Big burns ‘to send park up in flames’

Erin Pearson
STATE Government’s “mosaic burning” will destroy Otway National Park, the region’s peak community environmental group has warned.
Geelong Environmental Council president Joan Lindros said “large-scale” burn-offs proposed for 2010 and 2011 were “far too close” to areas burnt in the past three years.
“This year will see more than 1000 acres burnt in the eastern Otway foothills, with an adjacent national park area of 2000 acres burnt next year,” she said.
“Ecologically, areas burnt so close together in time and space will have problems for wildlife restoration and re-establishment. All the wildlife will have no habitat and this issue does not appear to be a consideration.”
Ms Lindros said Department of Sustainability and Environment had also failed to follow up on the regeneration of areas already burnt.
“Every burn in the Anglesea/Airey’s Inlet region in the past three years at least has vastly exceeded the planned size,” she said.
“There has been no post-burning monitoring or pre-burn evaluation of flora or fauna and certainly no consideration of soil organisms such as bacteria, fungi or other species, which ensure a healthy forest.”
Ms Lindros dismissed concerns over Black Saturday-type fires in the Otways without burn-offs.
“If you’re in that area, people know that if it’s a really bad day you just have to go,” she said.
Department Otway district manager Andrew Morrow said Fairhaven, Airey’s Inlet, Anglesea, Lorne and Forrest were some of the state’s worst bushfire-risk areas.
“Our burning program is strategically reducing fuel loads to directly reduce the bushfire risk to the people, townships and environment in the Otways,” he said.
“The burns in question are long-unburnt areas, not having been burnt since 1983.
“DSE considers and plans the sequencing of burns carefully and always takes biodiversity into account. If we exclude fire completely from our parks and forests, we’ll be doing more harm than good to the plants and animals living there.”