EUCALYPTUS FORESTS = HOT BUSH FIRES.

As always happens when people people join a FORUM to support a person or project they start to discuss other matters. Thus while I’m writing these posts in support of Peter Spencer I can not do much more that let people know why this courageous man has gone on a hunger strike. It must also be noted that every time I write the words Peter Spencer the powerful Google search engines will recognize his name and give it more prominence.

I posted my words yesterday on http://fayhelwig.com supporting the stand of Peter Spencer, who is on a hunger strike to draw attention to the lack of compensation for Australian country people who have had their rights to utilize their land, as they see fit, taken from them by Qld and NSW Government land grabs. I gained inspiration to write another post after reading comments on http://agmates.ning.com/group/peterspencerhungerstrike

Despite the fact that CO2 is a potent plant food, and that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would only result in a rise of 1 degree Celsius, why are we tying up vegetation? Wouldn’t it sequester more CO2 if trees were grown, the timber utilized, and then more trees grown in their place? Instead we have the ridiculous situation where vegetation is grown until senescence, then it falls down, cant be harvested or collected and adds to situation such as the recent ‘Black Friday’ here in Victoria? Comment from Colin J. Ely

Saplings clean much more CO2 out of the air and produce more O2. A plantation of new trees will help, rather than leaving the existing trees. Perhaps a compromise could be reached, a part of the land could be used as a plantation which could be used for logging once it has reached maturity. Just a thought. Comment by Leith Carnie.

Bushfire at Glen Aplin

This was the view from our farm boundary fence in October 2002 of a bush fire, on the other side of our Glen Aplin valley, which took the life of a local woman. The little clearing on the hill in the centre of this photo above is the Felsberg Winery.

The Felsberg Winery

Yes Colin, it would make more sense if the timber was utilized than to have such hot forest fires. This 2002 hot fire scarred the hill sides so that even 7 years later your can see the bare rocks and dead tree trunks behind the Felsberg Winery.

Leith it would be wonderful if these Eucalyptus trees could be thinned by logging for wood chip, rather than allowed to burn. There would be another advantage too.

These trees on the hills are relatively young trees. Very few of them have hollow limbs for bird nests or provide shelter for possums. These trees have grown across the hills in the last century since the introduction of the European bee as a pollinator. In Queensland, Eucalyptus trees have become a woody weed, stealing 2% of grassland every year. Because Eucalyptus trees are growing in thickets, not in open forest as was the situation 150 years ago, they result in fierce, hot bush fires as the flames ignite the canopy.

To prevent bush fires on our land I obtain a permit (another law) to burn our grassland every August or September while the weather conditions are favourable and pay a donation to the Rural Fire Brigade for their services.

Burning back

Here at Das Helwig Haus B&B the grass fire is lit near dusk at the end of winter when the air is already cool to burn off dry grass and leaf litter. Thus the ground is denuded of flammable material, which a month or two later could become fuel for a bushfire.

In the 1940’s, when I was a child, my parents moved to hill country at the base of the Bunya Mountains. I saw my father go out with a ring-barking axe and thin the young Eucalyptus trees on his land. There were two results

1. Grass grew freely as the trees died.
2. The creeks in the valleys became permanently flowing streams.

Terry Wright, another person writing on the same Forum as Colin and Leith wrote: Its about time some proper research was done into carbon sequestration. There is a school of thought that claims that a paddock of perennial pasture such as phalaris and or lucerne actively growing cleans more Co2 out of the air than all trees saplings or otherwise. When is someone going to collate the evidence and issue a definitive scientific statement as to exactly what the truth is.

I remember that my father, after ring-barking the Eucalyptus trees, planted the flat land beside the creek with lucerne (alfalfa), which flourished.

How much better would it be today for the residents of our cities, like Toowoomba, where their water reservoirs are situated in valleys surrounded by hillsides clad with Eucalyptus trees, if those trees were wood chipped (at least that would make use of them) or thinned. It never seems to occur to people that they do have a choice between trees growing thickly on the hills or water flowing through the valleys.

Today, thanks to the vegetation laws enacted by the Queensland and New South Wales State Governments people like my father can not go out with a ring-barking axe, poison or a bulldozer to thin the trees on their land and people like the residents of Toowoomba have no water in their reservoirs.

Peter Spencer has stood up in the courts of law in Australia to oppose these draconian laws. Please support Peter Spencer.

The story of the 2002 Glen Aplin bush fire is told in my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine.

Book cover

Technorati Tags: Australian, bush fires, Das Helwig Haus B&B, eucalyptus, Glen Aplin, Peter Spencer, Queensland, trees, Wildflowers wilderness and wine

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