National Parks across Australia no longer exist but in name only on the tourist literature.   Exceptional national parks of the Blue Mountains region, seven of them, listed with world heritage values in 2000, no longer hold the values of that listing – Eucalyptus diversity has been incinerated on a massively widescale the area of France.  Millions of wildlife species have been left to be burned alive.

The evil is that this was intentional by entrusted state government bureaucracy, the RFS and NPWS in NSW.   The state minister for Police and Emergency Services, David Elliott, abandoned the emergency at the time for a family overseas holiday in France and Britain.

 

 

The World Heritage listed Greater Blue Mountains Area is a deeply incised sandstone tableland covering over 1 million hectares spread across 8 adjacent conservation reserves. The landscapes of this World Heritage property lie inland to the west of Sydney and extend almost 250 kilometres from the edge of the Hunter Valley to the Southern Highlands near Mittagong.

An enormous variety of plants occur here, but eucalypts dominate the landscape: the area is home to 96 species (13% of all eucalypt species). Rare and endangered plants such as the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) also occur here.   (incinerated by defacto hazard reduction by the NPWS and RFS in December 2019).

World Heritage listing

The Greater Blue Mountains Area was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2000 in recognition of its significant natural values. It possesses unique plants and animals that relate an extraordinary story of the evolution of Australia’s distinctive Eucalypt vegetation and its associated communities.

The Vegetation, Fire and Climate Change in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area booklet outlines a mapping study on plant communities, fire regimes and the impacts of climate changes on plant diversity in this area.”

[Source:  ^https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/parks-reserves-and-protected-areas/types-of-protected-areas/world-heritage-listed-areas/greater-blue-mountains]

 

No longer.   The Blue Mountains World Heritage values have mostly gone.  Small remote ignitions have been deliberately and systematically ignored and let burn by the New South Wales Government entrusted all-controlling national parks service (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service) and all-controlling fire fighting authority the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS).  Days and weeks later, these fires have conflagrated into wildfire fronts then firestorms.    These bushfires were never under control because they did not start near habital property – the RFS charter of convenience. 

So by abject dereliction of duty to proactively protect World Heitage, the NSW Government has recklessly allowed vast natural areas, cumulatively larger than the size of Tasmania (42,000 km2) -a sanctuary endangered and valuable ecology to be incinerated. Sadly, these World Heritage natural values now no longer exist.

The secretly protected Wollemi Pine Grove from the Jurassic Period (201 – 145 million years ago, when conifers like the Wollemi Pine ruled the world) has likely been utterly destroyed by wildfire, according bushfire ground mapping by the Rural Fire Service (RFS) on its ‘Fires Near Me’ website.  The RFS is the entrusted New South Wales state government delegated authority responsible for responding to all non-urban fire firefighting emergencies throughout the state of New South Wales. 

The RFS has failed absolutely.  It is a serial annual failing fire fighting agency.  It lights bushfires and serves but to save the state government billions.

Half a million hectares of pristine World Heritage Wollemi Wilderness has been abandoned to wildfire by government emergency bureaucracy, the RFS,  so that the preciously unique Wollemi Wilderness of some half a million hectares be left to be incinerated in a deliberate bureaucratic defacto hazard reduction, dubbed a ‘strategic burn’. 

In NPWS/RFS colonial culture, World Heritage Listing means nothing but a fuel hazard to be so burned before it inevitably burns.  State based rural firefighting culture across Australia harks to colonial times when wildlife was vermin and Aborigines were savages.

[Image source:  ‘Fires Near Me’ Google dynamic overlay mapping, by Rural Fire Service of NSW on its website, ^https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/fires-near-me, updated 20200128.]

 

The vast area of the world heritage listed Wollemi National Park is 501,700 hectares.  The two bureaucrats charged to protect it were NPWS Upper Mountains Area Manager Richard Kingswood and NPWS Director of Blue Mountains Branch, David Crust.  Both jointly delivered Blue Mountains epic fails this Christmas.  Both need to be summarily held ultimately responsible and so summarily sacked for gross wold heritage abandonment, incompetence and defacto hazard reduction arson.

 

 

This belies this government bureaucracy’s antiquated culture of ecological hate and contempt that has been allowed and encouraged to get its way.  Wilderness has been tamed ready for farmland and Sydney’s massive urban sprawl.

Blue Mountains ecology has allowed to be decimated – 80% of it.

This is a programme of widespread blanket defacto ‘hazard reduction’ – we interpret as state government sanctioned ‘bush arson’ – a mindset to  burn native habitat before it burns, because capital city centric state governments deliberately under-resource rural fire fighting.

 

The Habitat Advocate’s subsequent email to UNESCO:

 

Dear Committee,

We are so sad to inform you that the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area has been mostly let incinerated.
It’s world heritage values perhaps no longer exist as a result.

https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/fires-near-me

State Government bush arson ramps up

We request your interest.

Sincerely,
Editor of The Habitat Advocate
Katoomba NSW 2780 Australia
Upstream of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.

 

World Heritage listing of the Blue Mountains region by the New South Wales Government (by its phony then Minister for the Environment, Bob Debus) was always with an ulterior motive. The listing’s ulterior motive was always about preserving a water catchment natural area immediately to the west of a massively expanding Sydney, since dubbed Greater Western Sydney that swallows the rural regions of the Blue Mountains, Hunter Valley, Central Coast, Newcastle, Wollondilly and Illawarra. 

It’s not just sad; it is strategically planned, calculated, staged and outsourced sold by spin doctors to a naive public.

Rural fire bureaucracy at state and territory level across Australia has been allowed to perpetuate on an under-resourced piecemeal, charity and volunteer ‘Dad’s Army’ basis since the 1939 Black Friday bushfires, some four generations ago.  It’s all to save governments money so they can splurge on other things.

Instead of 1939 being a national wake up call to Australia about bushfire unpreparedness, about ignorance of bushfire risk mitigation, about the lack of a nationally resourced and trained emergency unit of military standard to protect Australians, what was the governmental response?  

Yet another government enquiry.

This is a photo from the desperate and overwhelming 1939 Black Friday Bushfire Disaster across Victoria. 

A government enquiry (indeed a Royal Commission) was ordered into the bushfire disaster – 71 lives were lost, 69 timber mills burt out, millions of acres of fine forest of almost incalculable value decimated, townships were obliterated. 

The Bushfires Royal Commission Report 1939 by Judge Leonard E. B. Stretton reported that hundreds of small fires smouldered unattended in the week leading up to Black Friday, when, fanned by the gale-force winds, they joined to create the inferno. Most of the fires Stretton declared, with almost biblical gravity, were “lit by the hand of man“.

His scathing 35 page report (extract below) was presented to the Victorian Parliament on the 16th May 1939. It led to a few token changes to pile burning and fire safety measures for sawmills, grazing licensees and the general public, the compulsory construction of dugouts at forest sawmills, increasing the forest roads network and firebreaks, construction of forest dams, fire towers and RAAF aerial patrols linked by the Forests Commissions radio network VL3AA to ground observers.

Stretton examined the inevitability of fire in the Australian bush and heard evidence from foresters, graziers, sawmillers and academics whether it was best to let fires burn because they were a part of a natural protective cycle or to combat them to defend people and the forests. Importantly, his balanced deliberations officially sanctioned and encouraged fuel reduction burning.

Stretton recommended that the Forests Commission must take complete responsibility of fire suppression and prevention on all public land including State forests, unoccupied Crown Lands, MMBW catchments and National Parks plus a buffer extending one mile beyond their boundaries onto private land.

Most of those initiatives were soon abandoned by the Victorian Government out of complacency and subsequent contemporary political priorities.

The Stretton Royal Commission of 1939 presided over by Judge Stretton has been described as one of the most significant inquiries in the history of Victorian public administration.  His work has been referred to in subsequent bushfire inquiries and Royal Commissions such as Ash Wednesday in 1983 and Black Saturday 2009.

Yet, dozens of widespread bushfires later, thousands of homes razed later, ecology on the brink later, and rural fire bureaucracy rave on about the heroic effort by unpaid firefighting volunteer slaves.  This despite the fact that rural fire bureaucracy at state and territory levels across Australia has yet again failed rural Australian communities, businesses and ecology.

What’s changed since 1939?  Certainly not the governmental culture of leaving locals to fend for themselves.

• “Effect your bushfire plan“…. (abandon our home to the fire?)
• “Are you going to stay or go?” – (.. to bloody where?  Putting out the fires and defending property is supposed to be the job of fire firefighters isn’t it?)
• “We can’t guarantee a fire truck to turn up when you call 000.”  (why not, the real fire service does.  It is statutorily charged to protect the community.)
• “Tourists get out now!”  (Who compensates lost homes and regional tourism and business?)

 

The response next week after December 2019?  Another government enquiry.

Bushfires typically start in the bush either by lightning or arsonists.   Fire trucks are therefore useless; always too little, too late.  The arsonists continue to get away with murder, home loss – which often leads to suicides.

 

Australia’s national parks have been decimated to dead, silent park graveyards for wildlife.   They were never national; rather delegated to under-funded state bureaucracies with a record of mass sackings.

UNESCO needs to be told that the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area has gone.  It’s world heritage listing was cynically always about setting aside inaccessible forests to preserve and expand Sydney’s drinking water for a growing human plague.

Following the 2006 Grose Valley megafire (started by a Hartley Valley RFS backburn) and the 2009 Victorian megafires, this author was rebuked for daring to critise the volunteer rural firies and laughted at for suggesting a military national organisation take control with live satellite detection of ignitions and wioth paid standby airborne resources.

A decade later the old blokes are waking up.   Budget Dad’s Army culture remains stubborn – “we don’t want to be paid.  We prefer dependence upon the afternoon teas and charity donations by struggling and homeless locals, and more homes lost instead.  Just keep our traditional culture of volunteerism”

Australia’s remnant islands of ecology are being incinerated dead wastelands.  It’s a Baby Boomer legacy.

1300 homes destroyed thus far…but you dare not criticize because those authorities responsible for community safety, hide behind the volunteer veil. 

 

Summer 2020 herald’s the 81st anniversary of 1939 Black Friday Bushfires Disaster.   Australia as a nation would surely/sadly be up to Bushfire Emergency Mark 81 at least – deploying the same state based volunteer slave labour culture to cost billions and drive ecological extinctions.   

What a dishonourable scoreboard of environmental justice.

Hey Wildlife, enact your bushfire plans!

 

Further Reading:

 

[1]   The Stretton Royal Commission Report, 1939, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/wp-admin/upload.php?item=26596

 

[2]  ‘The Formation of a Civil Emergency Corps’, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/?p=4376

 

Smoking Ceremony or Smoke and Mirrors?

Staged for the delegates by National Parks and Wildlife Service of New South Wales (NPWS), somewhere outside Sydney, Australia

[Source:  ‘Global First Nations environmentalists share stories at the World Parks Congress in Sydney.5:30’, ^https://twitter.com/nitvnews, 20141113]

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Every ten years a World Parks Congress is a forum staged by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to discuss the effectiveness of World Heritage Listed Protected Areas.   For 2014, Parks Australia put up Sydney’s hand to host and fund it.

<<“We (Parks Australia) are delighted to be co-hosting the IUCN World Parks Congress with our colleagues in the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service – and look forward to welcoming inspiring leaders from around the world.”>>

IUCN’s vision is a “just world that values and conserves nature.”  The theme for the 2014 conference is “Parks, people, planet: inspiring solutions”.

The last congress was in Durban, South Africa eleven years ago in 2003 and significant messages from that congress were that:

1. Considerable progress has been made in the establishment of protected areas although significant gaps remain
2. Protected areas face many challenges, and management effectiveness must be strengthened
3. Protected areas play a vital role in biodiversity conservation and sustainable development
4. A new deal is needed for protected areas, local communities and indigenous peoples
5. There is a need to apply new and innovative approaches for protected areas, linked to broader agendas
6. Protected areas require a significant boost in financial investment
7. Protected areas management must involve young people

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Congress Cost Benefits ?

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The obvious first question for the 2014 Sydney Congress is what are the outcomes from these seven messages of 2003?

The second question is what is to be the conservation return on investment of staging the 2014 congress in Sydney?   That starts with Parks Australia and NPWS disclosing the full costs of the congress.  How much will it have cost by the time this week is over?   Five million? Ten million? Twenty million? More?  That also involves disclosure of the onground conservation outcomes, if any.   The congress hosts more than 5000 delegates for a week-long event in Sydney.

If the answers are not forthcoming and/or the performances less than satisfactory, then perhaps the money could have been better spent (invested) by Parks Australia and NPWS on specific onground conservation of current and worthy Protected Areas in Australia.  So the third question is what is the opportunity cost of the 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress which could have delivered the IUCN vision of a “just world that values and conserves nature”?

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Congress Opportunity Costs

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According to IUCN director general, Julia Marton-Lefevre, assessments during the past decade have found that half of the world’s protected areas at best — and possibly as few as 20 per cent — are managed effectively. “Some are what we refer to as ‘paper parks’ ” – parks just on paper.

The Australian Government’s $180 million allocation to expand the park reserve system expired last year.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is a case in point.  It is the iconic Protected Area in Australia.  Its World Heritage listing along with various national zoning, management plans, permits, education and incentives are supposed to protect and conserve the marine ecosystems and migratory species from human threats. But farm and urban runoff continues to contaminate the rivers that flow into the Reef.

In 2009 and 2011, mining company Queensland Nickel discharged nitrogen-laden water and 516 tonnes of toxic waste water into the Great Barrier Reef.

On 21 July 2013, on the second day of the biennial joint training exercise Talisman Saber, two American AV-8B Harrier fighter jets launched from aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) dropped four bombs, weighing a total 1.8 metric tons (4,000 pounds), into more than 50 metres (164 ft) of water. On 3rd April 2010, The Shen Neng 1, a Chinese ship carrying 950 tonnes of oil, ran aground, causing the 2010 Great Barrier Reef oil spill.

In December 2013, Greg Hunt, the Australian environment minister, approved a plan for dredging to create three shipping terminals as part of the expansion of an existing coal port. According to corresponding approval documents, the process will create around 3 million cubic metres of dredged seabed that will be dumped within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

On 31 January 2014, a permit was issued to allow three million cubic metres of sea bed from Abbot Point, north of Bowen, to be transported and unloaded in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, just outside of Abbot Bay.  The dredge spoil will cloud the water and block sunlight, thereby starving sea grass and coral up to distances of 80 km away from the point of origin due to the actions of wind and currents.  The dredge spoil will smother reef or sea grass to death, while storms can repeatedly resuspend these particles so that the harm caused is ongoing; secondly, disturbed sea floor can release toxic substances into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

Dredging the Great Barrier Reef for bulk export shipping

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The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has become just a blue line on a map.  The trickle of funds for Australia’s national parks betrays a lack of appreciation of their economic contribution. Annual funding for the authority that runs Australia’s most famous reserve, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, is about 1 per cent of the $5.2bn it earns the country in tourism revenue.

Yet if the IUCN World Parks Congress cost a conservative $20 million to stage then a key opportunity cost would be the June 2014 Federal budget cuts to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

The budget axed 17 staff including five of its’ directors positions.   These positions included the director of heritage conservation, the director of policy and governance and the director of coastal ecosystems and water quality as part of an internal restructure.  It’s being described as the greatest loss of expertise from Australia’s most important natural wonder and it comes at the very time the Great Barrier Reef is facing the greatest threat to its survival.

The Greater Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has been reduced by the Australian Government to being in name only and ineffective at protecting the reef.

Until recently, one of those five directors, Adam Smith, was charged with dealing with the contentious Abbot Point coal terminal development and the proposal to dump three million cubic metres of dredge spoil into the marine park.   Despite Dr Smith’s concerns, the sea dumping was approved by the Marine Park Authority.

Dr Smith has since accepted voluntary redundancy and moved on after disagreeing with the Authority’s new economic leadership and values.  Heritage conservation director Jon Day has left after 21 years, disillusioned too with the direction the Authority has taken to compromise the reef.

Next year UNESCO will decide whether to put the reef on its world heritage in danger list.  Native Dugongs are already endangered.  The deliberate extermination of the dugong and turtles which habituated the Gladstone area is a national tragedy. Dugongs are species listed under the Federal Environment Protection Biodiversity & Conservation Act, which requires the Federal government to legally protect these animals.

Prior to the massive dredging operation of 52 million cubic metres of seabed for the development of the world’s largest LNG Terminal, ( which is 62% completed) a study commissioned by the Gladstone Ports Corporation found that a take, or a quota, of more than zero dugongs would be unsustainable.

In the face of massive mortality of dugongs, turtles and inshore dolphins during the ongoing massive dredging, both the Federal and Queensland governments ignored the slaughter.

Look at the stranding data from the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management. Monthly cumulative Dugong strandings by year for Queensland, up to 31 January 2012.

There are 22,000 vessel movements a month in Gladstone Harbour. No ship strikes of Dugongs or of Green Turtles need to be reported.  No audit of environmental conditions has been undertaken by the Queensland or Federal Governments.   The wholesale slaughter of our marine wildlife is the price Australians are paying for the transformation of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area into the world’s largest unregulated quarry.

Mass tourism operators good for the economy

Getting up close to protected Humpback Whales within their 100 metre Protected Area

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Australian protected areas have seen rule changes in the eastern states have allowed cattle to graze, recreational shooters to hunt and hotel developers to build in national parks. Shore-based recreational fishing has been allowed in areas of NSW marine parks previously zoned as no-take sanctuaries.  National parks on land and in the ocean are dying a death of a thousand cuts, in the form of bullets, hooks, hotels, logging concessions and grazing licences.

Yet as host of the 2014 World Parks Congress, Australia is showcasing “our own inspiring places, inspiring people and inspiring solutions.”     The Global Eco Forum within the Congress programme focuses on tourism exploitation of Protected Areas because like the new Greater Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the new values are not about conservation by the billions in revenue opportunity to Australia’s economy.

The October 2006 issue of National Geographic published an article “The Future of Parks: Hallowed Ground – Nothing is Ever Safe”.

It stated:

“Landscape and memory combine to tell us certain places are special, sanctified by their extraordinary natural merits and by social consensus. 

We call those places parks, and we take them for granted.”

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Sydney’s 2014 World Parks Congress appears to be expensive window dressing, showcasing fraudulent conservation of Protected Areas in Australia.

It’s termed Greenwashing.  The opportunity cost of the 2014 Congress could have instead funded the retention of the previously effective Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and so done more for Protected Areas than all the pomp, promising, luncheons, showcasing, and talk-festing of the congress combined.

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Protest to stop Queensland Resources Council dumping dredge spoil inside the Reef

Protest by Cairns and Far North Environment Centre (CAFNEC), June 2014

^http://cafnec.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/rally-promo-photo.jpg

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Further Reading:

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[1]    IUCN World Parks Congress (Sydney 2014), International Union for Conservation of Nature, ^http://worldparkscongress.org/

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[2]   ‘Global Eco-Tourism in Protected Areas‘, by EcoTourism Australia,  >2014 Global Eco Tourism in Protected Areas.pdf   (1.1MB, 2 pages)

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[3]   Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (website), Australian Government,  ^http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/

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[4]   Fight for The Reef (website), Australian Marine Conservation Society, ^https://fightforthereef.org.au/risks/dredging/

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[5]   No Hunting in National Parks (website),  The National Parks Association of NSW,  ^http://nohunting.wildwalks.com/

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[6]   ‘An international perspective on tourism in national parks and protected areas‘, by J.G. Castley (2014), >An international perspective on tourism in national parks and protected areas.pdf  (100kb, 10 pages)

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[7]   ‘EXTRA: ‘Nasho’, Royal National Park, Sydney’s neglected southern jewel‘, by Nick Galvin, Journalist, Sydney Morning Herald, 20140613, ^http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/extra-nasho-royal-national-park-sydneys-neglected-southern-jewel-20140613-zs6d8.html

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[8]   ‘Paradise lost: Australia’s heritage jewels under threat‘, (audio), ABC ‘Background Briefing’ radio programme, by Sarah Dingle, 20131208, ^http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2013-12-08/5132224

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White Lemuroid Possum

(Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area in Danger)

Has the white lemuroid possum become the first mammal to go extinct due to global warming?
The species, normally found above 1000m, has not been sighted during any nighttime spotlighting expedition since 2005. Experts fear a temperature rise of 0.8 degrees Celsius may be to blame for the animal’s disappearance. 

[Source:  ^http://www.wherelightmeetsdark.com/index.php?module=newswatch&NW_user_op=view&NW_id=453]

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