Whipstick ‘in danger’

A group of bird, wildlife and nature conservationists say Department of Sustainability and Environment plans to burn in national parks around Bendigo are wrong when better protection will come from burning closer to suburban houses.Members of Northern Central Victorian Combined Environment Groups said yesterday they had talked to the department but were being told burns would take place on public land to meet recommended prescribed burn targets created by the Royal Commission into the 2009 bushfires.The target is five per cent of public land a year, which is twice the area of land burned before 2009.But group members said yesterday all available evidence showed fires in the Whipstick, north of Bendigo, and other parks would destroy bird, animal and plant species.Well-known artists John Wolseley and Stanley Farley said they had settled near the Whipstick to paint its beauty, which was unlike any other they had encountered around the world.“I am fascinated by the place of fire in our landscapes, and believe in the use of strategic and ecological burning,” Mr Wolseley said.“Our Box Ironbox forests are, however, one of those ecosystems where high-temperature burning – except for asset protection – can cause serious ecological damage.“The proposed burn program in the Whipstick and Kamarooka sections of the Greater Bendigo National Park could have disastrous long-term effects.”The combined environment groups’ spokeswoman Vanessa Richardson said the DSE’s decision to focus on national parks to meet the target was a knee-jerk response and, because fewer people lived close to national parks, was easy public land to select.She said the danger was that Bendigo forests would burn without research to determine the impact.The groups also claim the DSE has ignored its code of conduct by failing to ask the public about and creating areas of land that are exempt from prescribed burns. The environment groups want the DSE to fund an independent consultant to research the timing of prescribed burns and the impact on bird, animal and plant species.The public feedback period for the DSE’s plans ends on Monday at 4pm, after which the department says it will talk about the decision to locate most prescribed burns this year in national parks.