John Edwards' description of the beauties of Fortis Creek National Park featured in an earlier post . In a subsequent visit, described below, John was horrified at park management.
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Just weeks ago I raved in this column about the marvellous array of rare
and threatened flora found in the Fortis Creek National Park, urging readers to
take the opportunity to visit national parks to enjoy nature at its very best.
Today, after a return visit to another part of Fortis Creek NP which had
been subjected to a prescribed hazard reduction burn, I'm forced to describe
the ugly side of the way our national parks are managed.
Aside from the fact that frequent fire is negatively impacting
biodiversity, and the question of whether there is a need for frequent hazard
reduction in areas which have no nearby urban settlements under threat from
fire, what we observed was environmental bastardy at its worst. For kilometres
along a service trail, practically every old-growth tree within 40m of the
track had been bulldozed, vandalism that would result in prosecution had it
occurred on private land.
The loss to native fauna through destroying those hollow-bearing trees
is incalculable, and animals occupying those hollows would undoubtedly have
been killed or injured.
It is well documented that about half of all threatened fauna in
Australia are tree-hollow dependent, and loss of habitat is the primary reason
for their decline. What is not so well known is the time frame required for
those trees to form hollows, which is literally hundreds of years.
Research undertaken at the Australian National University has determined
that: “Large hollows, in Blackbutts (the main species targeted in this instance) with a
minimum entrance greater than 10cm, are formed after approximately 240 years”. I observed some
hollows greater than 30 cm.
In reality, many of these trees were already mature when Captain Cook
sailed by 250 years ago, and survived the timber getter's axe in the 1800s
because they were already too old, only to be mindlessly destroyed today.
Tourism is the life blood of the Valley, one of the world's biodiversity
hotspots, and it's supported by wonderful national parks and world heritage
areas, but what tourist wants to see this?
-
John
Edwards
This post was initially published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on November 11, 2015.
