Planned burns creating an environmental crisis

The Co-op has done extraordinary work over decades preserving this pocket of high quality habitat close to Melbourne. It is a remarkable achievement and a privilege to support rich biodiversity, including a host of threatened species, literally on our doorsteps. This is due to the hard work of co-op members over decades, but it is also because we are situated along the habitat corridor stretching from Warrandyte to Kinglake and beyond.

We benefit from species dispersal along the corridor and the resilience provided by contiguous bushland. What we do on the Co-op can have flow-on effects along the corridor, and vice-versa. We have been thinking about this a lot over Autumn, as huge areas of forest in Kinglake have been ignited as part of Victoria’s industrial burning program. The Co-op Whatsapp chats have been active with discussion of smoke from these burns. But the effects go beyond our respiratory health.

While we set up camera traps across the Co-op and delight in evening owl serenades, the very species that we seek to support here are being pushed out of forest just up the corridor.  For instance, all those critters that rely on tree hollows… Powerful Owls, Boobooks, Phascogales, Antechinus, Sugar Gliders, Parrots, Tree Creepers… Planned burning is creating a crisis for hollow-dependent species by causing the collapse of huge numbers of hollow-bearing trees (HBTs). A 2016 Victorian Government study found that 25% of HBTs reached by fire in a planned burn collapse. And we’re not just talking about small patches of forest here. A single planned burn area in the Central Highlands spans hundreds or thousands of hectares, and there are hundreds of these burns planned for the next three years. If you go to the forest the night following a burn you will hear the old hollow trees crashing down.

There’s a lot of peer-reviewed research on the negative impacts of planned burning on forest ecosystems, but now we are learning that this practice can actually increase bushfire risk.

We urge community members to contact the government to ask for urgent updates to Victoria’s bushfire mitigation plan. You can read and sign the open letter from Kinglake Friends of the Forest here. We would appreciate any help in sharing it around.

Planned burns scheduled for the next three years. Dark blue circles are burns that were conducted this Autumn. Source.