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Australian Alps Walking Track

‘Trekking 4 Autism’ along the Australian Alps Walking Track

Image: Peter Hosking
Image: Peter Hosking

Peter Hosking, 31 lives near Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains.

In the summer of 2014/15 Peter will be trekking from Walhalla in Victoria to Tharwa in the ACT. He will be walking along the Australian Alps Walking Track (AAWT), to raise money and awareness for Autism.

Peter says:

After nearly losing my life in a blizzard in 2012 and being a sufferer of ASD, I want to raise money for Aspergers and Autism. My cousin is full autistic. I want to raise awareness not just for Autism but also for anyone who wants to go into the backcountry, to be prepared for all weather conditions and eventualities. My intention is to raise awareness for ASD sufferers so the general public see our condition in a positive not negative or “taboo”.

You can find out more, and support the walk via his website.

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Climate Change and the Ski Industry – an Australian perspective

Mt Loch, VIC

This article was written by David Bain orignally published as the first of the Global Snapshot series, bi-weekly essays written by Protect Our Winters (POW) supporters, which give their local perspective of climate change.

The home of our snow industry is a unique and highly specialised sensitive alpine environment. So sensitive is much of our alpine environment that motorised vehicles of any kind are basically not allowed outside of the resort boundaries.

This environment is unique partly as a result of the old age of the mountains and lack of mountain building, being in the middle of a continental plate. Only minor glacial activity has occurred, being last present between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. The total area of the true alpine environment (above the tree line) is small, approximately only 770 km2, which is found as a series of ‘islands’ on top of mountains within a sub-alpine ‘sea’. In the order of some 6,500 km2 of alpine and sub-alpine areas annually receives some snowfall. Our endemic alpine species have largely evolved in isolation from other continents and often on isolated mountain tops only tens of kilometres apart.

The essay is available here.

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The Twins

Mid summer. Time to be out in the hills. I have been out exploring some of the less known peaks in the Vic High

Twins summit

Country, like Big Hill, south of Mt Beauty, and Mt Sugarloaf just near the old ticket station on the Mt Hotham road above Harrietville.

The stand out mountain so far has been the Twins, a bulky, almost hump-backed mountain just south-west of Mt St Bernard in the Central Alps.

Although it is generally seen from the Great Alpine Road, this peak really presents itself from the south side, with impressive slopes and wonderful views and a sense of remoteness despite being barely 9 km in a straight line from Hotham village.

There are some on notes here.

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Bogong Moth migration

Image: CSIRO

I keep hearing reports of Bogong Moth’s moving through Canberra, and thought I would add this link to a great overview of this iconic species.

Bogong Moths, Agrostis infusa, migrate over 1,000 km each year from the black soil plains of Queensland and western NSW to the Australian Alps, seeking refuge from the summer heat. Along the way, they travel by night and then in the morning, drop down to the ground to rest in the shade during the day.

This article was written by Abbie Thomas and is available here.

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Alps could become snow-free by 2050

Dargo Bowl, Mt Hotham, VIC

The effects of climate change on Australia’s alpine areas could mean the end of the ski season.

AUSTRALIA’S ski slopes could be completely bare of natural winter snow by 2050 unless concerted action is taken against global warming, according to a government-commissioned report that paints a grim picture of the effects of climate change on alpine areas.

The report, Caring for our Australian Alps Catchments, has found the Alps, which stretch from Victoria through New South Wales to the Australian Capital Territory, face an average temperature rise of between 0.6 and 2.9 degrees by 2050, depending on how much action the international community takes to combat climate change.

The full article is available here.

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missing walker found

a view from Mt Skene - in much warmer weather!

A walker has been found near Mt Skene in the Victorian Alps after an overnight search.

The man, 30, was walking from Walhalla to Canberra on the Alpine Walking Track (AWT) when he activated his emergency position-indicating radio beacon on thursday May 12. He was found the next morning, appears to be in good health, and is walking out with police and the search and rescue team.

A police spokeswoman said crews had been searching Mt Skene for the Alphington man on the east side of the Jamieson Licola Rd. There had been substantial snow falls across the Alps over the last few days and conditions have been below zero.
It is understood from media reports that the man was taking six weeks to do the AWT from Walhalla to Canberra.

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Stop alpine grazing – it’s a park not a paddock!

Image: VNPA

PUBLIC FORUM, April 6

The Baillieu Government has reintroduced grazing to Victoria’s Alpine National Park under the guise of a flawed science project.

Cattle were banned from the park in 2005, now they are back – damaging threatened species, trampling wetlands and spreading weeds.

While this may benefit a few cattlemen it comes at great cost to Victoria’s natural heritage. National parks are for nature, not cattle.

There will be speakers from Environment groups, scientists, politicians and others.

WHEN: Wednesday, April 6, 2011. Doors open 6.30pm, for a 7pm start.

WHERE: Box Hill Town Hall.

Full details here.

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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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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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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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Glen Wills logging

This stream provides water to Glen Valley Mountain Retreat. Logging is planned for the ridge immediately above it

Out beyond the Bogong High Plains, and about a 45 minute drive north of Omeo is the lovely valley of Glen Wills. This small community is increasingly gaining a reputation as a place where low impact eco tourism provides a reliable income for locals. From ski touring and walking on the High Plains to rafting on the Mitta Mitta and a range of other activities, Glen Valley is a real oasis.

We are currently working with some local land owners and tourism operators to get a number of logging coupes removed from the cutting schedule. This is partly because there will be considerable visual impacts along a section of the Alpine Walking Track (the major trail that goes from Walhalla to Canberra) and also because there are plans to harvest directly above the water supply of the Glen Wills Mountain Retreat.

Please check here for details on a letter you can send to the Minister for Climate Change and Environment, Gavin Jennings.

Many thanks.

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