Rubicon Forest Protection Group

Narbethong and Marysville have been wreathed in smoke over the last few weeks as fuel reduction burning gets underway in the mild Indian summer.

Rubicon Forest Protection Group members Bev Dick, Nick Legge and Jill Sanguinetti looked at six sections of forest near Narbethong to get a close-up view of the impact that planned burns may be having on forest health, plant life and biodiversity.

We looked at five different spots in Narbethong between Marysville Road, the Old Coach Road, Mayo’s Track and the Acheron Way

What we found was deeply disturbing.

The Rubicon Forest Protection Group is calling for meaningful standards to be set to guide the management of the Rubicon Forest under whatever land use regime is established following the cessation of native forest logging in Victoria.

We (Murrindindi, Victoria, Australia, Earth) face a triple crisis: global warming, biodiversity loss, global economy failure. 

It is huge: how to understand? how to engage? A useful principle here is: address the micro / immediate / local issues in ways which also contribute to redressing the macro / long term / global issues.  

The Rubicon Forest Protection Group applauds the current Change.Org petition urging the Minister for the Environment to stop broadscale burning of native forests. The RFPG urges members and friends to consider signing and circulating the petition. The RFPG also calls on the Minister to expedite the release of the new Victorian Bushfire Management Strategy before the (El Niño) summer of 23/24. 

Victoria’s fuel reduction burning regime is based on out-of-date scientific thinking. RFPG has written to Minister Stitt calling for a proper comprehensive ecological review, with public input, of planned burning which is a core element of Victoria’s bushfire protection regime. Letter (3 April 2023) here.

The Commonwealth's proposed "Nature Repair Market" is bad policy. Headline policy failures include: high transaction costs; the lack of validated methodologies for the assessment and measurement of biodiversity; and neglect of the scope for strategic action on biodiversity loss (including effective regulation and targeted subsidy programs).

Treeferns, critical players in Ash Forest Ecosystems, are Being Smashed by VicForests

Treeferns play a critical role in sustaining the complex ecosystems of Victoria's state forests. They also contribute significantly to reducing fire risk and mitigating fire damage. 

The smashing of treeferns and failed understorey regeneration are the regular result of unconstrained logging by VicForests. The absence of treeferns in coupes which were logged in recent decades contrasts sharply with their prevalence in 1939 regrowth. 

Victoria has failed to comply with its obligations under the Central Highlands Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) as renewed in 2020. Like the other ‘modernised’ RFAs, the revised Central Highlands Agreement followed a 2 year public consultation and scientific assessment process. For Victoria to have breached so many of its provisions, while perhaps not corrupt, is certainly outrageous.

After several false starts, in June 2022 DELWP launched the Comprehensive Code Review, mandated through the 'modernised' regional forest agreements signed in 2020.

The Rubicon Forest Protection Group has given notice of our intention to submit to the Code Review. However, the more we focused on the Code the more obvious it became that the whole regulatory system is deeply flawed and that an isolated focus on the contents of the Code might not help forest conservation very much. The Code is flawed but it is part of a deeply flawed regulatory system. 

Following up RFPG's 29 July submission on the proposed revision of the Code of Forest Practice, we have today written to all Labor MPs alerting them to the 180 degree policy reversal from the Bracks Brumby period regarding the long-term planning provisions of the Code.