Gippsland Environment Group Inc

Lonely Bay, Bung Yarnda
GunaiKurnai Country

Adjacent two very large planned burns

05 August 2026 | Lake Tyers State Park​​

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Beautiful, diverse long-unburnt coastal forest, with rainforest, old box trees, swamp wetlands, sweet pittosporum (in its natural home), lilly pillies and paperbarks.  On this day, swans, a sea eagle and ironbarks still in flower - a reminder of the ecological value of intact habitats and the seasonal resources they provide - even in the middle of winter. Sad to say this forest is right beside two very large planned burns.​

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Within the two adjacent burns, Nowa Nowa Snuff Gully 1197 ha  and Nowa Nowa - Balmers Break 477 ha, Gippsland Environment Group surveyors have recorded many active Glossy Black-Cockatoo feed trees and recorded extraordinary high numbers of Yellow-bellied glider calls, as well as a Masked Owl and Greater Gliders, a glimpse of the rich biodiversity this forest supports. Large old hollow bearing habitat trees throughout the forest provide homes for these and and other hollow dependent birds and mammals.

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Gippsland Environment Group surveyed the nearby Toorloo Arm Stoney Ck burn in Lake Tyers Park after burning in autumn 2025. In a 20Ha section of the burn surveyed, more than one hundred very large old hollow bearing trees were destroyed by FFMV operations. We recorded more than eighty large old trees that had collapsed or been felled, and dozens more were severely damaged or killed by the burn but still standing.  Many more collapsed in following weeks. That entire burn was only 122Ha - this burn scheduled here is 1197Ha and another 477Ha across the road from Toorloo Arm Stoney Ck.

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Some say you just need to burn 'cooler' - the question is - what are you burning and what do you hope to achieve? This forest was burnt in a planned burn in 2010 and the damage to old trees is still visibly evident (you can see fire damage in the foreground picture below). In the nearby Colquhoun Forest, we've seen large low intensity fires in cool season, that leave the canopy intact, trickle through and take out hundreds of old trees. Particularly if they survived an earlier burn and ended up with a hole at the base. However, the nearby Toorloo Arm Stoney Ck burn was anything but 'cool' and took out hundreds of old habitat trees.

DEECA’s own research in Gippsland (Bluff 2016) finds that fire is 28 times more likely to destroy hollow trees in planned burns, and the damage is cumulative. Fire also triggers emergency seedbanks that can produce dense thickets of fire-promoted understory species, potentially for decades.​