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Mountain Journal

Environment, news, culture from the Australian Alps

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Cam Walker

I work with Friends of the Earth, and live in Castlemaine in Central Victoria, Australia. Activist, mountain enthusiast, telemark skier, volunteer firefighter.

Tourism facilities in national parks could kill the ‘golden goose’

A release from the Victorian National Parks Association on a recent proposal to open up national parks for private tourism facilities.

MEDIA RELEASE – Tuesday, 8 March 2011

Tourism facilities in national parks could kill the ‘golden goose’

Mount Hotham

The Victorian National Parks Association says a recommendation by the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission, to open up national parks for private tourism facilities, is simplistic and would be a dangerous new direction for park management.

“National Parks are becoming a victim of their own success. They are popular and much loved, but now private companies want a piece of the action in a public asset designed to protect nature for the future”.

“There is a danger of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. People visit national parks for an experience they can’t get elsewhere – they want the opportunity to experience the natural world.    There is ample opportunity for tourism infrastructure adjacent to parks, where financially viable developments can take place without the more onerous conditions necessarily imposed on infrastructure inside parks.

The VCEC recommendations contradict Victoria’s current, and widely respected, Nature Based Tourism Strategy, which states that “Private investment into any new large scale facility, particularly accommodation other than adaptive re-use of existing infrastructure, should be sited outside the park”.

“There is a lot of tourism potential on private land adjacent to our national parks which allows for certainty of investment, particularly in and around regional towns,” said Mr Ruchel.

“The VCEC draft report fails to appreciate the public land tenure system and its landscape context. Over 60% of Victorian land is privately owned and 80-90% of that has already been cleared. National parks and conservation reserves make up only approx about 18% of the land in Victoria, and are a refuge for plants and animals in a state with relatively little intact native habitat left.”

“The State Government must rule out new major infrastructure in national parks and re-commit to the principles outlined in Victoria’s existing Nature Based Tourism Strategy.”

“The change we need in national park management is a solid commitment to managing our unique natural heritage for all Victoria’s and future generations” he concluded.

For further comment contact:
Matt Ruchel: 0418-357-813
Phil Ingamells: 0427 705 133

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Mountain journal turns one

Well, time really does race when you’re having fun. It’s hard to believe that Mountain Journal is a year old, emerging as it did from my late summer doldrums in March 2010, when winter seemed like it was still lifetimes away.

And what a winter it was – big storms, flooding rains, and enormous dumps of dry powder. Roads closed, communities snowed in, land slips.

stream at Telephone Box Junction, Mt Stirling, VIC

From the original idea of having a mountain-orientated on line journal, influenced by such luminous paper versions of the idea as the Colorado-based Mountain Gazette, it has evolved in various directions: as a forum for various environmental concerns, like alpine grazing and snow mobiles in the back country. As a place to comment on what’s happening across the Alps, and appreciate fun things, festivals, and human-powered activity. Judging by the response (most folks are shy and email me rather than posting comments on the site) it seems that I am not alone in appreciating the various aspects of mountain culture that the Australian Alps offer.

I really enjoyed doing a series of interviews with a range of people connected to the mountains – they shed some light on good work, good ideas and incredible commitment. It has also been a forum to educate and mobilise people, such as with the case of logging near Glen Wills. It became a place to advertise the Australian launch of Protect Our Winters (POW), another side project of mine that will hopefully gather some momentum in 2011.

The most visited sections over the past year have been:

·    the Alpine grazing alert
·    the ‘side country’ skiing guide to the Hotham area
·    the logging alerts
·    the proposal to put a ‘skyway’ up onto the Buffalo Plateau
·    the launch of POW
·    the interviews
·    the story on traditional owners of the Alps

But primarily, it has been my way of writing a love story for the mountains that give so much meaning and joy to my life, building on an earlier site on the Alps and broader ‘Bogong bioregion’.

My original vision had been to expand the journal into a ‘real world’ paper version, but the beauty of this project is that it is overtly not commercial in focus, and so the effort of chasing advertising to cover printing costs was all a bit much. So for at least the foreseeable future, this will remain in (green energy powered) cyberspace.

Thanks again for your encouragement and support on the journey so far.

Please feel free to contribute to this project, with news, links, stories, photos, reviews, poetry or any thing else that’s mountain-related.

Here’s to an early winter and deep snow! Regards, Cam

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small scale, on site wind energy greening up ski resorts in North America

A Leitwind turbine at Grouse Mountain, British Columbia. Image: New West snow blog.

This article, by Kristen Lummis writing on the New West snow blog, has a number of salient points for people interested in local renewable energy. Unlike in Australia, a growing number of resorts in North America and elsewhere are moving down the path of producing their own energy to run their operations. Many of them are using turbines. And the turbines are proving to be tourist draw cards.

Maybe we could start thinking outside the box when it comes to reducing the environmental footprint of our resorts while also driving greater decentralisation of energy supply? Having a turbine in the background is a good reminder that the energy running the lifts and buildings (and possibly making snow) has to come from somewhere, so it’s better if its environmentally benign.

You can find the article here.

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Backcountry film festival

UPDATE: 2012 shows – Melbourne in April

For details on the 2012 season please check here.

We will also be showing the festival at Dinner Plain in August. Stay tuned for details.

Showing in Melbourne, April 2011

Many thanks to everyone who showed up. We will need a bigger venue next time ...

The Winter Wildlands Alliance created the Backcountry Film Festival in 2005 to help grassroots and professional filmmakers to show audiences their love of the winter outdoors. Since then, the annual festival has been shown in more than 30 towns and cities, and raised thousands of dollars to help efforts to preserve our winter environment.

The 2011 film festival is showing in Australia.

This tuesday, April 12

Films start at 8 pm. Please feel free to arrive earlier to grab a drink.

At 303 (303 High street, Northcote, Melbourne), tram stop #32 on the #86 tram. Its just next door to the Northcote Social Club.

303 is a licensed bar.

Entry by donation. All funds raised will support Protect Our Winters.

You can watch the trailer here.

Protect Our Winters is the environmental centre point of the winter sports community, united towards a common goal of reducing climate change’s effects on our sport and local mountain communities.

We believe that to really effect things, consumer behaviour needs to change and that the power of an actively participating and united community can have a direct influence on climate change, now and for generations behind us.

This year’s festival features:

Best of the Festival: Teton Gravity Research’s festival cut of “Deeper” follows legendary snowboarder Jeremy Jones and other top riders as they forsake helicopters, snowmobiles and lifts to venture deep into untouched terrain under their own power.

Best Short Film: “Desert River” from Sweetgrass Productions, is a beautiful ski adventure into Alaska.

Best Environmental Film: “Whitebark Warrior” from TreeFight and Snaz Media, chronicles the decline of thousand-year old whitebark pines due to climate change and efforts underway to save these iconic high alpine trees.

Other Films Include:

  • Australis, an Antarctic ski odyssey
  • TELEvision (check here for a TELEvision trailer to give you a sense of whats on offer) and
  • Cross Country Snowboarding

For extra information, please check the festival website.

For details on POW Australia, please contact Cam: cam.walker@foe.org.au

There will be other Australian screenings of the festival:

  • at Mt Buller on 16th July.
  • Jindabyne, dates TBC.

Snow Monkey has offered a 10% discount card to each person that attends the night.

They have shops in Collingwood and Mt Hotham.

Josh Dirkson, Alaska, from the film Deeper. Image: Teton Gravity Research.
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news from the Strathbogie Ranges

The following are two great community sites from the Strathbogie Ranges, an outlier to the Vic Alps. The more regional sites the better!

Strathbogie Ranges – Nature View

Flora, fauna & natural history of the Strathbogie Ranges, Victoria

This blog is about observations & issues concerning the natural history of the Strathbogie Ranges, Victoria, Australia.
The Strathbogie Ranges are located in north-east Victoria, Australia. The Ranges include several districts (e.g. Strathbogie, Ruffy, Highlands), but support no towns (Strathbogie does have a General Store and Ruffy has the Pantry) and no major through-roads. Towns on the plains surrounding the Ranges include:

* Seymour to the south-west
* Euroa, Violet Town & Benalla to the north
* Yea & Alexandra to the south, and
* Mansfield to the south-east

The Ranges are separated from the main Great Dividing Range by the valleys and floodplains created by the Goulburn and Broken Rivers. Being separate from nearby areas of similar elevation and high rainfall has resulted in some interesting and unique biogeographic and ecological patterns.

If you’d like to add your own observations just leave a comment under the relevant post. If you’d like to contribute your own posts, email me and I’ll sign you up (bertram.lobert@activ8.net.au). You don’t need a photo to contribute, all your nature observations are welcome. This blog is part of a larger project to record biodiversity and natural history information from across the Strathbogies.

You can find their site here.

Images: Strathbogie Ranges – Nature View

Strathbogie community website

It’s a new way for residents and landholders to stay in touch and communicate with each other.  We may be a small and scattered community but, with increasing use of computers and email, this site offers the opportunity to keep informed about events, to comment about Tableland issues, to contribute ideas, to catch up with each other, to buy and sell, and to show off our creativity.

FOR THOSE WHO DON’T KNOW THE AREA, the small community of the Strathbogie Tableland is located on an elevated plateau in the Strathbogie Ranges. Two hundred kilometres northeast of Melbourne, it is surrounded by forests, farmland and granite hills.

The environment is beautiful with its native bush, birds and animals. While many people have spent their entire lives on the tableland, others are increasingly choosing to leave city life and move up to live here permanently.
You can find their site here.

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Endangered mountain frog thriving again

The following article comes from the ABC, and seemed worth a re-run given its a nice bit of good news about an endangered species.

Photo: David Hunter

There has been a major breakthrough in efforts to save an endangered frog in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains.

In 1998, the Spotted Tree Frog population in Kosciuszko National Park was down to one male.

Nicknamed “Dirk”, he was taken from a stream and became part of a captive breeding program in Victoria.

Frog expert, Dr David Hunter, says it took about seven years for tadpoles to appear, but the offspring are now thriving back in a High Country stream.

“Through the monitoring program, we were able to show that post-release survivalship has been quite good,” he said.

“Not only that, they’ve now reached sexual maturity, and they’ve actually bred in the wild which was fantastic.

“What we’re doing with the Spotted Tree Frog is something we’d also like to be able to achieve with many other threatened frogs.”

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‘adventures in saving snow’

Australia has any number of well known sports people. What sometimes surprises me is how few prominent skiers/ boarders – that is people connected with our mountains – actually speak out on environmental issues. This example from the excellent Wend magazine profiles extreme skier from the USA, Alison Gannett, and her advocacy work on climate change.

Alison Gannett–Adventures in Saving Snow

(author: James Mills)

Image: Wend

There are plenty of people out there talking about climate change. But how many are actually doing something about it? Even those of us who spend a lot of time outdoors can be guilty of contributing to the destruction of the natural environment we love. We fly in jets from place to place for the sake of adventure. And many of us are still driving low gas mileage, carbon emitting SUVs. Our active lifestyles can really hurt the planet. So that’s why we can all take a few lessons from professional skier and environmental advocate Alison Gannett.

“I went to school for climate change and majored in education for environmental issues. And then I went to school for solar design for alternative home building,” she said. “At the same time, I had a professional skiing career, doing crazy things like the X-Games and jumping off cliffs for a living.” While she had two careers running parallel to one another, Gannett suffered a devastating crash at the X-Games and because she was badly injured and unable to compete, several of her sponsors immediately dropped her. That got Gannett to thinking.

“I realized how shallow a lot of my ski industry sponsors were,”  she said. “I decided, wouldn’t it be cool to partner with companies that have more at stake and care more about than just selling clothing?” Though many of the competitors and colleagues thought she was crazy for chasing the more lucrative sponsorship deals, Gannett changed her professional priorities to work instead with companies who share her environmentally conscious values. “I want to chase ethics,” she said. “I want to work with companies that have the same beliefs that I do.”

It turns out that there are plenty of sponsors out there willing to support Gannett’s mission to raise awareness for the ongoing crisis of climate change. Blending her interests in sustainable living and an active lifestyle, she’s proven to be a very effective spokesperson for both. “As an athlete getting older, I’d have to say that I have better sponsor relationships now than I ever did,”    she said. “And now working with the Save Our Snow Foundation and working with schools, working with Congress, working with the White House I’m saving our snow, saving our planet and making the world a better place.”

Allison Gannett is the kind of adventure athlete that walks her talk. While still leading an exciting life as a professional skier, she’s making a big difference in educating the general public on the realities of climate change. And through her work at the Save Our Snow Foundation and on her own organic farm in Colorado, she’s showing us what we each can to do to slow it down.

You can find Alison’s website here.

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Alpine grazing action alert

A new dilemma for the government:

According to The Age newspaper, “traditional owners of Victoria’s high country have threatened the Baillieu government with legal action, accusing it of “stepping over the mark” in the controversial return of cattle to the Alpine National Park.”

The government appears to be in the bunker and not responding to a number of recent stories in The Age.

UPDATE, 12/1/11: it has just been announced that the government has secretly put a small number of cows back in the Alps Park in order to “prevent any potential Federal Government injunction”. (!!)

This secrecy flies in the face of the Ted Baillieu’s committment to transparent government.

Check this letter from the Environmental Farmers Network on the grazing decision.

Background

Cattle were removed from the Alpine National Park in 2005 by the government of Steve Bracks. This was an important step forward for good land management in our state. Since then, some of the long term damage caused by decades of grazing have started to heal.

However, the Victorian Coalition announced in the build up to the November election that it would return cattle grazing to Victoria’s alpine national parks as a tool to reduce fire risk.

It probably made sense to summer graze cows in the alps when the practise started in the 1800’s. Given what we now know – of the ecological damage they cause – it made sense to remove them from the precious alpine areas.

Putting them back into the Park – in the very headwaters of our most significant river systems in a time of climate change – would mean turning our backs on common sense land management and scientific evidence. Grazing greatly damages the alpine systems, including the peat beds, that release high quality water into our river systems across the north east of the state.

Research on alpine grazing has consistently shown that the pro grazing mantra ‘grazing reduces blazing’ simply isn’t true.

The Victorian National Parks Association has substantial information on the question of grazing and fires which is available here.

You can also see the CSIRO’s finding on grazing and fire here.

We need to send a strong message to the new government that the majority of Victorians do not support the re-introduction of grazing into the Alps and other protected areas like the Barmah forest.

TAKE ACTION

Please write to the Premier and Environment minister, explaining that you are opposed to the reintroduction of cattle grazing into Victoria’s alpine environment.

You could mention that the grazing of cattle in a national park is inconsistent with conservation management, which is the main purpose of national parks protection. It will not help reduce fire risk. Our alps are at great risk from climate change and do not need that degradation that will come with grazing.

Simply send a brief and polite email outlining your concerns, with your name and address to:

The Hon Ted Baillieu MP
Premier of Victoria
ted.baillieu@parliament.vic.gov.au

The Hon Ryan Smith MP
Minister for Environment and Climate Change
ryan.smith@parliament.vic.gov.au

It would be great if you could cc us a copy so we know how many letters have gone in: foe@foe.org.au

Please send this alert on to your friends. Thanks!

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The Ducane traverse

As summer kicks in, its tempting to get happily distracted by long gone snow and cold. I have been struggling to write content these last few weeks, so am ‘recycling’ a piece that hasn’t appeared on the front page yet: a summary of the Ducane traverse, in the southern end of the Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park.

climbing past Falling Mountain

Tasmania has notoriously un-predictable winter conditions, but the Ducane can provide  spectacular skiing when it’s in condition, on steep slopes and in gullies.

The ‘traverse’ is generally seen as being the walk/ snowshoe from Ducane Gap, on the Overland Track, over Castle Crag and Mt Massif, into Big Gun Pass, and then exiting onto the Ducane Range proper. From here you head out past the Pool of Memories and down to the head of Pine Valley via the Geryon climbers camp, or through the Labyrinth to the Parthenon track that takes you to Pine Valley hut.

Its awesome terrain at any time, especially winter, which is when these images and report are from. Enjoy.

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the Gould circuit

Mt Gould saddle

Another great and mostly off-track trip in the Cradle Mountain National Park in  Central West Tassie is the ‘Gould circuit’. It’s a nice three day trip to and from Narcissus hut at the northern end of Lake St Clair. If you continue north into the Labyrinth or west onto the Guardians you can easily stretch it into a longer journey (one option is to keep going over the Ducane Range and Mt Massif, to exit onto the Overland track at Ducane Gap).

The following are some slightly vague reflections on the Circuit.

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‘Moulding our landscape with fire’

re-growth, Mt Stirling, VIC

The following is from a piece by well known naturalist Bob McDonald, and taken from the ABCs ‘Drum Unleashed’ website.

Australia and Victoria in particular have been labelled among the most bushfire-prone areas of the world.

Before any analysis of the causes of the 2009 Black Saturday fires, the assumption was made publicly that the “lack of fuel reduction burning” was the “cause” of this catastrophe.

By implication it must have been Aboriginal people who burned the bush continually to maintain low fuel low loads. But did they? Just published research evaluated fire frequency using charcoal occurrence from more than 200 sites in Australasia over 70,000 years – concentrated around south-east Australia. It tells a completely different story. The results reveal how dramatic the increase in fire in the Australian mainland landscape has been since Europeans.

The full article can be found here.

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biomass power plant planned for New South Wales far south coast.

Image: Chip-Busters

The proposal to put a biomass plant in southern NSW is heating up again.

South East Fibre Exports wants to build a plant at Eden to generate electricity from woodchip timber waste.

Anti woodchipping group Chip-Busters have previously said “our forests are amongst the most carbon dense in the world, home to a vast array of wildlife and critical to the health of our water catchments and rivers in the face of the looming climate catastrophe. Woodchipping them for paper pulp or biomass energy is just plain stupid”.

Full story here.

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