Comments on: Red Gum Forests Need Water and Thinning: Not Bob Carr

By: Ron Pike

Ron Pike — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:09:15 +0000

Thanks David,
And yes I do the same. However I do not agree that letters editors are any more open minded than the rest of the press.
I manage to get some things printed in the Aus. and used to get some in Fairfax.
A couple of years ago Wendy Frew fabricated a story on the MDB including photos that claimed to be what they were not.
My letters to the editor were rejected. I then rang the journalist involved and requested a correction, which didn’t happen.
I followed this with a letter of complaint to the SMH. I was contacted by the Editor who claimed that the journalist believed that what she wrote at the time was valid and that her photographer had simply been mistaken.
End of story.
I have had no letters or articles printed in the SMH since.
Around this time I met with a well known journalist who was ex Fairfax and then employed by the Aus.
When I pointed out to her many misleading articles in relation to the MDB and again photos that were not what was claimed; she responded that she was aware of the false impressions but she was obliged to write articles that confirmed the editors beliefs.
I still occasionally correspond with this journalist, but with little positive response.
All very distressing.
Modern journalists seem to have some infalable belief that they alone know what is best for our democracy and they have the power to implement their narrow beliefs.
To challenge this holier-than-thou view, is to incur the wrath of the press and excommunication from further discussion.
Our democratic decission making process is less at risk from what voters don’t know, than it is from what they do know that is false.
E.G.
1: AGW
2: Renewablw energy
3: The problems of the MDB.
4: Forest and fire management.
Pikey.

By: David Joss

David Joss — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:39:20 +0000

Pikey, you ask “how do we do that?” which is a question that has vexed me too.
I use every opportunity to write letters to editors. Mostly to local papers as I figure if you can educate the local populace you then hopefully have plenty of allies.
But of course the important votes are in the big smoke so I try whenever an opportunity presents itself. I find you must be brief, quick off the mark and topical.
Even then you are at the mercy of a letters editor but I think they try a bit harder to get some balance on a contentious subject.
But I really dunno. I won’t stoop to the sort of infantile stunts the other side pull and maybe that’s a bad frame of mind.

By: Ron Pike

Ron Pike — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:00:05 +0000

To Ian and All,
I think that the information in this little post is informative less for debunking the miths about the MDB Red Gums as it is an example of how radical environmentalism has been aided by our incompetent, sensationalism seeking and left leaning media to repeatedly misinform the Australian public.
While it is pleasing to be able to air our views and seek to disseminate truth to a larger audience on Jennifer’s blogg, we are really having little impact on the wider audience that would be necessary to make real change.
How do we do that?
Pikey.

By: Ian Mott

Ian Mott — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:00:21 +0000

Yep, these green hideoids have taken an unambiguous ecological surplus and converted it to a duty of care. Carr and the facts have never been close associates and this situation is no exception. And surprise, surprise, the pathetic plodder lists his environmental “reforms” as his greatest achievement. That is a nice way of saying that he ponced about for more than a decade while his capital city got bigger, uglier, more congested and unlivable.

By: David Joss

David Joss — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:18:38 +0000

Further to the above, here is an interesting quote from the then governor of South Australia, Sir Henry Young, in a letter to his Victorian counterpart written from the paddle steamer “Lady Augusta” on her maiden voyage up the river in 1853:

“The river for 40 miles approaching Swan Hill, and for 20 miles beyond it, presents the most singular aspect which it is possible to conceive—a vast plain of reeds, without visible high land of any kind, or trees; the river-course perfectly safe, open, and deep (3 and 31/2 fathoms) ; occasionally a fringe of high trees, and then another vast plain, entirely bare and open, with large lakes.”

Unfortunately the “Lady Augusta” turned back downstream soon after navigating the “20 miles beyond” Swan Hill so we have no description of the river further upstream from that point.
Today the banks of that stretch of river are densely treed with river red gums, such is the invasive nature of the species.
Accounts by Thomas Mitchell the explorer and Joseph Hawdon, the first overlander to drive cattle down the Murray from Albury to Adelaide, concur with the above description. Both complained of not being able to light a decent campfire in the region because there were no trees.

By: Ron Pike

Ron Pike — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 06:34:28 +0000

To David Joss,
I appreciate your great input and would like to add a few points.
In relation to the river boat industry on the rivers of the MDB; this was quite short lived and was always hampered by irregular river flow.
It began in the 1860’s and came to an abrupt end with the 1st World War. At its peak there were about 240 boats involved, so claims that this industry were somehow partially responsible for loss of Red Gums is quite false.
The history of the “Barmah Choke,” in the Murray is as follows:
About 25,000 years ago there was an upmovement in the earths crust of about 12 metres in a line roughly between Deniliquin and Echuca. This uplift dammed the Murray and Goulbourn rivers and formed a large shallow lake.
The Murray followed a course of least resistance to the north, which today is the Edwards river. The Goulbourn continued to feed the lake and broke out to the west.
About 8,000 years ago the Goulbourn break in the uplift became the main out flow from this lake and the present course of the Murray river.
It is this breakout point that is the “Barmah Choke.”
It is the youth of this ex-Goulbourn channel that explains its narrow passage.
The abandoned channel of the pre-lift Murray can still be seen high and dry on the Cadell Tilt Block and is known as Green Gulley.
Today during major floods most of the water flows through the Edward- Wakool rivers system because of the restrictions caused by the Barmah Choke.
As the new channel developed the lake gradually drained and it was after this that the Red Gum forest began to establish.
I believe this all supports your observations above.
For those interested in this subject I recommend “Riddles of the Rivers,” by Alan Eager.
Pikey.

By: Ian Mott

Ian Mott — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:12:46 +0000

Davey, Carr was Premier of NSW for the decade from 1995 to recent times. He now satisfies his pathetic recognition cravings with bits of gratuitous planet salvation. He actually first won office by presenting himself as the (prrp prrp) Mr Fixit of Sydney transport (guuffaaw).

By: Green Davey

Green Davey — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:30:38 +0000

Good Grief,
Who is this Bob Carr? I don’t think I have noticed him before. I have noticed Dr John Benson. I believe he is a botanist, who signs himself as ‘ecologist’, but seems unaware of the important role of fire in Australian ecosystems.

By: Ian Mott

Ian Mott — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:17:34 +0000

Good posts, Ron and David. Solving imaginary problems in new, non-remnant ecosystems is central to Bob Carr’s MO. Indeed, it is now the central element of green/labor environment policy. The list is extraordinary;

1. A salinity scare that went away in the next drought.
2. The “restoration” of MurrayDarling catchment flows that are 50% above pre-settlement levels after land clearing.
3. The use of fresh water to flush the Murray Estuary after the barrage prevented the tides from doing so.
4. The “protection” of a greatly expanded River Red Gum estate.
5. Ignoring 14 million ha of new forest thickenning while justifying clearing controls.
6. Exaggerating actual clearing in NSW by a factor of 15.
7. Implying that the clearing was all original forest instead of regrowth.
8. The “protection” of a Barrier Reef that is under minimal threat.
9. Treating once-off, historical livestock modification of creek banks as if it were a current and continuous problem.
10. The failure to recognise the vast expansion of riparian and aquatic ecosystems along irrigation chanels.
11. The recording of urban water extractions from close to the Murray mouth as a loss to the entire river system despite the uncontested fact that the water has traversed 95% of the river length.
12. Preventing the partial harvest and complete restoration of less than 1% of the state forest estate each year while ignoring fire management bungling that has destroyed more than 50% of the parks estate (and its dependent wildlife) in a single year.

And the list goes on, and on, and on.

By: David Joss

David Joss — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 06:12:08 +0000

Jennifer
Overbank pumping doesn’t seem to work. In November 2006 Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt wrote: “As late as last week, 13 diesel pumps were still sucking water out of the Murray to water the gum trees of Hattah Lakes…”
Hattah-Kulkyne National Park was recently identified as having one of the highest levels of stressed trees on the Victorian side of the Murray. Obviously putting the trees in national parks does nothing to help them either, and yes, these are the same Victorians who have just locked up the Barmah and other river red gum forests to “save” the trees.
Edward Curr whose Tongala run encompassed the Barmah forest in the 1840s described the forest as open. When he first visited the Barmah area this is what he saw:
“Looking around, on one side of us we saw extensive reed-beds intersected by the Murray, which (an unusual feature in colonial rivers) flowed here almost without banks, and on the level of the plain. [His description of the Barmah choke is spot on and note his use of the word "plain"] The other half of the circle was occupied by open, grassy, forest land which extended we did no know how far.”
Further into his description he records climbing a solitary old gum tree from which:
“A sea of reeds, of several miles in extent, as far in fact as the eye could reach, met our view on both sides…”
Today the country he described is covered with dense forest and the reeds are considerably diminished except where it is regularly too wet for trees to flourish.
The aborigines burnt these areas regularly (Curr noted that too) and their burning, combined with lengthy, almost-annual inundations (which drown seedlings) meant that this forest was largely grassy plains back then.
Given the right conditions river red gums grow like weeds and that is what has happened since the demise of the tribal aboriginal.
So these ancient forests which Bob Carr is so desperate to lock up for their own good have really only been forests for about 200 years, sprinkled still with a few ancient survivors which escaped the aboriginal management regime. They are man-made.
Dr Tim Stone in a recent study found that the infamous Barmah choke or “the Narrows”, a section of the Murray between Mathoura and Barmah townships, was only formed about 550 years ago and has proposed that the Barmah forest dates only from then.