Citing climate change as a major driver of ecosystem decline, a Victorian Upper House committee has recommended trials to reintroduce dingoes as apex predators into Victoria’s parks and reserves, and the phasing out of 1080 baits to control invasive species. Source: Philip Hopkins for Timberbiz
The House’s Environment and Planning Committee also backed the Andrews Government’s Forestry Plan as a balanced way to increase forest conservation and transiting the forest industry to a plantation-based supply and recommended more humane ways to control cats.
However, the three National and Liberals on the committee, in a minority report led by Eastern Victoria MLC Melina Bath, strongly opposed the Forestry Plan and proposals to reintroduce dingoes as an apex predator.
Ms Bath, Shadow Assistant Minister for Public Land Use, said the minority report was prompted by concerns that the 11-person committee, which was stacked with Labor and Labor-voting independent MPs, would not impartially consider all the evidence presented at the hearings.
The 746-page committee report, which covers two volumes, contains 54 findings and 74 recommendations to avert major environmental threats from “invasive species, climate change and habitat loss and fragmentation”. The committee received 950 submissions and held 16 days of hearings.
The committee said climate change, caused almost exclusively from burning fossil fuels for energy and from greenhouse gases produced by agriculture and land changes, was driving ecosystem decline with devastating impacts for native flora and fauna. It urged detailed, localised projections of climate change to help plan and adapt biodiversity resilience.
The recommendation to reintroduce dingoes to create ecological benefits should be done with close involvement of traditional owners and with input from ecologists and dingo experts.
The trial would consult with adjoining landowners to ensure non-lethal protection of agricultural livestock, including the use of companion guard animals to protect stock and compensation for farmers whose livestock was predated by dingoes.
Legislation to control the management of invasive species should focus on “preserving biodiversity values as opposed to a focus on facilitating Victorian agriculture”, the inquiry said.
The phasing out of 1080 baits to control invasive species should go hand-in-hand with more government support for research and a wide use of more effective and humane ways to control pest animals.
The committee emphasised the role of both traditional owners in managing the environment and ecosystems such as forests and wetlands in sequestering carbon. “Climate change is driving more frequent and severe bushfires,” the inquiry found. These were devastating native fauna and “threatening the viability of the state’s ash forests, rainforests and other sensitive flora populations”.
The Government should work with First Nations experts in country and fire to examine the impacts of salvage logging on the regeneration of bushfire-affected forest ecosystems, and bushfires’ impact on threatened species, the inquiry said.
Ms Bath said the Opposition’s 50-page minority report gave a voice to the submissions and testimony ignored in the committee report. This testimony highlighted that much of the ecosystem decline was ‘at the Government’s own hand’ – “a direct result of poor government policy, inadequate execution of programs and mismanagement of major threats such as fire, invasive species and predators on public land”.
However, Ms Bath said the Opposition’s report backed the role of ‘traditional owners’ to reintroduce indigenous ‘cool burn’ techniques to complement the program of prescribed burns, and to help in conservation and land management.
The minority report’s recommendations and findings included:
- Abandon the ‘Safe Together’ fire policy, criticised by the Auditor-General as a failure, and adopt the 2009 Royal Commission’s fuel reduction target of 5 per cent of the forest.
- Bushfire, invasive species and introduced predators (and not sustainable timber harvesting) are the main threats to ecosystems.
- Victorian public and private land management is covered by a plethora of legislation and regulation which has not worked and impedes rather than supports continuous improvement.
- The ‘Victorian Forestry Plan’ fails to understand the long lead times, low returns and challenges of ramping up plantation supply, while VicForests professionally manages its 415,000 hectares of forest and meets audits of its environmental performance.
- We need a focussed forest fire organisation to manage fire preparation, mitigation and suppression.
- DELWP needs a demerger as it is a conglomerate on many unrelated functions. Staff responsible for public land should be relocated closer to the regions they manage.
- Employ a landscape-wide strategy for conservation management of threatened species, while more funding for local groups like Landcare would better control pests, weeds and animals.
The Government is expected to make a decision on the recommendations within six months.
The report: https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/epc-ic/article/4455
