Upper Yarra
Tuesday, 19 May, 2020
Search finds man in Warburton bushland
Macca's looks to be on its way
Looking back at a past pandemic
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Felling fans fires By Romy Stephens
No longer in lockdown Yarra Ranges residents that took to parks, reserves and golf courses over the days following.Cafes, restaurants and pubs will now await their reopening from 1 June. Read the full story on page 10
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Abi, 5 years old, from Launching Place enjoyed a return to golf last week as Covid-19 restrictions eased across the state. With restrictions easing from 11:59pm on 12 May, she was among hundreds of
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the dangers that come with this. “There’s no doubt that the most severe problems with fire are created by fire weather and climate but then logging adds significantly to that as well. “That’s a problem that we can do something about by not logging forests close to townships.” Melbourne University honorary associate professor in fire ecology and management, Kevin Tolhurst, disagreed with the research findings. “It was fairly inconclusive and what that comment paper really did was it didn’t actually provide any evidence for the argument or the conclusions they were drawing,” he said. “If you look at individual sites you could make an argument that a logged area is more flammable than a non-distrubed forest, for example. “But when you look at the whole landscape that’s not the case.” In a recent opinion piece, co-authored by Mr Tolhurst, he argued that it is poor science to suggest that timber harvesting leads to more severe fires based on selective, local-scale observations. “Some ecologists and conservationists, opposed to timber harvesting, are trying to use bushfire disasters as a lever to stop native forest harvesting, but their case is based on opinion, beliefs and selective science,” the paper read. Mr Tolhurst said he believed a better approach of studying landscape flammability would be to look at the temporal and spatial patterns of flammability across the landscape over numerous years. Continued page 10
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A leading Australian ecologist and former Warburton resident says Yarra Valley locals should be “very concerned” about the impact of logging on bushfire severity. Australian National University professor David Lindenmayer was among a group of five scientists that recently released a comment paper on the impacts of logging on recent summer bushfires. The research, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, found that logging had a profound impact on the severity of bushfires. Mr Lindenmayer has worked in the Yarra Valley and Central Highlands for about 37 years. He said there were numerous reasons for the research findings. “When a forest is logged a huge proportion of the biomass is actually left in the forest,” he said. “About two years later that material is burnt but only half is volatised, which is what is known as smoke. “Half of it actually stays in the forest, even though there has been a fire through it, and so that adds to the fuel.” Mr Lindenmayer said research found that logging also dried out forests, making them more flammable, by removing moist elements such as tree ferns. He added that forest regeneration created a field of young trees and those that die, because they lose the race for light, add to the fuel load. “The forest is drier, it has more fuel in it and the architecture of the forest has changed. They are the key mechanisms which are giving rise to this problem,” Mr Lindenmayer said. “The evidence of this is compelling.” Mr Lindenmayer said townships like Warburton should be concerned about the findings. “I worry about places like Healesville, like Powelltown and Noojee because of the proximity of high risk,” he said. “They should be very concerned, I used to live in Warburton, my wife’s family is from the Yarra Valley...I lost friends in Marysville, I lost friends at Steels Creek. I am acutely aware of