As part of the campaign to have State Forest converted to National Park in the Pilliga-Goonoo region of central western New South Wales, the Western Conservation Alliance held a forest protest in the Tinkrameanah State Forest in August 2002. The main thrust of their media release* announcing the sit-in was that : logging was a threat to the beautiful and high conservation value Tinkrameanah forest because contractors were not supervised.
Tinkrameanah State Forest became national park just over a year ago and timber harvesting is now banned.
This last week there have been bushfires in the Pilliga-Goonoo region with over 100,000 hectares burnt.
Volunteer fire fighters have been working around the clock, but in the Tinrameanah nature reserve they couldn’t put in a fire break because national parks officers were concerned about the potential environmental impact.
Yesterday I received an email from a woman who lives in the Pillaga near Tinrameanah, Juleen Young wrote:
“Tinkrameana was under State Forestry control but went under National Park’s control with the Brigalow decision. They have not had it 12 months and it has been incinerated, gone.”
Perhaps it was inevitable that the Tinkrameana forest would one day burn?**
The Pilliga forests are only new. Early explorers described the country as open grassland and woodland. Early European settlers followed with sheep but they didn’t survive the drought. Then there were flood in the 1880s triggering massive germination of native cypress and Eucalyptus. A timber industry established and flourished until about 1967 when the state government started converting the working forests to National Park beginning with the 80,000 hectare Pilliga Nature Reserve.
In May last year then NSW Premier Bob Carr announced a ban on logging over a further 350,000 hectares describing the decision as achieving ‘permanent conservation’ of the iconic forests. As the timber workers were chased out of their forests, they explained that without active management there can be no conservation. They said that the Pilliga forests need to be tended – including thinned and protected from wildfires.
Indeed foresters have a vested interest in not letting their forests incinerate, and that vested interest has benefited barking owls and koalas.
I’m sure that the Western Conservation Alliance, not to mention the Wilderness Society, are disappointed that the Tinkrameanah is gone. But the bottom-line is that while campaigning so hard to have State Forest converted to National Park, they didn’t budget for fire prevention.
In fact environmental activists in NSW have lobbied hard for restrictive fire intervals for prescribed burning and heavily conditional licensing and on top of this the National Parks and Wildlife Service is chronically under funded with inadequate reources for effective hazard-reduction (see ‘When Will We Ever Learn?’ by Jim and Aled Hoggett).
The Tinkrameanah forest may start to grow back one day, but with timber workers excluded will it ever be as biologically diverse? Indeed if the cypress is not thinned it may just develop into thicket void of koalas and barking owls?
The Western Forest Alliance was wrong to suggest the greatest threat to the Tinkrameana was logging, indeed the long term survival of biologically diverse healthy forests in the Pilliga region may depend on sustainable use conservation, in particular getting timber workers back into the forests.
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* Media Release
Embargoed until 12 noon, 9 August 2002
Western Forest Protest: First ever in region
Today the Western Conservation Alliance is holding the first-ever forest protest in the region against destructive logging, including the destroying of hundred-year-old grass trees in Tinkrameanah State Forest, near Coonabarabran.
“Management of this beautiful forest by State Forests is seriously lacking. Logging contractors are either failing to follow new licence conditions negotiated last year, or they are working under old, inadequate licences with no supervision”, said Friend of the Pilliga representative, David Paull.
“Either way it’s obvious that when land is designated state forest, it is in harms way. National park protection would ensure such damage would not occur.”
The WCA is calling for an immediate investigation into the logging and a moratorium on all logging of high conservation areas in the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion, such as Tinkrameanah State Forest, until the Western Regional Assessment is finalised.
‘Conservationists from all over the Western Region and NSW are concerned about the ongoing destruction of western woodland remnants and other poorly conserved forest communities’ said Bev Smiles from National Parks Association of NSW.
‘The protest highlights the need to stop logging key western forests and start planting hardwood timber lots on degraded agricultural land’, she said.
The Western Conservation Alliance wants Tinkrameanah State Forest to be protected in the Western Regional Assessment, to be finalised this year.
The peaceful protest in Tinkrameana State Forest, 40 km east of Coonabarabran and just to the west of Tambar Springs is being held on Friday 9th August. Further protests are planned.
** See comment from Luke (December 2, 3.21pm) following my recent blog post ‘Pilliga Forest Burns’ for a history of fires in the Pilliga.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
“Indeed foresters have a vested interest in not letting their forests incinerate”
So how come the Pilliga burned to the ground in the past then?
Did not past forestry practices exclude fire to make Cypress the dominant species. Have Forestry practices themselves contributed to fuel buildup? Were the Cypress timbers themselves being over-exploited?
And why have 17 mammals have disappeared from the Pilliga and a further 15 are now rare.
Have past wildfires under forestry control – caused these species reduction?
Anyway it’s a poor situation when we cannot arrange an outcome that benefits both conservation and forestry interests. I personally would like to think that some forestry operations would be feasible in the area.
Fire management is difficult – as the NPWS Fire Management Plan introduction says – this is clearly “big fire country”. Would “responsible” fire management with more frequent fires be not suitable for the forest industry. How do you get Cypress recruitment if the seedlings are burned?
And has the move to concrete railway sleepers made the ironbark industry more marginal?
I don’t know what happened on the ground in recent days with the fire break issue – if it’s true it would seem some poor decision making by NPWS operatives on the day. Probably should at least get their side of it Jen. Rod Young is obviously more in the know having been in local organisations such as Pilliga Push and the whole debate.
Why this continued focus on the Pilliga? Across Australia today there several dozen active fire fronts. Victoria has fires all round the great divide. In fact many Victorian bushfires are very close to the Alpine National Park.
Pilliga as a new National Park must be someone’s obsession hey
Jennifer; The frequency of major wildfires and their causes is not been properly by the blog. There are a number of good reasons why Carr made many old forestry areas into new national parks or extensions of existing national parks besides votes in Sydney
Sure; pressure was building up from extensive nationally wilderness campaigns that were a feature of the flowery 70’s.(not the Greens. Where were you Jennifer?) The NSW Wilderness Act 1987 allows any person or organisation to submit a written proposal.
But for National Parks policy in NSW lets go back only a decade. Policy development was being driven by another body of opinion. Federal regional assessment for the pending National Forest Policy Statement 1998 caused Carr to integrate forestry with parks. Simply we had used more than the resource could withstand sustainably
Another driver was the NSW Scientific committee work and “Key threatening process removal of deadwood and dead trees” ANZECC 2001, Firewood removal Landsberg 2000, also 290 VERTABRETE SPECIES hollow trees re western slopes, Smith & Lyndenmayer 1988 ie standing dead wood. They noticed foresters were burning substantial amounts of deadwood in re afforest operations everywhere.
In case there is a conflict brewing over methods I note the aborigines did not burn it all either. Fire is a ruthless tool in the wrong hands.
I’m fascinated by this curioius position State Forests must be evil and all the wildlife threatened by SF managment but the instant the land is under NPWS management it is saved. Which begs the question if it was such bad managment under SF why was it worth saving surely it was a barren wasteland and not worth saving?
Conversely it is easy to fall into the thinking that if it is under NPW then it will all be incinerated in a ferocious wildfire.
I’m fascinated by this curioius position State Forests must be evil and all the wildlife threatened by SF managment but the instant the land is under NPWS management it is saved. Which begs the question if it was such bad managment under SF why was it worth saving surely it was a barren wasteland and not worth saving?
Conversely it is easy to fall into the thinking that if it is under NPW then it will all be incinerated in a ferocious wildfire.
NPWS fire policy
“7.3 Environmental assessment of scheduled works
The National Parks and Wildlife Service considers that all works listed in the Work Schedule as activities under Section 111 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.
Environmental assessments will be conducted according to procedures prepared by the Service, and endorsed by the Department Urban Affairs and Planning. Where a significant impact has been determined for the proposed activity, an environmental impact statement will be prepared.”
6.0 Works schedule
6.1 Bushfire utilities and fire trails
6.2 Prescribed burns
6.3 Research
Bottom line rog, all red tape looks good on paper.
Some thoughts received by email today, just filing here:
“If lightning is a natural event, by what logic are we trying to put out the fires that it causes? Without human presence the fires would burn themselves out. I have heard certain enthusiasts assert that that is what we should do and if it takes 200 years for the landscape to recover then that is natural too.
Could arsonists be regarded as the successors of aborigines (they may be aborigines) duplicating annually the patch burning of the native inhabitants and thus reducing the probability of catastrophic fires. Arsonists are condemned mainly because the risk human life and property but if we evacuated the area as aborigines would have done then human life would not be at risk.
I pose these seemingly bizarre questions because it is apparent that our whole bushfire policy is a mass of contradictions. We make it difficult to do HR so we create the conditions for catastrophic fires. The catastrophic fires guarantee much greater ecological destruction. They are not ecologically sustainable in the sense that they permanently alter the landscape. We fight the fires mainly to protect human life and property and in that process we are prepared to destroy native flora and fauna.
So we fail to achieve protection of the environment and we go through the annual theatrics in which we risk human life. We don’t achieve any of our objectives.”
“Rarely can the predictions have come true so quickly.
One theme that may be worth using to link the strands you have identified is that the State Forest area may well have been actually in ecological balance with the combination of pre existing uses and that the park declaration threw it out of balance with the disastrous results for vegetation and fauna that we now see. A related theme is that active management may be better than passive because it results in a “beautiful” forest.
“It is difficult to comment without knowing exactly what went up in flames. If it is an area of commercial white cypress then the fire could result in the sort of massive species shift you postulate as it may not regenerate in the previous form. It tends to regenerate best when kept reasonably open with patch burning ie actively managed. The take out is that closing the forest to human activity does not conserve it in the “beautiful”
form that exists when it is declared. Declaration may be the cause of a totally different ecology.
You are right about the effect of the fire restrictions. It is resulting in extremely restricted opportunities for hazard reduction both within the season and over the years. We have seen this in the confusion in the minds of our local bush fire authorities as to when HR can take place and in the proliferation of administrative steps now required. The result is the build up of bigger fuel loads which will inevitably burn and burn more fiercely.”
Jen
Thoughtful email from anon.
The Pilliga is a modified system. More trees than 200 years ago. Perhaps with aboriginal management it may have more open. Or is it the luck of the climate and fire cycles – how they fall. Our own management (or lack of it) over the years may have unwittingly contributed to some massive fires by allowing thickening and accumulation of litter.
Perhaps aborginal management would have left areas more patchy – natural firebreaks – from sporadic burns. But what about big El Ninos or back to back droughts? Might these have also been associated with inevitable widescale fires. Gte it hot enough, dry enough and with a good wind and you have fire weather.
Regardless – much of the country is now developed – so in eastern Australia our forests and natural woodlands are now remnants in seas of agriculture and grazing.
So therefore we have little option but to manage these systems – which means reducing wildfires and undertaking prescriptive burns. Which incidentally I experienced personally at Boonoo Boonoo (near Tenterfield) in the last few years. Very black and smoky. Hazard signs on the road saying NPWS had undertaken a burn. So I know that in at least one system National Parks do light them up !
As for lightning and the purists – well take that line and none of us should be here either. Cyanide capsules all round? Don’t think so.
1) “If lightning is a natural event, by what logic are we trying to put out the fires that it causes?.
People, property, crops, livestock etc come before nature these days.
2) “Could arsonists be regarded as the successors of aborigines (they may be aborigines) duplicating annually the patch burning of the native inhabitants – “
Arsonists” convicted or not are such a varied bunch, how could we depend on them?
3) “it is apparent that our whole bushfire policy is a mass of contradictions. We make it difficult to do HR so we create the conditions for catastrophic fires”.
Much depends on how we interpret Hazard Reduction. In the ACT initial response was to replant all the pines. Today the plantations are gone and the bureaucracy is in charge of a vast mowing campaign. HR by burning is being well coached from the sidelines believe me
4) “We don’t achieve any of our objectives.”
True; the world never was a perfect place
5) “Rarely can the predictions have come true so quickly”.
Wildfire in this continent is so easy to predict. Prevention and control requires considerably more skill
6) “State Forest area may well have been actually in ecological balance with the combination of pre existing uses and that the park declaration threw it out of balance..”
A change in status hardly raises the hurdle for protection over such a short period unless someone has a grudge.
7) “It is difficult to comment without knowing exactly what went up in flames”.
My comment earlier was we have no picture post on this event
8) “You are right about the effect of the fire restrictions. It is resulting in extremely restricted opportunities for hazard reduction both within the season and over the years”.
This is now a universal complaint from local bushfire volunteers at recent inquiries. But our focus has shifted to sophisticated command structures and modules to the extent it’s so difficult to recognize any value we once had in local knowledge.
Luke: As major fire frequency rises we loose some forest resilience particularly in the form presented by very old large trees. Big tree protection is missing in most young crop fires.
HR that focuses purely on trash mass by volumes on the forest or woodland floor misses that point too, Large dead wood forms standing and fallen become targets in intense fires. A well timed cleansing fire should not remove all this stuff in terms of retained carbon mass either. Unfortunately these big fires completely change the landscape for very long periods.
Also cool burns become extremely difficult to achieve in these extended dry spells. Fire breaks can only be maintained or expanded safely by mechanical means in most areas around NSW from here on. Total fire bans are occurring in my region now based on wind predictions day by day.
Luke identify the 17 mamals that have disappeared from the Piliga and demonstrate how forestry practices had lead to this…….waiting, waiting, waiting – times up – you can’t. Stop the smear by association. If you have a policy to exclude fire from any area you will have very big fires as a result – just look at the north America experience. It took 90 years of fire exclusion courtesy of the Smokey the Bear policy before they woke up how long will it take us!
abc who’s still def and talking xyz. The Pilliga has had some bloody massive fires historically – with what result do you think? and under who’s management? why – cypress production demands fire reductions. Can’t be mosaic burning it all the time can we?
Turn it back onto the bureacrats, by not minimising the potential for the spread of bushfires and not suppressing an unplanned fire event of +20,000 ha the NPWS are in clear breach of Sections 63 & 64 of the Rural Fires Act, 1997 and the National Parks and Wildlife Act, 1974.
Clealy green theology and a fiscally irresponsible government have also had their role in the current spate of forest fires in NSW.
It is one thing to declare a national park/conservation area, and for this government it has been a relatively easy thing to do (NSW upper house greens alsway support new national parks). Howver it is a completely different thing to provide adequate resources for the management of the park.
With green theology (NCC, NPA, ACF,TWS etc)demanding that park managers are minimalist interventionists and NSW treasury abandoning its responsibilities in regards to the manner in which NPWS expends the public purse, it is little wonder that there is no preparedness or will to actively manage fires when it first begins.
The questions that need to be asked are not ecological or economic in nature they are social and political.
If the Western Regional Assessment did teach us anything it was that we know very little about what the Pilliga (or the Brigalow Belt South bioregion) looked like prior to European settlement. Whist species distribution, density, etc are mostly well understood today, what they were at the time of European settlement is still very much a mystery, and mostly irrelevent to today’s management of this anthropogenic forest.
What is relevent is the politics of land management. Green politics has assumed that this and other forests are somehow in a natural state and that if left alone they will remain so (Western Regional Assessment community consultation process.The nonsense of such a position is evident to anyone who has a passing interest in forest ecology.
Forest inventory commenced int he Pilliga as early as 1916 when inventory plots were established. That inventory and its remeasurement formed the basis of the 1936 (if memory serves me well)assessment. The plots utilised in that assessment were remeasured over time and wwere last measured in 1954. Subsequently the continuous forest inventory system was established in 1964 and is was last remeasured in 200 during the Western Regional Assessment.
What these forest assessments did demonstrate is that the forest is not a static display, it is a living dynamic ecosystem that requires active management to best provide for all of the values that our community requires (whether they are timber, habitat or intrinsic values is irrelevent).
Unfortunately green theology and treasury indefference has resulted in an overly bureaucratic management structure that is incapable f the rapid response required to extinguish small fires before thay become large fires.
Whilst I disagree with the removal of hazard/fuel reduction (call it what ever you want) as a fire management tool I am even more opposed to the neutering of the fire fighting capabilities of the RFS and gový land management agencies through an overly bureacratic structure, political interference, and green ideology. Somehow we must win back the right to practice responsible forest fire management or the ecology of place like the Pilliga will be well and truly stuffed.
Oh! and by the way, the Pilliga fires of 1982, 1997 and 2006 will overlap in some areas but not all. We really do need to see some maps of the areas burnt by those fires. Certainly during the WRA inventory we came across many areas that burnt so intensely in the 1997 fires that the sandy soils had glazed over, no regeneration and unlikely to be for many years if at all. it is these areas that burnt the most intensely and most frequently that are at most at risk of long term ecosystem change.
Peter: I left my response to you in the previous thread, Pilliga Forest Burns. IMHO NSW management completely botched their response around the ACT in 2003.
I followed up daily observations from my vantage point on Goodwin Hill with the media, subsequent inquiries, and a quick call to Fire HQ in Sydney during the aftermath with a question about late opps along Two Sticks Road on the Wednesday.
Peter states “What is relevant is the politics of land management” and I must agree.
But his use of this term “green theology” is more “anti” rhetoric, “treasury indifference” is the result of our disunity, “an overly bureaucratic management structure” reflects our modern dependence on policy driven by people from academia rather than practical experience at the grass roots.
When Peter says “Whilst I disagree with the removal of hazard/fuel reduction (call it what ever you want) as a fire management tool” we need to know if he has a foot in both camps (two bob each way?).
Peter is also saying a lot about his attitude to tall pyramids with “I am even more opposed to the neutering of the fire fighting capabilities of the RFS and gový land management agencies through an overly bureacratic structure, political interference” but IMHO his “green ideology” comes from another box of tricks.
“Somehow we must win back the right to practice responsible forest fire management or the ecology of place like the Pilliga will be well and truly stuffed”. Peter your TCA needs to promote itself by a more open and independent form of peer review across all manner of forest and rural community practice about the bush. Such a national body we don’t have yet.
Yesterday I met a mature lady who’s youngster is of to join Gunns today after a fair stint in our local clever school. Mum was horrified at the prospects of flack overwhelming her offspring down in the field, so we had a little chat about Gunns new compliance to this and that modern standard. I hope Mum felt a we bit better but let’s acknowledge here it’s hard bringing this old villain up by it’s bootstraps, with or without the newly qualified.
I offer this lead and its not via Bio-Security Australia or any similar industry group formed since our last decent shower.
Gavin,
I do not use the term green theology as a form of anti rhetoric, rather as a statement of observation. For where a belief is adherred to in the face of contrary scientific evidence there must be a deep and fundamental commitment to some form of theology, whatever it may be. Certainly I am guilty of lumping those with such beliefs as green theologians, my apologies if I do so in error.
I am concerned that we must win back the right to practice responsible forest fire management, that includes all aspects of management including: fuel reduction burns, grazing of forests if fire is inappropriate, fire response (timing and adequacy), learning from and adopting LOCAL practices rather than adopting a one model fits all approach, increasing our understanding of fire ecology both at a local scale and at a broader landscape level (including the intensity and timing of fire and its impacts).
The rapid adoption of computer modelling as a means to understand natural systems has provided insights that previously were not well understood. However the fundamental flaw with most models and especially fire models is a dearth of robust data. Whilst not infering that our current models are subject to the garbage in garbage out syndrome I see it more as a case of too few robust data sets available to truly understand the impacts of fire and more importantly to better understand the models and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
When I worked as a field forester the greatest source of knowledge in regards to local fire conditions and behaviour were the long term field staff. These men and women lived locally in nearby communities and did not move around in the manner that foresters did. As a result they accumulated a vast body of corporate knowledge. RFS procedure in regards to Section 44 fires has effectively quarantined that knowledge and experience and as a result poor decisions are being made. A pity really, as we can do better, if only we’d listen rahter than building bureaucratic structures.
Peter; thanks for responding to my bits and pieces. There is a chap in town who can tell a tail or two (not Val) and he is involved with another part of our rural recovery. What constitutes our selection that works in the field after severe damage is not often up for debate these days either, purists not green thumbs have run away with the plot every which way. I should be watching the cricket hey.
Peter says “The rapid adoption of computer modeling as a means to understand natural systems has provided insights that previously were not well understood. However the fundamental flaw with most models and especially fire models is a dearth of robust data”
Mate; I wish we could have a long chat about automation from boxes of switches, sometimes I write about experience and expectations in regard to new technology, commissioning and trouble shooting big systems was my job here and there however I won’t go into it here.
Cheney said there were some big gaps in our info going way back. I say from some odd experiences; watching bushfires and fighting them alongside unrecognized arsonists is an art form no PC can ever duplicate.
In Australia we have paid too much attention to weak snapshot fire ecology, and not enough to sane fire history, such as that by Sylvia Hallam. As Steve Pyne of Arizona says in his recent book, ‘The Still-Burning Bush’, “… the firestick has remained Australians’ point of contact with their combustible bush. They put down that implement at their peril. Give up the firestick and you may not be able to speak to, much less to tame, bushfire at all. The only fire will be feral fire.” I can demonstrate the truth of that mathematically.
Fire mosaics have a self-organising characteristic. Inappropriate fire exclusion leads, inevitably, to fuel buildup, instability, bigger fires, and total burnout. Frequent burning leads to a fine grained mosaic, smaller fires, and, importantly, the protection of less frequently burned fire refuges. Only a fool would choose the former. There seem to be many fire fools, in academia, in politics, and in the eco-bureaucracy. How many feral fires does it need before the truth dawns on them?
And your point is Lukie??? Yes Piliga has and will have some big fires under the current land management regieme this is more than certain. The fact that despite the timber industry and inspite of the big fires the Piliga is still seen as prime koala territory and so much so that this was one of the “iconic” species used for the conversion of forestry land to parks. Will koalas continue in the Piliga under this regieme………
And your point is Lukie??? Yes Piliga has and will have some big fires under the current land management regieme this is more than certain. The fact that despite the timber industry and inspite of the big fires the Piliga is still seen as prime koala territory and so much so that this was one of the “iconic” species used for the conversion of forestry land to parks. Will koalas continue in the Piliga under this regieme………
Davey, let me make this point again; We have collectively lost the art of a sustainable firestick ecology. This is not about back burns in the heat of the moment or some supervised fuel reduction here and there; it’s about barefoot kids learning everywhere. Each one of us needs to know what our limits are in the roundup.
Many people still have the urge to fire the long dry grass and scrub that surrounds them every summer but hardly anyone has enough perspective to light it up and stay with it then put it all back on itself before it runs away. This overall community skill and confidence can only be rekindled by practice at an early age.
Perhaps the biggest problem today is the massive amounts of regrowth around the country that has accumulated since we stoped using manual means to control the undergrowth. Very few people now know what a well managed patch should look like.
The accumulation and neglect naturally allows wildfire to knock us hardest on the edge of our civilization. I claim it’s the crops and weeds that are the wick to the rest and the obvious target for arson on a bad day. By the rest I mean farms, roadsides, towns and of course solid forests where they remain. I also claim we must learn to burn outwards not inwards as a community. Good fire practice starts round home.
Unfortunately out leadership is bothered by bushfire smoke in town.
Jennifer: There is another element in our bushfire behaviour not well understood by foresters, fire-fighters or the public at large and it’s the impact of fine fuels in high winds creating what I call a gaseous atmospheric furnace that is unstoppable on a bad day.
This phenomena has nothing the do with “fuel loads” on “forest floors” as outlined by CSIRO researchers, NAFI, TCA etc. It’s about the wild bushfire furnace being lifted and turned upside-down so it rains embers and gas a long way forward of the normal bush fire front.
From industrial experience, constant fuel explosions occur at slightly elevated atmospheric pressure in a fuel rich environment above a red hot ember bed. Crop fires became my focus after witnessing many rural fire events that developed enough energy to run with the wind. I said to recent enquiries; bushfires in National Parks tend to burn from end to end regardless of preparation or suppression effort on a bad day. I also said grass fires including other crops are the swiftest of all bushfires.
Light fuels are our peril. In 2003 atmospheric column over our huge crop fires blew down on town. I saw the sky on fire and that meant carbon rich clouds and fury from above as the bushfire front travelled fast in essentially old grassland from our former sheep country.
New bushfire research announced this morning on ABC 666 may give another clue. Dr Graham Mills discussed several things with our presenter before I picked up on his light fuels issue and atmospheric changes. All I can say at this stage is he is studying sudden changes in water vapour from satellite imagery after the events, 2003, Ayre Peninsula etc. that cause light fuels to turn into a bushfire fuel flash in about an hour or so.
Gavin,
I was interested in your comment on putting fire “back on itself before it runs away”. A few years back I spoke to an old resident of the kwongan (heath) country near Dongara in Western Australia. He said that Aborigines used the well known wind pattern there (easterly land breeze in the morning, backing to westerly sea breeze in the afternoon) to burn strip fires which turned back on themselves. Such strips have obvious ecological advantages over broad scale fires. Other old residents have told me that the country up there was burnt, traditionally, in strips, sometimes zig-zag. It seems to me that those responsible for fire management could re-learn that skill. Narrow headfires (single spot ignition) are more manageable than broad ones (multiple ignitions) and that fits in with Phil Cheney’s work on headfire breadth and intensity.
Do you have any knowledge of self-containing strip fires from your bit of country? As Mr Esplin and friends pointed out, we need to listen to local knowledge.
Davey G; thanks for your interest in my comments, we should have another chat about age old bushfire practice versus science some time. Yes, I reckon Phil’s team had and perhaps still have some catching up to do on a few issues.
Other readers may wonder where I’m coming from in our discussion here but I once had the advantage of watching dozens (if not quite some hundreds depending on our definitions) of hazard reduction burns lit by fire fighters who would later be charged by the authorities for their actions.
A much more interesting experience though was watching the interplay between our various volunteer district captains as they tried to uncover an expert arsonist in their midst. When I realized one was working very close to me I had a chat about my thoughts but missed their man by one address. Even so I think I was this chaps undoing.
Davey: it turned out we both respected the same reliable sea breeze however the state parks people and other chiefs did not and IMHO that’s why he went about the business privately for years and years.
I had two good clues, a similar experience interstate before hand (and in other places), but the best of all was an old retired farmer who lived down the road from the pair of us when I was a kid. My school mate’s old dad had a fetish about roadside rubbish encroaching on his lovely tidy dairy farm so he hung over each boundary fence all summer in full view of every one with his knap sack full of kero.
But each fire had to be completely out by milking time about four every arvo. He had another fetish about his boys being late with his cows; He used to give the older boys a flick with his stock whip as they ran in with the herd any time after 4.30. This cunning little man hardly ever saw a thistle down land in his property.
On property rights he had his not only with the sea breeze but also any mushroom gatherers from town who dared clamber over a fence with out asking. One Friday afternoon he ordered a taxi, took a basket to town bypassed the front gate, stepped over a brick fence and selected some flowers to the amazement of their owners.
Davey; attention to detail can be a full time occupation in anyone’s retirement but its our powers of observation that matter most in the long run. Number plates like the sea breeze are just part of the big picture.
AND LUKE STILL HAS NOT LISTED THE 17 MAMMALS THAT HE CLAIMS ARE MISSING FROM THE PILLIGA. NOR HAS HE EXPLAINED HOW FORESTRY HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THEIR LOSS.
He made this claim at 1pm on sunday 3rd December.
ABC requested he list them at 8pm the same day.
Luke made a smart ass comment about ABC a few minutes later but has not made any additional posts some 70 hours later.
It betrays an underlying contempt for the rights of people contributing to this blog to make up their own minds on issues based on the full facts of the matter.
It is the fundamental modus operandi of both the thief and the tyrant, and no small surprise for a member of Queensland Incorporated, where “the truth” is anything you need from a drop down menu.
RACK OFF IAN – Nobody else here answers demands including you. I just found this now actually. So given you’ve been rude I’m keeping my list. How they got creamed is obvious. You and your forestry mates have suppressed fires to let cypress grow and let fuel build up. The Pilliga is not natural in its current state as we know (well compared to pre-European). The resulting massive fires would have nuked anything in the system. It’s obvious.
As for smart arse comments you would win as the greatest abuse merchant of all time – Mr Insult Uzi. So when you stop being a pompous windbag and your politics gets more than 33 votes in an election we might give you some creds.
http://www.npansw.org.au/wca-bbs/html/brigalow/Whats_left_in_Brigalow1.htm
The impact of past and existing land use practices is most evident on birds and mammals in the region. At least 17 mammals are now considered extinct in the region, with 15 more declining and only 9 mammal species which are probably stable (Date & Paull 2000, RACD 2002d). This is one of the highest mammal extinction rates in Australia.
Furthermore, woodland birds of the Sheep/Wheat belt (which includes BBSB) are now experiencing a wave of local extinctions with 60 species recognised as threatened or declining (Reid 1999). This is approximately 25% of all native woodland species (Reid 1999, Reid 2000, Traill & Robinson 1996, Traill & Duncan 2000).
Analysis of ecosystem mapping in the region indicates that at least 23 endangered ecosystems, 15 vulnerable ecosystems and 10 rare ecosystems occur. That equates to 42% of ecosystems in the region which are of recognised conservation significance and/or subject to severe decline.
In many endangered bioregions the opportunities for further reservation are extremely restricted because all remaining habitat is extremely fragmented. However, the BBSB is unique because it contains several of the largest remaining temperate woodland patches in Australia, and they occur on publicly owned lands such as Pilliga and Goonoo State Forests.
However, these forests are currently threatened by unsustainable logging practices which continue to reduce the availability of critical habitat resources such as large, hollow-bearing trees, rich nectar sources, and infrequently burnt areas (Date & Paull 2000, Robinson & Traill 1996). Given that woodlands contain 70% of hollow-using fauna in Australia (Gibbons & Lindenmeyer 2002), the ongoing decline in hollow availability in woodland areas has national implications for the conservation of biodiversity.
Forestry practices in the woodlands have been particularly destructive because they have resulted in the systematic conversion of large areas of ‘mixed’ forests of eucalypts and native cypress into monocultures of dense regrowth cypress (Traill 1999). Other threatening processes which continue to affect woodland diversity and condition on public and private tenures include mineral exploration and exploitation, grazing, inappropriate fire regimes, weed invasions, feral animals, altered hydrological regimes and the affects of fragmentation (Robinson & Traill 1996, Traill & Duncan 2000).
http://www.racac.nsw.gov.au/pdf/preliminary%20fauna%20BBS.pdf
Below is a list of species thought to be extinct on the Brigalow Belt South. Species asterisked not recorded from New South Wales but are known from the Brigalow Belt South in Queensland and probably occurred in New South Wales. Hairy-nosed Wombat fossil remains are known at several locations in NSW. Darling Downs Hopping-mouse known from only one specimen from an unknown location. Sources as per Paull and Date (1999). In addition, the amber-rat, possibly of the Stick-nest Rat origin has been identified from caves at Willala Mountain (S. Ingleby, pers. comm..). These probably old sites for this species, whose specific identity is not clear, there being two possible species. Bone fragments found during this survey, possibly from this species, await identification. There are 14 species recorded, mostly terrestrial species. This is one of the worst rates of extinction for mammals in the world in historical times.
Common Name Species
1. White-footed Rabbit-rat Conilurus albipes
2. Plain’s Rat Pseudomys australis
3. Gould’s Mouse Pseudomys gouldii
4. Pale Field Rat Rattus tunneyi
5. Western Quoll Dasyurus geoffroii
6. Western Barred Bandicoot Perameles bougainville
7. Bilby Macrotis lagotis
8. Bridled Nailtail Wallaby Onychogalea fraenata
9. Eastern Hare-wallaby Lagochestes leporides
10. Brush-tailed Bettong Bettongia penicillata
11. Burrowing Bettong Bettongia lesueur
12. Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat* Lasiorhinus krefftii
13. Darling Downs Hopping-mouse* Notomys mordax
14. Stick-nest Rat Leporillus spp.
From:
http://www.racac.nsw.gov.au/rfa/wra/western.shtml
15. Red-tailed Phascogale Phascogale calura
16. Eastern Chestnut Mouse Pseudomys gracilicaudatus
I’d be very careful about quoting much of the RACAC Brigalow Belt South work on flora and fauna. The quality is not was just not a substantial amount of high quality data available to analyse.
This is the basic issue with much of the work carried out during the Brigalow-Nandewar assessments.
We had over 3200 individual plots to analyse for the vegetation mapping project, but even that number was not sufficient to achieve a high level of confidence in the results. Hence we produced probability surfaces with two or three different vegetation groups equally predicted to occur.
The best ratio of plot to land area was achieved by the forest inventory project with statistical targets for achieved. Quite possibly the only project to do so.
The main thing that was learnt from the entire exercise was how much we did not know (and still do not know) about the Brigalow and Nandewar bioregions. Details of vegetation structure are still eluding us and quality information on fauna is still mostly non existent (refer to Luke’s last paragraph for confirmation).
As a resources forester I am still apalled at the manner in which the fauna assessment was carried out. The bias in site selection was not given due consideration in the fauna reports (mostly ignored actually) and to attribute any meaningful statistical parameters to the results was just not possible given the survey methodology. This is more a criticism of most fauna assessment methodology not just restricted to the Brigalow-Nandewar assessment.
I admit that I am a biased when it comes to the implementation of scientific rigour to any form of natural resource and flora and fauna assessment and that this will taint my view of any work that does not come up to a minimum level of statistical inference.
Therefore I would recomend that the references provided by Luke be given proper consideration of their merits and that rather than take them as gospel go back to first principles and work through those papers (and their references) to make your own considered opinions.
What will become clear is there is no quantifiable evidence that 17 mammals have disapeared from the Pilliga nor that another 15 are rare. Given the size of the place and the insignificant level of research that has been carried out there it is just not possible to make such a claim. Further, we are unable to model the past vegetation distribution and structure from the available data nor are we able to quantify the past mammal distributions without reliable vegetation data.
What we can say with a degree of certainty is that the Pilliga is an anthropogenic forest. Indigenous management, post settlement farming and clearing, abandonment of farms in the late 1800’s drought, rabbits and their impact on regeneration, management by the Forestry Commission (including Timber Stand Improvement) and forest harvesting are just a few examples. Cumulatively their influence on today’s forest is significant.
ooops, Forgot to preview my post and left out some of the first paragraph. Here ’tis.
I’d be very careful about quoting much of the RACAC Brigalow Belt South work on flora and fauna. The quality is not very high, primarily because there was was just not a substantial amount of high quality data available to analyse.
Peter – having read the reports I would not contest what you have said. However do we have much better as a report and the references seemed extensive if not as quantitative as one would like. We can quibble about exactly where these animals may have been in the landscape – but they have disappeared from a variety of factors in an overall sense in the region. I would have thought intense fires hot enough to glaze sands over wide areas wouldn’t have exactly helped in some cases.
It’s a pleasure to have some serious local information on a very interesting ecological zone and be removed from the tedium of the property rights crowd/greenie debate. Serious intelligent debate with these guys is near impossible, and these posts are always setup as confrontations.
The implied theme is that National Parks have mismanaged and will in the future mismanage the resources under their care.
I appreciate Peter’s comments on the lack of statistical rigour, especially in fire ecology. I have recently seen a real howler in the refereed eco-literature.
I have long thought that all referees should be required to examine not only the text, but also the raw data on which any claims are made. This assumes, of course, that all referees have some statistical insight.
I remember a study done by a group of Australian statisticians, I think in the 1980s, covering papers published in biological and medical journals over the previous decade or two. If I remember correctly, they found that more than half were incorrect. Bit of a worry.
Two points Luke.
How dare you imply that these species, most of which were extremely rare to begin with, were driven to extinction by forestry. They are small mostly rat-like mammals and for you to exclude the far more likely prospect that feral cats and foxes had a major impact is inexcusable. They also obtain their cover from forbs and grasses and the absence of fodder through grazing, by stock, roos and rabbits would have played a major role in increasing predation and diminishing food supply.
In fact, the increased volume of branches etc left on the ground after timber harvesting would have actually improved shelter and nesting sites for these species.
Of more interest is the presence, in the quote you have provided, of evidence that a Mr Traill has been well aware of the presence of dense regrowth in the western lands since at least 1999. He laid the blame on forestry when he said,
“Forestry practices in the woodlands have been particularly destructive because they have resulted in the systematic conversion of large areas of ‘mixed’ forests of eucalypts and native cypress into monocultures of dense regrowth cypress (Traill 1999).”
And this is the gentleman who has been in public denial of the very existence of regrowth in the western lands. You quote this dude as an expert who just happened to not observe 14 million hectares of something that he had already identified as a problem. Clearly, one should also be very wary of quoting anything by Mr Traill.
So tell us, Luke, what did Bugs Bunny have to say about it?
Foghorn Leghorn – your’re spruiking opinion as usual as bully-boy industry apologist. Reach for your revolver or dynamite a Bilby colony.
The quotation above clearly indentifies a range of processes contributing to species decline. We have a situation where that biogregion has been extensively developed and the Pilliga as an area of remaining refugia itself subjected to a number of wildfires over the years.
Would the Pilliga be as it is today if regularly mosaic patch burned. Does Cypress enjoy regular fire?
What evidence can you cite to back any of your emotional retort up – simply your preferred paradigm of thought that exonerates all forest practices and all land clearers of everything in perpetuity.
Don’t try to demolish a reasonable attempt to quantify the faunal situation with a side line job on Traill.
You will also notice if you had read all my comments that I would have liked to think mixed use including forestry of these lands was still possible.
Ian “how dare” you try to do a swiftie PR hachet job on a difficult fire situation on a relatively new reserve when we’re dealing with a region that had many historic wildfires. It’s simply an “inexcusable” bit of propaganda.
You might ponder one day if somehow the style of the presentation is actually increasing the votes rapidly in exactly the direction you don’t want. How are the greens doing in the polls compared to the secessionist movement these days. You guys ought be building some bridges with moderate voices out there sympathetic to mixed use of forests and appropriate fire regimes.
The quote may have attributed a number of causes but in your opening post you posed the rhetorical question, “Have past wildfires under forestry control – caused these species reduction?” This is a clear implication of a sole cause, no mention of any mix of causes.
And still you refuse to assign an impact from cats and foxes on a list of mouse-like extinct species. And two of those species, including the distinctly non-mouse-like Wombat, have never been recorded within 300km of the Pilliga.
So you are apparently quite comfortable travelling in a very random orbit of a distant truth.
And given the recent statements of Barry Traill in respect of the claimed absence of broadscale regrowth, the contradiction with his earlier quoted statements is a very important issue for anyone with more than a casual relationship with the truth.
OK – knock two species off.
And I’ll concede cats and foxes have a significant effect – I’m not being stubborn – but so does refugia and what happens to it.
As for orbits of distant truths – would you suggest wildfires hot enough to glaze sandy soils might also be a tad harsh on wildlife?
And do we not need to exclude fire to get good stands of cypress?
Ian – it’s OK – I’m not inherently anti-forestry nor anti-land development. I’ve had my share of consumption – owned a cypress house and eaten my share of Narrabri Prime Hard wheat.
Oh, do you mean like the refugia in Victoria that are getting their second hot fire in 3 years at a scale that has never, ever, occurred in forestry. It is very rare for a forestry coupe to be more than 500ha and unlikely to see disturbance again for 30 to 40 years.
Big fires stop or slow when they run into recently harvested coupes and burn at different intensities. But National Sparks and Wildfires goof about and watch as preventable conflagrations belt the living crap out of 600,000 ha in two days, frying every criter in it. And then ponce about for three more years and do it all again.
Some refuge. Some environmental custodians. And they ban horse riders because the “impacts” are unsustainable. What a sick joke.
In Western Australia there is a tiny marsupial called the Noolbenger, or Honey Possum. It lives in heath country, notably on the south coast, and north of Perth in the kwongan country. Some academics say it needs twenty years without fire to survive. Some advocate attempted fire exclusion from large areas for that time, as a ‘natural fire regime’. They do not seem to understand that even lightning will often burn heath more frequently than that, so wiping out the animals they want to conserve. The only way to conserve pockets of twenty year old heath is for humans to burn frequently often around them. Fire managers listen , albeit cautiously, to what the academics say, but some academics arrogantly dismiss what experienced fire managers say. Some won’t even talk to those experienced in the realities of fire. Time for a bit more intellectual maturity and humility from the academics, and a bit less gullible acceptance of weak snapshot ecology in both the political area, and the ‘environmental movement’. I suspect the same applies in Victoria. I am a qualified ecologist, but I am beginning to avoid that invidious term. I might start calling myself a Natural Historian.
I believe it is offensive that the majority of nsw state forests have become national parks. I agree with the protection of the forest areas, but under the national park clasification, the protection is absolute!!! Everybody loses out, not only the foresters but the general public, who lose many privileges granted to them by the state forest clasification. To protect all areas is insane(it is a vote buying ploy). A sensible plan involving EVERYONE!!!! was what was and still is necessary!!!!
Brett, A Very UNHAPPY Camper!
I also wanted to add that I used to live in the Goonoo forest area at Mendooran(with my parents) in the early 1990’s, we knew many of the locals. In all the time we lived in the area, to my knowledge, there was never a fire in Goonoo forest and there was never a major destructive fire in the piliga region north of coonabarabran. This area was in drought at the time!!
We frequently went out into Goonoo forest for camping and fire wood, with our Labrador dog, which is something that can’t be done anymore and I’m angry about it!! We occassionly ran into local timber getters who did very little damage to the forest, they had respect for this valuable resource, they only took what they needed, they didn’t touch anything else!
I believe that the reduction and banning of timber getting for fire wood and other purposes is a major contributing factor in causing the fire that started in January 2007 that destroyed just over 25,000 hectares of this scruby forest land.
If we wish to keep scrub land and forests such as Goonoo and Piliga areas as we know them, then they need to be managed sensibly by LOCALS, who know and understand the area, and not protected ABSOLUTELY by people who may never have seen these areas.
Thanks to well meaning, but misguided people, if ALL our state forests become National Parks(which is nearly the case). The kids of the future(mine included) will be unable to experience our forests the way I did when growing up, and therefore, they will never learn to respect these areas!!!!