The Victorian government has announced changes to how fuel reduction burns (‘controlled burning’) will be carried out in the state.
Since the Black Saturday fires of 2009, public land managers have been seeking to burn 5% of public land each year. This has been criticised for being a very blunt management instrument for a complex problem. There are concerns that burning regimes have been inappropriate for some types of vegetation, causing ecological damage, and have not been able to reduce overall fire risk in the state.
Victoria’s forest firefighters who are employed by the Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning (DELWP) are fighting for fair pay and recognition as genuine emergency services workers.
The following information comes from the Australian Workers Union.
Approximately 95% of the bushfires that occur across Victoria take place on public land, where forest firefighters are the first to respond. Apart from responding to many of these fires, DELWP firefighters are also expected to perform a range of highly skilled duties in public assistance areas such as missing person searches, pest control, biosecurity incursions, marine pollution management, flood and heatwave, mine rescues and disruption to water or energy supplies.
This is one of the finest books written about the Australian Alps. Self published by Harry Stephenson in 1982 and long out of print, this compilation of essays about the development ok skiing in Victoria is exhaustive. Coming in at almost 500 pages, it must have been a massive effort. It is an incredible cultural history of skiing, based on a series of stories and recollections from key players in the development of skiing in the state. While we are generally offered a cattle grazing heavy history of the Alps, this book fills in details on some of the other actors in the early days of European settlement.
It’s various chapters cover the developments at key mountains across the state, from Buller and Hotham to Donna Buang, where skiing was popular in the 1920s. It doesn’t neglect wilder and more distant areas like Bogong or Mt Howitt. And it is inter-spaced with fantastic photo galleries by a range of photographers.
In the latest development in the decades long saga over cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park, the new Victorian government has confirmed it has stopped the grazing trial established by the previous Coalition government.
Latrobe University recently hosted a significant event organised by the Research Centre for Applied Alpine Ecology on the much contested topic of alpine grazing and whether it is a useful management tool to reduce fire intensity.
It featured two researchers with long term research backgrounds in the realm of fire and grazing.
Hoogenraad Auditorium, La Trobe Institute for Molecular Sciences
LA TROBE UNIVERSITY, Bundoora Campus
Hosted by the Research Centre for Applied Alpine Ecology, La Trobe University
This Symposium will showcase how science answers questions about a current, highly topical management issue in the Australian Alps – the effects of livestock grazing on fire regimes of the Australian High Country. The guest speakers will address globally important topics such as the evolution of Australia as a flammable continent, how weather and fuels determine fire regimes, fire-grazing interactions, and approaches to assessing the effectiveness of various fire management options, including alpine grazing. This is a public forum about an important land management issue, and there will be ample time for questions and discussion at the conclusion of the talks. The Symposium will be followed by drinks and nibbles.
This Symposium is a must for anyone with an interest in the ecology and management of the Australian Alps. Enquiries and reservations: femaa2014@gmail.com
There is no doubt that our fire seasons are getting longer and more intense. Here in the south east, in terms of massive fires (greater than 250,000 ha), Victoria experienced two such events in the 19th century and five in the 20th century. In less than two decades, we have already had three mega fires in the 21st century. Many alpine areas have been burnt three times in the space of a decade.
There is no coherent overall response as yet by state or federal governments that outlines how we should respond to the growing interaction of climate change and wildfire. Sadly, our Prime Minister is in denial, having claimed that since ‘fires have always been part of our landscape’ there is no link to climate change. The Victorian state government has been challenged on the lack of attention to climate change in it’s approach to managing fire risk. Reducing fire risk is therefore about reducing fuel load and getting larger equipment , not about reducing greenhouse gas emissions or accepting that enhanced fire risk is the new reality for much of the country.
The following report, from Grist, outlines a different approach. The US government has released a strategy that aims to respond to the changing nature of fire threats. One aspect that especially interested me is the fact that it includes an approach that aims to ‘restore and maintain landscapes that are resilient to fire.’ In Victoria, we seem to be doing the opposite. There is a politically driven target that dictates that 5% of the state will receive fuel reduction treatment each year. This is in spite of the fact that some vegetation types don’t need burning to maintain ecological health, and others can become more flammable with the wrong fuel reduction approaches, and others are directly threatened by too much fire.
Climate change just reshaped America’s wildfire strategy
Like a tree in a greenhouse, America’s forest fire problem is growing ominously. Rising temperatures and declining rain and snowfall are parching fire-prone areas and juicing conflagrations. On Thursday, following years of meetings and scientific reviews, the Obama administration published a 101-page strategy that aims to help meet the country’s shifting fire threats.
The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy divides the nation according to fire risks, and profiles the communities that face those risks. “No one-size-fits-all approach exists to address the challenges facing the Nation,” the strategy states.
Despite covering 70,000 communities and 46 million homes, the strategy can be boiled down to guidelines that aim to do three main things: restore and maintain landscapes that are resilient to fire; brace communities and infrastructure for occasional blazes; and help officials make wise decisions about how and whether flames should be doused. Here’s what that all looks like in flowchart form:
“As climate change spurs extended droughts and longer fire seasons, this collaborative wildfire blueprint will help us restore forests and rangelands to make communities less vulnerable,” said Mike Boots, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Cattle have returned to the Alpine National Park for the first time in three years, with animals released in recent days under the Napthine government’s grazing trial.
It is understood that a little under 60 cows were brought into the park either on Wednesday night or Thursday morning, marking the start of the program.
The move follows the state government getting approval for its grazing plans from federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt earlier this month. The state government says the trial will test whether cattle grazing lowers bushfire risk by reducing fuel loads.
As pointed out by Phil Ingamells of the Victorian National Parks Association:
“the trial was not science, rather a political promise to the cattlemen to protect their privileged grazing rights in the park”.
“Decades of evidence show how much grazing harms the park. But it does nothing to reduce grazing risk,” he said.
Environment Minister Ryan Smith with mountain cattle graziers, Wonnangatta Valley. source: MCAV
The state government has doggedly pursued this grazing trial since it came to power, and the environment minister Ryan Smith has been closely involved in efforts to get cattle back into the park. The first attempt was knocked back by the previous federal government. The current proposal has recently been approved by Coalition Minister Greg Hunt.
Victoria’s environment is in bad shape. Imagine how things could be improved if Mr Smith put as much effort into reducing Victoria’s contribution to climate change. Or protecting Mallacoota from the destructive development at Bastion Point. Or if he acted to protect the habitat of the endangered Leadbeaters Possum which is threatened by logging. Or … (insert any number of other issues here: for instance or check this list from Environment Victoria).
Sadly, he has instead overseen the demolition of the Victorian Climate Change Act. Development of renewable energy has basically stopped on his watch, which can only give benefit to the fossil fuel industry.
Meanwhile, he has pursued this project, widely described as being more about politics than land management.
Will he be remembered as the minister who turned his back on climate action and habitat protection, whose one legacy was to put cattle back into a national park?
Rob Harris provides an update on the alpine grazing proposal in the Weekly Times.
You will be pleased to know you have a full 10 days to provide input on more than 20 documents. The paperwork is available here.
Environment Minister Ryan Smith with mountain cattle graziers, Wonnangatta Valley. source: MCAV
Cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park could return after a full assessment of a proposed grazing trial
CATTLE could graze again in the Alpine National Park before winter after the Commonwealth agreed to a full assessment of a proposed trial.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt last week opened a 10-day consultation period.
Mountain Cattlemen’s Association of Victorian president Charlie Lovick said the decision for a “full federal environmental assessment” made sense.
“No doubt it’s a polarising issue and it’s going to continue to be, but this takes some of the politics out of it and now the worthiness of a trial can be accessed,” Mr Lovick said.
“The 10-day period and assessment means we could still get up there by late March and a short trial this year before returning next year could certainly be advantageous.”
The proposed three-year grazing trial of 60 cattle would take place in the remote Wonnangatta Valley.
Projects deemed by the Commonwealth likely to have a “significant impact” on nationally protected areas requires federal approval.
The process requires the State Government to publish assessments that “clearly articulates any impacts” and will also take into account expert scientific advice and public submissions.
A decision is expected by the end of next month.
Victorian Environment Minister Ryan Smith was asked to submit more information about the trial – particularly a survey of native flora – to the Commonwealth last month.
Grazing in the national park was banned by the Bracks government in 2005.
Mr Smith said the Coalition Government believed there was a “clear need to investigate”.
Past scientific studies, including one by the CSIRO, have ruled grazing did not reduce the risk of fire in Alpine areas.
The Victorian National Parks Association criticised plans to return cattle as “a back door way of getting cheap grazing for their mates” while the Australian Society of Native Orchids has written to the federal minister opposing the return of cattle.
With bushfire season still in full force, the kindest thing that can be said about the Victorian Government order to the community of Woods Point that they abandon their fire refuge is that it is very badly timed.
Woods Point is one of the most isolated towns in the state, in a valley in the Victorian high country. Long sections of heavily forested country must be traversed if people are to leave in the case of fire threat and the need for a community refuge is both obvious and necessary.
The following report comes from The Weekly Times, written by Chris McLennan.
Fury as Woods Point bushfire refuge deemed illegal
A SMALL Victorian town will defy a Victorian Government order to abandon their fire refuge.
Woods Point residents rely on the old gold mine tunnel which has saved the town’s population once before.
Despite the tunnel being the state’s only officially recognised fire refuge for years, new rules governing the construction of refuges have seen the government and local council in the last few weeks refuse to accept legal liability for the structure.
Signs nominating the tunnel as a fire refuge are to be removed and residents fear a gate on the entrance will be padlocked.
”Do they want us to die?” member of the town’s safety committee, Margaret Martyn said.
Fire Services Commissioner Craig Lapsley yesterday said the tunnel, known locally as the adit, did not meet the new building requirements to be a community fire refuge.
The Country Fire Authority yesterday began an assessment of the tunnel hoping to reclassify it as a “Neighbourhood Safer Place” but the question of legal liability remains.
Mr Lapsley said the CFA, Victoria Police and the Fire Services Commissioner would continue to work with Mansfield Shire Council to resolve the issue.
He said before the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, there was an adhoc and inconsistent approach to the designation of community fire refuges.
Snow gums are the quintessential alpine tree on mainland Australia, generally growing at heights between 1,300 and 1,800 metres asl. Forests and woodlands of Eucalyptus pauciflora can look quite uniform from a distance, but up close they have such character.
But wildfire has been devastating large swathes of snow gum habitat, with significant fires in the Victorian High Country in 1998, 2002/3, 2006/7 and 2013 and in the Snowy Mountains in 2003.
Research is showing that if we want to allow snow gum forests the chance to recover from these fires, we need to keep the cattle out and do our best to stop any future fire activity.
The following comes from The Weekly Times, journalist is Chris McLennan.
Image: DSE
With government plans to introduce camping fees for staying in national parks (which will draw on Parks Victoria [PV] resources to manage), allow private development in parks, re introduce cattle into the Alpine national park, you do have to wonder about the common sense of this government. Add to this the threat of ever worse fire seasons, and these cut backs seem short sighted and potentially dangerous. Union officials say that more than 500 people, including firefighters, will be caught up in the proposed changes.
Parks are slashing 10% of its workforce but exempt senior and managerial positions, and will target Ranger and Field Service Officer employees instead. Parks will waste $8-$10million paying out retrenched employees trying to save $10-$15million. It’s completely cost counterproductive. Parks Victoria (currently) employs 1,100 staff at 100 national, state, marine and urban parks.
Job fears in Parks Victoria revamp
Parks Victoria staff face an anxious summer after a department-wide restructure was announced just before Christmas.
Union officials claim more than 500 people will be caught up in the proposed changes, which may involve some staff pay cuts and others choosing redundancies.
“Many of these people are our frontline firefighters. They already have a lot on their plate,” Community and Public Sector Union federal secretary Karen Batt said.
A consultation period on the proposed changes will end on January 30 and a Parks Victoria spokeswoman said it may not be until March-April that the reorganisation is finalised. Individual staff are yet to be told which positions will be restructured.
Parks Victoria’s acting chief executive Chris Hardman said there would be no net loss of staff from the restructure. He said the proposed model was designed to significantly enhance the organisation’s services for the Victorian community.
“We are looking forward to hearing from staff and unions as to what they think about the proposal and to assist the organisation to put together the best possible operating model.”
More than 120 jobs have been trimmed from Parks Victoria in the past 18 months.
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