The Backcountry Film Festival is a pre-winter tradition in Melbourne, with screenings usually happening in autumn. Other towns and cities in Australia sometimes also host the festival. Sadly, in 2020 the festival couldn’t go ahead as a screening because of COVID-9 lockdown.
We want to test whether to host a virtual festival before Christmas, or wait until next year in the hope we can hold a ‘real’ (face to face) screening.
Continue reading “Backcountry film festival – should we go virtual?”
Logging has devastated so much of the Central Highlands, to the northeast and east of Melbourne. A strong hold of Mountain Ash forests, the public lands outside the national park estate are logged heavily.
In recent decades this logging has been intense in the northern sections of the Central Highlands, to the east of the well known Cathedral Range, which is popular with bushwalkers and rock climbers. The Blue Range and Royston Range have been heavily logged, causing significant fragmentation of Mountain and Alpine Ash forests. Now logging is being intensified in the Snobs Creek Valley.
Continue reading “Logging to intensify in Snobs Creek Valley”
Australia’s fires over the summer of 2019/20 were unprecedented in scale and level of destruction. Fuelled by climate change, the hottest and driest year ever recorded resulted in fires that burned through more than 17 million hectares, killed up to 3 billion animals, and affected nearly 80% of Australians. This included the tragic loss of over 450 lives from the fires and smoke.
Aerial firefighting capacity – planes and helicopters – are an essential component of Australia’s ability to respond to bushfires. This was demonstrated in the 2019-2020 bushfire season, when an unprecedented use of aircraft occurred.
However last summer also showed that we simply don’t have enough aircraft to fight fires in a bad season. This puts landscape, people, towns and houses, and fire fighters at risk.
Continue reading “We need a national aerial firefighting fleet to protect mountain environments”
Many people know the story of the Pine beetle which has been devastating huge areas of forest across North America because of climate change. There is a similar scenario emerging in Australia’s mountain forests, although it is much less known.
Snow gums are experiencing dieback in Kosciuszko National Park, largely because of the impacts of the native longicorn (or ‘longhorn’) beetle. These beetles prefer to lay their eggs on moisture-stressed trees and, in warmer weather, the longicorn beetle can hatch and grow up to 75% faster.
On December 10, Dr Matthew Brookhouse, Project leader of the SOSnowgum program, will deliver a public online seminar on snow-gum dieback. The seminar will focus on recognition of dieback, the research being done into dieback, and a citizen-science program that is providing information on the spread of dieback.
Continue reading “Public Seminar – Snow-gum dieback and forest decline”
Your chance to give back to Victoria’s Alpine Region, hit hard by bushfires and Covid-19.
The Victorian alpine community has a special place in all of our adventure hearts, filled with beautiful mountains, great people and businesses, amazing food and memories shared through generations.
But the community we all love is hurting – first with the bushfires, then the cancellation of the 2020 ski season due to Covid-19. They need our help.
Which is why the team at Amer Sports have brought the Australian outdoors and snow industry together to create an online auction for you to support the alpine businesses doing it tough in Victoria.
Continue reading “Victorian Alps relief auction”
Last summer’s fires devastated large sections of the Victorian Alps and East Gippsland. Government reports show that 31% of Victoria’s rainforests were burnt. Rainforests are fire sensitive, and need to be managed to ensure fire is kept out of these ecosystems. Apart from doing everything possible to stop fires before they get into rainforests, and suppressing fire in these forests, it also means ensuring adequate buffer zones between the rainforest and the surrounding eucalyptus dominated forest.
However, citizen scientists from the Goongerah Environment Centre (GECO) in far east Gippsland have discovered that the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) has failed to put in proper buffers for an area of cool-temperate rainforest on Mt Jersey in East Gippsland which is currently being logged.
Mt Tabletop is in the Alpine national park, on Gunaikurnai country, between Mt Hotham and Dinner Plain. Its snow gum country that is already feeling the changes that are coming with climate change. The forests in the area have burnt in 2003, 2013 and 2019/20. Some areas have burnt 3 times.
The terrain is a mosaic of snow plains, old open forests, crazy regrowth in burnt areas, and multi aged woodlands. It was burnt badly last summer.
Continue reading “The Tabletop fire 10 months on”
Baptist World Aid Australia (BWAA) is one of the organisations that track working conditions and sustainability in clothing brands. They have just released their report for 2020. It provides great information on how many brands are going – including key outdoor companies.
Continue reading “Ethical fashion guide – how are the outdoor brands going?”
Jakob Kennedy is a content producer and nature enthusiast. He is currently involved in the development of a film called Awaken, which follows adventurers on three continents as they come to terms with the growing impact of climate change on the places they love.
Jakob says “other than my clear love for snowboarding, it is nature, the experiences she provides and the inevitable lessons that are the reason I’m still doing this. So to be involved with a project that honours the value of these moments, by raising awareness to the importance of maintaining said environment, is a sure highlight in my career.
We only get one world and we only get one life do our best to care for it”.
The full version of the film will be released this January. You can see the trailer here.
Mountain Journal caught up with Jakob to find out about what the project and what inspires him. You can read the interview here.
Bushfires devastated huge areas of mountain country last summer – across the eastern Alps in Victoria and the northern Snowy Mountains in NSW. These fires triggered three government inquiries – all of which identified climate change as being a key factor in the scale of the fires.
Now the Bushfire Royal Commission is due to release its final report. A key question will be whether the Commission recommends that Australia act decisively to reduce it’s contribution to global heating. Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action (BSCA) is asking you to stand with us on climate change to highlight the need for the federal government to act.
Continue reading “Stand with bushfire survivors for climate action”
Last summer, large sections of the mountains of New South Wales, Victoria and ACT were hammered by bushfire. The Emergency Leaders for Climate Action noted that: ‘Australia’s Black Summer fires over 2019 and 2020 were unprecedented in scale and levels of destruction’.
The same terrible fires have been burning environments across the northern hemisphere through their summer. For instance, Colorado has seen its largest ever fires. Fires have burnt on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest mountain, and in the north east of the USA, a region that rarely burns. One fire chief in Maine said “this was a whole new kind of fire, this is the stuff you see out west.”
And the same forces are at play everywhere: climate change is making fire seasons more intense. The world has warmed as a result of human activity and now all fire events occur in a warmer environment. Thankfully this awareness is now becoming part of the mainstream debate.
Continue reading “Fires hitting mountain environments around the world”
The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA) is a World Heritage Site in Tasmania. It is one of the largest conservation areas in Australia, covering 15,800 km², or almost 20% of lutruwita/ Tasmania. It is also one of the last great expanses of temperate wilderness in the world.
In recent summer’s, significant sections of the TWWHA have been devastated by bushfires. The 2018/19 fires were especially destructive.
Fire is perhaps the greatest challenge for the management of the TWWHA, particularly in the context of climate change. With the September 2020 release by the Parks and Wildlife Service of a range of discussion papers for public comment, the state is moving towards the development of a Fire Management Plan for the TWWHA, as recommended by the 2016 report by Tony Press (Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Bushfire and Climate Change Research Project) and prescribed by the 2016 TWWHA Management Plan.
How have the papers been received by conservationists?
Continue reading “A Fire Management Plan for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area”
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