Not just a pretty tail: The lyrebird is a superb firefighter

Darren Gray, Rural affairs reporter for The Age
The Age, 4/3/2015 

Superb lyrebirds reduced forest litter by 1.66 tonnes per hectare over a nine-month period. Photo: Alex Maisey

Victoria's forests have an unlikely fire warden: the superb lyrebird.

Lyrebirds are reducing the chance of fires occurring in the areas where they forage ... and unburnt patches within large wildfires are really important sites for animals to survive.

New research has revealed the iconic songbird reduces the risk of bushfire by spreading dry leaf litter and digging safe havens that help other species survive fires.

The lyrebird's foraging reduces forest fuel loads, which in turn can reduce the risk of life-threatening fires, researchers from La Trobe University have found.

With feet like garden rakes, and an appetite for worms and bugs that live in the soil, lyrebirds sift the forest floor, burying the leaf and other forest ltter, speeding up leaf decomposition, and reducing the amount of fuel for bushfires.

Their foraging was also found to inhibit the growth of ferns, grasses and other plants which would otherwise contribute more potential bushfire fuels.

The research, an honours project for student Daniel Nugent, quantifies the lyrebird's role in forest litter reduction.

Conducted in burnt and unburnt sites in the footprint of Black Saturday's two most devastating blazes, it showed that lyrebirds reduced forest litter by a massive 1.66 tonnes per hectare over a nine-month period.

Researchers produced these measurements by comparing the amount of litter in unfenced plots of the forest, with neighbouring plots that had been fenced off.

"Lyrebird foraging areas may therefore suppress the horizontal and vertical spread of fire, limiting the extent and severity of fire events. Our modelling suggests that the reduction in litter fuel loads brought about by lyrebird foraging has the potential to result in markedly subdued fire behaviour relative to that predicted in the absence of lyrebirds," the report said.

"The loss of lyrebirds from forests adjacent and within urban areas could result in higher fuel loads and an increased likelihood of wildfires threatening human life," said the report, published in the CSIRO's journal Wildlife Research.

Steve Leonard, research fellow in the Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution at La Trobe University, said lyrebirds performed their protective role as they searched for food.

"They forage like chickens, they've got big feet with really long toes so they've basically got rakes for feet. They rake through the litter looking for worms and little bugs, stuff to eat. They're digging through that humus and litter layer looking for little invertebrates and whatever they can find," he said.

"Through that process they reduce the litter fuel load by, on average, 25 per cent, or about 1.6 tonnes per hectare. And we put those figures into a fire behaviour model and found that that level of fuel reduction is enough [that] in low fire-danger weather conditions it excludes fire, fire's not possible under low to moderate conditions. But even in more extreme conditions the fire behaviour will be more moderate, [with] lower rates of spread, lower flame height, so a less intense fire," he said.

"Our conclusion is that lyrebirds are reducing the chance of fires occurring in the areas where they forage and the ecological significance of that is that unburnt patches within large wildfires are really important sites for animals to survive post-fire," Dr Leonard said.

Alex Maisey, convener of the Sherbrooke Lyrebird Survey Group, welcomed the research.

"It really shows that it's an important species to maintain through predator control of the fox, even deer control, for maintaining the habitat in those key areas where the lyrebirds breed," he said.

There’s an urge to fuel reduction burn, but not to learn

Phil Ingamells, Victorian National Parks Association spokesman
Weekly Times Now, 278 August 2014 

FOR three years the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission’s independent monitor Neil Comrie has strongly advised the Victorian Government to abandon one of the commission’s recommendations: the call to burn 390,000ha of public land annually for fuel reduction.

Yet Environment Minister Ryan Smith is sticking to that target and, even more puzzling, DEPI plans to increase that annual target to an extraordinary 450,000ha.

Former police chief commissioner Comrie understands the importance of fuel reduction, but he sees the target as unachievable, and that it compromises a strategic burn program.

He says it “will not necessarily reduce the bushfire risk to life and property, and may have adverse environmental outcomes”. That’s an expensive lose-lose situation.

Minister Smith says he is listening to the latest science, but is he?

Five leading fire behaviour scientists in Australia, Canada and the US have demonstrated that managing the ignition point of a fire through increased capacity for rapid attack, and by closing public access to remote areas during high fire danger days, was more effective in reducing the extent of fire than fuel management.

And other published papers, from leading Australian fire scientists and ecologists, convincingly show that fuel reduction burns are most effective when performed close to the assets they are meant to protect. This is the sort of strategic effort — small, difficult and expensive local burns — that Neil Comrie says is less likely to happen when managers are struggling to sign off on a large area target.

Many studies show that we now have very little long-unburnt bush left in Victoria, even in remote areas such as the Mallee, and that the impacts on native wildlife are serious and growing.

One of the best ways to survive a severe bushfire is to have your own well-designed bunker at your home. That crucial fact never made it to the commission’s final recommendations.

We need to develop a more comprehensive strategy for bushfire management and direct more attention to the whole range of available tools, including building a serious rapid attack capability, encouraging well-designed bunkers in existing homes, and developing a far more strategic burn program. Lives would be saved, and our great natural heritage would benefit.

Phil Ingamells is Victorian National Parks Association spokesman

The inconvenient truth is out, logging forests increases bushfire severity

Peter Campbell

Letter to the Editor, The Age. Submitted 4/8/14

The inconvenient truth is out, logging forests increases bushfire severity according to recent research from Professor Lindenmeyer.

This was demonstrated during the Black Saturday bushfires when previous logged drier forests were decimated by bushfire while intact moist forests in Melbourne's water catchments resisted burning.

Yet the Napthine government continues to fund Vicforests, a sheltered workshop for environmental vandals who log them, while grossly overstating the paltry number of jobs in this destructive industry.

It time this logging stopped and our Central Highlands forests were protected in a Great Forest National Park for future generations to appreciate.

External links

• Logging can 'greatly increase' fire severity for 50 years, researchers say - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) : 

Logging can 'greatly increase' fire severity for 50 years, researchers say

ABC 774 Melbourne, August 4th, 2014

Photo: The Black Saturday fires in Victoria in 2009 killed 173 people.  Photo by: Andrew Brownbill: AAP

Logging practices can "greatly increase the severity of fires" in extreme weather conditions such as Black Saturday, Australian researchers have said.

Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) and Melbourne University examined hundreds of thousands of trees burnt in the 2009 bushfires in Victoria, which claimed the lives of 173 people on a day of extreme temperatures and high winds.

They found that the increased fire risk began about seven years after an area had been logged and lasted for another 50 years.

Professor David Lindenmayer, from the ANU, said the results showed the fires around Kinglake and Marysville were about 25 per cent more severe due to the clear-felling of forest in the area.

"If we cut down a forest tomorrow, we're still going to be adding to the fire risk in 50 years time," he told 774 ABC Melbourne.

Professor Lindenmayer said the big concern was that many of the areas recently logged were around towns such as Healesville, Toolangi, Warburton, Noojee and Marysville.

"It's a really important outcome, and quite a concerning one, given how much logging has taken place in the last 40 years and how much logging is planned in the next five to 10 years," he said.

Professor Lindenmayer said there should be no logging within five to 10 kilometres of towns to ensure "that we don't add extra risk through extra logging".

"There's a need to comprehensively revise forest policy in this state to reduce fire risk," he said.

"We need to let those forests recover and we need to develop the wet forests... which do have a fire suppressive effect."

Trees: the ultimate green investment?

Gregory Moore
Climate Spectator , 30 Jan 2012

The Conversation

Perhaps it is a pity that so many Australians think of our parks, gardens, streetscapes and urban landscapes only in terms of their aesthetics. While green spaces are beautiful and decorative, these attributes can mask the many functions vegetation serves in cities, to the point where its economic, social and environmental benefits are overlooked. Yes, trees are beautiful; but more than that, they save our cities a lot of money.

Cities are biodiversity hot spots because of the variety of habitats available in public and private open space, including front and back yards. Urban landscapes and trees have been wonderful but silent assets in our cities for decades and even centuries.

They are major urban infrastructure assets. I often hear it said that; “There are better things to use water on than plants and gardens”, but I challenge you to name them. What else delivers so many benefits immediately: benefits that last centuries into the future, which prolong healthy lives and make cities both sustainable and livable?

At a time of climate change, it is worrying that both private and public open spaces are threatened by urban renewal and development that puts at risk long-term sustainability. In many of these developments there is insufficient open space – public or private – to plant large trees, and the opportunities for vegetation to ameliorate the heat island effect, lower wind speed, provide shade and reduce energy use are lost. This affects the economic viability of such developments, as well as its long term environmental sustainability.
The shade provided by trees drops temperatures by up to 8°C: there is real economic value in that. Shade can reduce air conditioner use by 12-15%, which also decreases carbon emissions from our largely brown-coal-generated electricity.

When 11 million trees were planted in the Los Angeles basin, it saved US$50 million per annum on air conditioning bills. Large trees were removed from school grounds in the name of safety after the Black Saturday fires, without thought of the shade they provided. Consequently, large shade sails had to be provided to protect students from excessive summer sun.

It is more difficult to place a value on reduced wind speeds (up to 10%) due to the presence of vegetation, or on protection that trees provide from hail. However, we do know that under climate change winds will be stronger and that severe storms will be more prevalent. Indeed, Victoria has already suffered the effects of several major wind and hail storm events over the past few years.

Urban vegetation also removes atmospheric pollutants. It was calculated that the vegetation of New York provided US$10 million of benefit in pollution removal in 1994. Sadly there are few similar studies for Australian cities. However in the only study of its kind, economists found that each Adelaide street tree provides a minimum annual benefit of $200 per year and that it was an under-estimate of the real value.
Vegetation also holds and absorbs water during more intense rainfall events – unlike concrete and paved surfaces. The economic value of reducing localised flooding could be substantial.

Vegetated landscapes, especially those containing trees, improve human heath, extend life spans, reduce violence and vandalism, and lower blood pressure. Vegetation humidifies the air, easing breathing and reducing the need for medication in those with respiratory difficulties. In reducing the urban heat island effect, trees can also substantially reduce the excess deaths that occur, predominantly among the elderly, during heat waves. It is often forgotten that the fires of Black Saturday killed 172 people, but the heat wave surrounding it was responsible for 374 deaths.

There is ample evidence that treed landscapes foster both active and passive recreation. Green and leafy environments will be one of the vital strategic tools in dealing with children lacking exercise and becoming obese, encouraging an ageing population to exercise and curbing ever-increasing health costs. The human health benefits can save society a truck-load on medical and social infrastructure costs.

Melbourne is one of Victoria’s biodiversity hot spots. The parks, gardens, streets and front and backyards provide a very diverse range of plant species that generate a myriad of habitats and niches for wildlife. High density urban developments and inner city renewal make it virtually impossible to grow trees in places that were once green and leafy. We rarely ever see the real costs of such developments.

In the past decade tree populations in many Australian cities have declined, particularly with the loss of private open space. While the costs, damage and nuisance values attributed to trees are widely known, the benefits they provide are often subtle and under-appreciated.

Urban vegetation provides economic and ecological services to society. They are assets which warrant the expenditure of resources such as labour, energy and water. Such expenditure is not wasted: trees and urban landscapes provide far more economically and ecologically than they use. In any comprehensive and fair calculation urban trees and landscapes are worth more than they cost.

Gregory Moore is a Doctor of Botany at University of Melbourne

Gains hard to price

Jeff Dickinson, Tecoma
Letter, The Age, 21 June 2011

VICFORESTS' David Walsh says that wood would have gone to waste had the trees killed or severely damaged in the 2009 bushfires not been harvested (''Call for inquiry as salvaged wood exported'', The Age, 20/6). What a profit-at-all-cost mentality.

Leaving fire-killed or damaged trees standing is not a waste. They create structure in the regenerating forest, sheltering new growth and providing homes to badly affected wildlife.
Leadbeater's possum, for example, will rely on the protection provided by the hollows created in these trees to recover their populations over the ensuing years. And these trees will continue to store the carbon they have absorbed from the atmosphere for years to come.

We all enjoy the benefits of a healthy natural environment, even though it is not always recognised by some as an economic benefit.

Smoke and mirrors

Timothy Cleary, Werribee
The Age (letter), 6 October 2010

I agree with Jill Redwood (Letters, 5/10) and her concern for our forests and their wildlife, but I disagree with the impact that she attributes to logging.

In the past seven years, about a third of Victoria's forests have gone up in smoke due to wildfire. In the same period, less than 0.5 of 1 per cent has been logged. Minister Gavan Jennings may be making more national parks to ''save'' our forests (and marginal Labor seats in inner Melbourne), but this is not the same as fireproofing them.

Management helps our state icon

Max Rheese, Victorian Lands Alliance, Benalla
The Age (letter), 4 October 2010

HIS zeal for an end to sustainable catchment timber harvesting obscures the facts for David Lindenmayer (''Hello possum, you're an emblem of extinction'', The Age, 2/10), who states ''forestry is the key threatening process'' endangering habitat for Leadbeater's possum.

As the article states, Leadbeater's possum was rediscovered in 1961, in Central Highlands forests ravaged by fires in 1939, recovering to a population of 8000 despite 150 years of timber harvesting.

Lindenmayer and many others have previously identified fire as the ultimate determinant of forest structure in Victoria, while arguing for an end to timber harvesting in native forests. They have thus identified a supposed solution that will have no effect on fire as the primary cause of habitat change.

In his book On Borrowed Time, Lindenmayer argues for improved fire management to protect our forests, a commonsense argument recently accepted by the Victorian government.

Leadbeater's possum and other forest species will benefit enormously if their habitat is managed for the primary risk potentially affecting tens of thousands of hectares of habitat on a single day, as we saw on Black Saturday, rather than campaigns against socially beneficial timber production spread over a few hundred hectares in an entire year.

Hello possum, you're an emblem of extinction

Adam Morton
The Age, October 2, 2010

IT IS not every day you get a chance to make an animal extinct twice. According to scientists, Victoria is steadily working on it.

Leadbeater's possum, a marsupial endemic to native forest on Melbourne's fringe, was declared extinct in the 1950s, apparently wiped out by agricultural land-clearing around the Bass River in South Gippsland.

It was rediscovered near Marysville in 1961 - an event considered so momentous it was chosen as one of the state's two faunal emblems.

Its population peaked at about 8000 in the 1980s, but the last possum in captivity in Victoria died in 2006, and last year's Black Saturday bushfires devastated its main home in the central highlands, burning 42 per cent of the permanent reserve system in which it lives.

Leading scientists say its survival is now at risk from the state's forestry industry, particularly the ongoing "salvage logging" operation aimed at maximising timber yields from blackened areas.

Six weeks after Black Saturday, in a report seen by The Age, a US Burned Area Emergency Response team and Victorian bureaucrats advised the Brumby government that extreme care was needed during the salvage logging of large hollow-bearing trees that give the possum its home.

It said: ''It is recommended that none be removed from fire-affected areas known to contain Leadbeater's possum, powerful and sooty owls, and within Leadbeater's possum reserves.''

Scientists working in the central highlands claim this advice has not been followed. David Lindenmayer, an Australian National University ecologist who has spent 25 years studying the possum, says that trees are regularly felled in areas important to the survival of Leadbeater's possum and other threatened species of possum, glider and bird.

While fire can be an effective way of creating the old-tree hollows that the possum thrives in, Professor Lindenmayer says some have been removed - at times through breaches of the Central Highlands Forestry Management Plan, which prohibits logging of pre-1900 trees.

He says the animal is being pushed ''incredibly close to extinction'' by the removal of its habitat through a combination of fire and salvage logging, and 40 years of clear-felling of unburnt forest.

''Forestry is the key threatening process,'' he says. ''Basically you have a part of the landscape that is non-functional for an animal, and then you add another one and another one. You may reach a stage where the entire landscape is essentially non-functional for animals to live in.

''I really think we need to revisit clear-fell logging of green forest in the central highlands, because after the fire its impact on the possum is being magnified.''

Professor Lindenmayer's concern is shared by Melbourne Zoo threatened species biologist Dan Harley, who earned a PhD studying a relic population of possums in Yellingbo Conservation Nature Reserve. "Tree hollows suitable for Leadbeater's take more than 200 years to form," Dr Harley says.

These claims are vigorously contested by VicForests, the state government forestry agency. It has rejected a claim by environmentalists, formalised in a complaint to the state Ombudsman, that it has illegally logged pre-1900 mountain ash, putting the possum at risk.

Michael Ryan, a VicForests forest scientist, says field surveys are carried out to check for potential Leadbeater's possum habitat before logging, and an exclusion zone created where necessary. He says there is also ''an extensive conservation reserve system'' designed to protect the possum.

VicForests is required by law to leave untouched any three-hectare area with more than 12 hollow trees, and retain four to five trees a hectare in all logged areas. Mr Ryan says clear-felling is used to replicate the natural regeneration process only.

The debate over the impact of salvage logging comes amid a bigger argument about the future of the native forest industry - and whether an impending decision on Tasmania's forests could put pressure on the Victorian government to consider a similar commitment.

Dr Harley estimates the population of Leadbeater's possum outside the central highlands would total fewer than 100, restricted to tiny pockets at risk from the next major bushfire.

''We've got a second chance, but the possum's entire distribution is confined to a 70 by 80 kilometre area. We don't have much margin for error.''

Trees die, life stays

Chris Owens, Lysterfield South

The Age (letter), 16 November 2010

MAX Rheese's assertion (Letters, 14/9) that species could be pushed to the edge of extinction by current logging policies is ''drawing a long bow'', noting Leadbeater's possum was discovered in regrowth forest burnt in the 1939 bushfires.

Abundant research exists on this possum that reveals it requires hollows for shelter and nesting and, while the 1939 bushfire may have killed the trees, the stumps remained with their hollows to provide a habitat for this and associated hollow-dependent fauna.

Hollows have been proven to take between 100 and 200 years to develop. Current logging practice revolves around clearfell of coups that are logged on 30-to-40-years rotations and therefore hollow-dependent fauna are essentially permanently excluded from these areas.

After 150 years of logging, the remaining old growth and high-conservation-value forests are the last of the last where species such as Leadbeater's possum, sooty owl and spot-tailed quoll cling to existence. Given that this logging of a public asset occurs at a loss to the taxpayer and against the wishes of 80 per cent of the population and sufficient plantation resources exist, why do we not follow the precautionary principle and protect these areas?

Hardly a danger

Max Rheese, Victorian Lands Alliance, Benalla
The Age (letter), 14 September 2010 

Sarah Rees and Jill Redwood (Letters, 11/9) ignore that native timber harvesting occurs on less than one tenth of 1 per cent of public forest in Victoria by claiming this contributes to the decline of species such as Leadbeater's possum. Get real.

Asserting any species is in danger from such a minuscule activity, thinly dispersed over thousands of square kilometres of bush, is really drawing a long bow, particularly when the once-thought-extinct Leadbeater's possum was rediscovered in 1966 in regrowth forest from the 1939 fires.

The small area of timber harvesting occurring in Victoria does not result in any net loss of forest, as all areas harvested are required to be regenerated. Rees and Redwood cannot see the forest for the trees as the ultimate determinant of forest structure in Australia is bushfire, not timber harvesting.

LETTER: Catchment cry

Robert Stephen, Monbulk
Letter to the editor, The Age, 19 February 2009

Every year we clear-fell 150 hectares of Melbourne's prime water catchment forest near the Thomson reservoir. We lose 20,000 megalitres of water (one full Maroondah dam) every year due to regrowth, which uses vastly more water than old growth.

Clear-felling turns wet sclerophyll forest into dry sclerophyll forest and drastically increases the risk of fire. To save our water supply and reduce catchment fire risk we must stop clear-felling our water catchments, especially the Thomson.

Link

See also: Stop logging Melbourne water catchments

LETTER: The cattlemen versus fire furphy

Adam Pepper, Ringwood East
Letter, The Age, 26/12/06

People such as Suryan Chandrasegaran (Letters, 23/12) who argue that grazing cattle through alpine areas reduces the severity of fires should produce the scientific research that supports their claim. I can't see cattle eating the dried bark or leaves off trees affected by one of the hottest and driest years on record.

We have not seen smoke like this before because we have not seen weather like this before. From what the maps have shown, the fires have swept through former cattle grazing areas, logging areas, wilderness areas and state parks with equal severity.

The reality with changes brought by climate change is that we are going to need new approaches to managing our environment. Management should be based on scientific evidence, not the interests of lobby groups whether they be cattlemen, environmentalists or the logging industry.