Just over a year ago media reports indicated the Blue Gum Forest of the Grose Valley was “hanging in the balance” because of a wildfire made “more intense, unpredictable and extensive by massive backburning operations”.
I trekked into the forest today and was surprised and pleased to see a beautiful forest with little evidence of fire damage.
The Blue Gum Forest, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, February 3, 2008. Looking to the south-east.
The Blue Gum Forest, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, February 3, 2008. Looking to the north-west.
The Blue Gum Forest, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, February 3, 2008. At junction of Grose River and Govett Creek, looking to the north.
As I struggled up the steep escarpment on my way out of the valley, I passed a couple descending into the valley and I asked if they were planning to visit the Blue Gum Forest.
“Yes,” replied the women, “At least what is left of it”.
Like me, and so many Australians, she believed the media reports that the forest had been badly damaged. As we passed I suggested she would be pleasantly surprised by what she saw.
Why has reporting in the popular press been so negative? Was the state of this iconic forest misrepresented as part of a wider campaign against back-burning?
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Additional Notes and Links
Link to picture of burnt forest in Sydney Morning Herald:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-ghosts-of-an-enchanted-forest-demand-answers/2006/12/10/1165685553891.html
Link to earlier blog post with a question from Bill in Melbourne about the state of the forest:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002620.html
The Blue Gums in the Grose Valley are Mountain Blue Gums Eucalyptus deanii, here are some links to the more common Tasmanian Blue Gum, Eucalptus globulus:
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1702968.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Eucalyptus+globulus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_globulus
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Looks like it’s recovering well as I expected it would. I am planning an overnight when the track from Grand Canyon to the Blue Gum Forrest to Govett’s Leap is open again.
“Why has reporting in the popular press been so negative?”
may be nothing more than bad news and sensationalism selling more newspapers. At least I hope so.
Why? For the same reason that they hype and distort man-made global warming.
Thanks for the photos Jennifer. Like many, I was dismayed to read the reports after the fire.
On the NSW Big Bike Ride last year I talked to an SES volunteer from the Blue Mountains and he said the damage wasn’t as bad as reported – looks like he was right!
Jennifer, usually E. deanei are found at the margins of the Sydney Basin and New England in shale soils whilst E. saligna, Sydney Blue Gum, tolerates higher temps, humidity and less fertile soil.
The term “blue gum” can confuse as it is a common description.
The “blue” of the Blue Mountains is due to the oils exhaled by the Eucalypts.
Hehe, I blogged about it too – except probably not so politely – http://www.criten.org/2008/02/04/nobody-likes-tree-huggers-especially-ones-who-lie
Was a good hike indeed, will have to do another sometime! I don’t know anybody who likes this kind of stuff 🙁
Hi Peter,
I didn’t realize you had a blog – did you take that photograph with your camera?
And ofcourse I am keen for more hikes. Nichole and I should do some midweek training on the Giant Stairway – so we can better keep up with you. 😉
The love affair between eucalypts and fire has been known to foresters (I am not one) for donkey’s years. Vic Jurskis, a forester from NSW, has written much about it, as have many others, including Prof Steve Pyne of Arizona.
The fly in the ointment is that, as fires get fiercer, due to crackpot long fire exclusion, so structure is changed, due to loss of 200 year old veterans. Also, hydrology changes when there is a holocaust fire. At first there is flooding and erosion, then the creeks dry up, due to the regrowing young forest using more water than the old one.
I thought we environmentalists were supposed to care about ‘old growth forest’, and water?
P.S. Well, come to think of it, all forest grows, so let’s be sensible and just say ‘old forest’. At seventy years old, am I an ‘old growth person’? Come off it…
P.P.S. I can supply references if anyone is interested.
Davey,
It would seem to me that the fire that went through the Blue Gum forest in the Grose Valley late 2006 was very mild and that this Eucalyptus species is fairly fire resistant.
But what about River Red Gums? Are these forests as easily damaged by wildfire as many claim? I certainly saw some badly burnt Red Gum forests along the Murray last October-November.
These particular Deanes gum do not have lignotubers and rely on other physical characteristics like a white trunk to radiate heat away – river reds also do not have lignotubers.
I think we have another worried cliff-hanger looking over her shoulder and wondering what it takes to have another “decent” bushfire up in the Blue Mountains.
Pic 1 IMHO shows a severely reduced canopy, big trees struggling, and a fresh crop of bracken that can easily carry a swift fire once it’s dried out again. Pics 2 & 3 similarly show a lot of high scorch and fern explosion.
Sorry Jen,
I don’t know about those, but Mr. Infinity sounds right. He may be a forester. We, and the government, should listen more carefully to them. They are professionals, as opposed to academic paper producers. No wonder the market wants more pulp mills. All the old-timers I know in WA say that the jarrah forest was greener when it was burnt more often, say every 2-4 years. Being a greeny, I support that.
“Records show that the Blue Gum Forest was burnt in 1957, 1968, possibly 1982, 1994 and now 2006”
http://www.reportage.uts.edu.au/stories/2007/society/fire.html
“Without human interference , this forest may have been burnt once or perhaps twice in 50 years, not five times,” Jones said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/they-paid-163130-for-this-treasure-what-price-now/2006/12/10/1165685553948.html
GDGE: There is plenty more on the net about the Blue Gum Forest situation
There’s an old adage in the news media: “If it bleeds, it leads”
Good news does not sell papers. Nor does it provide dramatic footage for TV cameras.
And of course there’s that other piece of wisdom; “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
Modern media will hype anything to sell more advertising. They also appear to care little for time-consuming research.
Then there is the fallacy that our forests were pristine and untouched by human hands before the coming of Europeans. Nonsense. Many of them had been actively managed and reshaped over thousands of years.
Reading the comments of Jones in the SMH article doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The fires in 2006 (and most of the other years) were started by lightning.
No obvious human intervention there and if Jones is so against human intervention I assume he would of prefer to just let the fire take it’s course.
I lived in the Blue Mtns during all the fires from 1960’s through to 1990 and was a member of one of the brigades from 1978.
My first fire with the brigade was one that had started in the Grose and had jumped the Bells Line of Road and burnt through to Mt Wilson.
That was in 1978, not mentioned by Jones.
There was a major fire either in the Grose or Jamison Valley every 7 to 10 years
Very few arsonists or careless campers bother to travel to the more remote regions in the Blue Mts to light fires.
And the blasted trees still keep on growing back!
PS
Vic Jurskis has an informative PP presentation
comparing various forestry lots and private lands and the difference of having a fuel management plan and doing nothing. The good health of a well managed lot is stark compared to a lot that has been allowed to “choke”
Allan: My previous post was to establish a rough Blue Mts fire history, then raise the issue of terrain etc in particular regions. The report below mentions the different regimes state to state. Note; this preceded the Nairn Inquiry.
Current Issues Brief no. 8 2002-03
Bushfires: Is Fuel Reduction Burning the Answer?
‘Effectiveness of Fuel Reduction Burns
Opportunity to Carry Out Fuel Reduction Burning
Environmental Effects
Escapes of Burns
Where People Live—Prescribed Burns and Blackened Bush
What Frequency for Fuel Reduction Burning’
“There is no simple answer to the issue of fuel reduction burning because of the diversity of forests, topography and climates in southern Australia as well as the different priorities that different land managers have in developing specific burning regimes”
http://wopared.parl.net/library/Pubs/CIB/2002-03/03cib08.htm#Are
How the regimes have changed in other places is well covered here.
http://www.australianalps.deh.gov.au/publications/fire/pubs/alps-fire-history-chapter1.pdf
“Evidence in fact points to a sevenfold increase in bushfire frequency across much of the Alps following European occupation”
criten,
“Was a good hike indeed, will have to do another sometime! I don’t know anybody who likes this kind of stuff :(”
I do but my usual walking partner has moved to Perth:( We were at and almost went down the Grose Valley the day the fires started but walked the Grand Canyon instead. Didn’t know about the fires until I got home.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=vHx-2QGSIYQ
You are sure to recognise some of it.
hello,
can i use the picture of the woods wiht green grass and trees and branches hanging down with bushes for school because im doing a book trailor for my reading class?
plez & thanks,
brittanie