It’s not been an actual pub of course, but the
internet. And these days the web joins the pub and the media as one of the
major courts of public opinion. The arguments and potential fisticuffs have
been about the bushfires that are still burning in the wilder parts of Tasmania.
I’ve been arguing that these fires are catastrophic, and require urgent action. But I've been met with a dismaying array of counter arguments and even indifference.
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[Burned scene with cushion plants, near Lake Mackenzie, 2016. (Photo courtesy Rob Blakers)] |
- 2015 was one of the driest and warmest years on record in Tasmania
- Spring 2015 was the driest ever recorded in Tasmania
- On January 13, 2016, and again on January 27, thunderstorms crossed our island state
- Lightning strikes not accompanied by significant rain (commonly known as dry lightning) ignited more than 70 fires
- Most fires started in remote, uninhabited areas, including the Central Plateau, part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA), and the Tarkine region in the state’s far north-west
- As of the time of writing, many thousands of hectares - some 2% of the Wilderness World Heritage Area - have been burned
- As of the time of writing, no human lives have been lost, and no houses have burned down
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[Recently burned pine, Central Plateau (Photo courtesy Rob Blakers)] |
For what follows, I want to concentrate on the fires
in the Central Plateau, and most particularly those burning in its rare
high-altitude plant communities. I will start by looking at, and responding to,
some of the dismaying, misleading or just plain wrong ideas about the fires in
those alpine areas.
“Fire is a natural part of the Australian environment: always has been,
always will be.”
It’s true that in many places across much of Australia,
fire shapes our vegetation. But there are some very notable exceptions. Plant
communities which have developed in the absence of fire include rainforests and
the relict Gondwanan vegetation of Tasmania. That includes pencil pines, King
Billy pines and deciduous beech, and the complex, waterlogged peat soil
communities in which they thrive.
These plant communities, some of which date back 65
million years, are so special and so rare anywhere in the world, that they were
one of the main reasons the Tasmanian wilderness was declared to be of World
Heritage significance by UNESCO. But these plant communities are not at all
fire-adapted. Pencil pines, for instance, regenerate via the shedding of cones, which occurs only every
five or six years. They can also spread vegetatively via suckering. Neither
method allows them to spread far from the parent tree, which is one reason we
see them growing in stands. One hot, local fire will kill both the trees and their
seeds, leading to local extinction.
Fire is NOT a natural part of the highest and wettest
parts of the Tasmanian highlands. Fire ecologists tells us that natural fires
have been either totally absent, or extremely rare, over much of this country
for millions of years.
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[No regrowth for this dead giant (Photo courtesy Rob Blakers)] |
“These fires were caused by lightning, so they were totally natural.
Surely this is what has always happened.”
While these fires were caused by lightning, this has not
always happened in Tasmania. Dry lightning was once very rare, but is now
happening with greater frequency. This was predicted to be one of the results
of climate change, as warmer, longer dry periods, and more frequent extreme
events (including thunderstorms in Tasmania) occur. Dry lightning fires have
now been regularly recorded most years since 2003, and some consider this to be
the “new normal”.
“Surely Aboriginal people
burned all of Tasmania over many thousands of years.”
Yes they did, but with two big provisos. Firstly their
use of fire was usually small scale rather than landscape wide. And it occurred
during the cooler months. Their so called “mosaic burns” promoted patches of
regrowth, but left adjacent areas as unburned refuges for the mammals they were
hunting. Secondly, waterlogged and peat areas, including pine stands, would
have mostly been untouched by such fires, as they contained little grazing
grass and didn’t burn well in the cooler seasons.
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[A stand of healthy pencil pine, Central Plateau] |
“It’s an El Nino year. We always get hot, dry weather in Tasmania during
an El Nino pattern. This is no different.”
Actually it is different. While this is an El Nino
summer, the extreme conditions in such years – including the occurrence of dry
lightning – are becoming accentuated as a result of climate change. As
Professor David Bowman of the University of Tasmania says, “We are in a new place.
We just have to accept that we’ve crossed a threshold, I suspect. This is what
climate change looks like.”
“Fire regenerates the bush. There have been big fires in the highlands
before, and the bush recovers.”
Fire does not regenerate all species. As we saw above,
pencil pines are killed outright by hot fires. Other species, and the peat
soils on which they depend, are also killed by fire.
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[Recovery? 50 years after a fire at Great Pine Tier: click to enlarge] |
As for the fires that previously ravaged the plateau,
such as the deliberately lit fires of 1960-61, it’s very clear that the bush
did not recover (see photo above). Thousands of dead pencil pines, and peat soils burned down to
bedrock, stand as witness to their local extinction. Other species slowly take
over, but the unique Gondwanan coniferous heathland is gone forever.
* * *
As I step out of “pub”, I realise that we’re never going
to resolve this dispute through argument alone. If I had my way I would far
prefer taking some of the “pub’s patrons” with me into these pine-dotted
landscapes to experience them for themselves.
I’d want them to share the unique light, to breathe
that strangely ancient air, to feel the timelessness of these ancient stands. I
try to imagine them joining me just a month ago when, as a tired bushwalker
looking for a safe place to put my tent, I took refuge in a stand of pencil
pines close by a lake. Putting my tent up beside their stout trunks, I lay
back on a bed of pine needles and watched as stars wheeled overhead, filtered
through the foliage. If they’d been there they too might have known the comfort,
shade and shelter, and the indefinable, muted peacefulness that these pines
give.
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[The comfort of pines: Central Plateau] |
And what if we’d been there together on the night of
those storms, as vast clouds loomed and darkened, and lightning slashed from the sky, but rain
refused to fall? Then in the growing dark, as flames from the lightning-lit fires became visible, would they
have remained indifferent then? Or if they’d joined my friends Dan Broun and Rob Blakers, who
walked through the charred landscapes to record this catastrophe just days
after the fires started, what would their argument have been then? Having experienced these
unique places, wouldn’t they have wanted to do anything to prevent this sort of
catastrophe ever happening?
Any parent who loves a child, any person who loves
another, will know how fiercely you want to protect what you love. It’s time
more of us loved these ancient treasures before it’s too late. They’re in need
of our protection now.
* * *
I would like to acknowledge the fire crews from many Tasmanian and interstate
agencies, plus remote area fire fighters from as far away as New Zealand, who have
been working incredibly hard to quell these fires. It is a very
complex task in rugged terrain, with difficult access in sometimes extreme weather
conditions. Low cloud and rain have sometimes made it difficult to get
to the fires and to assess their condition, as this is mostly done via
helicopter. It still remains to be seen whether they were given sufficient resources, at an early enough stage, to adequately deal with this catastrophe.
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