[The following letter was first published in the Blue Mountains Gazette, 16-Nov-2005, contributed by the editor as Director, Colong Foundation for Wilderness. It sparked a debate in this local paper over successive months and preceded the 2006 Grose Fire in the Blue Mountains, possibly the worst fire storm in the history of the Blue Mountains.]
.
‘Premises at Risk’
Part and parcel of choosing to live in the Blue Mountains is that, by being on ridge lines surrounded by Eucalypt forests, many properties are inherently exposed to bushfire threat. Whether bushfires be caused by lightning (rarely), accidentally by people, RFS-prescribed, or by arson (usually); bushfire risk management is a community responsibility – not just the lot of RFS volunteers. The arson threat aside, “residents, landowners and land managers of the Blue Mountains need to accept that they are in a bushfire prone area and their properties may be subject to ember attack when threatened by bushfire.” (Blue Mountains Conservation Society Bushfire Policy).
To dispel a rural myth, not all native habitats recover from bushfire. Certain species and old growth flourish only in ecosystems that are never burnt. Post-bushfire regrowth often spawns dominant species like Eucalypt and Acacia, whereas original biodiversity may take centuries to recover. Bushfire is often a precursor to infestations of grass and weeds, and if followed by intense rain, also a catalyst for eroding irreplaceable native soils.
The antique premise ‘hazard reduction’ has become spin for pre-emptive burning that is prone to escaping out of control and so itself a hazard. Slashing and bulldozing under the premise of ‘Asset Protection Zone’ is also proving to be ineffective against ember attack and wildfire. But like arson, the hazard reduction and APZ theories contribute to the net loss of important habitat.
Proven effective and sustainable is early detection and response to ignitions. Most artificial fires start on developed land, so this in where the control measures should be focused – maintenance of gardens and guttering, retrofitting houses with materials and defences to resist fire, planting fire-retardant hedging around houses and implementing counter-measures recommended by Australian Standard AS3959.
The future of sustainable bushfire risk management starts by preventing houses being built where they cannot be safely protected from bushfires. Effective ‘hazard reduction’ is investigating and catching the arsonists.
.
.
Reply by District Manager, Rural Fire Service (RFS) Blue Mountains, Mal Cronstedt, 20060104 [Cronstedt ten month later was in charge of the response to the Grose Fire]:
.
.
.
Reply by local Architect, Nigel Bell, 20060118:
.
.
.
Counter reply by editor 20060222, page 10:
.
World Hazard Area?
I welcome RFS BM Superintendent’s response (BMG 4-1-06) to my letter (‘Premises at Risk’ BMG 16-11-05) and him challenging two of many researched points I raised.
In reply, my statements were not “misleading”. RFS’s own research confirms that most bushfires are caused by arson. Of 466 investigated fires in NSW (2001-2004), 296 (64%) were determined to be the result of deliberate ignition and the most prominent cause of significant bushfires. (Australian Institute of Criminology, Bushfire Arson Bulletin, 16-8-05).
In reply, an RFS ‘Asset Protection Zone’ will not stop a raging wildfire “with flames of up to 30m” nor stop embers carried by hot “60kph” winds well ahead of a wildfire front (Woy Woy). Burning/bulldozing bush, before arsonists get to it, is flawed logic. How many hectares of habitat would need to be destroyed to insulate bushfire-prone property from wildfire? Wildfires need not be inevitable. Wildfire fronts are often caused by an excitement-motivated arsonist’s multiple ignitions linking up.
I unreservedly commend the dedication of RFS volunteers each Summer. But habitat-destroying strategies applied by RFS bushfire committees each Autumn-Spring hark to 1940s solutions and are as ineffective as they are environmentally destructive. ‘Hazard’ reduction assumes a direct relationship between wildfire risk and the total area burned. But ‘hazard’ reduction does not significantly reduce wildfire risk. In 2003, the Auditor General of Victoria identified in his audit on fire prevention and preparedness, that “the relationship between hazard reduction burning and the overall wildfire risk is currently limited”.
Mal, no-one said solutions were simple. But to be effective, bushfire risk management must focus on the root causes – by (1) seriously resourcing investigation into bush arson, and (2) ambulance-speed detection and suppression of spot fires – else we do “invite disaster”! Our World Heritage need not be a wedge victim between ‘hazard’ reduction and serial arsonists.
.
.
.
Reply by RFS Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee member, Hugh Paterson, 20060405, page 10:
.
.
.
Counter reply by editor 20060426:
.
‘Land Clearing Immunity’
.
I welcome Hugh Patterson’s public input into the environmentally destructive practice of ‘hazard’ reduction (BMG 5-4-06). Conspicuously, none of the repeated research refuting the fallacy that ‘prescribed’ burning and bulldozing native habitat prevents wildfires, is disputed.
Hugh claims the Mt Hall bushfire in 2001 could not be controlled. But the coronial enquiry noted: “prescribed burns had been done… only two years and four months earlier” and “the ability of the fire to leap or bound many hundreds of metres at a time.” Reconfirmation that ‘hazard’ reduction does not prevent wildfires.
Why was the initial spot fire at Mt Hall not detected sooner and standby airborne water-bombing deployed?
Resourcing is clearly available when bushfire co-ordination committees can command millions in federal funding each year to perpetuate ‘hazard’ reduction – an unquestioned tradition dating back over 50 years. Last year these committees squandered $1.3 million ‘hazard’ reducing 3785 km2 of National Parks habitat, 565 km2 of Crown Land, and a further 391 km2 of local council-owned lands across NSW.
‘Hazard’ reduction is blatant land clearing. Worse, ‘mechanical’ hazard reduction (ie: bulldozing) permanently destroys habitat. Anyone else – farmers, developers, would attract severe penalties as environmental vandals. But these bushfire committees operate immune from EPA prosecution, write their own rules and code with eco-friendly jargon then call in the bulldozer anyway.
The discretionary millions deserve to be invested in effective detection and airborne suppression of spot fires, not squandered on finding something for volunteers to do over winter, which wildfires leap over anyway. According to the mayor of Junee last summer, “if it hadn’t been for the water-bombing aircraft half of Junee would have gone”.
Anyone arguing to divert scarce grant funding away from effective airborne fire-fighting and to justify futile habitat destruction doesn’t have a moral leg to stand on.
.
.
Reply by RFS Group Captain, Donald Luscombe 20060503:
.
.
.
Reply by local resident, Elizabeth Saxton, 20060517:
In the 1940s, ‘hazard’ reduction was a knee-jerk response in the wake of the Black Friday firestorms. The bushfire-prone nature of our community should compel us all to frequently look towards better solutions for bushfire prevention and suppression. We need to heed the latest investigative bushfire research telling us what’s effective and what’s not effective, then exercise best practice.
The research keeps reconfirming that hazard reduction is not effective. At the Adelaide Bushfire Conference 2004, research concluded that 90% of houses ignited in Australian bushfires are due to ember attack. ‘Hazard’ reduction does not prevent ember attack, so how does its stop the remaining 10%?
By walking around with petrol torches ‘hazard` reducing, volunteers are reducing habitat and reducing themselves to arson. Our actions need to respect both our built and natural assets. Most of us value our special Blue Mountains natural environment, otherwise why choose to live here and not in Portland or Pyrmont, where trees are scarce and concrete has eliminated bushfire risk?
Research into the Warrimoo, Valley Heights and Yellow Rock bushfires of 2001-2 concluded that the main cause of houses destroyed by bushfire was from burning debris (ember attack) allowed to gain entry into houses through inadvertent openings. Houses-by-house, those that survived were due to vigilant intervention by those present putting out small fires after the fire front had actually passed. CSIRO Research (1999) into causes of building loss from bushfires in Hobart (1967), Blue Mountains (1968), Otway and Macedon Ranges (1983), and Sydney 1994) confirmed the same and advocated focus on landscaping and building design strategies. Out of the 2001/2002 NSW bushfires, Sydney Councils recommended Sydney Water increase mains water capacity during bushfire crises.
Research literature is not widely promulgated, which means that the wider community must re-learn lessons in the wake of subsequent bushfires.
Perhaps like all residents, I wholeheartedly commend the dedication of RFS fire fighters fighting bushfires. I reaffirm this in rebuff to the misrepresenting tirade from Blue Mountains Bushfire Committee boss, Mr Luscombe (BMG 31-5-06).
The big local environmental issue continues to be the hundreds of Blue Mountains hectares cleared every autumn under the pretext of defending houses.
Mr Luscombe agrees the main cause of bushfire damage to houses is ember attack AFTER a fire front has passed. But he contradicts himself by justifying the need for hazard reduction in autumn BEFORE the risk season even starts. Clearly, hazard reduction is about thinning bush to minimise the intensity of a possible fire front, yet we agree the fire front itself isn’t the cause of house damage. Mr Luscombe is putting out the wrong fires. A sledgehammer approach to bushfire risk management won’t prevent wildfires or embers, but it will stuff forest ecology. I say it again – ‘hazard’ reduction is land clearing – an environmentally unsustainable practice all participants should critically question.
Extensive field research by Catling (1991) of the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Ecology has shown that “vertebrate fauna of south-eastern Australia is most abundant in forests with a dense understorey.” “If shrubs, litter and ground cover are removed, reduction in complexity of forest structure leads to a reduction in abundance and species diversity of small mammals” (Lunney 1987, Royal Zoological Society of NSW). Frequent, low-intensity burns in autumn reduce and eventually eliminate dense understorey – because rain and warm weather needed for regrowth are denied. As understorey is lost, threatened ground-dwelling native mammals (Tiger Quolls, Eastern Pygmy Possums, Rufous Bettongs) lose habitat protection, while many exotic species (foxes, feral cats, black rats) are advantaged.
On 28th April, ‘hazard’ reduction burning was prescribed for 347ha of the World Heritage Jamison Valley.
.
.
Counter reply by editor 20060719:
.
‘Slowly Cooking Habitat’
In the landmark book advocating the now famous Bradley method of bush regeneration by the Bradley sisters, ‘Bringing Back the Bush’ (1988), Joan Bradley challenged the 1940’s hazard reduction practices which still perpetuate unchecked today:
“One of the many myths about Australian vegetation is that occasional fire is essential for its renewal and that only natives are affected in this way by fire. But natives are not the only plants to flourish on an ashbed. I do not know of a single bush invading weed which does not respond in exactly the same way. Seeds germinate in abundance, and (weeds), like dahlias, lasiandra, cotoneaster, lantana and privet shoot from their base like gum trees.”
“Hazard-reduction fire is completely different from a real bushfire. Burning is done at the time of the year when the bush is dormant, and on the ground the leaf mulch is heavy and moist. For this reason it must be deliberately lit, frequently many times, whereupon it smokes, smoulders and steams. This type of burn consumes only the understorey. The ground smells like a garden rubbish heap, not a bit like bush after a bushfire, because the mulch is left to steam at high temperatures, and then putrefy.”
“It should be remembered that in the cooler seasons, plants and trees are storing food in their roots, ready for the surge of growth in spring, so this is not just an unnatural and unwelcome interruption to the vital feeding process. It is a major setback, as it was intended.”
“A prescribed burn has a disastrous effect on native plants and an absolutely explosive effect on weeds. With the understorey gone, the soil…is exposed to light which weeds thoroughly enjoy. The slow and uneven growth of the native plants (during the cooler seasons) does little to keep (weeds) in check.”
.
Result of defacto hazard reduction below Govetts Leap, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains
Photo by editor 20061209 free in public domain.
On Thursday 7th July 2005, while volunteering as Honorary Director of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness, the editor took a phone call at the Colong office from a Medlow Bath resident, who reported in that the Rural Fire Service had extensively graded the Six Foot Track in late June 2005. In the resident’s opinion the grading had occurred to such an extent that substantial damage had been caused to native flora, riparian zones and so warranted community reaction.
That same day I contacted the legal manager of the Six Foot Track, Jon Guyver of the Lands Department, based at Orange and heard his view, learning that the grading was requested by the Rural Fire Service and authorised by the Trustee using grant funding from the Federal Department of Transport and Regional Services (DOTARS). I then phoned Greg Wardell, acting BM head of the Rural Fire Service to hear his view. In each case there is a strong sense of righteousness in the grading. The justification for the grading was to create a Primary Fire Trail, but this RFS action breached many of the conservation provisions of Six Foot Track Conservation and Management Plan 1997, including the Policy 7.2 (d). [Refer References below].
On Sunday 10th July at the resident’s request I undertook a first hand inspection of the track, using topographical map ‘Katoomba 8930-1S’ and proceeded to Grid square 66 South, 48 East, which shows the Six Foot Track following the winding Megalong Creek south-westerly. On return that evening, I emailed the following report to the Blue Mountains Conservation Society’s Land User Officer:
“Noticeable evidence of grading activity starts at a bend in the track NE of the words ‘SIX FOOT TRACK’ . There is the remains of a stone fireplace here, as well as bush and topsoil graded into the bush toward the creek. Between this site and the concrete bridge at Devils Hole Creek I counted 6 fresh mitre drains. Between Devils Hole Creek and the locked gate [Grid Ref 642458] passed the horse paddocks, I counted another 15 fresh mitre drains, before reaching Corral Creek. I didn’t continue west beyond Corral Creek.
There are three obvious environmental impacts from this bulldozing activity:
Over-clearing of bushland
Leaving topsoil exposed to rain and erosion
Grading bush and topsoil into the Corral Creek
The disregard and disrespect for Aboriginal culture in the area appears to have been totally ignored/discounted. You are very right in bringing this issue to the attention of the public, stakeholders and authorities. Your efforts deserve recognition by the Blue Mountains conservation community.
Having this primary data, I agree that this environmental destruction deserves to be made very public and the process abuse exposed. The voluntary RFS are not a law unto themselves. RFS culture needs a wake up call to its unchecked environmental accountability.”
.
On Sunday 17th July, the Land Use Officer of the local Blue Mountains Conservation Society drafted a letter to the General Manager of the Blue Mountains Council which read as follows:
RE: Nellies Glen Rd – Six Foot Track – Breach of development consent conditions
“The Society wishes to raise two questions about the recent work undertaken on a section of Nellies Glen Road, which forms part of the Six Foot Track. The section in question is:
Legality of Re-location of a section of Road
A section of the road was rerouted. Extensive clearing has been undertaken.
It does not appear that the Dept Lands is exempt from the provisions of the LEP when widening or re-locating a road.
LEP 91 clause 17.7 exempts the Crown from “carrying out of any development required in connection with the construction, reconstruction, improvement, maintenance or repair of any Classified Road, except the widening, realignment, or relocation of such road”
Furthermore as the Six Foot Track is listed in Schedule 2 of LEP 91 as Heritage item MG6, Clause 25 applies.Clause 25.1 statesA person shall not, without the consent of the Council, in respect of a building work, relic, place or tree that is a heritage item –
(a) demolish or alter the building or work; or …..
(c) damage or despoil the place or tree; or
(d) damage or remove any tree or horticultural features on the land on which the building, work, or relic is situated or on the land which comprises the place.”
Did council give consent to the widening and re-location of the section of the Six Foot Track? If consent was given, was a heritage assessment undertaken? If no consent was given, what steps does council intend to take to penalise the land manager and/or to require restoration?
Pollution of Watercourses
The Society understands that Council has regulatory powers to enforce the NSW Protection of the Environment Operations Act.
We request that Council investigates the
Excavation of mitre drains within 10m of creeklines
Extensive clearing of vegetation around the constructed within 20m of watercourses, causing sediment to flow into the creek.”
.
.
‘RFS Bulldozes Six Foot Track’
[written by editor and published in the Blue Mountains Gazette, 27th July 2005].
This is what a bulldozer can do midweek when nobody’s watching.
The Six Foot (Bridle) Track is a State icon, first negotiated on horseback in 1887 as a shortcut from Katoomba to Jenolan Caves. The track is ‘protected’ under the Central Tablelands Heritage Trust by the Department of Land and Water Conservation. The area holds important Aboriginal cultural value. The Track passes through a significant River Oak Forest vegetation community and the topsoils along this river valley are particularly sandy, and once exposed are highly susceptible to erosion and weed infestation.
RFS choice of contractor has bulldozed the heritage Six Foot Track out to a 66 foot speedway and fresh mitre drains to channel the new runoff problem into Megalong Creek. Once the rains come and the exposed topsoil’s washed into the creek, flat chance the bush’ll come back.
This is not fire trail ‘maintenance’. This is road making. How ‘strategic’ anyway is a track deep in a bush valley over two kilometres from Katoomba? Strategic for arsonists perhaps. Anyone else would need development consent to bulldoze bush – and probably would be rightly rejected. The privileged exemption status granted to the RFS is for times of emergency. It is not a carte blanche for cowboy contractors.
This sad muddy bog left at the Corral Creek crossing is testament to the loose procedural controls of the bushfire committee. Such actions cannot help the RFS’ otherwise high community standing.
Following the publishing of my letter, correspondence from the Blue Mountains Conservation Society’s (ConSoc) Land Use Subcommittee, of which I was an active member, when silent.
My email to the Subcommittee on 14th August read as follows:
Re: LUC Meeting Item 2 ‘Firetrails
“Can someone please advise what actions may have been taken since the RFS bulldozing events in late June on the Six Foot Track (SFT) and on the track
on Fairy Bower Reserve at Mount Piddington (and possibly other bush tracks we are yet to find out about).
The minutes of the LUC August meeting indicated that ConSoc is to write to RFS “again”, so this suggest correspondence has already been made. I would appreciate any copies of correspondence please. What was the outcome (agreed actions) of the midweek meeting between ConSoc, >the RFS and trustee Jon Guyver back on or around 14 Jul 05?
Has the RFS agreed to remediate the bulldozing of the SFT site with endemic plantings, sediment controls?
Has the RFS or Jon Guyver been able to provide any minutes or correspondence regarding the decision making of the bushfire committee to authorise the bulldozing in June?
The silence on this has been ‘Council-esk’ and no public comment appears forthcoming from the RFS.”
.
Regulation of the Six Foot Track
“As per the previous LUC meeting on 13 Jul 05, I have enquired into the possible existence of a trust deed governing management and legal conditions concerning the control of the Six Foot Track.
The Land Department Office in Orange confirms no trust deed as such exists, but rather the SFT is governed by a Reserve Trust under the provisions of
the NSW ‘Crown Lands Act 1989’ and ‘Crown Lands (General Reserves) By Law 2001’ as Reserve No. 1001056.
Jon Guyver is the official administrator of the Six Foot Track Heritage Trust and he has provided me with a copy of the relevant sections of the Act, a complete set of the By laws applicable to the SFT and the Six Foot Track Conservation Management Plan Volumes I and II. The latter cost me $22. Lyn has indicated that she already has a copy of the Plan of Management – I assume this is the same. Volume I is 137 pages and Volume II is 142 pages. I am presently reading through Volume I.
From my reading so far, the bulldozing breaches the Management Plan’s ecologically sustainable development principles, although “the plan is
intended to serve as a guide to conservation and management of the entire Track, but is not a statutory plan which is binding” (Vol. I, p 8).
Jon says he is commissioning an updated version, so I suggest it would be useful for ConSoc to participate in the drafting of this updated version.”
.
[No answer was received from ConSoc, yet on 16th August the editor received a warning from a leading figure within the ‘conservation movement’: “Please do not cast aspersions against RFS people in Con Soc.”]
.
Then on Tuesday 23rd August, the editor emailed the following researched feedback to the Blue Mountains Conservation Society:
“All, Way back on 7-Jul-05, a call was made to the Colong Foundation advising that the Six Foot Track had been severely bulldozed near Megalong Creek. As a member based in Katoomba, I have followed this up, along with enquiries by other ConSoc LUC members.
I proceeded to acquire first hand information, walked to the site and have obtained extensive documentation from the trustee on the Plan of Management
and legislation governing the Track. I am still yet to find out what actions others have taken. I am still yet to receive a response to my email below.
Avid Gazette readers may have come across a small press release from someone in the Gazette’s Mountain Murmurs on 13-Jul-05. After no news, I submitted
my letter of 27-Jul-05 alerting the Mountains community to inappropriate destruction of native habitat and important heritage values of the Six Foot Track [the editor changed my heading]. The thrust of my message was to try to highlight the cause of the problem in an effort to prevent it re-occurring. I referred to the “loose procedural controls of the bushfire committee.” Last week, three mixed response letters arrived, one targeting the contractor, but all ignoring the problem source – the actions of the bushfire committee. Still no public statement has come from the RFS, despite this public call for accountability. I note that ConSoc’s latest Hut News (Aug-05, p3) contains a useful account of the “informative gathering” on 21-Jul-05 by representatives of various stakeholder organisations agreeing on the need for rehabilitation work. But what is still unaccounted for are the actions of the bushfire committee.
Is this bushfire committee made up of these same representatives?
Well, in the absence of feedback, I have continued my investigations and discovered that the underlying cause is the Bushfire Mitigation Programme
of the federal government Department of Transport and Regional Services. I direct you to the following website, the introductory extract and the
attached spreadsheet that lists the following ‘Fire Trails’ in the Blue Mountains for targeting as well as another undisclosed areas of the Blue Mountains National Park.
Question is, have all these locations been subjected to similar bulldozing that we don’t know about yet?
The Six Foot Track bulldozing is a drop in the ocean. The RFS Bushfire Assessment Code refers to complying with the >principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development, which seems nothing more than greenwashing.
Reserve / Activity Name Treatment Area (km) NSW Allocation
Cripple Creek Fire Trail Stage 2 5kma $15,000.00
Cripple Creek Fire Trail Complex 5 km $10,909.09
Caves Creek Trail 0.4 km $5,000.00
Edith Falls Trail 2 km $2,040.00
Boronia Rd – Albert Rd Trails 1km $1,360.00
Perimeter Trail – North Hazelbrook 1.5km $1,360.00
McMahons Point Trail – Kings Tableland 7km $1,000.00
Back Creek Fire Trail 3.2 km $816.00
Mitchell’s Creek Fire Trail 3.5km $204.00
Northern Strategic Line -Primary 8km $11,000.00
De Faurs Trail – Mt Wilson -Primary 2.8km $7,540.00
Mitchell’s Creek Fire Trail – Primary 3.5km $1,836.00
“Fire trails are important resources in the facilitation of prevention and mitigation works. An effective fire trail network increases options available in implementing hazard reduction to protect communities and their social, cultural, environmental and economic assets.
In September 2004 the Prime Minister announced the allocation of $15 million for a Bushfire Mitigation Programme, over three years, for the construction, maintenance and signage of fire trail networks to assist local communities to better prepare for bushfires.
About the Programme
The Bushfire Mitigation Programme is a national programme aimed at identifying and addressing bushfire mitigation risk priorities across the nation. It funds construction and maintenance of fire trails and associated accessibility measures that contribute to safer, sustainable communities better able to prepare, respond to and withstand the effects of bushfires. The specific objective of the programme is to enhance the effectiveness of fire trail networks and as a result increase the:
Safety of fire fighting personnel involved in a fire suppression effort;
Rapidity with which fire suppression agencies are able to access a fire; and
Type of resources that can safely be made available to a fire suppression effort.
The programme is administered by the Australian Government Department of Transport and Regional Services. “
.
[Again, no answer was received from ConSoc.]
.
‘Six Foot Track Abused’
[Published by the editor in the Blue Mountains Gazette, 31st August 2005, page 12].
.
The June bulldozing or grading of the Six Foot Track near Megalong Creek was not only wrong, unnecessary and excessive; it breached the statutory provisions of the Crown Lands Act 1989 under Crown Lands (General Reserves) Bylaw 2001, which prescribes rules for the Track’s environmental protection, heritage and public recreation.
For instance, By-law 23 (2) (n) prohibits conduct in the reserve involving defacing or removing or disturbing any rock, sand, soil, stone or similar substance. It appears no written consent was provided by the Trustee of the Six Foot Track Heritage Trust to the RFS.
The bulldozing also breached the Six Foot Track Conservation and Management Plan of 1997 (two volumes totalling 279 pages). Section 2.1.1 prescribes the need for ecologically sustainable development principles to be followed for all management and planning associated with the Track. Bulldozing or grading is not ecologically sustainable. Policy Statement (7.2) (d) states that the physical elements of the Track including examples of the original alignment, works and sites of Aboriginal and European significance and remnant stands of vegetation should be retained and conserved wherever possible. Numerous threatened species of flora and fauna are recorded as likely present in the Six Foot Tack environs and are listed in Volume I of the Plan. The Plan also states at Section 8.2.5 that “Where development consent is not required an environmental impact statement should be undertaken where there is likely to be an adverse impact on the environment.”
The Plan proposes the following general management objectives for the Six Foot Track:
(1) To ensure that all management decisions fully recognise the considerable cultural and heritage significance of the Six Foot Track
(2) To seek to recover and retain the Track’s original character by the preservation and restoration of identified sites and Track features.
.
.
Reader feedback at the time:
.
.
.
RFS Strategy Misguided
[Published by the editor in the Blue Mountains Gazette, 5th October 2005]
It has been revealed that the June bulldozing or grading of the Six Foot Track near Megalong Creek was a mere drop in the RFS Bushfire Mitigation Programme. Across the Blue Mountains, some twenty natural reserves including the Six Foot Track were targeted under the RFS 2004-05 fire trail strategy – Edith Falls, McMahons Point, Back Creek Cripple Creek plus some 95 hectares inside our National Park. According to the federal Department of Transport and Regional Services (DOTARS) website, $151,195 was granted to the RFS in the Blue Mountains alone, bulldozing 144 hectares of bush in the name of “addressing bushfire mitigation risk priorities.”
The Six Foot Track Conservation and Management Plan 1997, Vol II lists numerous vulnerable species of fauna recorded near Megalong Creek – the Glossy Black-Cockatoo (Clyptorhynchus lathami), Giant Burrowing Frog (Heleioporus australiacus), Spotted-tailed Quoll (Dasyurus maculatus). The RFS contractors wouldn’t have had a clue if they were within 100 metres or 1 metre of rare, vulnerable or threatened species.
The RFS is not exempt from destroying important ecological habitat; rather it is required to have regard to the principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD). Yet the RFS policy on hazard reduction is woefully loose on the ‘Bushfire Co-ordinating Committee Policy 2/03’ on ESD – advocating protection of environmental values and ensuring that ESD commitments are adopted and adhered to by contractors. Experience now confirms this policy is nothing more than ‘green-washing’.
The critical value of dedicated RFS volunteer fire-fighters fighting fires is without question. What deserves questioning is the unsustainable response of the RFS ‘old guard’ to fire trails and hazard reduction with token regard for sensitive habitat. Repeated bushfire research confirms that bushfires are mostly now caused by arson and that the prevalence of property damage is a result of more residential communities encroaching upon bushland.
.
.
Reader feedback at the time:
.
.
Aftermath
.
Following the above publicity and the on site survey of the grading damage by Andrew Scott on behalf of the trustee (Department of Lands -Soil Conservation Service), soil remediation of the Six Foot Track was carried out later in 2005 at a taxpayer cost estimated at $27,000. The RFS has continued to contract out its grading of thousands of kilometres of fire trails across New South Wales, federally funded by the Department of Transport and Regional Services (DOTARS). In 2008, DOTARS ceased online publishing the details of its funded fire trails activities.
The Blue Mountains Conservation Society Land Use Subcommittee (LUC) effectively ostracised the editor from all LUC meeting notifications, minutes and communications despite the editor emailing repeated requests for inclusion (all records remain on file). The logical conclusion drawn from this action is that due to the involvement by key influential members of ConSoc with the local Rural Fire Service and Blue Mountains Council’s Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee a conflict of interest existed in which the vested interest of the latter held sway. The Land Use Officer subsequently joined Blue Mountains Council. The editor (as Honorary Director) was also reprimanded by the Director of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness for taking a principled stand against ConSoc’s condoning of damaging bushfire management practices.
This issue has become a regrettable chapter in one’s exposure to questionable principles of the NSW conservation movement. On 19th January 2009, on principle the editor resigned from both ConSoc and the Colong Foundation for Wilderness to embark on designing an independent voice in The Habitat Advocate website. In November 2010, the editor renewed his membership with the Colong Foundation for Wilderness.
“After Black Saturday there was a predictable chorus calling for a greatly expanded fuel reduction program in Victoria. They got it as sound scientific expertise and advice went AWOL in Royal Commission into the fires. By covering their own butts from uninformed public hysteria, the expert panel have opened a Pandora’s Box. Now we can look forward to large scale indiscriminate burns as DSE struggles to meet ridiculous area based targets that will only accelerate the degradation of fire resistant ecosystems that provide natural barriers to fire. Fire prone forests will expand under this misguided approach and guarantee future mega fires.
All par for a pig headed and ignorant utilitarian approach to nature.”
– posted by Maaate on 08/12/10 – an online contributor to Tasmanian Times
This emergency management inept cycle of Unprepareness>Disaster>Enquiry>Report>Distraction>Amnesia>Unpreparedness…just keeps repeating itself.
Recall the Great Divides Fire of 2006-07, the Grampians bushfire of 2006, the Eastern Alpine bushfires of 2003, Ash Wednesday of 1983, etc, etc. (A list is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia).
Each was followed by an enquiry and a report. Each report has gathered dust and there is little evidence of lessons being learned by the authorities after each event.
The cause of the multiple bushfires were many, but directly due either to fallen or clashing power lines or else deliberately lit. The fire risk conditions were the worst in decades.
But just like after the firestorm, when the bush went into an eerie silence; after the Commission’s report, the government has been strangely silent.
.
Overhead Cabling culpable
One sign of life has come from Karen Kissane’s article in The Age, 1st August 2010, ‘Electricity grid needs upgrade to protect life‘, who has picked up on one finding of the Bushfires Royal Commission that governments and residents were too complacent about the dangers posed by fire.
“Electricity failures sparked five of the Black Saturday fires, including the Kilmore blaze that killed 119 people, and the system needed urgent upgrading, the report said. Power companies have previously said that this could cost billions of dollars.
“The commission also slammed Energy Safe Victoria (ESV), the statutory body charged with overseeing safety in the electrical system, as a weak regulator that lacked influence over power companies.
It said co-regulation by ESV ”appears to be nothing more than ‘compliance ritualism…the focus is on ticking boxes rather than substantive matters.’
.
Need for Serious Investment
.
One sensible solution is for state and federal governments to legislate a programme of relocating all power through or near areas rated as ‘high bushfire prone‘ to be installed underground – new transmission lines and retrofitting old overhead wiring. Governments need to accept the cost of this as part of its culpability in allowing successive bushfires getting out of control. It can’t blame the volunteers or residents or bushfires being an ‘Act of God’.
Before hearing the cries of cost from the energy companies, what did the 2009 Victorian Bushfires ultimately cost?Why is there no total figure?What was the direct economic cost, the infrastructure cost, the property cost, the social cost, the human cost, the wildlife cost, the ecosystem cost?”
The fires bushfires killed 173 people, injured 414 more, destroyed over 2,030 houses, 3,500+ structures, affected 78 individual townships in total and displaced an estimated 7,562 people, plus thousands of livestock and thousands of hectares of pasture, crop and timber plantations. But right down the bottom of the list is estimated that millions of native animals have perished. Quite likely these fires have caused local extinctions which was conveniently outside the terms of reference for the Royal Commission.
Does the Victorian Government care to measure these costs and invest to properly protect and defend Victorian lives, property and wildlife?
.
Opportunity Cost of Doing Nothing
.
It’s all a question of political will. What will Brumby’s unnecessary desalination plant at Wonthaggi end up costing Victorians anyway (as well as buggering Wonthaggi)? $24 Billion? This is the figure currently being bandied around.
‘Victorian taxpayers and water users will pay up to $24 billion over nearly three decades for the Brumby government’s decision to drought-proof Melbourne with Australia’s largest desalination plant. An Auditor-General’s report tabled yesterday fleshes out figures for the controversial project, showing that Victorians would pay on average as much as $860 million a year for desalination if the plant operated at full capacity over the 28-year contract.’
The opportunity cost of state and federal governments failing to invest in measures to mitigate bushfire risk, will only cost more when the bushfires happen again. It is publicly negligent for both governments to ignore the recommendations of the 2009 Victorian Royal Commission and all those bushfire commissions and enquiries that have gone before it, and to do nothing.
Above ground electical wiring in high bushfire areas is publicly negligent. Bushfire Emergency Management centred around volunteers in fire trucks is a recipe for disaster. Meanwhile another bushfire season approaches and all the bushfire authorities can advise the public is that they want to set fire to more bushland and CFA new chief officer Euan Ferguson confirms the ‘stay or go’ policy remains a big challenge.
ESV be reformed and be given more power to prevent electricity-caused bushfires and to punish companies for ”non-performance”;
All single wire earth return power lines across the state be replaced with aerial bundled cable, underground cabling or other technology;
The rollout be completed in bushfire-prone areas in 10 years;
Safety inspections be conducted every three years rather than five; and
Equipment be changed to reduce the risk of lines breaking and sparking.
Jonathan Beach, QC, for power company SP AusNet, had earlier told the inquiry such proposals would cost up to $7.5 billion in its distribution area alone and could force power bills up 20 per cent every year for 20 years.
The commission found that as the distribution network ages and components come to the end of their engineering life, ”there will probably be an increase in the number of fires resulting from asset failures unless the state government and the distribution businesses take urgent preventive steps. This poses an unacceptable risk to the state’s residents. ”The commission considers that now is the time for a major change and a start in planning for the replacement of ageing infrastructure. Protection of human life must be the guiding principle for that reform.”
It found that on Black Saturday three fires were linked to the ageing of the system:
The Kilmore East fire, where conductor failure was caused by fatigue on a line;
The Coleraine fire, where fatigue and corrosion led to a broken tie wire, and as a consequence, a conductor started a fire; and
The Horsham fire, where a conductor fell because of a failed pole cap.
Other kinds of electrical failures sparked the fires at Beechworth and Pomborneit-Weerite, the commission found. It said that ”over the years, distribution networks have been a notorious cause of bushfires in rural areas”, with nine of 16 major fires in 1977 caused by electrical assets.
The inquiry also said that power companies should be made to remove hazardous trees that might be outside their clearance zone ”but that could come into contact with an electric power line having regard to foreseeable local conditions”.
Power company SP Ausnet, part of the Singapore Power Group, yesterday said it was ready to implement any safety recommendations but ”until the full extent and nature of the implementation of any recommendations are worked through it is impossible to estimate any realistic costs”. The state’s other distributor, Powercor, also said it could not yet cost the proposals.
A spokesman for Energy Safe Victoria said it was inappropriate to comment at this stage. Earlier this year, the government announced it would increase ESV’s funding and introduce penalties for power companies failing to submit bushfire mitigation plans. It also planned to clarify ESV’s powers.
The commission’s findings appear to boost Victoria’s biggest class action, on behalf of nearly 600 fire victims, which alleges Singapore Power failed to monitor and maintain the power line that caused the East Kilmore blaze.
The suit claims an ageing 1.1-kilometre line failed because the power company failed to fit a $10 plastic anti-vibration protector to guard against metal fatigue. The action is believed to expose a potential liability of hundreds of millions of dollars.’
ELECTRICITY failures sparked five of the Black Saturday fires, including the Kilmore blaze that killed 119 people, and the system needed urgent upgrading, the report said. Power companies have previously said that this could cost billions of dollars.
The commission also slammed Energy Safe Victoria, the statutory body charged with overseeing safety in the electrical system, as a weak regulator that lacked influence over power companies.
It said co-regulation by ESV ”appears to be nothing more than ‘compliance ritualism”. The focus is on ticking boxes rather than substantive matters”, the commission found.
Judy Jans on her balcony overlooking Marysville. Photo: Neil Bennett
It said ESV did not assess how suppliers could achieve the best safety.
The commission recommended that:
■ ESV be reformed and be given more power to prevent electricity-caused bushfires and to punish companies for ”non-performance”;
■ All single wire earth return power lines across the state be replaced with aerial bundled cable, underground cabling or other technology;
■ The rollout be completed in bushfire-prone areas in 10 years;
■ Safety inspections be conducted every three years rather than five; and
■ Equipment be changed to reduce the risk of lines breaking and sparking.
Jonathan Beach, QC, for power company SP AusNet, had earlier told the inquiry such proposals would cost up to $7.5 billion in its distribution area alone and could force power bills up 20 per cent every year for 20 years.
The commission found that as the distribution network ages and components come to the end of their engineering life, ”there will probably be an increase in the number of fires resulting from asset failures unless the state government and the distribution businesses take urgent preventive steps. This poses an unacceptable risk to the state’s residents.
”The commission considers that now is the time for a major change and a start in planning for the replacement of ageing infrastructure. Protection of human life must be the guiding principle for that reform.”
It found that on Black Saturday three fires were linked to the ageing of the system:
■ The Kilmore East fire, where conductor failure was caused by fatigue on a line;
■ The Coleraine fire, where fatigue and corrosion led to a broken tie wire, and as a consequence, a conductor started a fire; and
■ The Horsham fire, where a conductor fell because of a failed pole cap.
Other kinds of electrical failures sparked the fires at Beechworth and Pomborneit-Weerite, the commission found. It said that ”over the years, distribution networks have been a notorious cause of bushfires in rural areas”, with nine of 16 major fires in 1977 caused by electrical assets.
The inquiry also said that power companies should be made to remove hazardous trees that might be outside their clearance zone ”but that could come into contact with an electric power line having regard to foreseeable local conditions”.
Power company SP Ausnet, part of the Singapore Power Group, yesterday said it was ready to implement any safety recommendations but ”until the full extent and nature of the implementation of any recommendations are worked through it is impossible to estimate any realistic costs”. The state’s other distributor, Powercor, also said it could not yet cost the proposals.
A spokesman for Energy Safe Victoria said it was inappropriate to comment at this stage. Earlier this year, the government announced it would increase ESV’s funding and introduce penalties for power companies failing to submit bushfire mitigation plans. It also planned to clarify ESV’s powers.
The commission’s findings appear to boost Victoria’s biggest class action, on behalf of nearly 600 fire victims, which alleges Singapore Power failed to monitor and maintain the power line that caused the East Kilmore blaze.
The suit claims an ageing 1.1-kilometre line failed because the power company failed to fit a $10 plastic anti-vibration protector to guard against metal fatigue. The action is believed to expose a potential liability of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yesterday, The NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (DECCW) within its Parks and Wildlife Group set fire to over 2500 hectares of remote wilderness in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
This deliberate burning was carried out in the name of ‘hazard reduction’ – in order to reduce the available ‘fuel’ (native vegetation) for potential future wildfires or bush arson.
Under the orders of the Blue Mountains regional manager, Geoff Luscombe, this deliberate burning was started around Massif Ridge some 12 kilometres south of the town of Woodford in wild inaccessible forested area of the World Heritage Area.
Aerial incendiary from a helicopter was used to ignite the forest vegetation floor and incinerate all ground cover and vegetation habitat across a large contiguous area, crossing over creeks and gullies. Fanned by a light southwesterly, the fire incinerated all native ground cover up to the tree canopy for a distance of 5 km into the Blue Labyrinth up to The Oaks Fire Trail.
Luscombe told the media that:
“this late warm weather has created a window of opportunity for us to get this important burn done and we’re taking full advantage. “The 2507-hectare burn will be conducted south of the Woodford-Oaks fire trail, and as a result the trail will be closed to mountain bikers and bushwalkers for the duration of the burn – approximately four to five days….“This burn is aimed at reducing fuel loads to help protect properties and assets in the region.” [1]
Luscombe ignores the massive natural asset in the region is indeed the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area he is setting fire to. The scale of the forested area affected equates to a 5km x 5km area, or 25km2 – an area about 1/3 the size of Lake Burragorang. Yet, the official Rural Fire Service website typically and misleadingly shows the burn area size as ‘zero’ hectares.[2]
Incident Name
Alert Level
Location
Council Area
Status
Type
Size (Ha)
Agency
Last Updated
Massif Ridge Hazard Reduction
Advice
Massif Ridge Hazard Reduction
Blue Mountains
Under Control
Other
0
Dept Environment & Conservation
The scale of the combined burns was also evident from the blanket of smoke smothering the entire Sydney basin and Cumberland Plain yesterday. This is shown in the following photo from the Sydney Morning Herald.
The purpose of bush fire-fighting is to put out bushfires and in the case of wildfires to limit their spread and impact.
However, DECCW’s bush burning policy is advocating exactly the opposite. This year up until 19th April 2010, DECCW boasts that it has performed 193 prescribed burns across NSW ‘treating’ more than 56,000 hectares. Last year it manage 168 prescribed burns ‘treating’ a similar 59,202 hectares. It claims this represents one of the biggest ever deliberate burning programs in National Parks’ history.[3] This equates to an area of national parks being burned every year approximating ¼ the area of the Australian Capital Territory; and this is on top of wildfire and bush arson.
Every year DECCW contracts helicopters and indiscriminately tosses out incendiary devices over wilderness forests. Thousands of hectares are burnt in a free-for-all and thousands of native animals are roasted. Thank crikey these State-sanctioned arsonists aren’t given access to napalm.
DECCW labels its deliberate burning of native vegetation with euphemisms like ‘hazard reduction’, ‘controlled burning’, ‘prescribed burning’, ‘cool burning’ and even ‘ecological burning’. It claims burning vast areas of vegetation somehow ‘assists’ biodiversity, justified on the simplistic premise some species of flora are fire tolerant and grow back. DECCW claims that its burning is essential to manage biodiversity to maintain the reproductive viability of a species or a community of species. DECCW’s ‘eco-logic’ is that since the bush grows back after fire it must be a good impact and therefore good for biodiversity.
DECCW terms areas of national parks targeted for such broadscale burns as ‘Strategic Fire Advantage Zones’ or SFAZs. DECCW justifies charcoaling a massive contiguous landscape as ‘assisting’ biodiversity.
Bollocks!
Luscombe himself has admitted that given the few reliable days a year it is considered safe to burn, DECCW engages in broadscale burning simply a matter of operational convenience.
Mosaic burning is too labour intensive and the typically inaccessible gullied terrain and thick forested vegetation of many national parks makes mosaic burning impracticable and too costly. Be clear; it is all about operational efficiency, not ecological biodiversity.
Last March, DECCW set fire to 2,200 hectares of native habitat in the Blue Mountains in remote wilderness in Kanangra-Boyd National Park near Jenolan Caves.[4] In April 2008, DECCW dropped aerial incendiaries in remote wilderness just to the north along the Krungle Bungle Range.
Like the Rural Fire Service, DECCW is denied serious public resources to detect and suppress wildfires, so it demonises and burns the bush, so destroying the natural asset it is charged to protect and conserve.
DECCW has descended into ecological bastardry, imposing a regime of arson fundamentalism upon nature. This is an unprincipled ‘bush-phobic’ culture.
Broadscale burning is sterilised ecosystems and driving species extinction
The Sydney Morning Herald reported ‘a rogue breeze drove smoke from hazard reduction burning in the Blue Mountains down to street level.’[5] It is more the rogue management of the National Parks Service that misguidedly thinks burning vast swathes of bush at once is good for biodiversity. This demonstrates the wanton disregard for native fauna and flora habitat and disrespect for Aboriginal cultural heritage.
Large contiguous areas of tens of thousands of hectares severely compromising flora and fauna conservation, potentially causing permanent ecological change and loss of species. In the process, DECCW is destroying natural and cultural heritage values of National Parks, causing long-term ecological damage and driving native species extinction.
Collectively, the forested area of the Blue Labyrinth now will lay sterilised of the naturally rich biodiversity of flora and fauna. When the rains come the exposed tops soil will wash away. Watercourses will choke with sediment. The thin fragile soils will change and so change the ability of the soil to replace the complex floristic structure. Only plants that are fire tolerant will recover. Only plants that are hardy to poor soils will recover. There will be less floristic diversity, not more.
Ground-dwelling mammals will have had their burrows, dens, nests, shelters burned and destroyed by the fires. Food sources for spotted-tailed quolls, rufous betongs and wombats will have gone. The undergrowth will have gone leaving a bare open charred landscape. Such a disturbed open landscape benefits feral pedators like cats and foxes and wild dogs. Complex and dense ground vegetation reduces the impacts of predators. But the post-fire regrowth takes many months and creates a simple shrub and herb layer. This allows maximum freedom of movement for cats and foxes, and provides minimum concealment for their prey.[6]
Territorial mammals and raptors do not simply relocate. They remain in their territory and have to compete with these feral predators. Many die. As top order predators like quolls and owls die, this alters the food chain and contributes to local extinctions.
Such broadscale deliberate burning of forest habitat is a threatening process driving Australia’s mammalian extinctions.
Australia has the worst record of mammalian extinctions of any country on Earth, with nearly 50% of its native mammals becoming extinct in the past 200 years.[7]
Australian native fire tolerant fauna (‘pyrophytes’) like most Eucalyptus, Acacia, Proteaceae, Xanthorrhoeaceae and many native ferns and grasses recover quickly after bush fire. However not all species of Eucalypt are fire tolerant (or ‘pyrophobes’) as commonly assumed. Eucalyptus parvula, Eucalyptus saxatilis and Eucalyptus tetrapleura are not fire tolerant. Also, some species of Acacia are not fire tolerant such as Acacia georgensis and Acacia chrysoticha.
Flora diversity varies with soils, aspect, topography and other factors. The Blue Labyrinth is characterised by a labyrinth of ridges and gullies, hence its name. Flora along riparian zones is generally wetter and not as well adapted to fire as ridgeline flora. Yet DECCW’s one-size-fits-all blanket broadscale burning of 2500 hectares up hill and own dale completely disregards the complex biodiversity variations between the gullies and ridgelines. What its blanket burning yesterday has done to the Blue Labyrinth, however, is indeed to have encouraged a consistent simpler form of regrowth vegetation – that is, less biodiversity.
Obviously no animal species is fire tolerant. The Blue Mountains provides habitat to many native mammals including Yellow-bellied Gliders, Koalas, Feathertail Gliders, Eastern Pygmy-possums, Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies, Spotted-tailed Quolls and Antechinus. What happens to these mammals when caught in burn-offs? Where are the native zoological surveys before and after reports for each of these burns?
Native mammals and raptor birds are territorial and do not relocate and typically perish. Broadscale unnatural fire regimes produce unnaturally high biomass, but not true biodiversity.
DECCW’s policy has bad biased biodiversity and fire ecology science to support its simplistic economic approach to bushfire management. DECCW has lost its way as a custodian of protected areas. It is now charged with priorities for exploitative tourism.
Land clearing and frequent broadscale bushfire continue to put many unique species of Australian wildlife at risk. Over the last two hundred years many species of plants and animals have become extinct. DECCW as trusted custodian of NSW’s natural wild areas and in increasing its frequent broadscale burning is possible the greatest contributor to species extinctions across NSW.
The DECCW is charged with custodial responsibility for environmental conservation and protection of the national parks and reserves under its control. DECCW is the lead agency responsible for environmental management of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area (GBMWHA). The GBMWHA Strategic Plan provides management principles and a framework for the integrated management, protection, interpretation and monitoring of the heritage values.
Two key strategic objectives for DECCW management of the GBMWHA is to ‘identify, protect, conserve… the World Heritage values of the GBMWHA’ and to reduce the potential for major impacts to adversely affect the integrity of the GBMWHA. Where there is doubt about the potential impacts of an action on World Heritage values
the ‘precautionary principle’ shall be applied. Under the ‘precautionary principle’:
“where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation”.[8]
Aerial incendiary to indiscriminately burn 2500 hectares of remote wilderness is clearly an impact causing serious and likely irreversible damage to important faunal habitat. Such bush fore management practice on a large congruous scale clearly lacks scientific certainty.
In a CSIRO Journal of Wildlife Research, Michael Clarke, associate professor in the Department of Zoology at La Trobe University says it is reasonable for land management agencies to try to limit the negative effects of large fires and to be sure they do not lead to irreversible damage to native wildlife and habitat.
Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security rather than to reduce fire risks, and the effect on wildlife is virtually unknown. The sooner we acknowledge this the sooner we can get on with the job of working out whether there is anything we can do to manage fires better. We need to know whether hazard reduction can be done without sending our wildlife down a path of firestick extinctions.[9]
Clarke has called for the massive burn-offs to be scrutinised much more closely.
“In this age of global warming, governments and the public need to be engaged in a more sophisticated discussion about the complexities of coping with fire in Australian landscapes.”
He wants ecological data about burns collected as routinely as rainfall data is gathered by the agricultural industry. Without it, hazard reduction burning is flying scientifically blind and poses a dangerous threat to wildlife.
“To attempt to operate without proper data on the effect of bushfires should be as unthinkable as a farmer planting a crop without reference to the rain gauge.”
In the coming decades, native plants and animals will face enough problems – most significantly from human-induced climate chaos – without having to dodge armies of public servants armed with lighters. Guesswork and winter smoke are not enough to protect our towns and assets now, and the risk of bushfires increases with the rise in carbon dioxide.[10]
The incinerating of 2500 hectares of remote bushland in the Blue Labyrinth yesterday was not to protect the houses and properties of Woodford some kilometres away.
Such broadscale deliberate lighting of thousands of congruous hectares of native forest habitat is not protecting houses. This is not clearing dead vegetation around properties. It was fuelled by an unquestioned vandalistic compulsion to burn any bushland that has not been burnt, simply for that reason and that reason alone. The bushfire management call it strategic. But it is a cultural bush-phobia – a fear and lack of respect for the natural landscape. It harks to early Australian colonial mindset that feared the bush to the extent that one had to tame it else invite wildfire Armageddon.
Contempt for Aboriginal Archaeology in the Blue Labyrinth
The Blue Labyrinth is a rugged natural region of forested hills and gullies a few kilometres south of the central Blue Mountains village of Woodford. It is an area of ancient Aboriginal culture. There are caves in the area displaying Aboriginal rock art dating back tens of thousands of years.
In February 2006, DECCW’s Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System (AHIMS) collated an official record of indigenous archaeological sites across the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. It listed some 850 discrete archaeological sites and 973 features in the GBMWHA, representative of past indigenous activities that remain in the landscape and are essentially the “Aboriginal archaeological record”.
An Assessment of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Values of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area by the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute (BMWHI) in 2007 highlights the important Aboriginal cultural heritage values of the area. Recent discovery and documentation of numerous Aboriginal archaeological sites and features in the Blue Labyrinth include shelters, shelter walls, rock platforms marked with imagery and grooves. These have largely been preserved because of the rugged and inaccessible terrain. The GBMWA remains highly significant for the many Aboriginal communities associated with it and there is a renewed and re-invigorated interest in the Area’s cultural heritage.”[11]
In December 2006, leading world rock art expert Dr. Jean Clottes to dozens of sites across the GBMWHA and the central coast. Clottes was recently appointed to UNESCO to advise the institution on the creation of a World Heritage Rock Art List.
He was so impressed with the GBMWHA rock art sites, and associated contemporary Gundungurra, Darug, Wiradjuri and Darkinjing stories that he considers the Area to have world Heritage significance. Indeed, it was the living connections to the sites and larger landscapes that most impressed him.[12] Rock Art at Bora Cave in the Blue Labyrinth is an example of important cultural connections of the local Gundungurra and Darug to the area.
Through the Mapping Country research in the Blue Labyrinth area of the Blue Mountains National Park, hundreds of Aboriginal cultural places were recorded. The BMHWI highlighted in its 2007 report the risk of damage by natural environmental processes and exposure to modern human activities. Particularly highlighted was the risk posed by an increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires and… and efforts to control fires can damage or destroy rock art sites. By locating and mapping sites they can be catered to as part of fire management strategies.[13]
Yet, it would appear from anecdotal evidence that DECCW failed to contact the traditional Aboriginal owners of this land to inform them of the planned burning. It is likely with such indiscriminate broadscale burning that some of the cultural sites may have been irreparable damaged.
What happened to Attic Cave, Dadder Cave and the Aboriginal archaeology between the Massif and The Blue Labyrinth? Was it burnt out and destroyed by DECCW’s needless incineration?
What happened to the wildlife and wildlife habitat? DECCW these days is more a patsy of NSW Labor right wing economic rationalism focusing on tourism revenues, than it is on its core ecological wildlife conservation raison d’etre .
"We're coming to you from the custodial lands of the Hairygowogulator and Tarantulawollygong, and pay respects to uncle and grandaddy elders past, present and emerging from their burrows. So wise to keep a distance out bush."
Ember attack during a bushfire.
Photo © Country Fire Service, South Australia. http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/
.
.
Burning hedge, lit by ember attack.
Photo © City of Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada.
http://www.city.kamloops.bc.ca/firerescue/images/burningHedge.jpg
Result of defacto hazard reduction below Govetts Leap, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains
Photo by editor 20061209 free in public domain.
