Gippsland Environment Group Inc
Lobbying against environmental threats on the unceded lands of the GunaiKurnai, Yaitmathang, Ngarigo and Bidwell Peoples
Forest Fire Management, VicForests and TAFE Gippsland destroy old growth forest near Lakes Entrance
GunaiKurnai Country
Burnt April 2021 | Colquhoun State Forest | 751Ha Lakes Entrance - Casey Creek (GP-TBO-NOW-0015)
This was a Forest Fire Management Victoria planned burn in Casey Creek, the headwaters of Toorloo Arm, catchment for Bung Yarnda. Unlike the surrounding forest, which had been subject to many planned burns over the past 30 years, this forest had only been burnt once, in a 1966 bushfire. Most of the area had no logging history, and there were areas of very rare old-growth forest, largely open with massive old trees.
After the 2019/20 bushfires, unprecedented in scale and severity, leading scientists identified that unburnt refuge areas should be the immediate and ongoing focus for conservation. The Colquhoun Forest was one of ten key unburnt refuge areas identified in VNPA’s After the Fires report.
This planned burn was bounded by Lakes-Colquhoun Road to the west, Blakfellas Track to the south, and Berkeley Square and Corduroy Tracks to the north and east. It contained high-value habitat, including modelled old-growth forest, as well as significant recorded numbers of Yellow-bellied Gliders, Greater Gliders and Masked Owls (Victoria's rarest owl).
Community protested this (and other inappropriate FFMV burns including Trident Arm Bung Yarnda,) but FFMV lit it up anyway.
Below: Blakfellas Track April 2021
The Fire Operations Burn Plan obtained through FOI says the Casey Creek fire was lit by FFMV ground crews with drip torches and with aerial incendiaries, over two ignition days and three patrol days.
Personnel over 5 days
Crew member- Firefighter – 26 over two days, 8 for day three, 4 for day five
Plant Operator – Tanker (Endorsed) - 2 over four days
Planned burn Operation officer – 1 over 4 days
Plant Operator – Dozer D4 - 2 over 3 days
Incendiary Bombardier - 1 for day two
Incendiary Operations Supervisor – 1 for day two
Plant and Equipment over 3 days
Tanker – Ultralight - 10 for days one and two, 4 for day three and four, 2 for day five
Tanker – heavy - 1 on days one to four
Vehicle – command / Ops FCV - 2 for days one and two
Dozer – D4 - 1 on days one to three
Aerial incendiary Machine - 1 for day two
Helicopter Type3 – 1 for day two
The considerable cost of human and mechanical resources required to execute this burn, stands in stark contrast to the Department’s complete lack of resourcing for any on-ground pre- and post-burn fauna and flora monitoring.
Within two hours of ignition, hollow trees were burning and continued to burn for weeks. This was according to FFMV a 'low intensity burn"and it left some patchy ‘mosaic’ and mostly intact-looking canopy.
Even so, the fire destroyed hundreds of old trees that were critical hollow habitat - including large old hollow habitat trees standing in riparian vegetation of Casey Creek, below.
After the burn, Gippsland Environment Group surveyors went into the Special Protection Zone (SPZ) for the Yellow-bellied Gliders and recorded and mapped significant and high conservation value old growth forest destroyed in the burn. Hundreds of huge old trees within the SPZ were destroyed. In some places massive old trees had been reduced to just shadows of ash on the ground.
Below: May 2021 survey one month after burning
More trees collapsed after the burn. In August, Gippsland Environment Group surveyors went back again and recorded hundreds of destroyed old trees within this 750Ha site.
Below: August 2021 - four months after burning
Planned burning in old growth forest
In 2021, DELWP (now DEECA) provided Gippsland Environment Group with their Policy Position, stating “planned burning is considered unlikely to have a significant impact on the core attributes of old-growth forest.” (DSE Policy Position 2012. Planned burning in old growth forest).
This is not what was witnessed and documented by GEG surveyors at Casey Creek. FFMV's large 'low intensity autumn burn' trickled through the forest and creeks and destroyed hundreds of old trees, the very structure of the old growth forest.
Eucalypts take 120–150 years to begin to form hollows and up to 250 years to develop hollows large enough for large Gliders. DELWP's own research in Gippsland (Lucas Bluff, 2016) found that 20–30% of hollow-bearing trees collapse in each planned burn, and damage accumulates over successive burns.
Many of these large, old habitat trees in the 2021 Casey Creek burn had survived the 1966 bushfire, some bearing fire scars at their base. When fire reached them again, they ignited like chimneys and collapsed. Trees that survived have been left weakened and more vulnerable to the next fire. DELWP’s own research suggests that after just three burns, most of these critical habitat trees could be lost.
VicForests and TAFE Gippsland logging within Casey Creek burn
In the wake of the catastrophic 2019/20 bushfires, logging unburnt forest in East Gippsland was highly contentious.
Within the Casey Creek 751ha burn was a cluster of unburnt VicForests coupes still being logged in 2021 by TAFE Gippsland for “training” and by Vic Forests.
'SeaView' coupe, the site of community protests on the western side, was logged the by Vic Forests the previous June.
The Lakes Post spoke to Gunnai woman Senator Lidia Thorpe in the Seaview Coupe. “It breaks my heart to see this, it really does,” she said. “We can’t maintain our survival as the First Peoples of these lands if our country and everything that belongs to the country is being killed off. It’s like killing us off."
Below: Lidia Thorpe in Seaview coupe. Photo Lakes Post 17-06-2020
Below: Lior Coupe
Logging started in the Lior coupe December 2020, but was stopped after surveys by Gippsland Environment Group, Goongerah Environment Centre, Friends of Bats and Habitat Gippsland and the Department’s own Forest Protection Survey Program. The surveys found Masked Owls, Greater Gliders and sufficiently high numbers of Yellow-bellied Gliders to warrant two 100 ha logging exclusion zones.
Instead, the Department of Environment Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) established a single exclusion zone - for the protection of Yellow-bellied Gliders - outside the logging coupes - allowing logging to continue, including the loss of 17 documented Yellow-bellied Glider feed trees.
Below: Yellow-bellied Glider feed trees in Lior coupe
Below: Lior coupe
In 2021, FFMV then bulldozed firebreaks through the Yellow-bellied Glider Special Protection Zone - where the loggers weren’t allowed to go - through Casey Creek and intact old-growth forest. This was to protect the logging coupes from their own planned burn.
Then they put bulldozer tracks into the old forest before the surrounding 750ha area was burned in April 2021.
This Casey Creek planned burn required substantial resources, and caused significant environmental impacts. This raises the fundamental question: did it actually achieve its intended objective of reducing fire risk?
Do planned burns reduce fire risk?
“We’ve understood for a long time now that logging can make bushfires worse, but it’s only in the last few years that evidence is showing that prescribed burning could be doing the same thing,” Lead researcher Professor David Lindenmayer, ANU https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/prescribed-burning-could-be-making-aussie-forests-more-flammable
Take Action
Contact those responsible.
Ask for independent oversight and protection of biodiversity in planned burns
Fire management planning is happening, without independent oversight with the Department self-assessing and evaluating their own operations. FFMV do not monitor the efficacy of their planned burns in preventing bushfires.
In Victoria there is no mandatory Code for protection of biodiversity values in planned burn operations that takes into account obligations under the EPBC Act
There is no publicly available information on how operations are planned and how impact on threatened species is minimised and avoided
FFMV do no on- ground pre or post-burn survey for fauna, flora or habitat
FFMV rely on desktop data from the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas in planning which is outdated and does not show most recent records. This was highlighted by the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office’s report Protecting Victoria’s Biodiversity (2021)
According to the Victorian Auditor General’s report Reducing Bushfire Risks. Victorian Auditor General (2020). “With the exception of some isolated case studies, DELWP does not know the effect of its burns on native flora and fauna”
You can send an email here:
https://vnpa.org.au/action-minister-give-native-forests-proper-oversight/
Below: Lior coupe
