Margaret Panter has produced a useful leaflet with photos and drawings to help people distinguish between Needle Grasses and Native Grasses. You can download a PDF version of the pamphlet here. Contact Margaret Panter on 5470 5072 between 7am and 7pm for more information.
Margaret has provided us with these links to some other Needle Grass brochures:
FOBIF now has an Instagram feed and we would like invite members and supporters to send their local nature photos to info@fobif.org.au so we can include them on the site. To have a look at the site select the new Instagram button on the FOBIF website or search in Instagram for ‘boxironbarkforests’.
People travelling on Harmony Way south of Harcourt in the last few months have been intrigued by what seems to be a new kind of mistletoe on roadside Red Gums.
Creeping Mistletoe on Red Gums, Harmony Way: it’s not new, just a bit more obvious now.
Although maybe more prolific than in previous years, the mistletoe isn’t new: it’s Muellerina eucalyptoides, or Creeping Mistletoe. Here’s the description from Ern Perkins’ Castlemaine Plant List online:
‘It is common in the Harcourt-Faraday area where it grows on Red Gums. It is abundant along the old Calder Highway in the vicinity of the vineyards.
‘Identification:
Ern adds: ‘Creeping Mistletoe has a wide range of hosts, including introduced trees, such as the Plane Trees in Collins Street and St Kilda Road. I have not seen it on anything but Red Gums locally.’
Creeping Mistletoe flower: the flowering season is just finishing for this intriguing plant.
Vicroads engineers met again with residents in Newstead last week to go over objections to tree removals along the Pyrenees Highway [see our previous posts]. Numerous objections to the basis of the project were raised. Some were accepted as legitimate—statistics regarding traffic flow and accident occurrence, for example, were found to be flawed. Nevertheless, none of these objections were enough to change the nature of the project. Engineers present made it plain that in their view it will go on as planned, sooner or later, further consultations notwithstanding.
The crux of the matter, it seems to us, is that Vicroads is focused on one side of the accident equation. As we reported last week, road authorities attribute the rate of serious injury to two factors: likelihood of a crash, and impact if the crash occurs. Residents’ proposals have centred on the first: avoiding crashes altogether, by reducing speed limits and installing new signage with various road surface improvements. Vicroads works from the assumption that crashes will happen anyway, and we should work to soften their effects. Of course if a car veers off the road a wire rope barrier will soften the impact of the accident. But what if, owing to its lower speed, the car was not to leave the road at all? The two sides of the argument bounce off each other with no result other than the inevitable: the project will proceed…
One revealing moment in last week’s discussion: engineers claimed that for every request they have for a speed limit reduction, there are ten objections to it. We’re pretty cautious about this claim, which sounds a little self serving. We remember that we were offered the same reasoning ten years ago when we asked for a reduction on the Castlemaine Elphinstone road…and a few years after that, the limit was reduced, with little or no community objection…
Residents have sought the assistance of the Minister and the Member for Bendigo West, Maree Edwards, who has been co operative, so far. Consultations are ongoing.
Connecting Country is preparing a grant application to Mount Alexander Shire Council for an Eltham Copper Butterfly project, working with local ecologists Elaine Bayes and Karl Just, seeking funding to monitor and protect this threatened species. FOBIF has agreed to be a partner in the project.
The aim of the project is to raise public awareness about the butterfly, and help develop a small team of citizen scientists trained in ECB monitoring. Castlemaine’s Kalimna Park is home to the largest remaining population of the threatened Eltham Copper Butterfly. However, little is known about this fascinating species, which continues to be threatened by proposed fuel reduction burning. The project uses engagement tools to raise local awareness about the butterfly’s ecology, and builds community skills and capacity to monitor and protect the species into the future.
As we’ve noted below, insect populations worldwide are under pressure, and the more we know about them, the better we will understand how to keep populations healthy. It goes without saying that the presence of the Eltham Copper in Kalimna park is invaluable asset to the community. An example: the annual gathering of the South East Australian Naturalists Association will bring many visitors to this region in October, and one of the attractions will be the chance to see the butterfly…
As we pointed out a few weeks ago, there’s increasing anecdotal evidence of a decline in local insect populations. The evidence is mounting that this is a world wide problem.
On Helge Track: Reports say that butterflies and moths are among the worst hit worldwide. ‘For example, the number of widespread butterfly species fell by 58% on farmed land in England between 2000 and 2009.’
According to the latest scientific review, ‘More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.’
The news is depressing. What’s just as important is, what we can do about it. The suggestions are unsurprising: ‘Ultimately the size of the human population and how much land it uses for the food, energy and other goods it consumes determine how much wildlife is lost. Protecting wild spaces is important, as is reducing the impact of industrial, chemical-based farming. Fighting climate change is also vital, particularly for the many insect species in the tropics. So demanding political action, eating fewer intensively farmed meat and dairy products, and flying less could all help.’
DELWP is currently running an online survey to gauge community attitudes to forest management. According to a Department press release,
‘The Forest Reform Program is the bringing together of land and fire managers, Traditional Owners and Victorian communities to plan and deliver integrated forest and fire management across the state.
‘The aim of the program is to deliver great community value from our forests to all Victorians.
‘This process includes a clear commitment to work in partnership with Traditional Owners to deliver the Forest Reform Program and manage Victoria’s forests into the future.”
‘The survey is giving people an opportunity to provide their views on what they value in our forests, how forest management can be improved and what they would like from forests in the future.’
You can find the survey here. It suffers from the very serious fault of all voluntary surveys: namely, by definition it is not a random survey of a cross section of the population. Instead, it records the views of those most interested in promoting their views. All the same, it’s at least a partial indicator of what people think, and we recommend you have a go.
The survey closes on March 31.
FOBIF has just received the following communique from Newstead 2021:
Community group Newstead 2021 Inc today has been informed by Bendigo West MP Maree Edwards that VicRoads’ proposed Pyrenees Highway Safety Improvements project between Newstead and Muckleford South have been postponed.
N2021 Inc submitted a petition with 532 signatures to Ms Edwards today asking the work be deferred until community concerns are addressed.
The project proposes to install wire rope safety barriers and guard fences, seal some sections of road shoulders and parts of intersections and remove roadside vegetation including 146 mature trees from Swift Parrot habitat.
Members of the Newstead community acknowledge the importance of road safety, but have been questioning the modelling, data and evaluations – economic, social and environmental – behind the project since 2016.
Newstead 2021 Inc has written to the Roads Minister, Jaala Pulford, about the project.
The group is asking that work to remove roadside trees be halted and the project commencement is deferred until community concerns are fully addressed.
These include the accuracy and reliability of environmental evaluations, traffic counts (eg. VicRoads project quotes 6400 vehicles per day. Local community counts suggest the figure is closer to 3600 per day), road crashes (eg. The project selects 2009 – 2013 data only) and modelling.
N2021 is also asking that the cost:benefit analysis and workings be shared with the community and that speed limits on this section of road are assessed in line with other reductions put in place along the Pyrenees Highway locally.
Green Gully residents are particularly concerned about safety and speed along the stretch of road and especially at their Cemetery Rd intersection where the school bus stop is located.
“Community members believe signage, road edging improvement along the entire section, line marking and changing driver behaviour would be more cost-effective to improve safety and minimise risk without removing 146 native trees,” resident Janet Barker said.
Residents are concerned about this project in light of VicRoads extensive tree removal and overengineering along the Calder Highway at Ravenswood near the Maldon/Mildura exit.
Mal ‘Jase’ Haysom has produced yet another useful map of our area: this time, roads and tracks in the Taradale Nature Conservation Reserve and [almost] adjacent State Forest. The map can be found online here, or a paper version can be picked up from the Castlemaine Market Building. It’s free.
These small but intriguing forest patches were threatened with serious damage in the planning stages of the Calder Freeway Malmsbury and Taradale bypass ten years ago: early proposals would have had the road slice into the Nature Conservation Reserve. Intervention by FOBIF activists persuaded engineers to route the freeway between the two forest patches. The freeway also has a wildlife underpass, allowing animal traffic between the two forest reserves. Judging from the look of the underpass, it’s very heavily used.
UPDATE ON THIS POST: Please see the press release above relating to this matter
Vicroads is planning to begin its tree clearance works on the Pyrenees Highway east of Newstead this week. Works were planned to start today (the 29th), but we’ve seen no sight of them yet.
Subsequent to the recent Newstead ‘consultation’ meeting, the roads authority has distributed a quantity of material to local residents explaining the project and providing answers to residents’ objections to the vegetation clearance.
The key documents can be found here:
file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/IE/QR7OSTPD
/Pyrenees%20follow%20up%20information%20220119.pdf
file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/IE/QR7OSTPD
/Pyreness%20drop%20in%20notes%20080119.pdf
As readers will remember, FOBIF’s objections to large tree removal were accompanied by a number of proposals including: reduction of the speed limit on the road, and installation of advisory ‘black spot’ signs: the point of these being to reduce the likelihood of an accident. As we have pointed out, Vicroads’ strategy in this case is not to reduce accident probability, but to soften the impact of accidents. According to Vicroads’ tree policy ‘The risk of death and serious injury is directly related to the likelihood of a crash and the impact forces on the vehicle occupants when a vehicle impacts an object.’ Of these two factors, the current project is focussed on one only: ‘This project is focussed on improving road safety outcomes for roads users who are involved in a crash.’ (FOBIF emphasis).
Vicroads’ modelling seems to have been focussed entirely on this angle: and, of course, if you run into a tree at 80 the effect is pretty well the same it would be at 90. The question is, would the accident have happened at all at 80? Numerous campaigns designed to convince us that speed kills would suggest not.
As to what decisions will be made on speed limits, we’re not clear.
A further objection, that the project will damage Swift Parrot habitat, is dealt with in the Vicroads material, essentially via the provision of offset plantings in the St Arnaud area. FOBIF has had no response to our question as to how the removed trees are valued, but we assume that the answer is that the offsets will at least equal the removed trees.
As we’ve suggested before, this project, like many before it, is a small example of a very large principle dominant in our culture: where an apparent conflict is seen between humanity and nature, it is nature which loses out every time. The principle is clearly seen in the current predicament in the Murray Darling, where the underlying principle of governments has been that there be ‘no negative socio-economic impact’. The principle is perfectly encapsulated in Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s statement today: ‘I’m concerned about fish, but I’m more concerned about people.’ The end result now most likely: not only has nature been seriously damaged, but the region, and Australia more generally, is facing a serious social and economic crisis as well.
And here’s a footnote: last July the French government controversially reduced the speed limit on secondary roads from 90 kph to 80 kph. The French Prime Minister released figures this week showing persuasively that 116 fewer people had died on the roads in the period since the change, compared to the average over the preceding years.
White Everlasting Daisy (Chrysocephalum baxteri)
Slime Mould
Dunns Reef
Tall Greenhoods
Gnat Orchid
Blue Caladenia
Downy Grevillea (Grevillea alpina)
Coliban river upstream of the Gibbons bridge
Coliban river upstream of the Gibbons bridge.
Coliban river upstream of the Gibbons bridge.
Sailors Gully ruin
Loddon River near Vaughan
Cortinarius archeri
Mycena subgalericulata
Cortinarius rotundisporus
Cortinarius cystidiocatenatus,
Ramaria sp.
Pink Heath
Mount Alexander
Mount Alexander
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Click on image for info/order page
Click on image for info/order page