Deborah Hunter President, Friends of Great Western Tiers Kooparoona Niara Conservation Officer, Mole Creek Caving Club. Correspondence: Submission for the Senate inquiry 15th April 2016 The response to, and lessons learnt from, recent fires in remote Tasmanian wilderness affecting the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, with particular reference to: a. the impact of global warming on fire frequency and magnitude; b. the availability and provisions of financial, human and mechanical resources; c. the adequacy of fire assessment and modelling capacity; d. Australia’s obligations as State Party to the World Heritage Convention; e. world best practice in remote area fire management; and f. any related matter. 1 Preamble This submission concerns the fire known as the Lake Mackenzie, Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS) incident number 236227. It later became known as the Mersey Forest complex of fires. We welcome any opportunity to make further representation should there be hearings into the fires. The catastrophic losses incurred elsewhere in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA) and high conservation value areas of recognised World Heritage status, 1 such as the Tarkine forests (takayna) are acknowledged but are beyond the scope of this submission. In making this submission, we express the greatest respect for all personnel involved in the dangerous and protracted effort to control and contain the fires. We make this submission in the spirit of helping to understand, address and prevent such devastation in the future. The first Tasmanians are respectfully acknowledged as traditional owners of this land, as is the name kooparoona niara. 2 Summary It is submitted that • Research on climate change and fire response must be restored and increased including CSIRO. • Inadequacy in response time and resources and skills in the Tasmanian fire fighting is evident and preparedness must be improved. • TFS communications and response considerably lagged events, TFS communications systems were not coping and failure of such protocols may have been related to assessment and prediction failures that require investigation and improvement. • Protection of what remains of the Central Plateau alpine vegetation and soils (consistent with the recommendations of the UNESCO Reactive Monitoring Mission to the Tasmanian Wilderness, Australia, 2015) and restoration of what is possible must be done, utilising local and indigenous communities. • Fire fighting detection, monitoring, assessment, reaction, resources and capacity must be restored and enhanced (consistent with the recommendations of the UNESCO Reactive Monitoring Mission to the Tasmanian Wilderness, Australia, 2015). Volunteer fire fighting teams’ skills and capacities must be improved to include advanced remote area skills in Tasmania. • A professional attitude that prioritises suppression of fires in reserved lands must supplant traditional political attitudes. • The impact of the fires on the behaviour of the karst drainage systems, water quality and karst ecosystems dependent on karst hydrology should be monitored on an ongoing basis. Sufficient resources must be allocated for proper and expert scientific methods to achieve this. The possible need to establish fauna sanctuaries must be investigated. The impact on future water supplies must be assessed. • Coverage maps showing extent as well as grades of severity in loss of vegetation and peat should be carried out as thoroughly as possible to learn as much as possible from the disaster and monitor any recovery and restoration. • This submission urges protection of the Great Western Tiers World Heritage Area (WHA) extensions in the secure conservation tenure of National Park, as recommended in the Report by UNESCO’s mission to Tasmania recently, as soon as possible. Inclusion in the new Park of the Central Plateau and other landscape elements of high conservation value contiguous with the WHA extensions should be considered as buffers and for long term viability. Remaining alpine areas must be protected alongside these buffering escarpment forests with increased firefighting training and allocated resources. 2 A folio of before-and-after photography has been assembled (Appendix 1). Photographic and written observations and records of the fire progress, extent and response to it were made throughout the alert period and into the “advice” period (held by the author). Website community information releases by the TFS were included. The setting is shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3, including the locations of photography used in this submission. Figure 1: Location of photographs in this submission, showing popular walking tracks including the Devils Gullet lookout and showing part of the World Heritage Area (purple transparency). The route traversed for before-and-after photographs (Appendix 1) is shown in the next figure. The scale bar shows 2 km. TheLISTmap, Tasmanian government. 3 Figure 2: Route traversed for before-and-after photographs, including pseudokarst shown in blue. The scale bar shows 1000 m. TheLISTmap, Tasmanian government. 4 Figure 3: The location from which most photographs of the fire in progress were taken is at “Fern-lea” (centre right). Marakoopa Café is shown at top, left of centre, while Chudleigh and Mole Creek (not labeled) are located at top on the red-marked B12 road. Liena is the cleared valley in top left, while Lorinna is just off-map to Liena’s north. TheLISTmap, Tasmanian government. 5 3 Submission to the terms of reference 3 (a) the impact of global warming on fire frequency and magnitude The impact of global warming on the geographic area at risk of fires should be added to this heading. In Tasmania this year, the geographic area affected by fires expanded into a region of alpine vegetation that is not fire tolerant, and fire has burnt the peat soils that vegetation grew upon. This alpine complex may not have experienced such fire for thousands of years. Excluding infrequent localised spot fires throughout the Holocene confined by waterlogged peat, the alpine vegetation of the region may have been established since the Last Glacial. It is apparent that rapid changes to the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and other earth systems, as manifestations of climate change, are already contributing to increased fire frequency and magnitude. A number of influences combined to result in the magnitude of the fire event that arose and spread onto the alpine Plateau. These include record dry and warm conditions over a long preceding period, a major dry lightning storm on 13th January, adverse wind direction and strength and apparently tardy detection of initial fires as well as tardy response. Research on climate change and fire response must be restored and increased including CSIRO. 3 (b) the availability and provisions of financial, human and mechanical resources It was only luck of wind direction that spared the communities of Liena, Lorinna, Mole Creek, Caveside and Western Creek. Instead, the highlands burned, while cinders and smoke affected communities of the adjoining lowlands for nine days of alert status from “watch-and-act” to “emergency.” Likely ignited by lightning on 13th January (Figure 4), the smoke from the fires was affecting nearby residents by the 18th (Figure 5), yet were only first officially reported by (or to) the Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS) on 19th of January (Figure 6). Tourism businesses were forced to close, and local tourism losses continued for up to three weeks (Figure 7). Alerts were first issued and resources were first mobilised on 19th January (e.g. Figure 6). Active fire-fighting including helicopter overflights continued until at least 12th March. The combined Tasmanian fire fighting effort lasted until withdrawal of interstate and new Zealand assistance on 14th March (TFS). The Lake Mackenzie- Mersey fire was the second largest fire, burning a reported 21,974 ha of alpine vegetation not known to regenerate after fire as well as commercial eucalypt forests and rainforests. 6 Figure 4: Lightning strikes over Fisher River valley from Devils Gullet lookout, 5.41 pm, January 13th. Danny Wilkinson. Figure 5: View from Caveside south-southwest across the escarpment of the Great Western Tiers towards Fisher River and Devils Gullet, 5.44 pm January 18th. No fire was yet reported. Deb Hunter. 7 Figure 6: TFS alert mapping, issued 7.24 pm on 21st January, showing fire first reported on 19th January, some days after it ignited and some 36 hours after fire in the Mersey valley was apparent to nearby residents. Tasmanian Fire Service. Figure 7: Looking across Western Bluff on the Great Western Tiers escarpment from Marakoopa Café, midday 21st January. The image shows the combined smoke from peat and forest fires, only 48 hours after the fire was first officially reported. The location the photograph was taken from is shown on Figure 3. Sarah Cooper, Marakoopa Café. Inadequacy in response time and resources and skills in the Tasmanian fire fighting is evident and preparedness must be improved. It was also evident to nearby residents from resources allocated to the protection of snarers’ huts and infrastructure that World Heritage Gondwanan alpine vegetation was of low priority in early fire suppression efforts. This smacks of a political agenda that threatens the values of the World Heritage 8 property. A professional attitude that prioritises suppression of fires in reserved lands must supplant traditional political attitudes. 3 (c) the adequacy of fire assessment and modelling capacity