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

WOOD-FIRED POWER STATION REJECTED BY INDEPENDENT PLANNING COMMISSION

 MEDIA RELEASE 

Conservation Groups Welcome Independent Planning Commission’s Rejection of Proposal to Increase Landclearing for Electricity

North East Forest Alliance and North Coast Environment Council welcome the IPC’s rejection of Verdant Earth's proposal to restart the closed coal-fired Redbank power station, using trees obtained from clearing more than 20,000 ha of land a year, to spew 1.3 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

On the September 15, the Independent Planning Commission refused the development application from Verdant Earth Technologies Ltd to restart the Redbank Power Station at Warkworth using biomass instead of coal tailings as fuel.

“Burning forests produces higher CO₂ emissions than burning coal, so it is madness to replace coal with wood to generate electricity as it undermines our transition to a low carbon economy”, said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

“It is particularly galling that in this case the proponents claimed that burning 850,000 tonnes of biomass per annum would result in no CO₂ emissions at all, when in fact the power-plant would release 1.3 million tonnes of CO₂ through its smokestacks each year, thereby significantly increasing atmospheric carbon when we urgently need to be transitioning to non-polluting solar and wind power.

“This is compounded by the fact that the biomass was intended to be obtained by clearing native vegetation, which is contrary to the need to restore and increase native vegetation as it is the only means we have of removing carbon from the atmosphere at scale. 

“The Independent Planning Commission rejected the proposal on the grounds that there had been no assessment of the environmental impact of increasing land clearing in western NSW from the current 6,635 ha per annum to over 20,000 ha per annum” Mr. Pugh said.

“It is madness in the midst of our current biodiversity and climate emergencies to contemplate cutting down the homes of a multitude of species and burning them to release more carbon into the atmosphere”, said Susie Russell from the North Coast Environment Council.

“This is the culmination of a six year community campaign against generating electricity by burning wood, and specifically this proposal that had initially proposed to take timber from north coast forests.

“The IPC meeting with stakeholders in Singleton last month received many presentations from both concerned locals, environment groups and biodiversity experts, critical of the proposal.

“They were proposing to clear land 600 kilometres from the power station, woodchip it, store it and then using B doubles, truck it to the Hunter Valley. There was no accounting for the emissions from any of that process which would have been fuel intensive. The whole project just didn’t stack up,” Ms Russell said.

The ALP’s 2024 NSW Labor Platform states:

3.112 NSW Labor recognises that burning timber and cleared vegetation for electricity is not carbon neutral and is neither clean or renewable energy, and therefore forms no part of a credible strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Labor will introduce legislation prohibiting the burning of any forests and cleared vegetation for electricity.

“We call upon the NSW Government to urgently implement their commitment to introduce legislation prohibiting the burning of any forests and cleared vegetation for electricity, to stop any repeat of this madness” Mr. Pugh said.

-  North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) & North Coast Environment Council (NCEC) .