CONSERVATION
WELCOME TO THE PYROCENE Climate change is coming for the places we love. By CAM WALKER
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fter World War Two, a growing appreciation of the As fire seasons also get longer in the northern hemisphere, Australian landscape and an emerging conservation this impacts on our ability to fight fire here. During the 2019/20 movement led millions of people to become involved Black Summer, around 1,000 personnel came from North in campaigns to protect our wild and special places. From the America to assist us in our firefighting efforts, and we continue Little Desert campaign in Victoria in the late 1960s and the to lease most of our large firefighting aircraft from the USA. Franklin campaign in the ‘80s, to the efforts to protect the This is impacting how we fight fires in our wild and protected rainforests of the Wet Tropics and the wonderful landscapes places. A stronger emphasis on aggressive ‘first strike’ tactics— of K’gari/Fraser Island, millions of hectares have been granted which aim to contain small fires caused by lightning before they conservation status and protected for generations to come. become blazes—is helping reduce the number of fires. Many Wild Magazine, and its readers, have played a key role in states are spending more to employ additional firefighters. securing many of these wins. Large-scale interventions, like the ‘strategic firebreak’ program Once a campaign was won, however, we often thought the batin Victoria, aim to slow the spread of fire in forested landscapes. tle was over. There was an assumption that the relevant parks It is also impacting the way land managers look after forests service would have sufficient funds to manage these new conserand other ecosystems during and after fires. After large fires in vation reserves; sadly, that was far from the reality. But the direct the high country of Victoria in 2013, the Victorian Government threats—be they mining, logging, cattle grazing or other activiestablished an aerial seeding program to try and ensure that ties—were removed by the granting alpine ash—which are often killed of protection status as a national by wildfire and then require around I FIND IT HARD TO ACCEPT park or World Heritage Area. twenty years between fires to be THE Several decades ago, I volunable to produce seed—did not colteered with an environment group lapse. This is a great program, howthat campaigned to protect wild ever the scale of the 2019/20 fires WHERE THERE showed how hard it will be to keep ecosystems. In those days, I supported a ‘let burn’ policy for managup with the need to re-seed areas USED TO BE MATURE FORESTS.” ing fire in wild landscapes. Leaving facing the prospect of ecological aside the problematic concept of collapse. It is estimated that at least wilderness (where First Nations people are liquid papered out 44,000ha of immature alpine ash forests in eastern Victoria are of history, and land is declared to be ‘pristine wilderness’ rather at risk of collapse (that is, conversion to non-native forest cover) than managed and co-created in conjunction with First Nations because of the 2019/20 fires. peoples) we argued that the Australian environment was In Australia, the threats posed to special ecosystems—like the adapted to fire, and that wildfire in large reserves would simply ancient vegetation in lutruwita/Tasmania that emerged when burn itself out as it hit natural buffers like old-growth forest. The Australia was part of the Gondwana supercontinent—is leading argument went that we needed less human intervention in manto even greater intervention on the ground. For instance, during aging wild ecosystems, and that if humans withdrew from active the 2020 fires, firefighters were deployed to a remote part of the management, the land would eventually pass back into equilibBlue Mountains to defend the only known natural grove of the rium as it recovered from impacts like logging and mining. world-famous Wollemi pines. Fire crews were dropped into the Fast forward to now, and we find ourselves in a different world. area to operate an irrigation system set up to protect the trees, Climate change is coming for the places we love and for which we with helicopters also doing water drops on the fire’s edge to worked so hard to protect. The impacts are everywhere and are reduce any impact on the pines. easy to locate—drought, flood, storm events, heat waves, rising It is the same dilemma overseas. During recent fire seasons in sea levels and so on. But I will just look at one: fire. North America, for instance, firefighters wrapped fire-resistant In a warmer world, fire seasons are already getting longer and blankets around ancient trees as blazes raced through Califormore intense. Higher temperatures and extreme drought condinia’s world-famous Sequoia National Park. While sequoia trees tions driven by climate change increase the risk of the hot, dry are very fire resistant and have evolved to survive flames—the weather that is likely to fuel wildfire. same as most eucalypts—the scale and frequency of fires is
ENDLESS ‘GHOST FORESTS’ OF DEAD TREES
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