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

The dark shroud of progress

One after another, the buildings and street-scapes of Melbourne are demolished, gutted or significantly altered in the name of progress, a sterile justification almost universally synonymous with commercial imperative. Here's a short missive in response to 'Windsor gets final go-ahead' in The Age: 
 
The changing face of Melbourne; no building, iconic or otherwise, is safe or secure against the onslaught of "economic arguments". So called heritage values are no match for cold hard numbers representing developers' predictions of material gain or loss. As is so often the case, a government department named to give the impression that it manages issues in our interest [ie Heritage Victoria on behalf of the People of Victoria], in fact becomes little more than an agency that lends an air of process and respectability to the greed and self-interest of parties pursuing personal gain. 
 
And what of this term heritage? "Evidence of the past, such as historical sites, buildings, and the unspoilt natural environment, considered collectively as the inheritance of present-day society" [Dictionary.com]. One wonders what kind of cultural landscape we are building, or ravaging, for future generations of Victorians to inherit.

under development
120 additional rooms
and a 26-storey glass and steel tower;
will what survives really be The Windsor?

Confessions of a longtime coffee addict . . .

Bean here . . . bean there . . . bean lots of places that serve the hot brown beverage good, bad and ugly. I’m a complex guy with simple tastes; I like it long, and I like it black. But it wasn’t always so.
   
In the year of the Tet Offensive, a gorgeous blond neighbour worked at Quist’s, the famous Melbourne coffee shop, and brewed me my first real cuppa; white and very sweet. Later, after MSO concerts at the Town Hall, when the sultry second viola didn’t reciprocate my attentions, I flagellated my palate with brutal espressos at Pellegrino’s. When we were whistling It’s Time and Gough got the job, a mate made replica cappuccinos on an old dry-cleaner’s boiler at his dad’s engineering shed. It took an hour to work up a head of steam, so we were grateful when it came, despite its austere metallic overtones. In the eighties, I developed a taste for the bitter-sweet of late-night correttos, a short black generously laced with Vecchia Romagna brandy, when I worked in Bologna and courted the signorinas into the wee early hours.
   
The most memorable coffee in recent years was a double-banger latte that a local coffee snob made in Port Fairy while testing one of his new bling machines out back in the shed. By far the foulest was in Tocumwall early one morning when I was driving from Carlton to The Reef. Desperate for a fix, I staggered into a likely looking cafe and asked for a cup of their best. “Just a moment, sir,” said the little old lady at the counter. “I’ll go and open a fresh jar of Moccona.” Worse than worst railway coffee, the infamous café olé that Société Nationale des Chemins de fer français [SNCF] inflicts on its passengers, I managed to slide it down the neck and keep it there. But it made for a long long drive.

Teens rule! All right?

Thank goodness for teenagers.

There’s a whole lot of derogatory crap written by those in a-dolt-hood about young people in the throes of negotiating puberty. Some voices in my friendship group are always ready with the mindless mantra of hypocritical judgement; “In my day you wouldn’t have got away with blah blah blah . . .”

Being an adolescent provokes the same kind of irrational flak as being an active environmentalist. Can’t you just hear that label Greenie slide scornfully out the side of a sneer? “Those *$%#ing Greenies won’t let you do this, or that, or the other!”

It’s all about maintaining the us and them dichotomy in the ghostly recesses of our cultural discourse. You know? Those millions of unspoken assumptions and pigeon holes that pass for knowledge but are rarely revealed or reviewed. The darkest regions are haunted by opinion journalists and talk-back hosts who strum the discords of bigotry.

Unfortunately, it’s about disempowering one mob to empower another.

Well, I’ve just had an experience with teenagers that has lifted my opinion of the whole human race, and was empowering and rewarding. It usually is.

Each year, students from a Melbourne secondary school come down to the Southwest on camp. They take particular interest in the environment, get involved in volunteer activities and contribute to our community.

Our Bird Group got dirty hands and sore muscles planting thousands of native plants in the saltmarsh and dunes. We went on long beach rambles picking up rubbish and investigating the flora and fauna. We cooked and ate together, and sheltered as a southwest change roared in through the trees like a boiling surf break.

There was enthusiasm and boredom, focus and distraction, candour and furtiveness, eager participation, the shaking of heads and the rolling of eyes. Whatever . . .

It was a great opportunity for us oldies to share some knowledge about the environment with those who will shape our future. In return, we learned about avant-garde teen culture, language and lots of fresh perspectives. And we were magically transported back to our own youth.

Perhaps the best times were in the breaks between activities, being accepted into a small group to chat and joke.

I hurt myself laughing at a group of young women being very girly, stranded and screaming on a picnic table as an emu circled with intent . . . to eat their sandwiches.

I felt like I still had it when I was able to compare notes about Prince of Persia with a very boysey boy and fellow gamer.

One student looked at me as though I was nuts when I told her that I missed some things about school days. “Like, what?” she demanded. “Like learning a musical instrument,” I answered; “being in the school play; the relief and chaos of art class; getting away from the family for a fortnight in the bush on annual camp; Geography; visiting the engine room of a cargo ship; hangin’ out with mates and the kind of people I would never spend time with again . . .”

As they packed up to leave after our final day together, one young fellow thanked us for caring about the environment and showing them the plants and the animals. That comment alone will underwrite my volunteer activities for many years.

In the end, it was just good fun.

animal or plant?
Bird Group beach combing
and enjoying the wonders of a fan sponge

The foul and most foreign fox

A report on the Urban Fox Control Workshop published in Basalt to Bay Landcare Network newsletter this August.

It’s sobering to consider that the destructive presence of the European red fox is a consequence of that Australian bugbear the cultural cringe. Hunting foxes was the preserve of aristocrats back in the old country, and it seems that foxes were released by the likes of pastoralist Thomas Chirnside in the 1870s to elevate Victoria socially in the eyes of its colonial masters. Now ranking second only to Homo sapiens as the most serious threat to Australian native animals, the fox is so widespread, clever and adaptable that control is a challenging proposition.

On the evening of 26 July, hungry for knowledge about Vulpes vulpes, twenty-eight of us gathered at the Foreshore Pavilion in Warrnambool for the Urban Fox Control Workshop. The highly credentialed presenter, Tim Bloomfield, did not disappoint.

Tim has worked in pest control for the last 35 years and is an acknowledged expert on foxes. Currently co-ordinating the Grow West project in the radically altered landscape of the Upper Werribee Catchment, Tim has contributed to many important vermin research and control programs. These include protecting Phillip Island’s little penguins from fox predation, a study into the urban fox in metropolitan Melbourne, and the Fox Eradication Program in Tasmania.

These experiences have helped Tim establish some guiding principles in controlling foxes. Here’s my take on his mantra.

The best time to see foxes is early morning or early evening, coinciding with the time their primary food source is active; rabbits. The best season to impact on foxes is September to December, when they are breeding.

Foxes are middle-order predators that kill quickly and efficiently before a higher-order predator comes along. The fox reacts instinctively to movement and will keep killing as long as its victims keep moving. Hence the carnage one fox can do in a chicken coop, leaving many dead birds uneaten. The only way to mitigate this mass killing is to stop interaction between the fox and its prey.

To impact effectively on foxes requires a population-wide approach. Only a co-ordinated campaign across an area bounded by natural barriers, like on islands or between rivers, has much chance of success. Territories overlap, so when a fox is killed, other foxes will move in quickly to claim the vacant territory, sometimes within hours. Even if a large area is temporarily cleared, foxes readily migrate and will come in from surrounding regions.

Trapping, shooting and bounties have limited efficacy. After initial successes, usually measured by kill rate, it becomes more difficult to find the remaining foxes. Foxes learn quickly and modify their behaviour to avoid detection and capture. The cost of continuing these measures becomes prohibitive and control ceases. Either enough individuals survive to regenerate the population or foxes move in from neighbouring zones. A coordinated long-term baiting program is the best way to control foxes, integrated with other measures like clearing weed infestations and fumigating dens.

Neither sightings nor body counts are good indicators of effective fox control. It is best to monitor species that the fox has been impacting on. For example, increases or decreases in the number of possums or penguins are reliable indicators of success or failure in controlling fox numbers.

Pet owners who feed their animals outside feed foxes. Some people leave food out specifically for foxes. A study at Webb Dock uncovered an ironic situation. Ports are high-risk entry points for rabies into Australia. Foxes are carriers and spreaders of the disease. Despite this, port security guards encouraged a resident population of foxes by feeding them regularly, sometimes for many years. Stopping people feeding and encouraging foxes is vital.

That’s all very well, but how do you know for certain a fox is patrolling your patch? In my case, I monitor beach-nesting birds that lose eggs and chicks with sickening regularity. They face many threats, so how can I tell if a fox is involved in their breeding failures? Here are some clues to look for.

A bird carcass with evidence of trauma around the head and neck is literally a dead give-away. Somewhere in the area there will be a den, comprising one or more holes bigger than a rabbit’s but smaller than a wombat’s. These are sometimes very difficult to find. Foxes use scats to mark territorial boundaries and places of significance, like potential food sources or buried caches. Their tracks are distinctive . . . once you know what you’re looking for. 

Features to look for:

• fox tracks lead in straight lines
• hairy under-paws leave soft outlines
• back footprints over-score front
• there is a gap between middle and outside pads on each paw.

If you want to know more about foxes and controlling them, here are some sources mentioned in the workshop:

They all ran wild: the animals and plants that plague Australia by Eric C. Rolls, Angus & Robertson Sydney 1984.

Improving Fox Management Strategies in Australia by Glen Saunders and Lynette McLeod, Bureau of Rural Sciences Sydney 2007; download from:
http://www.feral.org.au/improving-fox-management-strategies-in-australia

Foxes and their Impact by Tim Bloomield, Department of Primary Industries [Victoria] 2007; webpage at: http://new.dpi.vic.gov.au/agriculture/pests-diseases-and-weeds/pest-animals/foxes-and-their-impact

An icon under the Southern Cross

Every May Racing Carnival, a silver Skyliner rumbles into Warrnambool Aerodrome filled with punters from the Big Smoke. This remarkable aircraft’s story began reluctantly in California long ago.

Gooney Bird departing Warrnambool Aerodrome
a C-47 military transport built in 1945
serving with the RAAF until 1987
still working out of Essendon

In the beginning . . .

It all started with a $335.59 phone call between American Airlines president C. R. Smith and industrialist Donald Douglas in 1934. Smith wanted a sleek new transport based on the revolutionary all-metal DC-2, which had just won handicap honours in the MacRoberston Air Race between London and Melbourne.

As a teenager, Cyrus Smith started his career managing a western clothing store in Minerva Texas. Attracted to aviation, his no-nonsense approach to business and straight talking style propelled him to the leadership of American Airlines. His vision was to fly airborne sleepers on the route between New York and Los Angeles. Douglas, who founded his aircraft empire in a Los Angeles barber shop was conservative and cautious. Smith’s proposal worried him. The Great Depression was biting hard, American Airlines was cash strapped, and no one else was building airliners with beds. But Smith argued that only Douglas had the skills to construct a suitable aircraft and eventually wooed the recalcitrant engineer.

The Douglas Sleeper Transport flew on 17 December 1935, accommodating 14 passengers in luxury berths, with dressing rooms and a honeymoon cabin up front. Then, in a stroke of genius, Douglas ripped out the beds for a day version called the DC-3. The extra space allowed 28 seats and the first airliner to turn a profit from passenger services took off, making all its hangar mates obsolete overnight. In four years, air travel grew five-fold and the Douglases accounted for 90% of it.

Downunder, the first DC-3 arrived in 1937 for the Melbourne to Sydney run with Australian National Airways. The rugged planes were ideal for Australian conditions and soon became a common sight in our skies. For decades, aircraft designers failed to reproduce its versatility. Operators claimed the only replacement for a DC-3 was another DC-3. So it served tenaciously on Australian scheduled services for forty years.

The venerable Skyliners are now semi retired. Of the 182 once on the Australian civil register, about 15 remain airworthy. You can still experience the 30’s style and curious thrill of walking uphill to your seat. Order a Manhattan and settle back in plush comfort with old-fashioned leg-room. Glimpse the aviators at work through half drawn curtains. There is nothing like a flight in the world’s most successful airliner.

Five fabulous facts

1943 General MacArthur is allocated Australian DC-3 VH-CXE for personal transport. To avoid offending dignitaries, the crew paint a nude on the starboard side of the fuselage hidden from the boarding door on the port side, and call her Shiny Shiela. The General approves but a staff officer doesn't and has it removed. The crew's revenge is to use the call-sign sexy [CXE] over the radio.

1947 The last of 10,645 [total number hotly debated] C-47/DC-3s leaves Douglas’s Oklahoma City plant.

1957 A Frontier Airlines DC-3 hits a mountain and loses 12 feet of wing. The remaining 500,000 rivets and the two pilots hold it together for a safe landing. Repaired, it returns to service in less than a month.

1967 Douglas Aircraft Corporation is declared bankrupt and Donald Douglas retires after 55 years in the business. Cyrus Smith leaves American Airlines the following year.

2011 The logbook of the restored VH-ABR Kanana currently based at Tullamarine records operating hours that add up to almost eight years in the air. In 1938, it was the third DC-3 to arrive in Australia and flew the last scheduled flight of type for Ansett-ANA in 1972.

VH-ABR Kanana 'the quiet' resting on the apron
still airworthy after a long hard working life
surviving 4 emergency belly landings
"they don't make 'em like they used to"