Title-Park Watch June 2012 - No 250

September 2012 No 250commercial developmentS in parkSmiNiNg iN wombat forest

logging endangerS owlS, rare wattlefire target slammed

naturewatch helpS fire reSearchwalkiNg the overlaNd track

pluS – vnpa annual report 2011-2012

AnniversAry

vnPA60th

Hands off!

2 Park watch • September 2012 No 250

Federal MP Kelvin Thomson’s inspiring letter (below) shows the profound influence that one person can have on developing a lifelong appreciation of nature in other people – particularly young people.

Do you know of any environmental mentors like Ros Garnet today? If so, please let us know so we can acknowledge them and spread the word!


Park watch • September 2012 No 250 3

preSident Fred Gerardsondirector Matt Ruchel

Level 3, 60 Leicester StreetCarlton, VIC 3053ABN 34 217 717 593Telephone: (03) 9347 5188Facsimile: (03) 9347 5199E-mail: [email protected]: www.vnpa.org.au

vnpa’S viSionWe share a vision of Victoria as a place with a diverse, secure and healthy natural environment cared for and appreciated by all.

editorial committeeAnn Strunks, Matt Ruchel, Philip Ingamells, Michael Howes.

advertiSing Ann Strunks, [email protected]

getting involved in vnpaEveryone can help in the conservation of Victoria’s wild and beautiful places. You can:

• make a donation• become a regular giver or member• volunteer. You’ll be welcome in the office, on a campaign or in a park • leave a bequest to VNPA in your will.

publiShing policYAll advertisements should be compatible with VNPA policies. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement by the VNPA Inc. of the advertised product or service. The VNPA reserves the right to refuse any advertisement at any time.

Park Watch may be quoted without permission provided that acknowledgement is made. The opinions of contributors are not necessarily those of the VNPA Inc.

guidelineS for contributorSYou’re always welcome to contact the editor to discuss ideas for articles. Phone the VNPA or email [email protected]. Articles may be submitted by email, on disk or as hard copy. Include your contact details and brief biographical information. Photos, maps and drawings are needed too. Digital photos should be 300dpi and around 8cm by 12cm.

copY deadline for December 2012 Park Watch is 22 October 2012.

deSign Mary Ferlin printing Tara Press

front and back coverS

Front cover: Waterloo Bay, Wilsons Promontory National Park. Photo by David Neilson.

Back cover: Discovering the sublime on Tasmania’s Overland Track. See story p. 38. Photo by Eva Klusacek.

Park Watch iSSn 1324-4361

contentS4 From the President

4 From the Editor

4 For your diary

5 Congratulations and challenges

6-7 Hands off our parks!

8-9 Wilderness? Yes! Commercial development in parks? No!

10-11 Mining threat to Wombat forest

12-13 Millionth tree planted for Grow West

14-15 Forestry practices endanger vulnerable wattle

16-17 The skein of things and unthings: attachment to place

18-19 Marine conservation issues

20 Government’s grazing study based on old draft review

21 Independent monitor slams statewide burning target

22 Meanwhile, in other park and conservation news …

23-26 VNPA Annual Report 2010-2011

27 Grampians Wildflower Show celebrates 75 years

28 VNPA’s NatureWatch helps fire research and management

29 Ecologists study how fire affects wildlife

30-31 Grievances to garden party: the VNPA in the 1960s

32-33 Rare owls may lose habitat

34-35 Lysterfield Park

36-37 Friends help protect and promote the Gippsland Lakes

38-39 Discovering the sublime on the Overland Track

40-41 James Peter Egerton Human 1923-2012

41 Missing Mirna

42 BWAG: VNPA snow fun plus more!

Be part of nature


As I wrap up my nearly five years as VNPA President, I look back over the issues I have written about in Park Watch – and note a strong bias towards railing against the failings of our political class.

Time and time again we have had to re-fight battles which should already have been won and finished.

Instead, we find that the lack of dollars in our government funding models means politicians are easily led into neglecting the environment in favour of other more strident voices in our community.

No-one can deny the need for better infrastructure, hospitals, education, law and order enforcement, etc, but surely a fair share needs to be put aside for nature conservation. Our economy is a subset of our environment, not the other way round.

At the last state election I did a quick analysis of the environment’s direct share of the Victorian budget, and came

up with less than 0.5% of total state expenditure. No doubt the figure would be equal or less in the other states.

And yet it is to these states that the Commonwealth Government now wants to cede powers to self-assess the compliance of proposed projects with the EPBC Act! I could think of greater failures of Government but it might take some doing.

Imagine letting the cattle-crazed Victorian Government determine if letting cows back on sensitive alpine plains is good science. Or letting the WA or Tasmanian governments rule on environmental assessments for the North-West shelf or pulp mill projects, or the Queensland Government on land clearing.

There are probably not too many politicians in the various Australian parliaments with a science or environment degree, and hence an understanding of what is required

to protect and nourish our unique environment. Sadly the political parties seem determined instead to appoint hacks and flunkeys to the majority of seats. And they wonder why they rank so low in the ‘respect’ stakes!

In Victoria we could start to find a bit more money for the environment if we closed the loss-making ‘commercial’ enterprise known as VicForests. This company has been propped up to the tune of many tens of millions of dollars whilst singularly failing its mandate to get maximum value out of our extensive managed forest estate.

As a consequence, and with the conniving of sections of the department which is supposed to oversee its operation, its woeful track record has seen it needlessly and often maliciously hoe into our native forest estate.

Thankfully, organisations such as the VNPA and its sister NPAs throughout Australia continue to defend and advocate for our unique natural environment.

I plan to spend much of the next year boosting the profile and funding of NPAs at the national level, as well as continuing to mix with many VNPA members through BWAG events.

Thank you all for indulging my passion for the environment over the past five years. I look forward to catching up with you in one of our magnificent national parks! • pw

fred gerardson

from the president

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Welcome to September Park Watch! Just as it was ready to go to print, bang came the next bombshell – commercial developments in national parks. Again. But our members and supporters are ready to meet the new challenge, I’m sure.

Then there’s the Wombat forest gold mine, logging, threatened species, feral animals … all the issues.

But plenty of positives too: tree planting, bushwalking, wildflower shows, Friends groups and more. They help keep us going.

Thank you to all our contributors! • pw

michael howes

from the editor

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for your diarytuesday 9 october: vNPa annual general meeting, 60 leicester st, carlton.

friday 26 october: reef watch 10th anniversary celebration, ricketts Point.

Sunday 18 november: vNPa annual Picnic, lysterfield Park. see p. 34.

24 november – 9 december: great victorian fish count 2012.


More than 100 people attended the VNPA’s 60th anniversary commemorative dinner in the Lower Melbourne Town Hall on Thursday 9 August, enjoying stimulating company and excellent presentations. Guests included members, supporters and representatives from Parks Victoria and other organisations.

VNPA President Fred Gerardson welcomed guests and reflected on his own 30 years with the VNPA, the Association’s 60-year history and its future, which depends entirely on continuing support and engagement.

Dr Bill Jackson, Parks Victoria CEO, acknowledged the dedicated efforts of the VNPA and like-minded organisations in establishing our park system. He paid special tribute to the VNPA’s volunteers and staff.

He listed challenges to national parks as our urbanised society, as well as an ageing and increasingly multicultural one; pest plants and animals; climate change; and economic uncertainty.

Dr Jackson challenged us to instil within current and future generations a deeper respect for country, and for our special places, our national parks.

Sidney Myer Fund chairman Carillo Gantner AO explained how the Fund and the Myer Foundation go about assessing applications for funding, and said that the VNPA’s Red Gum National Parks campaign, which they supported, ‘ticked all the boxes’.

The shared management of the red gum parks with the Indigenous community had particular appeal to the Foundation, he said, as it offered dignity and economic benefit to a community that has long suffered from its dislocation from country.

Stressing that philanthropy is not just something done by big foundations or wealthy people, he said that in fact “the poor give a far greater share of their ‘time, talent and treasure’ for the benefit of others than do the rich”.

He said that the fund directors strongly believe in the power of nature and the importance of harmony with the natural environment, and that we need to use social media to get the conservation message to a wider audience.

Museum Victoria Head of Sciences Dr Mark Norman then gave us a fantastic illustrated tour of Victoria’s wildlife, both marine and terrestrial, stressing that although there are many challenges and issues we still have wonderful variety and richness in our biodiversity.

He paid tribute to the VNPA’s Reef Watch program, led by Wendy Roberts, for its value in supplying up-to-the-minute information about marine species to museum scientists.

Environmental historian Associate Professor Don Garden gave an eloquent account of some of the Association’s high points (production of the VNPA Nature Conservation Reviews, establishment of new national

parks) and low points (disappointment in the 1950s and 60s, plans to clear the Little Desert) over the past 60 years.

Christine Goonrey, National Parks Australia Council President, spoke passionately about the Federal Government’s plans to hand over its powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to the States, and the urgent need to oppose this weakening of environmental protection.

Finally, VNPA Executive Director Matt Ruchel thanked all the speakers, sponsors and supporters, staff members Lara Hookham and Ann Strunks who organised the dinner, and MC Pete Dillon. He also thanked members and supporters for helping the Association to continue its work.

He said that persistence has always been a key VNPA trait. Another is taking a long-term view of conservation.

Acknowledging the dedicated work of Parks Victoria and its staff in managing those places we hold dear, he said that our greatest challenge is engaging the Victorian community in sharing our passion for nature, and caring for nature.

“We are working towards the day when Victoria’s great natural heritage is secure, and as a community we have the knowledge, skills, resources and most importantly the political will to do the job properly,” he said.

“With your generous financial support, time, advice and good will I think we can make a real and significant difference.” • pw

michael howes

Indigenous rangers at Barmah NP. The establishment of Victoria’s

River Red Gum parks was of great importance to Traditional

Owners, the VNPA and the Myer Foundation.

congratulations and challenges

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The Victorian Government has opened the door to private developments in our national parks. The decision followed a report by the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission (VCEC) which, while actually suggesting that the priority for developments should be outside parks, left the door somewhat open:

“In general, the Commission considers that the best course is to develop tourism ventures outside the boundaries of a national park where this is practical. But … for some types of investments the park may be a superior location.”

The government has shown no such caution, however, eagerly seizing on the park option by flagging 99-year leases in parks, and claiming that investment in these areas “helps to make a positive contribution towards conservation of environmental and cultural values of natural areas”. But neither the government nor VCEC has come up with any detail of how private tourism infrastructure would make that unlikely contribution.

There are at least four reasons why the government’s decision to hand

long-term leases in our national parks to developers is short-sighted, ill-considered and irresponsible.

1 Private developments will grow and grow

The Victorian government isn’t in any position to guarantee that developments in national parks will remain low key and sensitive.

A 99-year lease is effectively freehold title, and under a long succession of different governments private developments will inevitably grow. An initially small, eco-sized accommodation will need added beds to cover the high costs of operating in a remote area, and that brings forward the need for a café, bigger car parks, and eventually a shop or two, not to mention a sewerage plant and roads.

Victorians have already been through this incremental process (sometimes called ‘infrastructure creep’) at Mount Buffalo National Park, where there are now almost more buildings than park visitors on an average day. The Chalet’s extensive compound, Dingo Dell’s

Keown Lodge, a park office and a large and very visible works centre all make their presence felt.

But it was Tatra Inn, on the remote southern end of the Buffalo plateau, that most clearly demonstrated how private developments fail in parks. Originally a 1960s project sanctioned by the Bolte government, Tatra Inn was bought back ten years later at great expense by the next Liberal government, under Premier Hamer. The long-term leaseholders had wanted to add more buildings, clear more land and build a lake.

At the time The Age, echoing public calls to end the mayhem, said that “conservation policies must be far sighted and well founded. A trickle of ill-judged compromise soon becomes a lake of regret.” Tatra Inn burnt to the ground in 2007, and the Chalet now can’t find a commercial backer.

2 Regional tourism doesn’t need developments in parks

The government is wrong to claim that regional tourism needs private access to parks.

In Victoria, the most cleared state in Australia, the parks are mostly small and fragmented jewels, with infrastructure often already adjacent to them on private land where there is plenty of opportunity for more investment.

Grampians National Park, for example, has Halls Gap township in the middle of the park. The Alpine National Park has the Falls Creek and Hotham alpine resorts outside the park boundary but effectively embedded within it. And those resorts, already over-developed, have several hundred beds vacant over the summer period.

Experience shows that the people who benefit most from private investment in parks are the investors, not park visitors or the parks themselves. And there is absolutely no evidence that large-scale private developments contribute anything to the natural areas parks were set up to protect. Rather, they often skew resources towards managing people and nature-based sideshows, rather than the many problems facing our natural areas.

By allowing a developer privileged monopoly access to land within a national park, the

hands off our parks!

NatioNal parks aNd coNservatioN reserves are primarily there for Nature coNservatioN. they’re Not there for cow paddocks, firewood depots or hotels, say vNpa executive director matt ruchel aNd park protectioN project officer phil ingamellS.

left: sugar glider. the integrity of the prime habitat for victoria’s native species is being seriously compromised by the victorian government’s plans to open up parks to private developments.

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government is actually disadvantaging locals who want to set up their own sympathetic ecotourism facility nearby. Even the government’s own Competition and Efficiency Commission has said that the priority should be to develop tourism ventures outside the boundaries of a park.

3 High-end tourism is not the best way for parks to contribute to society

The government has wrongly assumed that providing yet more facilities for high- spending tourists is the boost to the economy we all need. But those most in need of improved access to parks are the underprivileged, especially those school kids who never get to experience an adventure or three in the wild.

It would be a wise government which, perhaps in league with corporate sponsors, guaranteed every schoolchild good access to adventure programs in our national parks, immersing potentially troubled students in a healthy natural environment.

There is a wealth of medical advice that many of our young need more healthy

exercise. There is also a wealth of advice from psychiatrists that such programs help to avoid behaviour problems and lead to a stronger, more productive society. And our parks, after all, do belong to all Victorians.

4 All parts of a national park are needed for nature conservation

It’s the fourth blunder that tells us most about the government’s mindset. By claiming that we needn’t worry because no developments will go into those parts of parks set aside as wilderness or remote and natural areas, they fail to understand that national parks give protection to natural values throughout the whole park.

And indeed, increasingly, we need vigilant nature protection across much of the state.

The Victorian community, over decades of careful consultation and scientific advice, has set about trying to guarantee that our natural heritage will survive the massive impacts we have inflicted on it. National parks and other reserves have been created to look after some

300 different habitat types, and the tens of thousands of native species they support.

But those species, many of which are now threatened and need very careful management, don’t all live in the most remote parts of parks.

This is why less than 1% of 20,000 national parks worldwide have any significant tourism infrastructure, and most of those either pre-date park establishment or are on pre-existing enclaves on private land.

Rather than introducing cattle, gold prospectors, hunters, unnecessary levels of burning and private developments to our parks, saying each time that these things won’t have too much impact, the government should take its role as guardian of our national parks seriously.

It has previously been, and should remain, an important bipartisan role of governments to be vigilant protectors of the great and irreplaceable natural heritage in our national parks. • pw

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main photo: eurobin falls, mount buffalo NP. inset: early last century, the mount buffalo chalet started as a quaint little shack. but after a hundred years of government and private efforts to generate a profit, its seemingly endless tangle of added infrastructure now occupies an area 400 metres long by 150 wide.

for more information about the vNPa’s campaign against commercial developments in parks, and how you can contribute to it, see our website www.vnpa.org.au

vnpa’s campaign


Wilderness and sustainability

Can we still ‘afford’ wilderness? And if so, should we aim to use it ‘sustainably’? The straight answers are: yes, and no. But the terminology is misleading.

The total cash cost to buy all the world’s remaining areas of high biological diversity at current local land prices is estimated at $20 billion per year for ten years. This is less than annual US expenditure on soft drinks. So yes, the world can afford it.

Most wilderness, however, is not for sale, except politically. It is controlled by national governments, which protect, exploit or ignore it depending on their own economic and political power bases.

Can we afford wilderness?

A much more important question is whether we can afford the continuing loss of wilderness worldwide.

We rely on relatively undisturbed natural ecosystems to clean the dirty air and water which emanate endlessly from our cities. Wilderness

areas, especially oceans and tropical grasslands and forests, also absorb atmospheric carbon to mitigate human-induced climate change.

The only realistic way to get carbon out of the atmosphere is to put it back in the soil, or (better) keep it there. ‘Biochar’ is an artificial approach; it’s much cheaper to keep areas under native vegetation.

Wilderness areas contain the genetic diversity that underpins our food, textile and pharmaceutical industries, and allows us to keep breeding new varieties of staple food crops and livestock.

Ten years ago, economists calculated that the recurrent financial value of goods and services which humans derive from nature is at least twice as large as the entire global economy: many tens of trillions of dollars every year.

Most of this is ‘ecosystem services’ such as clean air and water, which rely on wilderness. So wilderness is something we definitely can’t afford to lose.

Can we use wilderness sustainably?

Given that we can afford to keep wilderness and can’t afford to lose it, is it possible to use it ‘sustainably’? This is a misleading question.

We do already use wilderness, all the time, to keep the planet habitable for humans. Every breath you take and every drop you drink uses wilderness.

And since humans as biological creatures are completely dependent on the natural environment, they can only continue to survive as long as there are also areas where that environment is not being consumed: that is, wilderness.

For the world as a whole to remain ‘sustainable’, a place where humans can continue to live for the foreseeable future, wilderness must be kept as wilderness.

Impacts

There are four different ways, apart from planetary life support, in which people want to use wilderness.

Wilderness outside protected areas suffers continual attrition and degradation from

ralf buckleY, director of the iNterNatioNal ceNtre for ecotourism research at Griffith uNiversity, writes about the values of wilderNess aNd explaiNs why commercial tourism developmeNts iN parks are Neither affordable Nor sustaiNable.

this article featured iN park watch iN juNe last year, but because of its curreNt relevaNce we repriNt it here.

wilderness? Yes!commercial development in parks? no!

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Picnic Bay, Wilsons Promontory NP.


high-impact human uses ranging from agricultural clearance, industrial forestry and fisheries to mining and oil production.

These activities are ‘business as usual’. But they continually reduce the world’s remaining supply of wilderness, on which we all depend for survival. The area protected within national parks is not enough on its own.

Even within protected areas, wilderness is still subject to some attrition. The oil and mining industries lobby to operate inside parks. But this has enormous impacts.

At the other end of the scale, most national parks are used for recreation as well as conservation. This does have impacts, but they are relatively minor and manageable.

Spending time in parks also saves on public health, hospital and aged-care costs. ‘Healthy Parks Healthy People’ is not just a Parks Victoria marketing tag. It’s part of the state budget.

Commercial tourism

Midway between the mining industry and the individual hiker lies the commercial tourism industry. National parks are major drawcards for both domestic and international tourists. Three-quarters of all overseas visitors to Australia visit at least one national park.

The commercial tourism industry gains by selling these tourists their transport, accommodation and some activities. A quarter of the Australian tourism industry bases its businesses in natural areas.

In most of the world, tourist accommodation and commercial tourism hubs are in gateway areas outside the parks themselves, and all activities in protected areas are controlled by the park management agency. This approach works well even in very heavily-visited parks, such as those of India and China.

Not surprisingly, the commercial property development sector sees publicly owned parks and wilderness areas as a plum prize, an opportunity to profit at the public expense.

If property developers can build tourist accommodation inside a park, then the

attraction, infrastructure, operational management costs and marketing are all publicly subsidised.

Development costs

If in addition a tourism developer can negotiate an exclusive right to provide accommodation and retail services in a particular park, that operator also gains a monopoly rent.

But this imposes inequitable costs on the parks agency, on less wealthy independent visitors, on other tourism providers and regional industry, and on the wilderness areas themselves. It is neither affordable nor sustainable.

The tourism industry calls this ‘partnership’. But it’s not a partnership in a business sense. Tourism operators want to use and control parks resources, but not the reverse.

Tourism property developers argue that they can make money for parks. But where tour operators have to pay park fees already, they complain bitterly.

Agencies in five developing countries get more than 40% of their operating funds from tourism. But this proportion is high only because government funding is low.

And they earn their tourism revenue directly from individual tourists, via entry fees. Commercial tour operators contribute less than 5%, in fact generally less than1%.

There are more than 20,000 national parks worldwide. Less than 1% have any kind of private tourism infrastructure; and most of those either pre-date park establishment or are on pre-existing enclaves of private land.

Private tourism development can also impose huge costs on parks agencies, especially if something goes wrong. The Thredbo landslide is a famous Australian case.

The idea that a hotel inside a park will somehow contribute to conservation is not supported by evidence. It’s just lobbying.

And people actually don’t want hotels in parks. They want to be able to go to parks cheaply, and camp and enjoy nature. When in 1996 the Victorian Government proposed a luxury lodge in Wilsons Promontory National Park, Victorians lodged thousands of objections. People want wilderness the way it is.

As Thoreau said more than 150 years ago, ‘in wildness [wilderness] is the preservation of the world’. It is essential for sustainability, social and economic as well as environmental.

And it only works if we leave it the way it is. • pw

ralf buckley has written widely on ecotourism and environmental management. the above article is a condensed version of an article first published in ‘online opinion’, march 2010. copyright remains with the author.

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although these newspaper polls are not scientific, they point to the strength of

community feeling against commercial developments in parks.


Under what has been described as a ‘secret proposal’, four hectares of the forest will be bulldozed and cleared of native vegetation to develop an open-cut mine and test how much gold is below the surface.

The site is 2km south of Bullarto township and in the headwaters of the heritage-listed Lerderderg River.

Local community group Wombat Forestcare recently held a public meeting in Bullarto South after finding

out about the mining proposal by accident. Over 350 concerned local people attended to hear about the proposal and voice their concerns.

No-one in the community was aware of the proposal, which includes clearing vegetation and digging up over 5000 tonnes of material to be trucked to Maldon for processing.

While this news has sparked understandable community concern, it is just the tip of the iceberg.

Natural values of the Wombat

wombat state forest is valued by locals and visitors alike and is rich in plant and animal species, many of which are threatened. it is also important for water quality in central victoria.

in a detailed study of the area carried out in 2010, the vNPa identified the main areas of the wombat as having high conservation significance, and therefore as being worthy of better protection under the National Parks act.

for more information, see ‘special Places’ at www.vnpa.org.au

mining threat to wombat forest

If the initial project finds enough gold, the mine will be significantly increased in size to a full-scale open-cut gold mine.

Adding to these concerns, there are other mining and exploration licences right across the Wombat forest and surrounding district.

The impacts of mining

Mining in the Wombat State Forest will result in the large-scale removal of trees and other native vegetation, impacting on native species and habitat.

It is also likely to impact on water catchments, and has the potential to pollute and increase sedimentation of the headwaters of the heritage-listed Lerderderg River.

As well, there will be drastically increased heavy vehicle movement through adjoining rural communities as excavated material is transported by truck to and from the processing site in Maldon.

Toxic chemicals, including cyanide, are used in the gold extraction process. There are real risks of material treated with these toxic chemicals contaminating the area’s land, air and water during transport and at the mining and processing sites.

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in a move that haS Shocked local people, local government, conServationiStS and recreational uSerS alike, the baillieu government haS given the green light to a commercial mining operation in the wombat State foreSt near daYleSford.

left: the wombat forest – a special place.


The VNPA’s position

So what is the VNPA position on this latest in a long list of shocking environmental decisions by the Baillieu Government?

• The VNPA believes that mining has no place in high-value forests on public land. We believe that mining on high-value agricultural land should also be ruled out.

• The Victorian Government should heed local community concerns and place an immediate moratorium on mining within Wombat State Forest.

• To protect the natural and recreational values of the Wombat forest into the future, the area should be protected under the National Parks Act at least as a State Park.

• The Victorian Government should instruct the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) to investigate the area and recommend future land use and boundaries for additional conservation reserves or parks protecting publicly owned forests across central Victoria.

The VNPA and local groups are resolute: the Victorian Government must never be allowed to hand over areas of high conservation significance such as Wombat State Forest to mining companies.

We ask you to join us to send a clear message to the Baillieu Government to rule out mining in state forests, and rescind mining licence MIN5349 for mining in the Wombat State Forest. • pw

nick roberts, vnpa red gum & river rescue project coordinator

Mining licences cover vast area

there are two types of mining licence — exploration and mining — and both currently exist for large areas of the wombat forest and surrounding areas.

mining licences are in place for over 400 hectares within the wombat state forest, including the licence for the proposed open-cut mine at bullarto south.

over 8000 hectares of wombat state forest and the surrounding areas are under exploration licence, with applications for a further 15,000 hectares — any of which could become mining operations.

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eHave your say

to send a clear message to the baillieu government, write to state minister for energy and resources michael o’brien. use some of the information in this article and add your own thoughts and views.

michael o’brien

electorate office313-315 waverley road, malvern east 3145Phone: (03) 9576 1850 fax: (03) 9576 1849

ministerial officelevel 22, 1 spring street, melbourne, vicPhone: (03) 9938 5963 fax: (03) 9938 5962email: michael.o’[email protected] twitter: @michaelobrienmp

wombat State forest

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parks

The proposed gold mine site contains mature trees. The area would be totally cleared.

Wombat gold: colourful fungi

and lichen.

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In the late 1990s, the hilly landscapes around Bacchus Marsh in the Rowsley Valley and Pentland Hills areas were becoming a wasteland. The land was at the mercy of rabbits in plague proportions, erosion, saline soils resulting from years of land clearance for farming, and a (then) emerging environmental weed, Serrated Tussock.

That’s when the concept of Grow West was born – a plan to revegetate this degraded landscape through a series of biolinks and stepping stones between high-value conservation reserves: Brisbane Ranges National Park, Lerderderg State Park and Werribee Gorge State Park .

An alliance of local landholders, Landcare groups, government agencies and Moorabool Shire Council recognised that joint action was the only way forward.

The Grow West Implementation Committee was formed, a plan to create a large-scale network of biolinks was developed in 2003 – and now nearly ten years later the millionth tree has been planted.

Grow West has become one of Victoria’s most successful and enduring landscape rehabilitation projects.

Since 2006, thanks largely to the efforts of VNPA Honorary Life Member John Stirling, the VNPA has been a significant Grow West partner, at least 100 members and friends assisting at each of the annual Community Planting Days.

Over the past decade, Grow West has initiated revegetation and farm forestry projects on around 1,000 hectares of land at 175 sites. These included major planting projects associated with the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

millionth tree planted for grow west

oN suNday 15 july, at the seveNth aNNual Grow west commuNity plaNtiNG day aNd iN the preseNce of more thaN 100 vNpa members

aNd frieNds, plus maNy local laNdcare Group members aNd others, state eNviroNmeNt miNister ryaN smith (ceNtre, froNt row) plaNted

the millioNth Grow west tree. this was at david muir’s property ‘haftoN’ iN the peNtlaNd hills Near myrNioNG.


Grow West Project Coordinator Helena Lindorff says the project’s accountability to its many funders over the years enabled her to confidently calculate that the ceremonial one-millionth tree would be put in the ground on Sunday 15th.

Minister Smith said planting the one millionth Grow West tree was an honour for him and an amazing achievement for the project.

He thanked the 200 volunteers, the largest volunteer crowd that the project has ever seen, and the supporters of the Community Planting Day and of the Grow West program over the years.

In addition to the usual excellent lunch and afternoon tea, the planting day was enlivenend with Melbourne Water staff giving illustrated talks to the planting teams about the local native wildlife, which includes several frog species, bats, bush rats, possums, gliders and more.

millionth tree planted for grow westThe VNPA congratulates Helena and the Grow West committee on the excellent planning and organisation of the day, and we look forward to progress reports in coming years. •pw

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The planters assemble for a

group photo.

right: the lindorff family – helena,

chris, bethany and charlotte – with the

millionth tree.

far right: cheerful planters at work.

Project partners include:

• Port Phillip and westernport catchment management authority

• victorian National Parks association • friends of werribee gorge and long forest mallee• computershare e-tree and landcare australia limited• melbourne water• Pentland hills landcare group• mobile 4wd landcare group• bacchus marsh lions club


The history of the Wellsford is the history of all box-ironbark forests. Exploitation for timber during the Gold Rushes and since, and for eucalyptus oil, has meant only nine large mature ironbarks remain today. Yet it is one of the best examples of box-ironbark left and deserves to be fully protected for future generations.

The Bendigo and District Environment Council is extremely concerned with the inappropriate logging practices being used in the Wellsford forest, which is currently being logged by State Government-funded contractors to provide free firewood, largely for Melbourne’s wood merchants for next year.

The cutting of trees for firewood in this area is paid for by taxpayers. The wood is then given away free.

Unsupervised contractors have felled large trees onto a significant stand of the rare Ausfeld’s Wattle (Acacia ausfeldii), listed as Vulnerable in Victoria. This has damaged the wattles so much that they are unlikely to recover.

The authority responsible for state forests in western Victoria (which is not VicForests) is required to identify and protect important flora and fauna before timber cutting commences. But as the damage to this important area of Ausfeld’s Wattle shows, it is being done without such measures.

It appears that the production of firewood in Wellsford forest is not being supervised by foresters on the ground.

Trees have been dropped right on top of an endangered plant, showing the process of ecological management used (if there is one) to be inadequate, as the area of wattle is easy to see. You wonder how the cutters could have missed it.

What’s going to happen to the little that remains of this significant area of Ausfeld’s Wattle when people come to collect their firewood? Who will be there to stop further damage?

Who will make sure that something is saved, as wood collection is messy and not supervised?

This careless and irresponsible act shows that the unsupervised methods used to produce firewood and other forest products within the Wellsford are damaging the natural environment.

Firewood production is incompatible with the conservation of flora and fauna in Box-ironbark forests. The current ‘sustainable’ management of forests, including box-ironbark forests, means nothing more than the sustainable management of wood production by the modification of the forest structure, damaging and degrading habitat in the process and resulting in a loss of biodiversity.

We have government-sponsored taxpayer-funded destruction of high conservation value Bendigo bush for almost no return to Bendigo. Why should our community lose this most valuable asset when there are ecologically sustainable sources of firewood within the district? We must put an end to this charade!

There is more than adequate firewood being produced on private land in the

forestry practices endanger vulnerable wattlethe 7100 ha wellsford forest, which is riGht oN beNdiGo’s doorstep aNd is oNe of the larGest blocks of box-iroNbark forest iN victoria, is Not curreNtly iNcluded iN Greater beNdiGo NatioNal park. it must be protected uNder the NatioNal parks act, at least as a state park.

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A carpet of Rosy Heath-myrtle within a mallee area of the

Wellsford Forest.


district. Many landholders are endeavouring to create a sustainable wood industry but are being frustrated and undercut by taxpayer-funded free firewood from public land.

The Wellsford is home to several other rare or threatened species of plants such as Whirrakee Wattle, Buloke and Sand Rush, and the endangered Swift Parrot and Brush-tailed Phascogale.

The Yellow-footed Antechinus, Diamond Firetail, Speckled Warbler, Crested Shrike-tit, Bibron’s Toadlet, Lace Monitor, Mouse Spider and a bullant species identified by the late Jenny Barnett are also recorded there.

The sad story of firewood permits

Permits for firewood collection on public land in victoria have been in place since 1958, under the bolte liberal government’s forests act.

although not perfect, the permit system did ensure a first point of contact between firewood collectors and the public land manager (now dse). Permits also ensured that people knew where they could and couldn’t take firewood, and gave advice on safety and environmental considerations.

importantly as well, the permit system enabled dse to monitor the amount of firewood being removed from forests.

this has now all been lost by a foolish political decision. in late 2011, the baillieu government announced that it would remove the requirement for firewood permits, without amending the legislation. this meant that for at least six months (until amendment) victorians were breaking the law by collecting firewood without a permit.

in the meantime, regional communities have largely missed out on firewood because greedy users and commercial suppliers have taken advantage of the government free-for-all by clearing out areas designated for householders. and farmers growing trees for firewood have lost sales.

the impact on our forests and parks is potentially immense. many people have complained about firewood being taken illegally. even live trees have been felled in some parks.

dse acknowledges “a number of incidents across the state where trees have been illegally felled on public land”.

nick roberts

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Biolinks Alliance gets together

thirteen landcare networks, conservation management Networks and environment groups in central victoria – from the grampians to the alps – formed the central victorian biolinks alliance at a workshop in bendigo recently. the initiative has been guided by local groups, the victoria Naturally alliance and the vNPa, and funded by the wilderness society.

since december, Project officer sophie bickford has been meeting with the networks to develop a draft vision, mission and governance scheme.

the bendigo workshop decided that priority projects are, first, to develop a ‘learning network’ in which lessons learnt by all players can be shared easily, and secondly to collate data that helps build a regional context for groups to set their own priorities. an example is climate change scenarios for the region and how these might impact on local and regional priorities.

for more information contact sophie bickford, [email protected], or see www.centralvicbiolinks.org.au

karen alexander, victoria naturally alliance

The only way to protect this significant forest and its box-ironbark flora and fauna is to give it park status.

It is clear that Victoria’s forestry authorities are unable to provide this protection.•pw

the writer, Stuart fraser, is the convenor and one of the original members of the bendigo and district environment council inc. bdec is a non-profit organisation established in the mid-1980s whose main interests are the conservation of the natural environment and australia’s progress towards ecological sustainability. it runs action groups including bushlinks and wellsford watch, and is campaigning to gain park status for the wellsford forest.

Take action!

Please contact the Bendigo Advertiser newspaper calling for better protection for the wellsford forest. email [email protected] or write to Po box 61, bendigo, vic 3552.

write also to state environment minister ryan smith: [email protected] or level 17, 8 Nicholson st, east melbourne, vic 3001.

for more information see www.vnpa.org.au and click on ‘Protecting special Places/small Parks Project’.

right: daisies and gold-dust wattle among the wellsford forest ironbarks.bottom left: slender sun-orchid (Thelymitra pauciflora) in the wellsford.

bottom right: ausfeld’s wattle (Acacia ausfeldii).


Several years ago I researched the nature of ‘place attachment’, something we all experience as a superlatively important part of our lives, but which can also contain mysteries intriguing to unravel: a fine skein, a ‘delicate ribbon’, but powerful.

For this purpose I interviewed, separately, several people living near the marvellously complete box-ironbark forests that surround Bendigo. These people were, deliberately, a varied bunch: two naturalists from the Bendigo Field Naturalists Club, a gold miner, a hunter and an Aboriginal elder, all generous with their time.

Place attachment is intricate, encompassing the emotions found in any sort of attachment, and knowledge, beliefs, and actions connected with landscape.

I was interested in the notion that we construct (not create) our own meaning for places; that is, we construct

meaning through a combination of our cultural heritage (something abstract) and what we perceive around us (mostly, concrete things).

But fascinatingly, this mental ‘construct’ has real effects. Michael, the hunter I interviewed, described hunting club loyalty, an intangible thing, yet its effects are real and seen in their practices. However, events could break up the club and the loyalty evaporate: the binding forces of the club are constructed reality.

If each of us is constructing our own meaning for our places, then each person can have both group similarities and personal differences in our place attachments. The attachments of my five people had much in common, but much that was different.

Early experience was decisive. For instance, Jeanne, a naturalist had had many walking holidays with her family in her native England:

Oh it’s the plants, it’s plants that are important… we saw plants and we saw birds and we walked down to the beach and there were little tiny pansies and … a Burnett Rose, like a little wild rose that’s about three centimetres across…

Lyndon, another naturalist, went to a school camp in the bush, was blown away by the experience and began a lifetime of bushwalking in forests. Doug, a gold miner, and not well off as a boy, took to the bush hunting rabbits and camping for his entertainments.

Another common theme was the importance of shared experiences with other people in the landscape: for example, the shared, arduous work underground for Doug and the shared hunting and marksmanship activities for Michael.

Some people had sophisticated connections to landscape as a whole. Lyndon said about the box-ironbark forest,

the skein of things and unthings: attachment to place

“The gods of Asgard, on their third attempt to bind Fenris, the terrible giant wolf: ‘And the dwarves made a supple skein from unthings. There were six, woven together: the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish and the spittle of a bird. The thing was light as air and smooth as silk, a long, delicate ribbon.’ ”

From Ragnarok, by A. S. Byatt, p. 54.

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One of the Wellsford Forest’s few remaining big old ironbarks.


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above: the loneliness of the box-ironbark forest.

left: the massive bark that give the ironbark its name.

below: relics like this boiler remind us of the area’s mining history and also of the gold rush legacy of enormous environmental damage.

… in this area it’s always very gentle, rolling hills, densely covered and you’ve got a… rather intense feeling of loneliness… not desolation, though, but loneliness, of melancholy, and with a sort … of waiting, of patience …

However, of overriding importance for everyone were landscape objects.

These were very various. Lyndon overwhelmingly valued trees, especially ‘lovely, big, old Red Ironbarks’, some of which he described as ‘magnificent beyond belief… big thick trees and massive trunks… quite a few of them, their crown diameter was as great as their height.’ They represented to him the living things that are ‘as close to everlasting as you can ever get’.

For the Elder, Harry, it was the great array of rocks of various densities and aptness for shaping that could become tools and weapons, as well as boulders and ancient trees used in ceremonies.

For Michael one of his objects, strangely enough, was the fox, for its cleverness, beauty and hard-working nature.

The miner Jeff, like all the interviewees, also valued what I called in my research ‘intangible objects’ – in his case the knowledge and skills he gained from mining. For this early school leaver, these capacities included impressive knowledge of gold-bearing soils, their forces and stresses, control of water underground, and the chemistry of assaying gold-bearing rock: troll-like knowledge about the underside of the place.

All these aspects of attachment melded into a particular view of the world for each person; for example, the theme running through Jeanne’s interview about honouring the thing best suited to a particular place. She stood ‘in awe and amazement’ before the endurance and specificity of plants, and saw this as a key to the survival of the planet; and she wanted the social history of the old forest industries of mining and eucalyptus oil distilling honoured by the maintenance of the historic, local marks they had made.

Since each person’s objects are different, it follows that the form of their attachment is different. Therefore the number of meanings given to a landscape is as great

as the number of people connected with it.

People in landscape need engagement with things that mean something to them, and things that engage young people will often be different from those engaging older people.

A while ago on a VNPA walk at the Yarra Bend parklands, we were shown a mighty cliff where a woman had made a jaw-dropping dive from a world-record height in the 1930s, watched by tens of thousands. This sort of physical object (the cliff) combined with a striking history can be the beginning of a more landscape-wide connection to a place.

People need meaningful objects as well as shared experience, the feeling of developing knowledge and skill, and time to develop a history with the landscape.

Each person has their own intricate binding skein of objects. One of the keys is how they come to see meaning in their own landscape objects. •pw

article author Julia hamer, daughter of former victorian premier sir rupert hamer, is a landscape designer, gardener and writer with a lifelong interest in plants, and consequently a deeply concerned environmentalist. in 2008 she completed a master’s thesis in horticulture on a topic related to landscape sociology.


What’s going on?

A Tasmanian company called Seafish Tasmania is proposing a joint venture with the giant Dutch freezer trawler FV Margiris to catch more than 18,000 tonnes of small bait fish off the coast of Australia.

Any fish caught by the super trawler within Australian waters will be frozen into 20kg blocks and sold to Nigeria for $1 a kilogram.

This low value will come at a high ecological cost.

A massive step backwards

The commercial fishing industry has made big steps recently to move towards more sustainable practices, but the introduction of the super trawler would be a massive step backwards for both the industry and the Australian Government.

The trawler has been allocated a catch quota by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, but conservation groups and thousands of recreational fishermen across the country have major concerns about it.

Localised depletion: Due to the size of the ship’s nets, it can catch its quota (which includes blue mackerel, jack mackerel and redbait) in a small area.

Tasmania has seen this sort of fishing in the past. Twenty years ago trawling pressure was blamed for the depletion of local fish stocks.

Key species in the food chain: Bait fish are a critical food source for a number of predator species, including Bottlenose Dolphins, Australian Fur Seals and other marine animals, sea birds and larger fish.

Help stop the super trawler now!

The federal ministers for the environment and fisheries have the

power to stop the super trawler and prevent industrial-scale fishing within Commonwealth marine waters.

Across Australia, people are raising their voice in opposition to this super trawler coming anywhere near Australian waters, but the clock is ticking.

Your help is urgently needed! For more information, and to join the thousands of Australians campaigning against the super trawler, send a loud and clear message to federal fisheries minister Joe Ludwig and environment minister Tony Burke at www.stopthesupertrawler.vnpa.org.au

the giant super trawler is coming!

bY the time You read thiS, a huge european Super trawler maY be in

auStralian waterS. thiS factorY Ship, 142 metreS long, weighS 9499 tonneS and can proceSS

250 tonneS of fiSh a daY.

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The super trawler MV Margiris.

The dramatic Port Campbell NP coastline and its marine species

could be affected by seismic testing in the Otway Basin.


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in an innovative move, the vNPa teamed up with environment tasmania and ocean Planet, as well as the australian marine sciences association (amsa) and the Nz marine science society, to present the latest science on marine protected areas (mPas).

this year’s amsa conference was held in hobart in July with leading marine scientists from all over australia and Nz attending. the vNPa worked closely with the organisers to set up a dedicated day-long series of mPa presentations on the monday.

Origin Energy Resources Ltd is continuing its push to conduct more gas exploration in south-west Victoria. The latest proposal targets the Otway Basin – already subjected to comprehensive seismic testing by Woodside in 2004.

In May 2010, then state environment minister Gavin Jennings gave Origin approval to conduct seismic testing within and adjacent to Bay of Islands Coastal Park, a decision that the VNPA expressed major concerns about.

According to Origin, the purpose of the seismic surveys is to enable the company to understand the geological structure of the deep subsurface rock formations – in other words to determine whether there are enough gas reserves in the region to exploit.

Port Campbell and Warrnambool commercial rock lobster fisherman have collated extensive anecdotal evidence about the impacts of the 2004 seismic testing on some of the region’s marine species, and do not support further gas exploration in this region.

The new seismic testing proposals will avoid the whale migration season (and marine protected areas), but are likely to coincide with the breeding and spawning times of species such as rock lobsters and abalone. Local fishermen have evidence that the puerulus (late larval stage) recruitment of rock lobsters decreased significantly after the 2004 testing.

There were also mass deaths of penguins around that time, and local rock formation the ‘Crown of Thorns’ collapsed.

Government agencies attributed these events to other environmental factors, but an independent investigation is needed to establish whether seismic testing was to blame, before any new exploration is permitted.

Presentation highlights included ground-breaking research about the role of mPas in building ecosystem resilience to better withstand the impacts of climate change, and an outline of the Nz experience of marine biodiversity recovery after mPa establishment.

dr steffan howe from Parks victoria spoke on Pv’s new ‘report card’ methodology and some early results from wilsons Promontory and yaringa marine National Parks.

complementing the amsa conference, the vNPa also helped organise a public symposium on the tuesday night with some of monday’s keynote speakers. victoria’s matt edmunds, from australian marine ecology, spoke about monitoring our mPas and some of the results ten years after their establishment.

this symposium was captured on video; visit our website to see some of the leading science and research presented.

Showcasing the latest science in MPAs


There is published scientific research about the impact of seismic testing on marine species, and moves for new research that specifically looks at the effects of seismic surveys on larval and adult rock lobsters, scallops and other species in near-shore areas of the south-west.

The precautionary principle should be applied; the Otway Basin should not be opened up to new gas exploration surveys until the findings of this new research are published.

The bigger issue here is that there is no broader marine planning in place to safeguard against the ad hoc release and re-release of more areas for exploration for gas or other fossil fuels. At the moment, companies like Origin can submit proposals for exploration anywhere, including within marine national parks, due to a loophole in the National Parks Act.

We need an overarching marine plan that puts the protection and management of marine species and habitats first, rather than their being viewedpurelyasaresource.•pw

simon branigan, vNPa marine and coastal campaigner.

Seismic testing to reverberate through Otway Basin

Diver in an underwater

‘canyon’ at Twelve Apostles Marine National Park, in the Otway Basin.

Bastion Point saga takes a critical turn

The State Government has advised the East Gippsland Shire Council (EGSC) to make a decision by the end of 2012 on its intentions for Bastion Point. It must decide which development option it will submit for Coastal Management Act (CMA) consent.

The Save Bastion Point group believes it is likely that the Council will stand by its previous preferred option and submit Option 3b (major development) for CMA consent. There is then a real risk that the Government might approve it.

The group is calling on EGSC to listen to the community and heed the two consultation periods in which 87% of submitters rejected the large Option 3b breakwater and beach road, preferring a lower-key development.

For more information, and to take action, see the VNPA website or www.savebastionpoint.org


In a sane world we would know that it’s simply good housekeeping to look after the natural world we live in.

But we don’t live in that sane world, and a recent battle the VNPA has had with the Victorian government makes that fairly clear.

For over a year now, we have fought a Freedom of Information battle to obtain a review of scientific literature, the main evidence on which the Baillieu Government claims to have based its decision that an alpine grazing ‘scientific trial’ was necessary.

Let’s go back in time a bit.

Before the current state government was elected, it made a few promises about alpine grazing, mainly in East Gippsland where it was trying to unseat Labor-leaning Independent Craig Ingram.

Those promises were, officially, that it would introduce a scientific trial to establish whether grazing could help reduce the fire risk in the alpine region. Less officially, they were promising the cattlemen that their cattle would be back in the Alpine National Park.

The Baillieu Government claimed victory in the election on 29 November 2010 and swore in its ministers, including new

environment minister Ryan Smith, on 2 December.

Then, with unseemly haste, they set about getting cattle back into the park. On 9 January 2011, at the Mountain Cattlemen’s Association’s annual get-together, Nationals leader Peter Ryan and his deputy Peter Walsh announced that cattle had been introduced to the park “to reduce the fire risk”, effectively pre-empting the results of the ‘scientific’ trial.

The cattle had already been secretively introduced to a series of ‘scientific research sites’, just a month after the government was sworn in.

The promise of a scientific trial was clearly a problem for them. Setting up any credible scientific study takes a lot of time, and this one was a corker.

The Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre (CRC) had already tried and failed in a similar experiment near Kosciuszko National Park, but some three years after they began that trial they abandoned it. The Bushfire CRC website still notes that “the impact of fire on the vegetation was able to be measured but the effects of grazing were much more gradual. Hence, the combined effects of fire and grazing may take decades to be fully apparent”.

So, having won a series of appeals to at last get hold of the main evidence on which the government based its decision that we needed more studies of alpine grazing and fire, what did we find? The literature review was an unfinished draft, and already five years out of date when given to the government.

The public would rightly be outraged if a government ruled that a certain type of research was needed to cure cancer, having based that decision on a five-year-old draft summary of research which it then fought to keep secret.

But that is exactly what has happened with this government’s decision to set up a trial to see what effect cattle grazing might have on fire in the alps.

The issue of bushfire research is a very important one, both from a public safety and a biodiversity perspective, and warrants well-informed research decisions made by the scientific community and experienced land managers.

Politicians don’t make decisions for treating patients in our hospitals, yet they seem ever keen to make decisions for our fire managers and biodiversity managers.

The Victorian community deserves better. •pw

phil ingamells, vnpa park protection project coordinator

A nationally threatened Alpine Tree Frog was, bizarrely,

in the middle of one of the alpine grazing ‘research’ sites, hastily set up

by the Victorian Government barely a month after taking office.

the Great battle to protect victoria’s Natural heritaGe will Never be woN uNtil we Get a GoverNmeNt that respects Nature, aNd respects evideNce-based arGumeNts to protect it.

government’s grazing study based on old draft review

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thaNkfully, sometimes somethiNG Good comes out of the blue.

Ever since the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission (VBRC) handed down its recommendation to burn 5% of public land each year for fuel reduction, the VNPA has been pointing out that using a single large annual burn target is a very simplistic, and inherently damaging, approach to fire management.

But because both major parties publicly accepted the 5% target, we have been talking to the proverbial brick wall.

Then, on 31 July this year, Neil Comrie, the Bushfires Royal Commission’s Implementation Monitor (BRCIM), came up with this welcome assessment of the target-driven approach to planned burning:

“The BRCIM questions the rolling target as the most effective way to increase the level of planned burning across the State as working towards a pre-determined target may diminish the State’s ability to focus on risk reduction in high risk areas.

“The BRCIM advocates that the State reconsider the planned burning rolling target of five per cent as the primary outcome as part of the planned burning reform program. It is considered that the most important objective of the planned burning program must be to address public safety risks in line with the VBRC’s intentions.”

This is no idle recommendation. It is a strong statement by the body the Commission insisted should indepen-dently assess the implementation of its recommendations. Indeed the Implementation Monitor has his own Act of Parliament, which clearly states that Mr Comrie “is not subject to the direction or control of the Minister”.

The 5% burn target, roughly 390,000 hectares per year, has come under increasing criticism from ecologists and fire safety planners.

It was always a no-brainer that the 5% target was a bad idea. It ignored wildfire completely, ignored any fire on private land and assumed that the application of fire was effective in substantially reducing fuel levels in all ecosystem types.

And in order to reach the target, it turned out to be easier to burn large areas in remoter parts of the state than it was to perform more difficult, and more costly, burns close to townships. We are now burning the Mallee woodlands, box-ironbark forests, far east Gippsland a host of other areas that really don’t need a lot of planned fire.

Mr Comrie’s report points out that last year only 5,266 ha were treated in Zone 1 (the critical Asset Protection Zone) compared to nearly 100,000 ha in Zone 3 (the Ecological Management Zone).

This sort of thing was predicted by the Commission’s own expert advisory panel, which said a statewide target would encourage land managers to go for the ‘low-hanging fruit’ – the less necessary burns in remote areas.

The pressure to burn in the ecological zone has led to some woefully inadequate justifications for burns. Now, perhaps to avoid that problem, DSE’s new Code of Fire Practice has re-named Zone 3 the ‘Landscape Management Zone’.

Mr Comrie’s report is a breath of fresh air in the fire debate, and should not be ignored. It’s time for clever, local, fuel management and biodiversity prescriptions that are not driven by a theoretical statewide burn figure. •pw

phil ingamells

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independent monitor slams statewide burning target

Long-unburnt woodland near Steeles Creek, before Black Saturday. We need more research on how understorey fuel loads can sometimes

decrease if unburnt over a long period.

Fire and Biodiversity Symposium papers

digital copies of the Proceedings of the royal society of victoria for the vNPa and rsv’s fire and biodiversity symposium are now available. they include papers on current research, and research summaries, by some of our best fire ecologists and other scientists.

to secure a copy, contact the rSv at [email protected] or (03) 9663 5259.


students learning about nature photography on the razorback, alpine National Park. there is a real need to encourage much greater access for young people to our parks. it’s one of the things the parks are meant to be for.

Park plans under threat

For the last couple of years, the Alpine National Parks Management Plan has landed in a series of holes that seem to be getting larger, partly due to an impasse between DSE (ultimately responsible for park plans), and Parks Victoria (actually engaged in preparing them).

Now, we are concerned that DSE’s proposed new ‘landscape-scale’ regional management plans may not

just give context to park plans, but actually supplant them.

This is a very worrying development, particularly when we have a government that appears intent on encouraging access to parks for potentially damaging activities. It will affect a series of management plans currently under way, including the new ‘Ngootyoong Gunditj, Ngootyoong Mara’ South West Management Plan.

meanwhile, in other park and conservation news …

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Hunting and shooting

The Victorian Department of Primary Industries (DPI) is currently reviewing the regulations under the Wildlife Act. Proposals flagged in the ‘Regulatory Impact Statement’ suggest they have initially consulted only with sporting shooters’ organisations.

DPI has suggested increased opportunities for duck and quail hunting, relaxed licence restrictions

Prospecting in parks

The Victorian Government has determined that prospecting (metal detecting, gold panning and gem collecting), currently allowed in a series of central Victorian box-ironbark parks, should be introduced to eastern Victorian parks such as Baw Baw, Croajingolong, Errinundra, Lake Eildon, Lind, Mitchell River, Yarra Ranges and the Alpine National Parks.

While we are glad that this matter has been referred to an independent investigation by the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, we are not at all happy that VEAC’s draft terms of reference insist that prospecting must be introduced to at least some new parks. There should be no expansion of prospecting till prospecting impacts in existing parks have been monitored and assessed, as sensibly asked for in existing management plans.

This was another low-profile undertaking by the government, largely hidden from most of the population. In pre-election correspondence to the Miners and Prospectors Association, the Liberal/National Coalition said ‘In cases where it can be demonstrated that there will be no heritage, environmental or similar detriment as a result of prospecting activities, a Coalition government will be prepared to review existing access arrangements.’

As we understand it, under-resourced Parks Victoria staff have yet to implement the monitoring of prospecting impacts in the box-ironbark parks, as required by their park management plans.

for young shooters and tourists, increased use of toxic lead shot and reduced access to wetlands for non-hunters.

They have also failed to take this opportunity to deal strategically with feral Sambar Deer and other pest animals.

The VNPA’s submission to the review is on our website under Publications/ Submissions.

by phil ingamells, vnpa park protection project officer

My term as President is coming to an end after four and a half years at the helm and five on Council. It has

been an immensely rewarding time for me.When I began my term I was blessed

to find many capable and willing hands with me on Council. In particular, Libby Smith has brought us fantastic knowledge and enthusiasm in the key marketing area, and Russell Falvey gave staunch support, experience and enormous time to the finance field.

Charles Street had taken on the time-consuming job of Secretary, and I have never met anyone with such a strong work ethic and sense of perfection. Together we set up a broader and more inclusive committee structure to oversee the VNPA’s development.

Within a month we were fortunate to have Matt Ruchel commence as Executive Director. Matt’s knowledge of the politics surrounding the environment, plus his management skills, took the VNPA to the next level.

Two other Councillors I wish to pay tribute to are John Renowden, with his incredible passion and ear for grass-roots environmentalism, and Maelor Himbury, who has never missed a Council meeting and who provides a critical coordinating and research role.

Within the first year we had produced the 2020 Strategic Plan. There followed sub-strategies for Fundraising and Marketing, Community Education and Engagement, Branding (including a new logo and tagline) and Communications. We also overhauled the Constitution, by-laws and Governance policies.

The final step in the planning process has been the updating of the VNPA’s conservation policies and the commissioning of our fourth Nature Conservation Review. The former is complete and the latter will be finished within the next year, both under the able guidance of Russell Costello. They will underpin our environment objectives in the next decade.

The Communications Strategy in particular is set to make our member and supporter activity take off. This is a very exciting time to be part of the VNPA!

But it doesn’t mean that the job is done or that the future will take care of itself. A key fact is that membership fees and donations from members only contribute

around 10-15% of our budget. However, maintaining the office, and

developing and distributing our publications and other communications, takes about 50% of our budget, and all our campaign staff rely on hard-to-get philanthropic funds for their positions, hampering our ability to respond to all the challenges we face.

For the VNPA to continue to prosper in these difficult financial times, it is incumbent on our members and supporters to cover a greater share of the financial load. In saying that, Council is committed to keep membership fees to a minimum, and to rely on those who can to donate the funds we need to prosper.

With a regular donation of $25 per month under our ‘Giving Naturally’ program, you will help cover our core costs and enable us to employ campaigners to respond to issues, and an activities coordinator to assist the hard-working events committees.

This is the final frontier to ‘building our capacity’. You should receive a phone call soon to discuss this program further; otherwise, please just call the office on 9347 5188 and sign up today.

The VNPA is the leading voice for nature conservation in Victoria. Please join me in continuing the legacy built over the past 60 years. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to be part of it.

In our 60th anniversary year we remember founders like first VNPA President Philip Crosbie Morrison, here (left) at Mt Buffalo National Park, 1957. Photo: DSE

VNPA ANNUAL REPORT 2011-2012

VNPA 60th Anniversary 1952-2012 www.vnpa.org.au

COUNCIL MEMBERS

Fred GerardsonPresident

PRESIDENT’S REPORT

• President: Fred Gerardson (Executive, Governance, Conservation)

• Vice President: Russell Costello (Executive, Conservation)

• Secretary: Charles Street (Executive, Conservation, Governance)

• Treasurer: Kyle Matheson (Executive, Finance)

• Russell Bowey (BWAG Convenor)• Libby Smith (Membership & Marketing)• Ann Buik (Executive, Education & Events, Member-

ship & Marketing)• Ann Birrell (Governance, Policy & Legal)• Andrew Dodd (Membership & Marketing)

• Euan Moore (Conservation)• Maelor Himbury (Membership & Marketing,

Education)• John Renowden (Conservation)

Note: Committee memberships in brackets


ThE yEAR IN REVIEw

EMPLOyEES


• Executive Director: Matt Ruchel.• Fundraising & Marketing Manager: Emily Clough

(to March 2012 maternity leave).• Direct Marketing Officer: Maxine Hawkins.• Fundraiser: Lara Hookham (from February 2012).• Communications & Marketing: Ann Strunks (from

February 2012).• Finance & Operations Manager: Shanti Fowler.• Administration & Membership Officer: Amy

Dyer (to June 2012 maternity leave).

• Administration Assistants: Charlotte Kandelaars, Irina De Loche.

• Marine & Coastal Project Officer: Simon Branigan.

• Nature Watch/Community Projects Coordinator: Caitlin Griffith; Ada Nano (to Dec. 2011).

• Park Protection Project Officer: Phil Ingamells.• Red Gum & River Rescue Project Coordinator:

Nick Roberts.• Reef Watch Coordinator: Wendy Roberts.

• Park Watch/Nature’s Voice Editor & Publications Officer: Michael Howes.

• Victorian Naturally Alliance Project Leader: Karen Alexander.

• Central Victorian Biolink Project Officer: Sophie Bickford.

• Conservation Review Project Coordinator: Andrew Cox.

• Media Officer (shared with other environment groups): Ian Kenins (to May 2012).

In the VNPA’s 60th year, it is a great privilege to lead such a successful organisation and to reflect on the past.From time to time (like now) we have to

spend time holding the line, defending past achievements.

We do our best to monitor and respond to state and federal government conservation-related policy and action at a strategic level, but attempt to stay grounded as well and respond to conservation issues and debates around the state.

Progress on new initiatives to protect the environment is difficult at this time, but while responding to issues we have continued to strengthen the organisation.

Naturally aware community We continued to implement the Community Engagement and Education Strategy developed last year, with a consultancy on improving our education program nearing completion. Our citizen science and community engagement programs, NatureWatch and Reef Watch, are going from strength to strength. Naturewatch continued to run and support activities on grassland threatened species, and began a new Yam Daisy monitoring project. Our Caught on Camera project was launched in Wombat Forest and Bunyip SP, involving a number of new volunteers.

Reef Watch continued its popular Sea Science seminars, the Great Victorian Fish Count (over 320 divers participating) and Feral and In Peril monitoring projects, and received the prestigious Education Award for 2012 from the Victorian Coastal Council.

Grow West and Project Hindmarsh: in 2011, some 250 VNPA volunteers planted more than 20,000 trees and shrubs in these on-going projects.

Nature conservation What a year! The VNPA football team has spent a lot of time with the ball in the back line, working on our tackling and zone defence.

Conservation policy vacuum: the Baillieu Government has been gradually undermining key conservation measures, beginning with the return of cattle to the Alpine NP under the guise of science – finally blocked by the federal environment minister in January 2012.

Parks under threat: the proposal to establish a Murray River Park linking the major red gum national parks was dropped, and areas open for firewood collection in Barmah NP extended to 2015. We have been monitoring plans for large-scale ‘ecological thinning’ (logging) in these parks.

The government is also reviewing restrictions on mineral prospecting and fossicking in many parks.

We continued to highlight the impacts of pest plants and animals on parks, and the need for improved management responses.

We also continue to work for the reinstatement of responsible park management plans that outline effective protection of each park’s natural values.

Firewood bungle: a policy change made firewood collection free in specific state forests and led to a free-for-all, with areas cleaned out by large-scale operators, impacting on the bush and local communities and farmers who grow wood for sale.

Attacks on habitat: speculation and debate continued about opening parks up for further commercial or tourism development. Plans have also been announced to review Native Vegetation rules, and to change the native forestry strategy to lock in unsustainable long-term logging contracts.

Riverside rescue: we released a key report in July 2011 which put the case for better

management of publicly-owned riverside land currently licensed for grazing. The findings of this report were later mirrored in a Health Department report.

Seas and shores: a new VEAC marine investigation started in 2011. Although its terms of reference are restricted, it will highlight the value of our marine areas and opportunities for better protection.

We continued to work with locals against Bastion Point (Mallacoota) development proposals, and monitored other major coastal developments such as Westernport.

We were instrumental in the temporary protection of the Blue Groper, with permanent protection likely.

Fire ecology: in October 2011 we held a successful fire symposium with the Royal Society of Victoria, where issues around the damaging 5% burning target for public land were fully discussed. We continue to fight the 5% target in the media, and with regional groups.

National environmental laws: the VNPA worked with other state NPAs for better national environmental laws, especially concerning national parks. We are deeply concerned about Gillard Government proposals to hand over national environmental approval powers to state governments.

Building a stronger organisationThis year completed the refresh of our brand and communications strategy. Our new-look Park Watch, available on line, will help us communicate better and ultimately build a stronger support base so we can do more to protect nature and increase nature appreciation.

Thank you! We would like to thank all our supporters, members, volunteers and partner organisations for your generous contributions to our work. We just couldn’t do it without you!

Matt RuchelExecutive Director

STAFF, VOLUNTEERS & COMMITTEE CONVENORS

BUSHWALKING & ACTIVITIES GROUP

Volunteers• Administration assistants: Jill Casey, Sandra Cutts,

Colette Findlay, Margaret Hattersley, Raimonne McCutchan, Graham Trigg.

• Research assistant: Evelyn Feller.• Conservation Committee: Russell Costello, Fred

Gerardson, John Renowden, Charles Street, Joan Lindros, Dr Bruce McGregor, Euan Moore, Chris Smyth, Gerard McPhee.

• Marine & coastal: Sharon Livermore, Christopher Pape, Nicole Noy, William Hamilton-Coates, Hugh Nugent.

• Education kit coordinator: Jill Casey.• Grow West Project: John Stirling (Convenor) and

Terese Dalman, plus 17 team leaders and over 100 VNPA volunteer planters.

• Project Hindmarsh: John Stirling (Convenor) and Terese Dalman, plus 27 team leaders and over 150 VNPA volunteer planters.

• Grasslands: Yasmin Kelsall, Andrew Booth

• Firewood & grasslands assistant: Erin Richardson.• Market research & advice: Libby Smith.• NatureWatch team leaders & office volunteers:

Evelyn Chia, Christine Connelly, David de Angelis, Bryant Gagliardi, Luke Johnson, Marion Shadbolt, Beatrix Spencer, Allen Sun, Ned Surla.

• Publications: John Hutchinson, Euan Moore, Geoff Durham.

• Nature’s Voice & Park Watch mailout team: Murray Bird, (the late) Rita Bonvicin, Pat Cooper, Betna Dryden, Jan Gay, Brian Groom, Jo Groom, Margaret Hattersley, John Hutchinson, Kelvin Kellett, Keith Lloyd, Ian McDonald, Elsebeth Murray, Sheina Nicholls, Joan Phillips, Barbara Prouse, Lorraine Ratcliffe, Paul Stokes, Wally Thies, Graham Trigg, Pat Witt.

• Victoria Naturally Alliance: Ann McGregor, Bruce McGregor, Libby Smith, Jeremy Press, Lea Scherl and the many people and groups associated with the Central Victorian Biolinks project, plus Victoria Naturally Alliance colleagues.

Volunteer committee convenors• Bushwalking & Activities Group: Russell Bowey.• Caring for Nature Day: Reg Elder.• Conservation & Campaigns: Russell Costello.• Executive: Fred Gerardson.• Excursions: Larysa Kucan.• Finance: Kyle Matheson.• Governance, Policy & Legal: Fred Gerardson.• Membership, Marketing & Communications:

Libby Smith.• Community Education & Engagement Working

Group: Ann Buik.

Hosted network• Victorian Environment Friends Network

Committee: Maelor Himbury, Sue Wright, Michael Howes, Ray Radford, Robert Bender.

Another year and another 1800 participants enjoyed over 270 activities and events including walks,

rides, kayak trips and snow trips, organised and led by our dedicated volunteers. Thanks to all participants and leaders for your support!

Among the highlights were hiking in Spain, cycling in Eastern Europe, touring NSW national parks and walking Tasmania’s Overland Track and Frenchman’s Cap.

Local activities ranged from snorkelling just below sea-level to skiing a metre above Bogong; from the Mallee to Gippsland and from multi-day hikes to therapeutic strolls.

Encouragingly, a record number of child members discovered that Wii Walking doesn’t come close to the real thing, with a rise in family-friendly walks.

Social nightsPresentations started with astro-photographer Phil Hart and his amazing selection of night sky photos and videos.

Gary van Dijk showed us Lord Howe Island; Simon Branigan and Wendy Roberts took us underwater in our own back yard.

Euan Moore presented birdlife and travels in Bali and Nusa Tengara, Karen Alexander gave us a great introduction to Antarctica, and Basia Dziedzik took us around Iran.

We also had our annual Christmas and mid-year get-togethers. The Under 35s reinstated their monthly social nights, and while numbers were sometimes low, the cheer was high. Conservation: BWAGers participated in activities from the classic Hindmarsh and

Grow West projects to Reef Watch and Clean Up the Alps. We also ran 22 of our own popular Walk, Talk and Gawks, and joined lots of NatureWatch activities. Financial: BWAG contributed $10,000 to VNPA, significantly up with some carry-over from the previous year.Thank you: I’d like to thank committee members for giving their time to make all this happen. Special thanks to Lisa Sulinski, who stood down after three years as Convener but continued as Secretary until recently relinquishing this role. Tracey-Ann Hooley too is taking a break from committee work but continues to lead trips.

Other committee members Rob Argent, Terese Dalman, Gayle Davey, Geoff Durham and Kyle Matheson (Council Liaison) have all done a great job in encouraging people to ‘Be Part of Nature’!– Russell Bowey, Convener

ExcursionsThe Excursions Group and its volunteer leaders conducted 11 day trips in 2011-12.

In March the group celebrated its 500th excursion with a most successful day trip to Wilsons Promontory, where the VNPA’s very first excursion went in 1954.

Other destinations included Portarlington, Sale, Trentham, Tarra-Bulga, Cape Schanck and Castlemaine. On these trips members enjoyed walks, picnics, photography, farmers’ markets, galleries, historic homes and the company of other conservationists.

Most of the 57-seat coaches, hired from McKenzie’s for the past 48 years, were fully booked. The group contributed $9145 to VNPA, up from the previous year’s $6543 because of more participants. Many thanks to all trip leaders and everyone who came!– Larysa Kucan, Convenor

BWAG bike tour at Lake Mountain. Photo: Russell Bowey


Abridged Audited Special Purpose Financial Report for the year ended 30 June 2012

The members of the Council have determined that the Association is not a reporting entity and in our opinion the

abridged special purpose financial report set out below presents a true and fair view of the financial position of VNPA as at 30 June 2012 and its performance for the year ended on that date.

At the date of this statement there are reasonable grounds to believe that the VNPA will be able to pay its debts as and when they fall due for payment.

This statement is made in accordance with a resolution of the Council and is signed for and on behalf of the Council by:• Kyle Matheson, Treasurer• Matt Ruchel, Executive DirectorDated this 16th day of August 2012

Income Statement for the year ended 30 June 2012 REVENUE 2012 2011Operating Activities $ $Appeals, Donations & Bequests 914,617 764,923Grants & Sponsorships 302,940 472,643Membership Fees 115,045 111,070Interest Income & Sundry Sales 123,081 107,250Total Income 1,455,683 1,455,887

EXPENDITUREEmployment Expenses 866,115 827,112Campaigns, Projects, Activities & Education 180,851 345,428Office & Administration 158,007 113,498Printing/Publications/Web 75,764 99,371Accommodation & Insurance 101,540 97,725Total Expenses 1,382,277 1,483,133OPERATING SURPLUS (DEFICIT) BEFORE TRANSFERS (TO) FROM RESERVE FUNDS

73,405 (27,247)

Transfers (to) from Reserve Funds (72,321) 30,683OPERATING SURPLUS AFTER TRANSFERS (TO) FROM RESERVE FUNDS

1,084 3,436

FINANCIAL REPORT

Balance Sheet as at 30 June 2012ASSETS 2012 2011Current $ $Receivables and Inventory 59,603 104,310Cash and Cash Equivalents 1,059,966 1,179,162Total Current Assets 1,119,569 1,283,472Non-CurrentFixed Assets at Written Down Value 18,909 20,396TOTAL ASSETS 1,138,477 1,303,868

LIABILITIESCurrent 387,206 626,002TOTAL LIABILITIES 387,206 626,002NET ASSETS 751,271 677,866Funded by: Association Funds 751,271 677,866TOTAL ASSOCIATION FUNDS 751,271 677,866

VNPA – Activities Accounts for year ended 30 June 2012

The operating accounts for the Bushwalking Group have not been consolidated into the general accounts above and are reported separately as follows:

2012 2011$ $

Opening Bank Account Balance 4,823 196 Income 8,425 9,964 Expenditure (984) (1,337)Funds Contributed to VNPA (10,000) (4,000)Closing Bank Account Balance 2,265 4,823

Statement by Members of the Council

NOTE

Independent Audit Report: As in previous years, the Auditors have issued a qualified Audit Opinion on the annual financial statements on the basis that it is not feasible for organisations such as VNPA to implement accounting controls over all cash collections from donations prior to their initial processing in the accounting records.

The full Independent Auditors Report will be tabled at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting as part of the Audited Financial Statements and the full text of the Report will be available at www.vnpa.org.au.


Photo: courtesy David Neilson

SUPPORTERS, DONORS & PARTNERSThe VNPA acknowledges and thanks the following key supporters, donors and partners.• The Arnold Foundation• Australian Government’s Caring for Our

Country• Grants to Voluntary Environment and Heritage

Organisations (GVEHO)• Hamer Family Fund, a subfund of the

Australian Communities Foundation• Helen Macpherson Smith Trust• Loftus-Hills Trust• Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation• Parks Victoria• Port Phillip and Westernport Catchment

Management Authority• Running Waters Fund, a subfund of the

Australian Communities Foundation

• Sidney Myer Foundation• The Dara Foundation• The Ian Potter Foundation• The Limb Family Foundation • The Mullum Trust• The Poola Foundation: Tom Kantor Fund• The R.E. Ross Trust• Treepot

Support and cooperation from key project partners• Arthur Rylah Institute• Biosis Research• Environment Defenders Office

• Grow West• Hindmarsh Landcare Network • Museum Victoria• The Royal Society of Victoria

Victoria Naturally Alliance partners • Trust for Nature• The Wilderness Society Victoria• BirdLife Australia – Victoria• Environment Victoria• Invasive Species Council• Bush Heritage Australia• Australian Conservation Foundation• Greening Australia Victoria


The show’s committee of volunteers has planned a comprehensive program of activities for the four-day show, to be held 4-7 October at Halls Gap’s Centenary Hall.

“It’s wonderful to think that our community-run event has attracted thousands of visitors over seven decades and is one of the longest-running events in regional Victoria,” said long-time committee member Margo Sietsma of Friends of Grampians-Gariwerd.

“We welcome all kinds of visitors to the show, from serious botanical enthusiasts to keen photographers and people who just love the Grampians’ natural environment.”

Mrs Sietsma said woodland, heathland and wetland species endemic to the Grampians would be displayed for

this year the GrampiaNs wildflower show will celebrate 75 years siNce of showcasiNG the reGioN’s wildflowers to visitors from all over victoria aNd beyoNd.

Angair Wildflower Weekend

this popular wildflower show, with guided walks and bus tours, indigenous plants for sale and more, will be held on 22 and 23 September at the anglesea memorial hall, mcmillan st, anglesea. for more information see www.angair.org.au or phone 5263 1085.

everyone to enjoy, and wildflower experts will suggest where to see them in their natural environment. Parks Victoria, Friends of Grampians-Gariwerd and other groups will also supply information.

Flowers on display are grown in people’s gardens or collected from designated areas of the park under special permission from Parks Victoria.

“There will be craft activities for children as well as daily bus and walking tours of wildflower hot spots in Grampians National Park,” she said.

“So please mark your diaries now for 4-7 October. It’s going to be a really special show this year.”

For more information see www.grampianswildflowershow.org.au or look on Facebook. •pw

Special VNPA member offer!

the wildflower show committee has kindly offered two complimentary double passes to the show for vNPa members.

Just write to the vNPa or email [email protected] and tell us in 50-100 words what you love about grampians NP and why you would like to go to the wildflower show, and you could win a double pass! closing date: monday 24 September.

remember to take your copy of the vNPa guidebook The grampians in Flower, available to members for just $23.00. there are not many copies of this book left, so don’t miss out!

grampians wildflower Show celebrates 75 years

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Grampians wildflower walk, and (inset) Wildflower Show visitors

enjoy the botanical embroidery of Lynne Stone from Marysville.


This year, the NatureWatch program has been trialling its ‘Caught on Camera’ project in Bunyip State Park and Wombat State Forest. This project involves using motion-sensing cameras to monitor for fauna in relation to fire.

Local groups Wombat Forestcare and Friends of Bunyip State Park have been involved in developing the projects and carrying out on-ground monitoring, and the science behind the project has been developed by the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research (ARI).

The project is also supported by land managers from Parks Victoria and the Department of Sustainability and Environment.

Working with the community groups and different agencies has brought great local knowledge and strength to the project. Linking in with existing studies also strengthens our monitoring efforts.

In Wombat Forest, we have been working at Wombat Forestcare Community Research sites, and in Bunyip State Park the project is linked in with ARI’s Retrospective Fire Study (see Richard Loyn’s accompanying article).

Motion-sensing cameras are a great tool for monitoring for mammals, as they require much less labour than trapping (which can involve checking traps several times per day) and are much less stressful for the animals.

And although the cameras have their limitations, they are proving to be an exciting tool for community monitoring. Not only do they collect valuable data, they also capture great images!

In March this year, ARI scientists Matt Bruce, Ed McNabb and Richard Loyn trained volunteers from VNPA and Wombat Forestcare in using the cameras. In July, ARI joined us again to train Friends of Bunyip State Park and more VNPA volunteers.

Images from Wombat State Forest and Bunyip State Park have been coming in every three weeks and it’s been such a pleasure to view them and see the suite of animals that inhabit the two areas.

Later this year, as part of the NatureWatch program, VNPA will again be working with ARI and local groups to analyse this first year of data and develop a system for volunteers to carry out simple annual data analysis, as we hope to continue this project for many years to come. •pw

Naturewatch coordiNator caitliN Griffith describes a New moNitoriNG project which is produciNG excitiNG imaGes of forest wildlife.

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vnpa’s naturewatch helps fire research and management

from top to bottom: Naturewatch volunteers prepare a motion-sensing camera, mix bait for a bait station, and instal a camera.

NatureWatch heads to Hindmarsh

in an exciting future development, the ‘caught on camera’ project will be extended into hindmarsh shire in the wimmera to determine to what extent native animals are returning to areas replanted with indigenous vegetation under the hindmarsh project – in which many vNPa members have taken part. more details to come!


The Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research (ARI) is conducting a major Fire Ecology Retrospective project in the foothills of eastern Victoria, including Bunyip State Park, to assess how past fires have influenced the present occurrence and abundance of plants and animals in foothill forests. This knowledge will contribute to the wise planning of prescribed burns.

We have taken a ‘retrospective’ approach in which we relate the current nature of the vegetation and its vertebrate fauna to what we know of previous fire history. By ‘looking backwards’ we can quickly collect data for long time-spans and predict future successional patterns without waiting many years.

We can also examine the effects of fire regimes (not just individual fires) by comparing sites that have experienced contrasting fire histories (e.g. few or many fires over recent decades). A purpose-built database allows us to summarise the known fire history for any site in the state, and this has proved invaluable in the site selection process.

The retrospective project is funded by the DSE Fire Division through its Landscape Fire and Environmental Monitoring Program, and has been extended in conjunction with DSE’s Hawkeye monitoring project.

The ARI program focuses on mixed-species foothill forests because they cover extensive areas, and experience a wide range of fire regimes. The dominant trees generally survive fire unless conditions are extreme, resulting in a diverse range of forest structures.

Planned fires are used as a tool to manage these forests, and there is scope for exploring new strategies to meet the twin objectives of reducing bushfire risk to people, and conserving biodiversity and maintaining ecosystem resilience.

We conducted pilot studies in the Grampians NP and Bunyip State Park. We then expanded into East Gippsland and north-east Victoria, selecting 22 landscapes (each 20km square) with sites representing a range of fire histories based on two related variables: fire frequency (number of fires since 1970) and time since last fire.

We are also examining fire patchiness, to assess whether we should aim to produce broad-grained or fine-grained mosaics of fire in the landscape.

On each of the sites we are assessing vegetation, fuel hazard, diurnal birds, small mammals and bats, using a subset of the sites for some of the work on fauna. At Bunyip State Park we selected 68 sites where previous surveys of owls and arboreal mammals had been conducted, half of them in forest that was burnt in 2009.

The ARI team has repeated these surveys since 2009, and also conducted surveys of diurnal birds across all sites.

Data from all these studies are being analysed to help improve our ability to manage fire regimes in the landscape, with benefits for both biodiversity and bushfire risk reduction.

NatureWatch in Bunyip State Park

This valuable project is allowing ARI to collect data on small mammals at some sites in Bunyip State Park, using camera-monitoring as part of the retrospective fire study.

In collaboration with VNPA and Friends of Bunyip State Park, ARI selected 20 sites for initial work, half of them in forest that was burnt in 2009.

Data collected by the volunteers will allow us to expand our research to include small mammals in this region. We look forward to the first year of results coming in!

We also pass on a big thank-you to all the volunteers involved in this project. •pw

ecologists study how fire affects wildliferichard loyN, matt bruce aNd ed mcNabb from the arthur rylah iNstitute for eNviroNmeNtal research explaiN this study aNd how Naturewatch moNitoriNG is coNtributiNG to it.

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caught on camera: motion-sensing camera photos of a bush rat or antechinus, a

southern brown bandicoot and an echidna.


In March 1973 a letter arrived at the VNPA from Premier Dick Hamer, asking the Council to submit a list of names of councillors and members who might be invited to a garden party at Government House.

Even at this distance in time I imagine I can see jaws dropping. What a transformation there had been in the last year or so!

The 1960s had been a fractious time in the relationship between the environmental movement and the government of Sir Henry Bolte. Early optimism after Bolte had passed the 1956 National Parks Act had turned into disappointment and then anger and distrust, culminating in the Little Desert dispute of 1969-70.

Much of the effort of the VNPA in the 1960s was devoted (generally unsuccessfully) to encouraging the government to establish new national parks and to expand existing ones. However, it was also often on the back foot, fighting defensively for gains that it had already won or defending areas that it hoped would become national parks.

In essence, much of the decade was spent putting out the spotfires that kept breaking

out – and indeed many have continued to break out over succeeding decades.

That is not unusual. History is often notable for its repetitions, and many of the challenges and events that were faced then have been repeated in succeeding decades, notably the expectations of the timber industry and mountain cattlemen and the pressures for the commercialisation of national parks. Several of these concerns related to Victoria’s alpine regions.

Developments at Mt Buffalo

The only alpine area included in the 1956 Act was the long-standing reservation at Mt Buffalo where the Victorian Railways ran the Chalet. Defending this national park became a constant problem.

The main challenge at Mt Buffalo was over the perceived role of a national park. On the one hand, environmentalists argued that once declared, reservations should be permanent and that human activity needed to be tightly controlled in order to protect natural systems.

But outside the environmental movement there was another view –

national parks were sometimes seen as little more than temporary reservations of recreational areas that could and should change and adapt to meet the needs of free enterprise, tourism and community recreation. The Bolte government, its Country Party allies, the tourism, timber and some other industries, and many residents in rural communities tended to hold versions of this view.

In 1960 the government legislated to enable areas within national parks to be leased for commercial purposes, essentially as a response to pressure from the tourism industry for facilities such as upmarket accommodation and dining. Soon after the legislation was passed, plans for a tourist development were announced for Mt Buffalo, a lease was granted and in August 1964 the Tatra Inn was opened.

The VNPA staunchly opposed the leases and the presence of commercial enterprises within national parks, and while it failed initially at Mt Buffalo it took a stronger and ultimately successful stand against similar proposals at Wilsons Promontory.

At Mt Buffalo, however, there was periodic revival over the next eight years of a desire to create a recreational lake near the Inn, and in 1971 to undertake a major

eNviroNmeNtal historiaN associate professor doN GardeN is writiNG a history of the vNpa, the first two chapters of which are Now available oN the vNpa website. the followiNG is a coNdeNsed versioN of chapter 2, writteN specially for Park Watch.

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grievances to garden party: the vnpa in the 1960s

development scars: tatra inn and car park at cresta, mt buffalo NP, under construction in the early 1960s. the horn in background. tatra inn was destroyed in the 2006-07 bushfires.


expansion of the premises. The VNPA fought these all the way, and finally in 1972, after Bolte had retired, the Hamer government announced that it would not allow the dam or further development. In 1975 the lease was bought back.

An alpine national park?

One of the VNPA’s major ambitions was the creation of a large Alpine National Park, but there were many interest groups opposed to the concept.

Local government bodies feared that national parks would damage the industries upon which their communities depended. Together with the Forests Commission and the timber industry, they opposed national parks that would significantly curtail logging in alpine regions.

Over these years, the Forests Commission built an extensive network of access and firefighting tracks through sensitive alpine areas, much to the horror of the environmental community. The VNPA Newsletter and the Council minutes contain a record of frequent sparring with the Chairman of the Forests Commission, F.R. Moulds.

Another source of concern, although more in East Gippsland, was the emergence in the late 1960s of the woodchipping industry.

Mountain cattlemen resisted any reduction of their leasing of mountain areas for summer cattle grazing. In meetings with the VNPA the Mountain Cattlemen’s Association assured them that cattle did not cause erosion, and that offroad vehicles and trailbikes were a greater problem. In the latter they may have been correct, for as affluence and mobility increased there was major influx of offroad vehicles in the 1960s.

Tourism more broadly, and snow skiing in particular, brought higher visitation and greater exploitation of alpine regions. Areas that the VNPA hoped to have included in a national park were developed as ski resorts and tourist attractions, with all the accompanying road and accommodation impacts.

Because of such opposition and development the debate over an Alpine National Park was attenuated, and it was not finally declared until 1989.

The Little Desert and Bolte’s departure

Henry Bolte and his ministers, while paying some lip service to ‘conservation’, were essentially supportive of such ‘development’ and growth economics, and gave little support to the environmental movement or the extension of the national park system. Over the decade the relationship between Bolte and the VNPA soured.

What brought matters to a head was the 1968 plan to develop for farming most of the Little Desert in western Victoria. The VNPA campaigned from the late 1950s to have most of this area declared a national park, especially as it was one of the few areas where the Malleefowl was still relatively numerous. Government plans to sell off the land were led by Lands Minister Sir William McDonald, who saw the land as wasted and useless if it were not being made productive.

The Little Desert plans coincided with another government proposal to allow pine plantations in the Kentbruck Heath region of south-western Victoria, where the VNPA had been seeking declaration of a Lower Glenelg National Park.

Environmental groups united to fight these causes, especially the Little Desert, and formed the Save Our Bushland Action Committee in which VNPA President Gwynneth Taylor played a major role. SOBAC received strong support from The Age and the wider public. In 1969 more groups united to form the Conservation Council of Victoria, now Environment Victoria.

So strong was this community and political backlash that a change of direction began to emerge in Bolte’s policies and administration, such as the establishment in 1970 of the Land Conservation Council to advise on the ‘balanced’ usage of public land, and the creation of the Environment Protection Authority.

When Bolte retired in August 1972 and was replaced by Dick (Sir Rupert) Hamer, a new era commenced. And the new Premier even invited the VNPA to a garden party at Government House. •pw

top: there wasn’t much money for park facilities in the 1960s: toilet at wyperfeld NP.

bottom: dr len smith, director of National Parks 1958-75 and lyrebird authority, contemplates ivy invasion in sherbrooke forest.

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The Sooty Owl ranges from the Yarra Valley to East Gippsland, the Masked Owl is concentrated in the lowlands of East Gippsland with a scattering of records in wet forests elsewhere, and the Powerful Owl is found in forested areas, most Victorian records being from the east of Melbourne. Sooty and Powerful Owls are classified as Vulnerable, Masked Owls as Endangered.

These owls are the top predators in their environment. A breeding pair of Powerful Owls needs the equivalent of 300 large possums per year. Pairs of Masked and Sooty Owls require about 200 large possum equivalents per year, the Masked Owl concentrating on small ground-dwelling mammals.

This equates to a home range of around 1500–4500ha for each pair of owls, depending on prey density.

The FFG Act 1988 is one of the main tools for protecting native flora and fauna in Victoria, but it is not working well. Less than half the listed species have had an action statement prepared and many action statements are out-of-date. There are problems with the quality of available

data and lack of resources within DSE to implement the Act.

DSE’s website states:

‘Action Statements are like brief management plans. They provide some background information about the species, including its description, distribution, habitat, life history, the reasons for its decline and the threats which affect it. They also state what has been done to conserve the species and what will be done. Action Statements are designed to apply for three to five years, after which time they will be reviewed and updated.’

Implementation of the FFG Act and action statements is a requirement under Regional Forest Agreements.

The major conservation objective of the action statements is to stop further population decline and to increase the population in the long term.

Action statements were prepared for all three owl species in the late 1990s. Those for Powerful and Sooty Owls are currently being reviewed – long

overdue, as much of the habitat suffered from severe bushfires between 2003 and 2009. New research into the habitat requirements of these owls must also be considered during the review process.

The recommended minimum population required to maintain genetic diversity and prevent further population decline in Victoria is 500 breeding pairs for Sooty and Powerful Owls and 150 for Masked Owl. The number of owl sites across Victoria required to provide for this is shown in Table 1.

of victoria’S Six owl SpecieS, four are liSted under the flora and fauna guarantee (ffg) act. three of theSe are concentrated in the tall foreStS of gippSland.

rare owls may lose habitat

forest management area

powerful owl Sites

Sooty owl Sites

masked owl Sites

areas west of melbourne

111

central highlands

60 65 20

central gippsland

85 125

North-east 97 100 10

tambo 47 79

east gippsland

100 131 100

total 500 500 170

the Powerful owl, australia’s largest, depends on large tree hollows for nesting and smaller ones for prey habitat.

inset: masked owls are rarely seen and relatively poorly known in victoria.

table 1. minimum number of owl sites required by region. highlighted regions have been subject to extensive wildfire since the action statements were prepared.

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Wildfire destroys the habitat for these owls and their prey. Since the 2009 fires, the known population of Sooty Owls in the Toolangi area has declined from around 73 birds to just three.

Similar population declines may have occurred in other areas where there have been extensive wildfires. Unfortunately these areas have not been surveyed.

Earlier this year a review of Owl Management Zones (designated areas of suitable habitat with regular owl sightings) was carried out within the East Gippsland Forest Management Area (FMA). This review included the results of recent surveys across the region in both protected areas, i.e. national parks, and non-protected areas.

The surveys found owls at locations where they had not been recorded previously. On the face of it this should be good news, but the sting is in the way that the Department has used this data (Table 2).

So the minimum short-term requirements as specified in the FFG action statements have become the maximum long-term provision by the same Department that is supposed to be implementing the FFG Act. Although an additional 553ha have been set aside for the Masked Owl, there has been a net increase in area available for logging of 6370ha.

The measure of success of the action statements is to increase the population so that species are no longer threatened. This should also be the DSE’s objective.

The review of the action statements will give a statewide perspective, but DSE is proposing changes that will pre-empt the revised action statements. There must be a statewide survey to determine the current population and distribution of these owls following recent fires, and this data must be used when the revised action statements are being prepared.

Recent habitat changes have affected the distribution of the owls, making the relatively unaffected habitats of East Gippsland even more important for their long-term survival.

When the original action statements were prepared there was limited data available on the habitat requirements of these owls, estimated then to be around 500ha. It is now known to be much greater.

By releasing protection zones back into the General Management Zone, DSE’s proposed changes reduce the available owl habitat. Sites are being released in a way which increases fragmentation of the population and allows logging to the boundary of national parks.

There is no benefit to the owls from these changes, which simply support the declining native forest timber industry.

target owl management areas (oma) for east gippsland (based on action statement).

131

existing omas before survey. Protected and unprotected areas.

122

New omas designated following survey. some of these are in conservation reserves.

24

total omas now identified (122 + 24). 146

omas outside conservation reserves released for timber harvesting (146 – 131).

15

area to be returned to the general management zone, i.e. timber harvesting.

3643 ha

this small reserve at cabbage tree creek east of orbost protects owl habitat, but much of the surrounding area is subject to logging.

fig 1. the overlap of sooty owl habitat and recent wildfires in eastern victoria. sources: dse bushfire and Planned burn history 2002 – 2008 with 2008/2009 bushfires; birdlife australia bird atlas database sooty owl sightings 1998 – 2011.

table 2. sooty owl data for east gippsland provided by dse as background to the proposed zoning changes.

Unfortunately, this is likely to be just the start of an inadequate review process to be conducted in other areas of Victoria subject to Regional Forest Agreements. •pw

the author, euan moore, is a keen birdwatcher, a member of the vNPa council and leader of vNPa bushwalks.

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John Goodman has been a ranger at Lysterfield Park for 15 years. He says that the big change since 2005 has been the increase in visitor numbers and increased recreational opportunities. Overall usage has almost doubled. With additional areas to look after and reduced staff, he says the rangers have received great support from the community and interest groups.

The park is bisected by Wellington Road. The northern section is native bushland; the southern is mostly plantations on old farmland, and this is where visitors are concentrated. The quarry to the north-west has reached its boundary and the present skyline should be preserved.

The extensive lakeside picnic area off Horswood Road is well used, particularly on summer weekends and holidays when

swimming is popular and the car parks are overflowing. Triathlons attracting 400-500 participants are held four or five times a year. There is free entry and free BBQs. Opening hours for vehicle access is from 7.30 am, closing at 9.00 pm in summer and 6.00 pm the rest of the year.

Cyclists, joggers, walkers, birdwatchers, sailors

Pedestrian and cycle access is unlimited and the park is used for night cycling. The Bicentenary picnic tables in the shape of stylised maps of Australia have been replaced by conventional tables. The picnic facilities are well utilised, particularly by groups from various ethnic backgrounds. The park is popular with joggers and is a good place for bushwalking and bird watching.

As anticipated, cycling has increased following the Commonwealth Games. Direct access to the mountain bike course is via Hallam North Road where there is a car park and toilets. Mountain bike events attracting up to 500 riders are held several times a year. In the 2011-12 financial year the bike trails were closed for two months, but 148,307 riders were counted.

The 1998 Management Plan has as a Priority Management Strategy ‘Investigate establishing a tea house in the visitor centre’. This is now a basic cafe associated with a busy bicycle sale, repair and hire shop. ‘Trailmix’, which has been operating for about four years, is open every day except Mondays, and provides visitor information. Lakeside vegetation that obscured the view of the lake from the shop and lawns below it has been removed.

lysterfield lake has beeN the veNue for two vNpa aNNual picNics, the first 30 years aGo iN 1982, shortly after the first formal park reservatioN iN 1981, aNd the secoNd iN 2005 before the opeNiNG of a 6.5 km, $3 millioN mouNtaiN bike course for the 2006 commoNwealth Games. we returN to the park for our special 60th aNNiversary picNic aNd activity day oN SundaY 18 november.

Geoff durham briNGs us up-to-date siNce our last visit.

lysterfield parkIN PARKS

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John Goodman says that off-trail cycling and conflict between walkers and cyclists have diminished.

Below the dam wall at the degraded site of the 1982 VNPA picnic there is now a ‘Pump & Jump’ course which is very popular with young cyclists. The lake is overflowing for the first time for many years, the water ending up in Eumemmerring Creek. The water in the lake is monitored weekly in summer to detect any outbreak of blue-green algae.

The bird hide in the conservation area is now open for general use. A floating jetty has been installed and sailing for the disabled is conducted every Wednesday. The Lysterfield Sailing Club operates from a compound with buildings.

There are horse trails around the perimeter of the park. Dogs are not allowed.

The park rates ‘High’ on the Parks Victoria ‘Level of Service’ register. Water, power and sewerage have been upgraded in the last 12 months and picnic ground roads and tracks have been improved. Signage is good – a spinoff from the Commonwealth Games.

Community involvement

The Friends group has lapsed, but weeding is carried out regularly by a small number of ‘Woody Weeders’ and much work is done under the Community Services program for offenders.

Holmesglen College of TAFE has various groups doing all sorts of things like constructing board walks and picnic furniture. The Lysterfield and District Trail Riders, a group of about 135 centred on the shop, do volunteer work on the bike trails.

Conservation management

Conservation management has a lower priority than visitor management. The park was established in 1981 and it is disappointing that weeds, notably Boneseed, Blackberry, Sweet Pittosporum and Spanish Heath, are not better controlled after 30 years. Pest animals receiving attention are rabbits, foxes, and the occasional dumped goat, pig and cat. Deer are not present.

The last wildfire was in 2009 when about half of the bush north of Wellington Road was burnt. There have been no botanical surveys but fuel reduction burns are carried out in both plantations and bushland.

Revegetation of the 125 ha addition joining Lysterfield Park with Churchill National Park has gone well, with open areas left for kangaroo habitat. The kangaroo population is ‘exploding’ and data is being collected to determine whether a management strategy is required. The kangaroos assist in grass mowing, and Cherry Ballarts in particular have a pronounced kangaroo browse line.

A Priority Management Strategy is ‘Monitor eucalypt dieback and investigate link with Bell Miners’. The Bell Miner population has dramatically declined but there is dieback due to Cinnamon Fungus.

‘Healthy Parks, Healthy People’

We must be grateful to the politicians who, through reservation, have protected Lysterfield Park and the adjacent Police Paddocks, Churchill National Park and Birds Land from urban development.

‘Healthy Parks’ means control of invasive species so that indigenous species can flourish. Parks are important in many ways for ‘Healthy People’, but so is a recognition that modern people are an invasive species. •pw

a previous ‘in Parks’ article on lysterfield Park was in the september 2005 (no. 222) issue of Park Watch.

details of the vNPa Picnic on 18 november will be included in the october-November nature’s Voice newsletter.

lysterfield Park is popular with walkers, cyclists and picnickers, and for sailing.

Previous page: musk duck on lysterfield lake.

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The inaugural meeting of the Friends of the Gippsland Lakes group (FoGL) took place in 2004 after a local Parks Victoria ranger stated that many parks and reserves in the area did not have direct community involvement.

The group enables interested people to participate in projects and activities to enhance the environment and facilities within the Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park, The Lakes National Park, Blond Bay Reserve, Gippsland Lakes Reserve and crown land frontages abutting the lakes. There is also a strong commitment to promoting the area’s values and assets.

FoGL is independent of Parks Victoria, but because of the focus on the parks and reserves the two parties liaise closely.

We have sourced funding through community grants and government programs to support many projects, a major one being Project Burragarra (the return of indigenous species).

Boole Poole projects

We have also been involved in a number of activities focusing on the Boole Poole area of the Gippsland Lakes. Our main concerns are:

Hog Deer

Despite being declared a pest elsewhere in Australia, the Hog Deer is a protected species under the Victorian Wildlife Act. They are found in colonies along the south-eastern coast of Victoria, including The Lakes and Wilsons Promontory national parks. Hog Deer are small, attractive Bambi-like animals with typical deer behaviour including felt rubbing and demolition of immature trees (rutting). They graze on many indigenous species, and like goats they haul down lower tree branches to eat.

Issues of most concern are actual numbers (including male/female ratio) and impact on the natural environment. There has been little reliable data collection or analysis and the threat to the environment and biodiversity is not well managed.

DSE’s new Hog Deer Management Plan highlights the need for research, and FoGL was invited to set up exclusion plots at sites within an area recently burnt as part of fire management operations. The methodology was thoroughly researched through Melbourne University and Forestech TAFE, and sanctioned by DSE and Parks Victoria.

Unfortunately vegetation offset funding to be provided to implement the project was withdrawn because the proposal would not involve actual revegetation of threatened plant species! But observation has revealed that the attrition of regrowth following the fire is significant for some species.

Eradication of feral pigs

Boole Poole Peninsula has an ongoing problem with feral pigs, apparently bred from deliberately released domestic animals. In 2006, FoGL was able to gain Commonwealth funding for a contractor who, with the support of members, conducted a trapping program in this isolated location.

jeNNy dalGleish is a retired primary teacher who has beeN liviNG iN metuNG for the last seveN years (after 25 years iN sale). she loves GippslaNd aNd has a lifeloNG passioN for the eNviroNmeNt, beGiNNiNG iN eNGlaNd but Now well eNtreNched iN australia.

friends help protect and promote the gippsland lakes

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Jenny and Stuart Dalgleish with friends from FoGL,

working on the restoration of the Lune Beeuke

walking track on the north side of Bunga Arm.


continued the link with the Friends of Metung and upgrading of the Reserve, a degraded area of Limestone Box Forest.

This project also benefited from the involvement of Forestech (TAFE) lecturers and students from Bairnsdale. Site works have included restriction of vehicle access, weeding, revegetation, and provision of signs and picnic tables.

As part of FoGL’s promotion of the Lakes area there have been open days with informative talks led by local botanists and environmentalists, as well as night walks and canoe paddles.

A significant promotion in partnership with the East Gippsland Art Gallery was ‘Around the Edge with FoGL,’ where invited artists were introduced to the ecology of the parks and reserves of the Gippsland Lakes through field trips. Their works were exhibited both in the Gallery and as ephemeral pieces within the Lakes environment.

FoGL has a current membership of around 40, although the number of active members is much lower. The impact of recent cuts in funding to Parks Victoria is a major concern as so much of what we have achieved has been in association with our local PV office.

However, despite these pressures we have maintained a working relationship with the rangers, and a formal liaison process is in place to assist in each other’s planning. We hope and trust this will not only continue but be enhanced with an appropriate level of support. •pw

for more information see www.fogl.org.au

Interest has been maintained with sightings and evidence of damage, and some camera monitoring undertaken in the park and neighbouring private land. This continues as Parks Victoria begins a staged program which we hope will complete the eradication process.

Activities in other areas

Members can take part in hands-on activities at a variety of locations. Some are ongoing projects, while others are facilitated by members with an interest in a particular area, including:

Mitchell River Silt JettiesThese classic digitate deltas are some of the finest examples in the world. Work initiated by members from Eagle Point is now shared with others from East Bairnsdale. Restoration and revegetation works are organised on National Tree Day and there are other follow-up working bees in association with Eagle Point Landcare.

The need for maintenance is ongoing and volunteers continue to put in many valuable hours of work. Issues of weeds and fire risk are raised with Parks Victoria.

MacLeod Morass (Sale) FoGL is represented on the MacLeod Morass Working Group which reviewed planning for the treatment plant and Morass to provide direction to the EPA. Successful grant funding for a revegetation project allowed FoGL to complete major plantings at the Morass in October 2011.

Metung Bushland ReserveOne of FoGL’s main aims is to support the activities of other groups with similar interests. One member has

What it means to be a Friend

it was important for me, when i retired, that i become involved in an environmental organisation of some sort. fogl was just starting up, and within a short time i became a committee member. that was seven years ago.

i like to think that in that time i’ve had some positive impact on my local environment and it’s obvious from our list of achievements that the group is making a difference. but it’s not been a one-way street by any means; i have made tremendous gains on a personal level.

certainly there are busy times with some degree of stress (getting an interesting newsletter out on time!), but overall it’s been wonderful to be part of a ‘hands-on’ proactive group with access to professional input and advice, where i have learned much about local flora and fauna, threats to our environment, our local indigenous culture and lots more. then, of course, there are the friends i’ve made!

being a ‘friend’ involves not only giving time and energy; there’s lots of ‘receiving’ too, and i’m sure i’m a better person for it!

Jenny dalgleish

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Canoeing MacLeod Morass.

top: mature male hog deer.bottom: feral pig, boole Poole Peninsula.


Why do we get such pleasure spending time in remote places? Why do we seek the perspective of being in relative solitude amid nature?

In The Art of Travel (Penguin 2002) writer/philosopher Alain de Botton proposes that being in wild and remote places teaches us about life in gentler ways than our ordinary lives allow, highlighting our frailness in direct contrast to the power of nature.

People’s quests to seek the wilds of the Arctic, Alps, Antarctic or Outback are ones of intrigue emanating from the sub-conscious. In finding them we find ourselves fully rewarded, relaxed and soothed.

Alain de Botton terms these landscapes – places of raw nature deserving our respect – the sublime.

However, it wasn’t in the icefields of the poles or the harshness of the desert but in the eucalypt, myrtle and tea-tree forests of the Tasmanian wilderness that I reconfirmed my own ordinary, diminutive existence.

Each and every day of the Overland Track is sublime, come sunshine, snowfall, or seemingly perpetual rainfall – or in our case all of the above!

Anxiety had developed in the days before the trip. I kept reminding myself that this was part of the process. In fact, I was looking to improve my confidence in the bush.

I found reassurance, knowledge and experience in the five fellow VNPA members I’d met for an hour in the comfort of a Carlton bar some six weeks before.

New companions heralded new friendships, comedy, and priceless adolescent antics in the snow, with an indisputable kinship, genuine warmth and offers to share equipment painstakingly researched and cherished.

These were beyond my humble expectations, being a migrant to Australia and a VNPA member of just five months.

Any layers of social propriety were quickly removed as we stepped onto the bus

bound for Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre.

The official track distance of 64km, through some of the most pristine wilderness on earth, didn’t really matter at the time. Yes, Mt Ossa is there and presents a physical challenge. But my motivation was to relax the mind and rediscover one of the simplest pleasures of life in a landscape that was unknown to me and warranted apprehension.

The Tasmanian Parks Service kindly offers a summary of some of the many motivators to trek the Overland that annually draws upwards of 8,000 walkers:

Exercise your body, rest your mind, be one with nature or be challenged by it – your journey will be all the richer if you slow down and look for more than the track ahead.

(The Overland Track, Parks & Wildlife Service Tasmania, 2008)

The pace appealed most. Just as well, as with days of relentless rain, criss-crossing and puddle-jumping, our average speed plummeted to a blissful 2km per hour.

JameS hewlett (above) Grew up iN wales where, eNcouraGed by his father, he eNjoyed access to the brecoN beacoNs aNd sNowdoNia NatioNal parks, toGether with trips to the cuilliN raNGes oN the isle of skye. he became a supporter of the campaiGN for the protectioN of rural wales.

james moved with his youNG family to victoria iN 2010. he works at the uNiversity of melbourNe alumNi office aNd joiNed the vNpa last year. this is his accouNt of his first walk with us.

discovering the sublime on the overland track

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James and Cradle Mountain near the

start of the Track.


My journey had begun with an email from the VNPA – a welcome bulletin and reminder of what is important. Throughout our trek there was a mix of respect, envy and interest from fellow walkers who learned of our membership of the VNPA. As a newcomer I felt an unworthy pride at being part of it.

And at the end we had traversed between Mounts Oakleigh, Geryon, Pelion East, Ossa and Olympus to name a few. We had made warm acquaintances from many corners of the world, shared the excitement of a couple engaged atop Cradle Mountain, and embraced the elements.

We became accustomed to retiring to our sleeping bags by 8pm and rising with the sun, camped in one of the most pristine parts of this planet.

John Muir is often quoted reminding us that “in every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks”.

As a newcomer to bushwalking and the VNPA I was enriched by a bounty of the sublime and am indebted to my companions Jess, Eva, Mel, Eloise and Saeed for such a memorable welcome to the VNPA. •pw

The Overland Track by numbers

• 64 km – the length of the trail (58.2km if using the ferry for lake st clair)

• 8,000 – the number of people who walk the track each year

• 21 kilos – the estimated average weight of our packs

• 1614 metres – the height of mount ossa

• 760 dollars – the estimated cost of the walk (ex melbourne and excluding gear)

• 5 – the number of new friends likely if joining a vNPa group!

• 18 – genuine, warm acquaintances made

• 0 – the mobile phone signal strength

• 32 – capacity at waterfall valley huts (first night)

• 1931 – year of the first bushwalking party on the overland track.

alain de botton terms these landscapes –

places of raw nature deserving our respect –

the sublime.

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above: overland track toilet in snow

below (from left): Jess, James, eva and eloise in the rain.


My father Peter Human was one of the wise old men of practical conservation, advocacy and lobbying in Victoria. He died at Kew on 6 July aged 88, leaving a legacy of friendships and achievements, along with many admirers of his range of interests and abilities, sharp intellect and wit.

He joined the VNPA in 1969 and was a lifetime supporter. After his retirement in 1982 from his career as a research chemist and laboratory manager at CSIRO, he was a regular and much respected member of the VNPA newsletter and Park Watch mailing teams.

Peter was born in Adelaide on Christmas Day 1923 and had a sister eight years his senior. He lost his father before he was four. Growing up in Horsham, the Clare Valley, Adelaide and then Perth as his mother sought work, he was largely left to his own devices.

He led a Huckleberry Finn-type existence on the Swan River in the 1930s, building canoes from old tin with road bitumen melted on hot summer days to make the craft watertight. He and his boyhood friend Doug Hill (my namesake) fished for pilchards and skipjack or headed to Cottesloe to bodysurf.

Peter had an extraordinary academic record. He gained a scholarship to Wesley College Perth, where he excelled in science and won a scholarship to the University of Western Australia. He took first class honours in every subject of his undergraduate science degree, numerous prizes at every level, an MSc from the University of Adelaide and a PhD from Cambridge.

Throughout his life he was able to draw on his wide reading in the classics, history and biography, languages (he was proficient in German for science, French for romance, and Latin for fun) and literature to quote almost anything at any time.

Peter came to conservation, as many of his generation did, by way of the Depression and necessity, but also from a childhood reared in the principled practices of the Anglican Church, where his older sister was a nun and school principal.

He was ahead of his times in so many ways, bringing reality to the phrases ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ and ‘think globally, act locally’. And he had an abiding dislike for waste, greed and avarice.

He also had incredible ingenuity, able to fix almost anything. His workshop was

superbly equipped and maintained as he took on countless repair jobs for family or friends.

Peter’s wife Rachel was born in Korea in 1923; they met through the Student Christian Movement and were married in 1950. The home they moved to in 1964 was acquired in 1941 when Rachel and her missionary parents returned to Melbourne.

The maintenance of the home and garden was a lifetime work and pleasure for Peter, though not the same following Rachel’s death in 2007. He cared for plants of native, European and Asian heritage with an ingenious watering system that took virtually no mains water.

When he suffered a stroke in 2010, we are pretty sure he was halfway up a 20 foot ladder doing customary pruning. He would rig up complicated rope and ladder arrangements and swing carefree through the air with a chainsaw for this work.

Peter was unconventional. He dressed for functional purpose and substance rather than style, although dressing for Scottish country dancing with kilt and dagger was an exception.

In the 1970s he initiated a waste paper recycling depot at the church. Saturday

tribute author doug humann iS peter and rachel’S Younger Son. peter Joined doug to the vnpa in 1983 and doug went on to become director of vnpa (1990-97) and an honorarY life member. later ceo of buSh heritage auStralia, he iS now an environmental conSultant.

James peter egerton human 1923-2012

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Preservation Society. Not inclined to leadership roles, he must have been looking the other way when he became President (and Rachel Secretary) at one of the first meetings they attended.

They delighted in going on excursions with the Leeper sisters and others. This period opened a whole new world of discovery. He and Rachel explored most corners of the state and supported the VNPA’s endeavours to protect and enhance parks and wilderness areas.

mornings would see Peter, my older brother John and me hurling bundles of newspaper into a truck with immense satisfaction. He was a man renowned for his physical fitness, strength and agility, and we were proud sons labouring alongside him.

In 1971 he made the first philanthropic gift I recall, to help save Lake Pedder. He and Rachel were supporters of a variety of conservation and social justice causes, and pioneered the idea of interest-free loans, where an organisation or individual held an investment for an unspecified time and retained its interest as a donation.

In the 1980s, through fellow VNPA member Budge Bleakley, Peter and Rachel joined the Native Plants

Whilst his spiritual home was the Toolangi forest, one of his abiding joys was to canoe on Lake Albacutya and up Outlet Creek during the couple of times the lake filled in the 1970s. He had a special fondness for the Mallee, the Grampians, the Alps, the coast at Moonlight Head, and for canoeing at Hattah, the Glenelg River, Rocklands and Pretty Valley dams, and in the ocean at the Thurra River and Lorne.

We will remember these places for his support of their protection, and Peter for his fondness for natural places, his family and his community. •pw

the vNpa has maNy GeNerous members. oNe was dr mirNa ilic, who died earlier this year.

Years ago she offered a car-less stranger (me) a lift to a distant VNPA project – possibly the first ‘Help the Alps’ weekend.

She then introduced me to the annual Project Hindmarsh weekend and, until buses were organised, drove me there. She has also driven me to Grow West plantings and Bogong High Plains hawkweed surveys.

Thanks to the VNPA and Mirna I have enjoyed leaving the big smoke for various conservation projects; but deceit and trickery were always required to circumvent her refusal to accept petrol money.

I introduced Mirna to less distant planting projects. She enjoyed cycling, so was happy to pedal from her Camberwell home down the Yarra and sometimes up Merri Creek. While our bicycles rested, we slaved away digging holes and re-planting weed-smothered riparian expanses.

Mirna was reliable. She checked websites and newsletters and reminded me when to book for Alps and Hindmarsh

weekends. She is one of the very few VNPA members to have participated in every Alps weekend – until this year when wild weather caused the project’s cancellation and cancer was overwhelming her body.

At Hindmarsh several years ago, not long before Mirna retired from researching bone joint biochemistry at La Trobe University, her skin turned ashen-yellowish. Pancreatic cancer was detected.

The first bout of chemotherapy allowed her apparent recovery. But then the cancer reappeared, and treatment late last year was, in the end, unsuccessful.

She was too ill to join me hawkweed-hunting last December but, with the help of a mutual friend, joined a later hawkweed survey. She was very weak,

but pleased to be on the beautiful Bogong High Plains.

Without my planting buddy, ‘Help the Alps’,

Hindmarsh, Grow West and hawkweed projects will seem very strange indeed.

In the fond hope that these words reach beyond Park Watch’s usual earthly limits, I wish to apologise to you, Mirna, for my inability to write a proper obituary. On the rare occasions you talked about yourself, I didn’t take notes. So I can’t now remember which part of the former Yugoslavia you grew up in, nor when you came to Australia and, with limited English language skills, became a successful BSc undergraduate, then postgraduate. Sorry Mirna.

We miss your quiet enthusiasm and determination. •pw

tribute from dr linden gillbank, school of historical and Philosophical studies, the university of melbourne.

missing mirna

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mirna (left) and linden at the hindmarsh planting weekend, 2010.

left: Peter human at bush heritage’s Judith eardley reserve near wedderburn, 2004.

left inset: Peter in 1947. right: Peter and rachel on their wedding day, 24 may 1950.

far right: Peter in his csiro laboratory, 1955.



this new ‘field guide for walkers’ is available from cSiro, rrp $29.95. we will review it in a future Park Watch.

Pho

to b

y ti

m f

orc

ey

free SeminarS

defending environmental lawsPROTECTING ThE PlACES yOu lOVE

Skiers enjoying Mt St Gwinear, August 2012. Photographer Tim Forcey says a road across the Baw Baw plateau was proposed, but luckily never built.

Find many more bushwalks and other activities in the VNPA BWAG Program for July – December 2012, and our monthly emails.

Don’t forget the VNPA Annual Picnic at lysterfield Park, Sunday 18 november!

vnpa SaturdaY coach excurSionS

15 September: Whroo and Nagambie

20 october: Dandenongs Gardens

24 november: Colac and Beechy Railtrail.

details and bookings: larysa Kucan 9347 3733.

the vNPa and the environment defenders office are running free seminars on our environmental laws and how community members can respond to attacks on these laws and be heard on the issues.

wednesday 12 September: bendigothursday 20 September: rosebud

for information and registration: see www.edovic.org.au or phone 8341 3100 or 1300 336 842

bwag snow fun plus more!VNPA Bushwalking and Activities Group

practical ecologY can help you with the conservation and effective management of indigenous flora and fauna and habitats during planning and development processes.

consulting services include:•Floraandfauna(ecological)

assessments•NetGainAnalysesand

offset management Plans •Land/PropertyManagementPlans

for public or private land•Traininginecologyandland

management, and planning bushfire attack level assessments, bushfire management statements and bushfire risk assessments.

our on-ground contracting services include: •Nativevegetationmanagement

on private property and public land•Weedcontrol•Revegetationandplantsalvage•Fencingforconservation.

contact us on (03) 9484 1555 or visit www.practicalecology.com.au2b stott street Preston, Po box 228 Preston vic 3072.

Practical Ecology is a VNPa Diamond anniversary Partner.


[email protected]

Phone 08 8985 2134 Fax 08 8985 2355 12 Carrington St Millner NT 0810

You have to experience it to believe it!

GOINGPLACES m

ost

PEOPLEONLY

DREAMABOUT

Off Track WalkingWe don’t do anything else

How could we? There are no tracks where we walk.

Explore hidden waterfalls, ancient rock art, flowing streams and deep pools of pure, clean water with experienced guides

leading the way. If you like bushwalking you will LOVE a Willis’s Walkabouts trip Check out our website and see the

incredible variety we offer.

Our super fund invests in companies that harness wind power and other renewable energy sources. We support investments that are positive for society and the environment, and actively avoid any that do harm. For more information, visit www.australianethical.com.au

Australian Ethical Investment Ltd (‘AEI’) ABN 47 003 188 930, AFSL 229949. Australian Ethical Superannuation Pty Ltd ABN 43 079 259 733 RSEL L0001441. A PDS is available from our website or by calling us and should be considered before making an investment decision. Australian Ethical® is a registered trademark of AEI.

If you’d like to put more

of your super here,put it here.

AvAilAble now!$39.95 + postage

For further details and/or order form:[email protected]

The first Australian ski history bookcovering all major resorts in all alpine states, written by one of Australia’s most experienced skiing writers.

Title-Park Watch June 2012 - No 250

Documents

Transcript of Title-Park Watch June 2012 - No 250