in the Mt Tomah forum, for instance from independent academics with expertise on fire ecology. Possible inclusions could have been:

- Kevin O’Loughlin, CEO of Bushfire Group Research Centre (CRC)
- Dr Kevin Tolhurst, Fire Ecologist at the University of Melbourne
- Dr Kevin Hennesy, Climate Impact & Risk Group, CSIRO
- Prof. Andy Pittman, Environmental Life Sciences, Macquarie University
- Phil Cheney, Honorary Research Scientist and fire expert, CSIRO
- Prof. David Lindenmayer, Centre for Research and Environmental Studies, ANU

Each of these people provided valuable contributions in the ABC television Four Corners documentary ‘FireStorm’ hosted by Quentin McDermott, which went to air on 5 March 2007. It would be helpful to watch this doumentatry and to make contact with these people to gain further insight into fire ecology and fire research. In addition, local fire ecologist, Nic Gellie, who wrote a well-informed critique of the management of the Grose Fire in the local Gazette, ought to have been included in the forum.

[Habitat Advocate:16] It is disappointing that Carol Cooper was only invited as an observer. An invitation to participate in the forum ought to have been made to members of the local indigenous people, who have a direct cultural connection to the Blue Mountains, namely the Gundungurra, Dharug and Wiradjuri.[1]

[Habitat Advocate:17] Otherwise, each of the above organisations is in one way or another a member of the Inter-Agency group responsible for fighting the Grose Fire. The GBMWHAC is a BMCC committee. The invited participants were members of organisations pre-selected by Bob Debus. So effectively this set up the forum as a closed shop of the protagonists. How could it then possible be expected to meet expectations of the community, with the community denied access and participation? The forum failed on any test of independence, public access, public accountability and transparency. No wonder “the plan of action risks not being practical or achievable.”

“A list of the participants is shown in Table 1.1. 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.”

[Habitat Advocate:18] The only members of that informal coalition of residents that were listed as participants of the forum were members of the Blue Mountains Conservation Society (a member organisation of the fire ‘inter-agencies’ and which is also a member organisation of the Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee. Those particpants were Ian Brown, Dr Brian Marshall, Don Cameron

[Habitat Advocate:19] A one-day forum was never going to allow sufficient time to properly hear and debate the gamut of issues raised, nor to mould achievable actions for future improvement to local fire management. Allowing for the introductions and breaks the agenda indicated that about 5 hours was allocated to achieve all this. How ‘enormous ground’ was gained within this forum is questionable. Much after work appears to have been done to enable the many issues and actions to be documented in so much detail.

[Habitat Advocate:20] It is not surprising that the intentions “collective” given the like minded mix of participants coming rom the one side of the table.

[Habitat Advocate:21] Possibly one of the more intangible yet most enduring impacts of the Grose Fire that was not covered at the Mt Tomah forum has been the significant damage caused to the reputation of the RFS and the level of trust it has in the eyes of many in the community. The negative publicity in the local Gazette newspaper by local letter writers invited very defensive public responses from RFS management and crew alike. There was also a noticeable increase in the positive advertising and articles on the RFS in the Gazette throughout 2007. This negative publicity must have had noticeable consequences on the RFS in terms of morale, membership retention and ongoing recruitment. This is a vitally important issue that deserves appropriate but sensitive discussion.

[Habitat Advocate:22] Refer to Appendix 3 below for quoted extracts of letters in the local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper that either challenged the fire authorities in its management of the Grose Fire or else vehemently defended the RFS and its volunteer fire fighters. The community became polarised on this subject, with few correspondents offering a middle ground perspective. The comments provided in these letters and articles should be factored into the review into the Grose Fire. The author has collected nearly all letters and articles published in the Gazette newspaper on the subject of fire management since 2002.

.

APPENDIX 1: Copy of a public notice issued by the RFS on its website Saturday 2 Dec-2007 calling for a series of community informational meetings into the Grose Fire.

[Editor’s note: No minutes, notes or actions have been publicly released as a result of these forums.]

“Following the recent bushfire activity in the Blue Mountains and Lithgow Districts, a series of Community Meetings will be held several locations throughout the Mountains.

The purpose of these meetings is to:

Operations:

• Provide an overview of what happened and didn’t happen

• Detail what was done and what wasn’t done, and why.

Community Liaison and Public Information:

• Provide information on the Community Liaison process,

• Obtain feedback from you, our community, on how well we did it this time and how we might be able to do it better in the future,

Recovery:

• Explain what is going to happen in the coming days and weeks,

• Provide details of who to contact if you need assistance,

• Provide information on what we can do, as a community, in the future

Our overall Aim is:

Better integration between emergency services and the community.

Who will be attending:

• Your local fire brigade members, officers and Group Officers

• Members of the Community Liaison Team

• Members of the Incident Management Team

• Representatives from the Rural Fire Service

• NSW Fire Brigades

• National Parks and Wildlife Service

• Blue Mountains City Council.

Who should attend:

• Community members directly or indirectly affected by the recent bushfire

activity,

• Community members who want to know what happened and why,

• Community members who would like to obtain information about how to

prepare for bushfires.

Remember — This is only the start of the bushfire season, not the end of it. Now is not the time to become complacent or to think that it won’t happen again this summer.

For information about preparing your home, or to make a written bushfire action plan, visit our website: www.bluemountains.rfs.nsw.gov.au or call 02 4782 2159 during business hours.

Date and Time	Location
Thursday, 7 Dec @ 7:30pm	Winmalee Rural Fire Station, Cnr Coramandel Ave & Hawkesbury Rd
Friday, 8 Dec @ 7:30pm	Leura Golf Club, Sublime Point Rd Leura (Opp. Fairmont Resort)
Saturday, 9 Dec @ 10:30am	Mt Tomah Rural Fire Station, Charleys Rd, Mt Tomah
Saturday, 9 Dec @ 3:00pm	Clarence Rural Fire Station, Chifley Rd
Saturday, 9 Dec @ 7:30pm	Blackheath Golf Club, Brightlands Ave
Sunday, 10 Dec @ 10:00am	Faulconbridge Rural Fire Station, Railway Pde

These meetings are being facilitated by the Community Safety Group of the Blue Mountains Bush Fire Management Committee. For further enquiries, please call 02 4782 2159 during business hours, Mon-Fri.”

Inspector Eric J Berry JP, Community Safety Officer

Blue Mountains District, NSW Rural Fire Service

Emergency Services Centre

Cnr Bathurst Rd & Valley Rd

KATOOMBA NSW 2780

Ph: 02 4782 2159 (Office)

E-Mail: eric.berry@rfs.nsw.gov.au

APPENDIX 2: Local Weather at Time of Start of Grose Fire

Mount Boyce, New South Wales

November 2006 Daily Weather Observations:

Source of data: IDCJDW2087.200611 Prepared at 13:06 GMT on Monday 10 September 2007

Observations were drawn from Mount Boyce AWS {station 063292}.

The closest station with cloud observations is at Katoomba, about 11 km to the south.

Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology, http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/200611/html/IDCJDW2087.200611.shtml [Accessed: Sep-07]

APPENDIX 3: Selected quoted accounts of letters in the Blue Mountain Gazette newspaper [BMG]

Noticeably, the contributors were either decidedly critical of the handling of the Grose Fire, or otherwise vehemently defensive of the RFS organisation and its volunteers.

‘The burning alternative’

[BMG 13-Dec-06]

(Extracts only below due to the article being nearly 1000 words)

“…Tragically, the lack of resourcing of the initial attack with helicopters and remote area crews in the first two days of the fire contributed to the expansion of the fire area. A well directed initial attack may well have avoided the huge cost of later suppression – and the damage to heritage values that we must now count.

Hopefully a truly independent inquiry will soon enough tell us what really happened in the Blue Mountains…”

“…During dry thunderstorms on the afternoon of the 13^th November, lightning started a fire near Burrakorain head in the Grose Valley. Helicopters and remote area crews were deployed to contain the fire. A day later*, a separate fire, cause unknown, spread up to the Darling Causeway and spotted across the road into the Grose Valley and the national park, about 2 kilometres east of its source.

Because of the failure to suppress the spot-overs on the Darling Causeway and the remote lightning strike, it was decided to burn out the Upper Grose valley and enlarge the fire area.”

“…Management of a World Heritage area or national park must be based on a sound set of fire risk principles that protect the natural and cultural assets of the park system, as well as adjoining human assets. Whether it is Kosciusko, the Wollemi of the Blue Mountains, our parks are suffering. And potentially fire fighters, people and property are being put at greater risk as a result of a ‘back-burning’ dominated strategy at times when the weather is urging caution.”

“Frustratingly there is an alternative – …During periods of dry thunderstorms and forecast extreme fire weather, we went on high alert and put out lightning started fires immediatey with direct attack using remote area crews and helicopters.

To succeed, you need a knowledge support system based on a detailed understanding of the park’s landscapes, biota, fire spread, and historical and current fire weather. With this, you can develop fire strategies that minimise risk to both nature’s and people’s assets.

“…To implement this new approach, we need teams of people, including volunteers, trained to manage our fire-prone landscapes more effectively. These people should come from a range of scientific and cultural backgrounds, with close knowledge of biodiversity, heritage and community values.”

Nicholas Gellie is a fire ecologist an former fire manager with 30 years experience with various agencies, including the NSW NPWS. He is currently completing a MSc thesis at the ANU on the topic of ‘Exposure of the ACT region to severe drought, fire weather and lightning ignition’.

*[This account differs from the Secton 44 Report that states the Lawson Long Alley fire started on the same day.]

‘Job well done’

[BMG 13-Dec-06]

“Now that things have calmed down on the local fire front, I would like to convey my thanks to the local community and its fire-fighters for a job well done.

Volunteer firefighters of the RFS, together with colleagues from the New South Wales Fire Brigades and the National Parks and Wildlife Service have spent countless hours over the last weeks protecting our communities.

Their efforts have meant that there has been no private property lost, no people hurt and the fire’s size has been much less than similar events in past years. Well done everyone.”

SuperIntendent Mal Cronstedt

Blue Mountains RFS.

‘Questions on Fire’

[BMG 13-Dec-06]

“Firstly I would like to say how much I admire and appreciate the dedication

of the men and women who work and volunteer in fire-fighting and emergency crews. They spend their precious time and risk their life and limb to keep people and property safe, and they are having a very hard time of it in the Mountains at the moment. They all deserve to be paid a proper wage for their work, and they do not deserve to be put in unnecessary danger.

Secondly I have some questions for those higher up in the chain of command. Why was the fire in the Grose Valley allowed to burn for a week while the weather was cooler and the fire was moving slowly in the undergrowth rather than leaping through the treetops?

Why weren’t enough resources thrown at the problem before the expected weather change?

It seems as if there is a policy of allowing our national parks to burn, in fact the situation seems to have been used as an excuse for the backburning which increased the fire front which now threatens people and homes.

Our national park is also our property and is a home for many species, it is also an important tourist attraction in the Blue Mountains. It is not good fire or resource management to let our Blue Mountains National Park burn.”

Susan Ambler, Katoomba

‘Under fire – Koperberg defends fire effort’

(front Page headline – BMG 13-Dec-06 – article by Damian Madigan)

“The Rural Fire Service commissioner Phil Koperberg has stood firm against calls for an independent review of last month’s Grose Valley bushfire, rejecting claims backburning intensified the fire threat.

His defence of the fire fighting effort has been strongly backed by the State Government with Blue Mountains MP Bob Debus criticising local rumours that backburning got “out of control”.

Political heat over the bushfires started last week when more than 140 Blue Mountains residents took out a full page advertisement in the Blue Mountains Gazette calling for an independent review of the fire. Their concerns were given weight this week when fire ecologist Nic Gellie criticised the fire fighting effort, and Colong Foundation for Wilderness director Keith Muir called for an independent inquiry…

…The latest criticisms centre on supposedly “out of control” backburning and subsequent damage to the Blue Gum Forest. But Mr Koperberg angrily rejected the claims when he spoke to the Gazette last week. He said the situation would have been much worse if the backburning operations weren’t carried out.

“The reality is this is the first time in half a century that a fire at the head of the Grose did not consume all of the Grose Valley which it would have done if we had not intervened with backburning”, he said. What I would like to know is this – does anyone believe the fire would have gone out if we had not intervened? Well, it wouldn’t have. It would have just went on its merry way and we would have been fighting it in every town and village in the Blue Mountains, and the Grose would have burnt from end to end…”

Questioning the questioners

Monday, 18 December 2006 BMG

I was interested in the letters in last week’s Gazette questioning the RFS’s approach to the recent Grose fire. In particular I was wondering if Dr. Jackie Janosi and Susan Ambler had, before writing to the Gazette, considered the following questions:

Has the Blue Gum forest burnt before ?
If so how many times in recorded history and how many times prior to white man’s arrival in this country and what was the frequency of fire before and after our arrival?
During previous occasions how intense was the fire ?
If intensities varied from this time why ?
Were the fires prior to the exclusion of cattle from the forest more or less intense ?
Was the lack of hazard reduction in and around the forest a contributing factor to the intensity of the fire ?
Could the forest, and indeed the whole of the Grose Valley, be better managed or is it inevitable that fires will occur in the Grose Valley every 10 – 13 years because fuel levels generally build to a point that will sustain fires that are difficult to control within that time frame ?
If fire is inevitable what should fire authorities set as their prime focus – firefighter safety, protection of people and their assets or protection of the natural assets ?

I put these questions to provide some balance to earlier comments in relation to a complex subject.

Donald Luscombe, Winmalee (RFS)

‘Blue Gum Lessons’

[BMG 20-Dec-06]

The Habitat Advocate

‘Try blowing it out’

[BMG 20-Dec-06]

“The next time there is a large blaze in the Blue Mountains, perhaps we should get fire-fighters to make a big circle around it and blow it out like a big birthday cake?

That won’t require precious water, expensive air support or back burning. I’m not sure if it would help put the fire out though.

Let’s just allow the real experts to do their jobs, ask the pretend ones to keep their mouths shut and be thankful that this time, we al still have homes to live in.”

Brian Fischer-Giffin, Hazelbrook

‘Residents repeat call for fire review’

[BMG 14-Feb-07]

“The group of residents who supported the “Fire in the Grose Valley’ statement published in the Blue Mountains Gazette last year [6-12-06] have repeated their call for an independent scientific review.

“We fully support the Rural Fire Service, National Parks and volunteers. We want them backed up with more fire research, funding, planning and training. This is all about a better fire management system for the future,” they said in (their) statement to the Gazette.

“We think independent scientific analysis is critical to achieve this. We feel even more strongly about this now than two months ago. There are many in the community who would like more information and answers to their questions.

“Could the fires have been better contained earlier and kept to a smaller area? Were there enough remote area fire-fighters? Could some of the impacts on the World Heritage Grose Valley have been avoided with better resourcing? Some people think that any fire is ok and it can’t hurt the bush. It’s not true”, said the statement. Frequent fire is listed as an ecologically threat under NSW legislation. And excluding fire is damaging too. The Blue Mountains bush is complex, and each community is adapted to a particular pattern of fire. Surviving animals need time to mature and breed. If the bush burns too often then some plants and animals – perhaps unique to the Blue Mountains – will be eliminated.

“The most constructive approach is to work on flaws in the system that get in the way of best results. We have written to the government outlining the sort of review we would like – a thorough and objective technical review, with community input and feedback – the same as what the Blue Mountains City Council voted to support.

“It has to be constructive and blameless and it should happen routinely after every big fire.”

(Article – probably drafted by Ian Brown, co-ordinator of the informal coalition of residents).

‘Not buckling’

[BMG 14-Feb-07]

“In reply to Helen Buckle (BMG 7.2.07): the call for an independent review of the 2006 Grose Valley fire being used as a political football lies with responses such as your letter which implies that the purpose of the review is nothing more than an attack on a particular candidate. This narrow approach irresponsibly discourages an ongoing comprehensive evaluation of our responses to major and possible devastating fire events.

The position of councillors who supported the recent motion calling for an independent and public review reflected the opinion of a large number of Blue Mountains residents, including the 143 citizens who called on the State Government to conduct a review by way of a full page statement in this paper on December 6.

To trivialise this issue and groundswell of public opinion as being merely my “own select community of Blue Mountains residents’ is nothing more than a denial of views existing in the community which do not happen to coincide with one’s own.

This is a serious matter which should not be allowed to be sidelined or marginalised because of the particular make-up of the candidacy for the seat of Blue Mountains in the imminent State election. Cheap political shots do nothing for the measured level of consideration which this issue requires.

An independent and publicly accessible review of the fire and our responses, called for at this point in time, can only be held after the election and presumably, to be effective, before the next fire season, i.e., during the winter months. Hopefully, by then, shallow and reactive responses will be exhausted, and a rational and constructive evaluation will allow us to continue to develop effective and efficient strategies for the Mountains, its communities and fire-fighters, in the face of the certainty of large and intense fires in the future.”

Clr Pippa McInnes, Faulconbridge

[Editor: This independent review seems to have been forgotten].

‘What Really Happened’

[Published BMG 10-Oct-07 under a different heading: [‘RFS resources limited’]

“The official RFS Section 44 Report into last year’s Grose Fire found that “there (were) not sufficient RAFT crews” despite multiple spot fires in difficult terrain and “the likelihood of fire escape during severe fire weather (being) certain.”

“Suspected” dry lightning sparked two ignitions last November on Monday 13, one oddly mapped to a grass paddock within easy fire truck access off Walton’s Road, Hartley Vale. But these fires were “not detected until the following day.” On Tuesday 14, with a gusting westerly and a fire index of 25, numerous spot fires had progressed into steep bushland inaccessible to fire truck crews. Despite it becoming apparent to fire authorities that these fires “would present problems beyond the resources available locally”, the decision to declare a Section 44 escalated response wasn’t taken until Wednesday 15.

Multiple broad-acre backburning became the “fall-back strategies” despite “spot-over” fires occurring “some 12 kilometres distant from the main fire” north of Linden, showing up backburning as ineffectual. A new burn was lit along Hungerford Track inside the Grose and “aerial incendiary” was dropped “north of Blackheath on Sunday 19. An RFS burn south of Bells Line of Road became “a concern” on Wednesday 22 (“blow-up day”) before it coalesced with the wildfires into “a major run” through the Grose Valley. A massive 6km pyro-cumulous cloud developed “visible from much of the Sydney basin”. Some 14,470 hectares of bush habitat had been burnt.

The report documents insufficient aerial support, “deployment was less than satisfactory”, “radio communications (were) poor”, bulldozer contractors were unsupervised and RFS RAFT crew standards “were questioned”.

Lack of early detection resources, of rapid initial suppression and ineffective resource management were inferred as key operational concerns behind the Grose Fire. Surely, fire fighters protecting both community and public assets deserve first class management, resources and funding.”

The Habitat Advocate

=== End of Report ===

References:

[1] Smith (Jim), ‘Wywandy and Therabulat – The Aborigines of the upper Cox River and their association with Hartley and Lithgow’, paper No. 49 originally presented on 22-Oct-1990, ISBN 0 85866 0997.

Tags: Blue Gum Forest, blue mountains, Blue Mountains wildlife, Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, Grose Valley Fires 2006
Posted in Blue Mountains (AU), Threats from Bushfire | 1 Comment »

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Where have all the native animals gone?

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

by Editor 20100902.

Detail from ‘The Blue Mountains Pioneers‘, Sydney Mail, Christmas Supplement, 1880,

Engraving in printed periodical BN336 [State Library of New South Wales, http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/history_nation/exploration/blue_mountains/index.html]

“Shot one pheasant [Superb Lyrebird], with tail complete; shot two others without tail. It appears too early in the season for them.” (William Cox crossing the Mountains in 1814). In 1824, Rene Lesson observed lyrebirds had become less common around Springwood Military Depot “since there had been persistent hunting.” In 1836, Charles Darwin at Hassan’s Walls commented “a few years since, the country abounded with wild animals; but now the emu is banished a long distance; and the kangaroo is becoming scarce; to both the English Greyhound is utterly destructive.” [J. & P. Smith 1990, ‘Fauna of the Blue Mountains]

Upon first setting foot in Australia’s undisturbed ecosystems, early colonial explorers diarised observations of native animals in abundant numbers. Then the colonialists set about their survival-fired mission to exploit and convert the unfamiliar Australian bush into a familiar replica of the pastoral landscape they had migrated from. It was a different time and culture.

As was inflicted upon so much of colonial Australia, timber getting, ring barking and land clearing cumulatively displaced many native animal populations across the settled central Blue Mountains plateau following Cox’s transit route. “Tiger Quolls, Eastern Quolls and Dingos were all apparently common in the Blue Mountains in the 1880s and were renowned for their raids on [farmers’] poultry.” In those early pioneering days, survival in the inhospitable bush became a fundamental preoccupation; so justifying any means to achieve it, a self-proclaimed right. Any concept of ‘native habitat’ would have been deemed, understandably, though not excusably, a fanciful hindrance.

Tiger Quoll (Dasyurus maculatus)

Trapped on Pulpit Hill, Blue Mountains in 1995,

subsequently handed over to National Parks and Wildlife Service.

.

Following the rail reaching Mount Vic in 1868, hunting was touted as a main tourist attraction. “In 1888, the advertised local game was Scrub [Swamp] Wallabies, Rock Wallabies, Wombats, Tiger Cats [Quolls], Native Cats [Eastern Quolls], Wallaroos, Platypuses, Hares, Opossums, Lyrebirds, Satin birds [Satin Bowerbirds], Cockatoos, Parrots and others.” The popular fur trade in the 1890s saw marsupials hunted for their skins. Hundreds of thousands of Brush tailed Rock-wallabies were slaughtered for their skins. Pelts of platypus, sugar gliders and opossums were also prized. [Smith 1990]

The early 1900s became the ultimate watershed for Blue Mountains fauna. Most hotels in the area maintained hunting lodges for the entertainment of their guests. In January 1902, the visiting English cricket team was treated to a shoot in Kanimbla Valley, which turned out to be the ‘last great wallaby drive.’ Shooting parties from Richmond and Windsor shot at anything and everything. [Smith 1990 citing Kinghorn 1924]

That upon the arrival of the colonists, native fauna across the Blue Mountains was observed to be in such prolific numbers; provides testament to the harmonious relationship Australian indigenous people had maintained with nature over tens over tens of thousands of years. In hindsight, we can now see how colonist land management practices over just a hundred years, directly or indirectly had decimated native fauna populations and diversity.

A further hundred years, today Australia’s ‘lucky’ first world society has advanced well beyond its initial survival needs. Yet inherited colonial practices die hard. Our habitual exploitative land practices perpetuate many of the same serious threats to native fauna survival. Land clearing, in all its guises, continues to destroy habitat. Foxes and feral cats have long supplanted the quolls and wild dingos of the Blue Mountains region at the top of the food chain. Road making across the Mountains either prevents wildlife roaming or otherwise contributes to the ‘road kill’ of many native mammals and marsupials each year. The only ‘Wildlife Crossing’ dedicated by the RTA on the Great Western Highway is on the Boddington Hill climb where a solid concrete barrier greets wildlife crossing.

If we value the return of Blue Mountains fauna, we must get serious about preserving the integrity of its habitat, exterminating feral predators and facilitating effective wildlife corridors. Without rich dense habitat and fauna diversity, our Blue Mountains swamps, forests and heath lands, while appearing healthy and natural from vantage points like Echo Point, will incrementally become sterile ornamental gardens.

As to the feral predators, what happened to the promises in 2004 of a strategy after the Blue Mountains Urban Fox Control Programme’s public survey? Of the survey respondents 64% confirmed foxes as an environmental problem in the Blue Mountains mainly because of their negative impact on wildlife, 53% felt that not enough is being done or more work is needed to manage foxes in the Blue Mountains, and 82% said they would support one or more ways to control foxes. The follow up implementation (“Active Control”) component of the strategy in May 2004 at page 4 recommended to:

“Protect communities of threatened species in the Management Area likely to be impacted upon by foxes. If research indicates that populations of such species are present in the Management Area a fox control programme is to be implemented. Actions include liaising with the Blue Mountains Threatened Species Team and using best practice procedures.
Supplying a list of fox control contractors to residents who want to actively control foxes on their properties and investigate the servicing of community requests for assistance through an active fox control project supported by Blue Mountains City Council.
Respond to community calls for fox control at high-density fox sites (eg. Blaxland tip site) with the trial of a fox control project.”

With the survey done, the fox problem confirmed and the implementation actions agreed in May 2004, the programme was then stymied. Political will faltered and local council, as the land manager responsible to effect and fund the above actions, found other priorities, downplayed the problem and rustled up a defeatist line: “the damage has been done and due to the pervasive extent of fox distribution it cannot be rectified… there is no way to prevent foxes from entering the area.” So thus, far this costly survey and committee has achieved a zero return on investment.

So where have all the native animals gone?

Toward extinction.

– – –

by Editor, 14-Jul-06.

[This article as first published in The Colong Bulletin Issue 221, May 2007, p.7, of The Colong Foundation for Wilderness Ltd, of which the Editor was an honorary director for two years from July 2005.

This article was previously submitted for publishing in the ‘Hut News’ of the Blue Mountains Conservation Society [BMCS]. However, it was rejected so as not to upset the ‘relevant authorities’. Feedback from the BMCS Management Committee was:

“We have to choose our battles carefully and be realistic about what we can achieve with our limited resources. Wherever possible, we prefer to approach the relevant authorities first to see if we can work with them, before going public with our concerns. Whilst we share your concern about threats to our native wildlife, we also appreciate that the control of feral animals is a complex issue. For this reason I have decided not to publish your article in Hut News. I have no objection to re-visiting the debate over fox control in the Hut News but any articles need to be factually correct and, if they are expressing an opinion as that of the BMCS, they will need to be approved by the Management Committee.” [ ‘Hut News’ Editor, Blue Mountains Conservation Society, email 24-Jul-06.]

Tags: Blue Mountains fauna, Blue Mountains wildlife, colonial Australia
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Wildlife Crossing in the Blue Mountains

Monday, March 29th, 2010

by Editor 20100329.

The Editor had been intending to take the following two photographs for some years.

Perhaps self-evident, but the first shows a ‘wildlife crossing’ sign by the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) at the side of a widened busy four lane section of the Great Western Highway on the Boddington Hill climb at Wentworth Falls, Blue Mountains, in Australia.

The second photo shows a two metre provision for wildlife to cross under the barrier in the middle of a one kilometre long continuous concrete median barrier. This section being on a 80kph downhill bend and typically ignored.

Presumably, the only wildlife crossing would be guaranteed to become ‘road kill’. This wildlife crossing is greenwash tokenism at its disingenuous best.

This section of the Great Westren Highway traverses a ridgeline through a narrow land zone excluded from listing in the Greater Blue Mountans World Heritage Area, atthis location just 500 metres away. Another reason why the Blue Mountains while conveying a first impression of wild and protected, is almost devoid of the ground dwelling mammals that were once prolific.

Throughout the Blue Mountains, no wildlife corridor provision exists. Indeed, local residents have their own disputes with this arrogant state government department to achieve local pedestrian and vehicular crossings of the expressway development, let alone wildlife. What wildlife?

‘Wildlife Crossing sign’, Boddington Hill

Photo by Editor, 20100327

Actual wildlife crossing provided by the RTA

Photo by Editor, 20100327

Scientifically Recorded species of the Upper Blue Mountains:

Short-Beaked Echidna ( Tachyglossus aculeatus )

Tiger Quoll (Dasyrus maculatus)

Brown Antechinus ( Antechinus stuartii )

Dusky Antechinus ( Antechinus swainsonii )

Common Ringtail Possum ( Pseudocheinus peregrinus )

Common Brushtail Possum ( Trichosurus vulpecula )

Swamp Wallaby ( Wallabia bicolour )

Grey Headed Flying Fox ( Pteropus poliocephalus )

Bush Rat ( Rattus Fuscipes)

Swamp Rat (Rattus lutreolus)

Garden Skink (Lampropholis guichenoti)

Blue Mountains Water Skink (Eulamprus leuraensis)

Eastern Water Skink (Eulamprus quoyii)

Blotched Blue Tongue (Tiliqua nigrolutea)

Pink –Tongued Lizard ( Hemisphaeriodon gerardii)

Weasel Skink ( Saproscencus musteline)

Copperhead ( Austrelaps superbus )

Eastern Brown Snake ( Pseudonaja textiles )

Red – Bellied Black Snake ( Pseudechis porphyriacus)

Common Eastern Froglet ( Crinia signifera )

Striped Marsh Frog ( Lymnodynastes peronii )

[Source: Extract from FAUNA OF THE GULLY, Upper Kedumba River Catchment, Les Peto 2007].

Sightings of these species are so rare these days as to almost, sadly, presume that many have been forced into local extinction by colonist Australians and their descendants and subsequent immigrants.

On 20th December 2010, a local reader sent in the following photographs of the same ‘wildlife crossing’ site where a wallaby had been killed. Many motorists use the derogatory term ‘roadkill’, but this reader certainly conveyed a higher respect for our wildlife. The reader contributed the following personal account with the photos:

“It shows a swamp wallaby roadkill less than ten metres from the so-called ‘wildlife crossing‘. The carcass has been there for a few days – as a mountains resident you have probably already seen it for yourself.

I too have been wanting to take a photo of the site for the last few years and was prompted to do so after the events of yesterday. I was heading down the highway on my way to work in the morning when I spotted the wallaby on the road. This was the first time in the four years I’ve been living in the mountains that I have seen any significant roadkill at the site, and I felt sickened as I have always considered the wildlife crossing an absolute joke, but now it’s become deadly serious. Further, only two minutes after I saw the wallaby, I came across an injured sulfur-crested cockatoo in the middle of the highway at Bullaburra. After wrapping it up in a jumper, I got my partner to come down from our home in Wentworth Falls to retrieve it, and it subsequently died just before reaching the local WIRES volunteer’s home.

Yesterday’s events have inspired me to address the issue of the complete lack of any facilitation of wildlife movement across the highway – a huge barrier separating the northern and southern sections of the mountains. This has led me to your website – and it is heartening to know that there are plenty of others out there who are also disturbed by the status quo. “

Tags: Blue Mountains wildlife, Boddington Hill, Great Western Highway development, road kill, RTA Blue Mountains, wildlife crossing
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Posts Tagged ‘Blue Mountains wildlife’

‘Native Wildlife Alert’

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Editor’s Comments:

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Related Articles:

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‘Wallaby becomes roadkill after fence holed’

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‘Peering down the corridor’

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‘Wildlife corridor from far south to far north’

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Further Reading:

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Wildlife Service sets fires to another 3000ha of World Heritage bushland

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Linden Ridge HR Ops (May 2011)

Massif Ridge HR Ops (May 2010)

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Gross Valley Defacto HR Ops (Nov 2006)

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Further Reading:

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Ben Esgate [1914-2003] from an interview in October 2002 [Jim Smith PhD]:

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Further Reading:

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Bushfire Management’s root problems

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