Land study queries tree plantations

Melissa Fyfe, Environment Reporter, The Age, (article) January 15 2003

Many of Victoria's tree plantations are probably in the wrong place, leading to less water in rivers downstream and increased salinity, research has shown.

Australia's top research centre for catchment hydrology has warned commercial plantation companies against planting trees in upper catchments.

It said this posed a problem for Australia's thriving plantation industry, as upper catchments were usually wetter and ideal for growing trees quickly.

Victoria's boom area for plantations is in the south-west, where 60,000 hectares of bluegums have been planted in the past decade.

These are predominantly in upper catchments, the Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority has confirmed.

Studies by the Cooperative Research Centre for Catchment Hydrology, which brings together expert land managers and scientists from universities and the CSIRO, showed that upper catchments were important for delivering large amounts of fresh water downstream, flushing out river salinity.

But plantation trees in upper catchments drank large amounts of water as they grew, significantly reducing the natural run-off and the water yielded downstream.

Old trees did not require so much water.

Commonwealth and state governments predict that private plantations will treble by 2020, with Victoria's stock - concentrated in Gippsland, the south-west and north-east of the state - likely to grow to 750,000 hectares.

A Department of Sustainability and Environment spokesman said the department was keen to look at the research but it was too early to comment on what it meant for Victoria's plantations and water yield.

"We want to go through the details," he said.

The plantation industry said the research needed to be balanced with the right of land owners to grow whatever they chose on their land.

Peter Juniper, the chief executive of Plantation Timber Association Australia, said the industry was regulated through codes of practice in each state.

Victoria's biggest plantation company, Hancock Victorian Plantations, said governments should provide incentives to move into lower catchment areas.

Senior manager Simon Penfold said that while planting in lower catchments would have benefits for salinity, the industry was firmly ensconced in upper catchments, with manufacturing operations nearby. It would be technically difficult to move, he said.

However, logging on lower catchment areas - which are not as steep - would be less expensive, and scientists were now working on tree types suited to lower rainfall, he said.

Hancock, which lost $1 million worth of timber in a recent bushfire in Gippsland, owns 180,000 hectares of plantations: 80 per cent pine, and 20 per cent native eucalypt.

CSIRO's 1988 pointer to a fiery calamity - back to top

January 29 2003, The Age
By Geoff Strong

A 1988 CSIRO report warned that global warming would lead to the kind of bushfires and drought now ravaging south-eastern Australia.

Kevin Hennessy, senior climate change researcher at the CSIRO's Division of Atmospheric Research, said the latest data appeared to confirm this, showing that the period of drought was the hottest since accurate records began a century ago.

He said figures compiled by the Bureau of Meteorology showed temperatures from March to November last year to be one degree hotter than the previous hottest drought of 1994 and 1.65 degrees hotter than average. This led to increased evaporation, greater dryness and more severe bushfires.

"It is pretty spectacular and it follows a trend showing Australia has become hotter over the past 50 years. The reasons are complex and include a range of factors from El Nino to the solar cycle," Mr Hennessy said.

The 1988 report by a team led by the CSIRO's Tom Beer was undertaken when the impacts of warming from greenhouse gases (from transport, fossil fuel power generation and land clearing) were only beginning to be understood.

Earlier this month a report by two Monash University researchers for the World Wide Fund for Nature said the drought and fires were the first in which human-induced global warming could be clearly observed.

The Federal Government has followed the US in refusing to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The blame game behind bushfires - back to top

January 30 2003

Once the fires abate, arguments about the causes will flare. The Age -Claire Miller and John Schauble report.

The parallels are eerie. In January, 1939, Victoria also stirred under the cloud of impending war. The long, hot summer followed a dry winter that left rivers at their lowest in 80 years. Hot, windy conditions persisted for days, culminating in Black Friday, January 13, when the mercury broke 45 and set a state record.

And afterwards, before the smoke had cleared, the blame game began. Then, as now, the row was about burning to keep the bush safe.

Farmers, graziers and bush workers blamed the Forests Commission for an overly zealous fire-suppression regime as it tried to regulate the public propensity for burning off. The commission, in turn, blamed landholders for setting fires at dangerous times.

After hearing evidence in the royal commission on the 1939 fires, Judge Leonard Stretton concluded that, in a sense, everyone and no one was to blame. As one witness to the commission put it: "The whole Australian race has a weakness for burning."

Judge Stretton highlighted the popular culture of indifference, often carelessness. Hundreds of small fires smouldered unattended in the week leading up to Black Friday, when, fanned by the gale-force winds, they joined to create the inferno. "These fires were lit by the hand of man," Judge Stretton wrote.

Tom Griffiths, an environmental historian at the Australian National University, says in his 2002 book Forests of Ash that people believed they were acting in the tradition of Aboriginal "firestick" farming, keeping the bush "clean". They set fires to clear land, promote green growth for livestock, blaze paths to mining reefs, clean up logging debris, create buffers around property, and often just to let others know where they were working in the bush.

Common practice and bush lore did not prevent major bushfires in the decades leading up to 1939. Dozens of lives and thousands of buildings were lost in severe fires in 1898, 1905, 1908, 1914, 1919 and 1932. Sixty people died in the 1926 inferno that swept through Gippsland and the central highlands, and a quarter of Victoria was burnt out in the 1851 conflagration.

The findings of the Stretton royal commission led to the fire-management regime now under attack in 2003. According to Dr Griffiths, Judge Stretton identified two possible cures for scrubby fire-prone forests. One was the long and total exclusion of fire, because fire induced scrub growth. The other, shorter-term option was regular, controlled fire, which Judge Stretton considered a more realistic option in modern Australia.

Responsibility for fire prevention and suppression on public land was subsequently vested in the Forests Commission, later subsumed into what is now called the Department of Sustainability and Environment. The Country Fire Authority was also formed to care for private land outside greater Melbourne.

A key fire-management tool used by the authorities is prescribed or cool burning to reduce the fuel load and therefore fire intensity. But scientists warn it has its limitations.

Dr Malcolm Gill, who has studied fire ecology for 30 years at CSIRO Plant Industry, said that contrary to what most people think, "prescribed burning does not leave you with a pavement-like landscape with nothing left to burn. We can reduce the risk but we can't remove it".

Dr Gill said prescribed burning in forests only removed most of the fine, ground litter, leaving behind most of the rest of the fuel: shrubs, hanging bark, fallen trees and tree canopies. This fuel could only be removed in a burn set when it was hot and dry - the same extreme conditions in which wild fires take hold. The same area of forest also cannot be burnt year upon year, because not enough ground litter would accumulate in between to sustain the burn.

Dr Gill said opportunities for conducting cool burns were also narrow. Burns must be done when the forest is not too wet and not too dry, in still, mild conditions. That means only a few days a year in spring or autumn. It is open to debate whether managers burn enough land often enough, but that is as much a question of budgets, staff and air-pollution controls.

There was also the question of fuel loads on private land. Prescribed burning in a pine plantation would kill the trees, and landholders could not just set bush blocks alight whenever they felt like it.

There is little data about how extensively Aborigines actually burnt the bush. It is probable fires have been far more common since white settlement, which has fundamentally altered the landscape.

What Causes Bushfires on Public Land? - back to top

The Department of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE) is responsible for the care and management of public land and other natural resources in Victoria. Public Land management activities in Victoria are carried out by both NRE staff and staff of Parks Victoria. NRE Fire Management has responsibility for the prevention and suppression of bushfires on public land. Victoria's public land includes National Parks, State forests and other protected public land. In total these areas cover approximately 7 million hectares (or around one third of the State).

Bushfires on Public Land

Approximately 600 bushfires occur within Victorian public land each year. Causes of these fires can be placed into two groups: 'natural' causes and those caused by human activities.

Natural Causes
Lightning strikes are the cause of virually all bushfires of natural origin. Approximately 26% of all bushfires on public land are started by lightning strikes. There are, on average, more fires started by lightning than any other individual cause. For example, over 100 fires in East Gippsland were ignited by lightning within a 24-hour period in late November 1997.

All other bushfires on public land are started as a result of human activity. The category of 'human caused bushfires' includes both deliberate and accidental ignitions. Some examples of human caused fire are discussed below.

Campfires
On average, campfires cause 10% of the bushfires which start on public land. These bushfires burn, on average, around 1,500 ha of public land each year. Most of these fires start when the campfire is left unattended or not properly extinguished. In 1994, a bushfire caused by an unattended campfire burnt 14,500 ha near Ballarat. A campfire was also suspected to have started a fire in 1998 that burnt 32,000 ha in the Alpine region of Victoria. For more information see: Campfires & BBQ's.

Burning Off / Agricultural Burns
Farmers may burn vegetation on their properties for a variety of reasons including weed control, burning of crop debris and the removal of rubbish. Agricultural burns can accidentally spark fires on public land. These fires cause over 15% of bushfires on average each year. Unattended burns are most likely to 'escape' and become bushfires. On average, agricultural escapes burn approximately 8,000 ha of public land each year. For more information see: Burning Off on Private Land.

Equipment/ Machinery
Any equipment or machinery that generates heat or sparks is a potential cause of bushfires. Examples of such machinery include chainsaws, slashers, welders, grinders, and exhaust from vehicles. On average, fires originating from equipment or machinery burn approximately 2,500 ha of public land each year. For more information see: Equipment / Machinery fires.

Deliberate
This category includes all fires which are deliberately lit, and develop into bushfires on public land. Examples include children playing with matches or experimenting with fire, farmers deliberately lighting fires without necessary permits or authority, or maliciously lit fires (fires lit with an intent to damage or destroy property).

For general information about DPI or DSE please contact:
DPI/DSE Customer Service Centre
Phone: 136 186
Email: customer.service@nre.vic.gov.au
Department of Primary Industries / Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria, Australia

Greenie's court win leads logging review - back to top

January 31 2003
By Melissa Fyfe
Environment Reporter

The State Government will review its guidelines for logging near rainforests after losing a court case against an anti-logging protester.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment yesterday admitted the case raised a "grey area" for how it interpreted the Code of Forest Practices for Timber Production.

In the Geelong County Court on Wednesday, Hayley Shields, 23, successfully appealed against a charge of obstructing a lawful logging operation. It was a win that environmentalists believe will have repercussions across the state.

Ms Shields was involved in the 2001 protest in the Ciancio forest block in the Otways. Protesters believed logging was too close to protected rainforest.

The former Department of Natural Resources and Environment had allowed for a 40-metre buffer between logging and rainforest, as recommended by the local forest management plan.

But the code says that - in the absence of a detailed forest plan - there should be a 60-metre buffer for forests that are more than 20 per cent myrtle beech trees. This is to ensure that logging and road activity does not spread the fungal disease myrtle wilt, which is fatal to the trees.

Judge John Nixon ruled that the department had interpreted the code incorrectly and the local forest management plan did not contain a detailed strategy for the protection of rainforest.

Following the case, prosecutors agreed to drop similar charges against 13 other protesters arrested in the same forest block.

Environmentalists saw the case as a test of whether the department can be legally bound by the code. They mounted a similar case about rainforest buffers in East Gippsland last year but lost.

"It was a win that environmentalists believe will have repercussions across the state."

The department will now review how the code fits with local forest management plans across the state. "In the light of the court's decision, the DSE (department) will review the circumstances of this case in order to clarify the application of the Code of Forest Practices relating to the protection of rainforest," a department statement said.

Although recent cases have focused on the protection of rainforest, the broader issue is whether the anti-logging movement can prove operations are illegal. If this is proved, it will be more difficult for protesters to be charged under the Conservation, Forests and Lands Act for obstructing a lawful logging operation.

The DSE said Judge Nixon had ruled the department and its officers had acted in good faith, believing that they were complying with the appropriate prescription and on that basis he did not award costs against the department.

The department said it was premature to predict whether the timber industry's access to wood - through wood utilisation plans - would need to be altered.