The Department of Sustainability and Environment's prescribed burn that got out of control in Wilson's Promontory National Park, has focused attention on the practice of prescribed (fuel reduction/"control") burning. The concept of prescribed burning in forests and parks was devised by a North American forester, named Cameron, in the 1920s and imported into Victoria shortly afterwards by the former Forests Commission.

The practice was developed by Cameron to increase timber production in Longleaf Pine forests by killing off non-timber plant species. The practice has persisted from the old Forest Commission days and is still a well-entrenched practice within the DSE bureaucracy.

Out of seven prescribed burns planned for ignition in the Otways within the next week or so, four are in logging coupes that have been clearfelled during the past few months. If any of these get out of control, Warrnambool's domestic water supply, already affected by logging, will be further affected by fire. All four coupes, including one near Stevenson Falls are within the catchment that supplies two-thirds of the town's water.

It's time that the practice of logging and burning our forests ended.

Stephen Chenery

In late November last year, VEAC released its recommendations for a single National Park spanning the Otway Ranges. VEAC had originally been asked by the Government to investigate upgrading the Angahook-Lorne State Park to a National Park. The Government later modified its request to include all public land between Anglesea and Cape Otway and all State Forest. State Forest is forest reserved for logging.

Since then both the State Government and the logging industry have misleadingly claimed that the proposed park will be nine times the size of the existing National Park without mentioning the fact that the Angahook-Lorne State Park and Carlisle State Park will make up a substantial part of the proposed Park.

In fact the proposed Otway Ranges National Park (102,470ha) is only just over two and a half times as large as the existing Otway National Park (12,900ha), Angahook-Lorne State Park (21,359ha), and Carlisle State Park (5,600ha). Therefore, just over half of the proposed Otway Ranges National Park is already protected under the National Parks Act.

For the proposed National Park to be complete, the public native vegetation in the Holywater Creek area and the headwaters of the Aire River must be included. The Holywater Creek area is unique for its range of vegetation types on sandy soils and its Masked Owl and Powerful Owl habitat. The headwaters of the heritage-listed Aire River, above the Aire Valley softwood plantation contain areas of Cool Temperate Rainforest, Tiger Quoll habitat and the popular Beauchamp Falls waterfall.

Stephen Chenery,
Otway Environment Council.

e*CO-RE*volt