Fuel reduction regime; scientifically evaluated intervention or politically motivated mismanagement?

“The torching of the State is proceeding under the delusionary supervision of DSE.”

It is little wonder that to many people in Victoria, DSE is known as Department of Smoke and Embers.

Last Saturday was the beginning of the Labour Day long weekend. Around lunchtime, the Department of Sustainability and Environment ignited 1,000 hectares of Herb Rich Woodland and Lowland Forest in Southwest Victoria, including Dunmore Forest and part of Mt Eccles National Park.

The smoke pall spread from the Grampians in the north to many miles offshore, at least 150kms in total. Two huge billowing columns were visible from 60kms away. Cumulonimbus anvils thousands of meters high were generated above the smoke by the intense heat. It's an all too familiar and scary sight to anyone who's experienced wildfires.

Is this a responsible way to manage native forests
and reduce atmospheric carbon?

The photographs were taken about 19:15. By 21:00 these fires were listed as controlled on the DSE website. This is highly unlikely, as the fires could be seen burning on the horizon for another three days. When I flew into Hamilton following day, the smoke was so dense that from 1,000 feet we were barely able to see the mighty Grampians mountain ranges only 30kms to the northeast.

Thousands of native animals were killed, maimed or displaced. There is evidence of a rare population of bandicoots at nearby St Helens Flora Reserve [see older post St Helens - a landscape for woodland birds]. What is the likelihood of other populations of bandicoots surviving in surrounding pockets of native forest? Not much chance now!

Again in this age of marketing and double-speak, a Government Agency sports a name that implies something it is not. The burning of our forests and reserves for fuel reduction to mitigate bushfire risk is neither sustainable nor informed by environmental science. The latest official mumbo jumbo for this kind of destructive mismanagement is community risk reduction.

In a recent conversation with a Ranger [environmental management professional], I was told that many DSE staff object to the current regime of fuel reduction burns. But they have no choice and are bound to instigate policies set by their ministerial master in response to findings of the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission.

As a concerned environmental activist observed; “It’s been a disaster for years, since we had a reasonable Forests Department and a Soil Conservation Department. Governments certainly know how to stuff up our country in order to win Melbourne seats.”

Our lingering fear of the Australian bush
manifested in mismanagement by fire

It is clear to me that a high proportion of Australians are profoundly fearful and ignorant of The Bush. We have disconnected ourselves from the Australian wilderness by a process I suspect is part of the retched cultural cringe. And as food production, a process that ought to link us intimately with the land, becomes ever more industrialised and unnatural, and our predominantly urbanised culture evolves, we are increasingly alienated from the natural world. But if we care to listen, there is wisdom and guidance available from Indigenous peoples and others intimately connected to the environment, like naturalists and Wildlife Carers.

A friend suggested an intriguing reference: The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia by Bill Gammage. “I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It highlights the tragedy we see here, the tragedy of ineptitude and gross mismanagement through bureaucracy."

Fuel reduction burns have no basis in science and are politically motivated. Surely we must protest against this delusionary policy that amounts to just another excuse to destroy precious native flora and fauna.

If you talk to animals, they will talk with you
and you will know each other.
If you do not talk to them you will not know them,
and what you do not know you will fear.
What one fears one destroys.
Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation

Road Kill: accounting for the carnage

We uniquely are capable of apprehending the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, proper and improper conduct toward animals. If being human isn't what requires us to treat animals humanely, what in the world does? Wesley J. Smith

There was no warning. Suddenly, it came straight at her out of the darkness. In a heartbeat, maybe two, a frightening roar, a blinding flash, and the brutal impact of steel pulverising flesh and bone. She was hurled through the air to land a quivering heap on the gravel beside the road. A last heartbeat trickled blood through her shattered teeth, her one remaining eye clouding as life fled the traumatised body. She never knew what hit her. Neither did the little one hidden in her belly clinging desperately to life. The victim was a young female eastern grey kangaroo with her first and last joey. The joey had survived, cowering deeper into the security of his mother’s pouch. But something was terribly wrong. His universe had been violently disturbed. Now his mother was still. He couldn’t sense her pulse. The smells of blood, torn flesh and intestinal fluids signalled unknown terror. And her warmth was ebbing away. Inevitably, he faced a slow and lonely death from cold, dehydration and starvation. The trucks thundered past all night, oblivious to these two creatures lying mute and discarded among the human detritus that lined the road; plastic bags and burger boxes, a cigarette lighter and butts, a strip of rubber tread, a child’s headless doll.

left on the road to be pulverised
beautiful creature made macabre monster
courtesy of man and machine

Every hour on Australian roads, vehicles kill six hundred frogs and reptiles, and one hundred and forty four mammals and birds. That totals about seven million creatures a year according to incomplete, conservative and outdated Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates. Apart from some studies along specific roads focussing on kangaroos, wallabies and wombats, probably because their size leads to expensive insurance claims and threatens human injury, we do not have comprehensive statistics on road kill across the nation. Considering the dimensions of the task, perhaps this is understandable. In 2010, Australia’s road network extended 820,000 kilometres, easily enough to pave our way to the moon and back. In that year, 16 million vehicles used the roads to motor an astounding 226,632 million kilometres, equivalent to seven and-a-half return trips to the sun.

There are more detailed statistics available for Tasmania. Avis rental cars even come with a road kill survey form in the glove box for drivers to fill out. Concerns about the survival of the State emblem have led to collecting road kill data as a means to monitor the declining population of Tasmanian devils. There is also disquiet about the Holiday Isle’s image as an unspoiled wilderness destination for domestic and international tourists. Thousands of carcasses line the roads through the forests, stark reminders that this is no island paradise. Despite a concerted effort through numerous studies, the gruesome annual toll of 300,000 mammals and birds is thought to be a significant underestimate. But on these figures alone, road kill is a disaster of epic proportions.

New Holland honeyeater stunned on the road and rescued
this one was lucky and flew away

Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg. The statistics do not account for injured animals that manage to leave the scene and succumb out of sight of the road. Many animals are parenting when maimed or killed, their orphaned offspring left to fend for themselves before sufficiently developed to have any chance of survival. Many joeys die a slow and lingering death hidden in their mother’s pouch. The toll on insects and other invertebrates is completely unknown. Many of us will not acknowledge this as an issue, yet studies in other parts of the world have shown that road kill has contributed to the local extinction of species like dragonflies. There are wide-reaching effects of road infrastructure on habitat and wildlife behaviour that scientists struggle to understand and most of us do not even imagine. Studies predict that up to twenty percent of the ecology of the United States of America is directly impacted by roads. But the current climate debate clearly illustrates our capacity to ignore warning signs, label expert analysis alarmist, and continue on our habitually destructive ways because negative impacts do not tangibly impinge upon our everyday lives.

This is not really the case with road kill. It is obvious and ugly. It is in our faces. It upsets people. Australian tourist operators and chambers of commerce worry that visitors from all over the world come to see our amazing wildlife and wilderness, only to be confronted by their hosts’ apparent disregard for the wellbeing of our unique creatures. One tourist was moved to write; “My wife and I spent two weeks touring Tasmania in 2004. We were upset with the road kill. It was the worst I’d ever seen. I wrote to the Tasmanian Government about our thoughts.” It beggars belief that most individuals and families can love and pamper their pets, watch endless programs about meerkats, gorillas, whales and dolphins, tune in to countless children’s programs hosted by actors impersonating wild animals, yet tolerate the systemic and very public brutalising of much-loved native species like the koala.

road orphaned koala joey in care
facing an uncertain future