CLARENCE VALLEY TOPS THE CHART FOR WILDLIFE PRESERVATION

On September 13th over a dozen Clarence Valley residents with gazetted Conservation Agreement (CA) properties received results of their surveys for the Land Libraries program from NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust ecologists.

Last year after training in equipment and sound capture techniques, these landowners were issued with two motion sensor cameras and one bio-acoustic meter per property to help with a statewide CA wildlife survey.

The Land Libraries project aims to promote public appreciation of biodiversity by collecting as much data as possible from private properties to help with long term investment and development decisions.

The landowners, who came from Pillar Valley, Swan Creek, Jackybulbin, Tullymorgan, Coutts Crossing, Copmanhurst and Shannondale were happy to learn that their records topped the charts in a number of areas. They clocked up 100,800 of 720,000 hours of survey effort, with 3,161 records from an overall 11,664, covering 605 of 1,200 identified separate species.

They had also forwarded a range of personal photographs from their properties to the NatureMapsr website for confirmation and lodgement with the NSW Bionet Atlas, adding to the now vast knowledge of Clarence Valley's shrubs, forbs, trees, fungus and wide range of birds, mammals, frogs, insects, and one endangered gudgeon.

It should be of interest to Clarence Valley Council, which owns and manages lands around Shannondale, that the most active mammal from that area was the Vulnerable Rufous Bettong. Also a previously unrecorded not-so-common Common Dunnart was a first for the property, while Brush-tailed Phascogales turned up at several sites. The night-time acoustics hero was the Powerful Owl with 208 calls, while Squirrel Gliders and Koala were active on several consecutive nights, as were 12 microbat species, including seven threatened and one federally listed as endangered.

Since  Council now knows a few species that its wonderful natural bushland supports, hopefully it will take more interest in its land and join in the surveys when the program is opened up next time around. The program’s success and the interest it has created makes this more than likely to happen.

-        Pat Edwards

 

 Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent , 1st October,  2025.

FROGS UNDER THREAT FROM BUSHFIRE

As we near that time of the year when landowners start dropping matches, filling the air with health threatening air-borne particulate matter, it’s timely to highlight some lesser-known impacts of burning.

We had observed one of those threats following an intense fire which blackened a swampy gully running through our property in 2017. Prior to that fire, any storm event would see the wetland erupt into a deafening roar as thousands of frogs seemingly emerge from nowhere to spawn.

However, for years following that fire, the wetland remained eerily silent and even now, after eight years, only six of the fifteen originally recorded species have returned, and even those are in greatly reduced numbers.

Our observations have been mirrored in a study that was conducted by Newcastle University and the Australian Museum 18 months after the devastating 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.

That extensive study involved the collection of 16,000 files of overnight acoustic recordings of 35 frog species across more than 400 sites in northeast and southeast NSW. These found that the fires had significantly reduced the distributions of at least six frog species and others that are now locally extinct.

One worrying fact for us is that our frog ponds, constructed near the house and not fire impacted, were equally silent, with only low numbers of four species in residence eight years later.

What we need to remember is that frogs are fairly low on the food chain, and while frog-lovers might cringe at the thought, they are, nevertheless, crucial to the survival of a wide range of mammals, birds, and reptiles who depend on these amphibians for food.

University of Newcastle’s lead researcher, Dr Chad Beranek, made a very pertinent observation when pointing out that these findings raise serious concern for the survival of frogs under an increasingly fire-prone climate.

With no real rain falling in the Clarence for the past three weeks, and temperatures rising into the 30s, why are fire permits still not required?  Clearly the authorities are still not taking the bushfire threat seriously.

 

-            John Edwards

 

 Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent , 24th September, 2025.

BLICKS RIVER GUARDIANS AWARDED THE PRESTIGIOUS TOGA

 MEDIA RELEASE 

6 October 2025

 Blicks River Guardians has just been awarded the prestigious TOGA (Triumph Over Greed) Award from the North Coast Environment Council (NCEC) for their record-length successful forest protection actions (The Clouds Creek Glider Reviver) to protect the "Clouds Creek Greater Glider Sanctuary". 

The Glider Reviver stopped industrial logging at Clouds Creek for 420 working days (January 2024-September 2025) and ensured that these globally significant forests were protected from logging. This was the second biggest block of native forest ever attempted to be logged in this region by the Forestry Corporation of NSW.

 Blicks River Guardians protected these remarkable forests from logging and they were recently placed under a logging moratorium and identified for inclusion in the Great Koala National Park by the Minns Government. We warmly welcome this outcome and look forward to urgent gazettal of the National Park to allow the process of repair to begin and to commence the rebuilding of fauna populations decimated by massive recent logging across the Dorrigo Plateau.

Travelling from the highlands of the Gumbaynggirr Nation on the Dorrigo Plateau to the lowlands of the Bundjalung Nation south of Casino key members of Blicks River Guardians, Meredith Stanton and Mark Graham, were honoured to receive this award. This was particularly the case considering that the previous recipient (in 2022) was a leading conservation visionary, the man who first proposed the Great Koala National Park, Ashley Love.

“The NCEC's TOGA award recognises the efforts of every one of us who held space at the Glider Reviver over the 84-week campaign on beautiful Gumbaynggirr country... and all those cheering us on!,” said Meredith Stanton,

“It is not very often that grass roots community triumphs over corporate greed, yet in this instance, so satisfying to know that local koalas and greater gliders, our river systems and all future generations will be the beneficiaries of our sustained efforts to save Clouds Creek greater glider forests as intact habitat,”

“Unlogged, these catchments forests have a 15–20-year head start towards climate resilience. That's why we need to stop logging all our forests now and begin the restoration process inside the 476,000-hectare national park.”

 Blicks River Guardians extends the deepest gratitude and respect to all our many partners in our ongoing actions to ensure a healthy living future for the Blicks River. The Blicks River is the catchment draining the western parts of the Dorrigo Plateau, a major tributary of the Nymboida River.  This river provides drinking water to about 100 000 coastal residents between Sawtell and Iluka.

Mark Graham said, “Ending logging in the catchments will prevent extinctions, ensure our region and its economy will have the clean and adequate water needed for the survival of all industries including agriculture, fisheries, retail and other services and tourism industries, will provide generations of work needing substantial labour inputs over decades to come, to stabilise our regional climate and capture and store carbon in the landscape. Our forests provide us with the only path to a safe and viable future,”

 “Forests deliver water security, destroying them with industrial logging takes away the water security that we all need. We must now switch immediately from logging and destroying public native forests for a massive loss to taxpayers to the restoration and repair of forests.”

Blicks River Guardians hope all of the Great Koala National Park will be protected from mining too, but particularly the drinking water supply catchments on the Dorrigo Plateau which must be made into National Park or Nature Reserve because lower classes of reserves (such as State Conservation Areas) allow mining and there are growing concerns across the community about poisonous mining proposals under consideration on public lands in this catchment.

     - Blicks River Guardians