Recent Wildfires in the Tasmanian Wilderness
Recent wildfires in the Tasmanian Wilderness The 2016 and 2019 Tasmanian wildfires burnt upwind of the most important Gondwanan refuges that remain - Mt Anne, Mt Bobs, Federation Peak and the Eastern Arthurs, New River headwaters, the Du Cane Range, the Walls of Jerusalem, Mt Read, the Tyndall Range, the lower Gordon River and the entire Tarkine rainforest (Huskisson River in the south and the Rapid River in the north). Aerial documentation of the south-eastern part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA) in March 2019 shows that fire damage to sensitive vegetation, although not wholly catastrophic, was extensive and locally extremely severe. For many areas the consequences will be permanent. A small selection of images from the flight is included below. Of even greater concern than the damage done, however, was that, with uncontrolled fire widespread through the landscape in 2016 and 2019, a brief period of severe or catastrophic fire conditions would have obliterated Tasmania’s most important stands of Gondwanic vegetation. In hot, dry, windy conditions rainforest does burn – the Southern Ranges, Mt Picton, the Raglan Range, Frenchmans Cap, Mt Murchison, Algonkian Mountain, the upper Jane River, the Meredith Range and many other places bear grim testament to that. The effects of climate change, combined with the absence of an effective means of immediately suppressing remote wildfires, pose a catastrophic threat to irreplaceable Gondwanan flora. This vegetation forms a major component of the Outstanding Universal Value of the TWWHA. Important tracts of these ancient life forms also occur outside the TWWHA. Climate change is creating unprecedented levels of dry-lightning strikes and resultant wildfires in the Tasmanian wilderness.
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