Page 246 - Week 01 - Thursday, 13 February 2020
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Bushfires—wildlife recovery
MS LE COUTEUR: My question is to the minister for the environment and relates to calls from ecologists for urgent action to encourage successful wildlife recovery after the bushfires. Minister, how are you acting on calls to urgently control feral animals in Namadgi and other recently burnt areas given that pest animals like cats thrive in newly burnt areas by preying on homeless and possibly starving wildlife?
MR GENTLEMAN: I thank Ms Le Couteur for her question. It is an important time as we move into the recovery mode for Namadgi National Park. We know that our people and the environment are resilient, but both need our support as we move into this phase.
The post-fire recovery team has been established to assess recovery needs across the conservation estate. The team is a multidisciplinary one. They are looking at specialising in the fire impact assessment on threatened species’ habitat and water quality. They cover all of those areas, including animals that might predate on other animals, particularly native species.
I can advise that prior to the fire actually getting to Tidbinbilla, we were successfully able to relocate a number of native species that are endangered. Bettongs and brush-tailed rock wallabies were transferred to other locations that were well away from the fire. Our rapid assessment team is in there at the moment. They will provide advice to me on which way to proceed from here.
MS LE COUTEUR: Has the government received advice about the impacts in Namadgi and other burnt areas given that it is only 17 years since the last major fire there and, despite the recent rain, the ACT is still in a drought, which presumably will make regrowth more challenging?
MR GENTLEMAN: We receive updates on the condition of the park and our catchments regularly. That has occurred since the 2003 fires. We have looked at the regrowth of vegetation in particular in—I will not use the word drought because we have not declared a drought in the ACT—what we have talked about as extended dry seasons. Hopefully, this rain will help us quite a bit.
There is a lot of information that has been brought together over many years on how to look at increasing the best ecology for the park. We have looked at the way that fire and native species work together. We know that hot fires, for example, will return a different sort of species in the forested area and cooler fires will return another sort of species in the forested area. Those species tend to provide the fuel load for those particular types of fires. We know—Indigenous culture has made us aware—that if you were to burn the landscape with cooler, slower fires, you would get the right species back to protect the landscape from hotter fires into the future.
A lot of work has been done. That all goes into the recovery part of this process.
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