Protecting forests through education, litigation and exploration

https://www.kinglakefriendsoftheforest.com

Opposing planned burns and so called ‘Strategic Fire Breaks’ by:

– educating the public about the inefficacy of planned burning and the damage it does to biodiversity and threatened species
– continuing to gather evidence of fire-sensitive biodiversity values within planned burn areas.

In terms of educating the public we would like to produce visually compelling info flyers for distribution at events and in public spaces, and also a series of short videos for sharing on social media and digital platforms. The planned burning issue is complex, so we need experienced visual communicators to help us with this project.

We are finding that surveying for threatened plants is leading to the best outcomes for the forest in our communications with Forest Fire Management Victoria. It is also potentially an avenue for litigation.

This Autumn we succeeded in protecting patches of threatened Goodie pubescens that we found within planned burn areas, and thus reduced the area of forest burnt and protected areas of Damp Forest – a fire sensitive vegetation community.

We would like to continue surveying for plants, but to do this we require the assistance of experts because many of the species are cryptic and require specialised knowledge to identify. We would aim to conduct around 12 days of surveying with experts accompanying us. Often we have more than one expert accompany us on surveys so that we can break into groups and maximise the survey area.

We aim to bring two strategies (education and surveying) together in a day-long BioBlitz in Toolangi in November. The site is an area of extraordinary biodiversity that was scheduled to be burnt two years ago. Through a combination of threatened species surveys and public pressure we have successfully put the burn off both last year and this year, but we know that to do it again we have to ramp up our efforts.

A Bioblitz is an event where members of the public sign up to attend sessions with experts on a range of topics – birds, flora, nocturnal wildlife, invertebrates, aquatic life, fire behaviour – and collect data as citizen scientists. Given the demand for other BioBlitz events and the popularity of the spotlighting nights we have run in this forest, we expect this event will generate a lot of interest and publicity.