Keen local field naturalists, citizen scientists and anyoneone who appreciates getting out in the forest is being invited to join an upcoming wildlife monitoring event being hosted by the Victorian National Parks Association.

Spotlight on Wombat Forest takes place Tuesday, December 5 from 10am to 4pm and will involve carrying out some valuable wildlife monitoring activities.

After 10 years of surveying wildlife across the forest, the Victorian National Parks Association took a break after the massive storm in 2021, but is now heading back with a new project aimed at surveying for threatened species across the areas impacted by the storm.

Those who participate in the event will help collect, reset and reinstall a series of wildlife cameras. No experience is necessary and all training will be provided. However, the activity is not suitable for children.

Registrations are required with the event being run through the NatureWatch Program.

I was very concerned when I read the article “Wombat State Park on its way, finally” in The Local (Edition 288, September 11, 2023). The promised park is the Wombat-Lerderderg National Park, not a state park. In 2010 Wombat Forestcare launched a campaign for the Wombat Forest to be protected as a state park.

However, in 2019, the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) recommended that the
Wombat Forest become a combination of national, regional and conservation parks. The Victorian
government has accepted most of the recommendations.

In most of the coupes at Babbington Hill nearly every large log from the wind fallen trees has been salvaged. This is not “every tree removed, beginning with 8000 square metres at Babbington”. However, a 2-acre log landing was created and that did involve the removal of all standing trees.

I have no idea where the information that VEAC set up three storm recovery meetings at Blackwood, Bullarto and Barkstead came from. These meetings were organised by DEECA to inform the public about firewood coupes and other storm recovery works.

It is two years, not 20, since the Victorian government undertook to create the Wombat- Lerderderg National Park. The state government has allocated $4M to survey the boundaries and the work is progressing.

From: Gayle Osborne, Convenor, Wombat Forestcare

(Editor’s Note: This letter has been edited for space. The article was based on information supplied.)
Letters to the editor are always welcome. Email news@tlnews.com.au Any addressed Dear Sir will be deleted. You know why 🙂

Words: Kevin Childs

Signs are emerging that the long-promised Wombat State Park may become a reality.

This comes at a time when the State Government prepares to break up its logging business VicForests. The business lost an unprecedented $52.4 million in the last financial year, blaming the cost on legal actions by community environment groups which stopped logging.
VicForests has been roundly criticised in the Supreme Court, which upheld logging bans.
The court found VicForests breached environmental protection laws by logging the habitat of endangered greater gliders and yellow-bellied gliders. A judge said “serious or irreversible harm” had been caused to the gliders.
The Wombat State Forest is also home to the vulnerable brush-tailed phascogale, carnivorous marsupials.
The government’s decision was greeted by Gayle Osborne, convenor of Wombat Forestcare, as a small step towards dismantling VicForests. “It is not soon enough for the Wombat Forests,” she said “We still have VicForests causing massive environmental damage.”
VicForests’ heavy industrial logging in Central Victoria is blamed by environmentalists for heightened bushfire danger. Research shows that fallen trees from the 2021 storm raise fire risk because of the regrowth of dangerous fire fuel, with Ms Osborne pointing to the ferocity and carnage in the fires of Hawaii, Canada and Greece.

Ms Osborne said that after the 2021 storm, 175 logging coupes were set up over the Wombat area and Cobaw, near Hanging Rock. Starting at Babbington Hill, every big tree was to be removed, beginning with 8000 square metres at Babbington.
“This was ‘overseen and regulated’, but the forest does not have a lot of protection,” she said. “Working under forest fire management, the Department of the Environment cleared 80 to 100 metres each side of every track, taking out every large tree. Piles of bark and small fuel were left, endangering the bush.”
VicForests, which harvests and sells timber, is to be split into different government departments, easing great concern over native logging. This worry grew when the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC), set up to provide independent advice, recently held three small “storm debris community meetings”, at Blackwood, Bullarto and Barkstead. The meetings were seen as an attempt to get community agreement to salvage logging and timber harvesting.
Environmental groups and scientists, including some from Daylesford and beyond, combined to set up a mobile field observation base to record any impact on endangered species. Dozens of people have been involved.
Locally, eagles’ nests at Babbington Hill, near Lyonville, have been threatened by log salvaging.

Words: Kevin Childs | Image: Contributed

LIKE a never-ending game of chase, the campaign to protect the Wombat State
Forest manages to save some trees, then logging starts elsewhere in this vast area.
Now it appears to enter a new phase with a threat to Daylesford’s water.

And one of the many odd aspects is that taxpayers subsidised VicForest’s logging with $54 million
last year, a figure predicted to double this year. The increase is expected to come from the cost of paying
retainers to contractors, who may have no work.
Another curiosity, according to Daylesford forest activist David Stephens, is that it is 21 years since the
local ALP branch voted to have the forest managed as a national service, providing clean air and water.
That same year the party pledged to create a Wombat National Park.
Instead, according to Mr Stephens, the most massive equipment to enter the forest has been
clearing swathes. “There has been overwhelming forestry reduction, with the greatest damage ever
seen,” he says.
“Muddy water is running into the Wombat Dam, which is Daylesford’s water supply.
“Removing ground cover leads to erosion and pollution. Then the fine regrowth increases the fire
risk because there is more fuel. It takes 40 years to get sufficient regrowth.”

Intriguingly, VicForests did not comment on the water supply threat but acknowledged that it has
paused all commercial harvesting while a new survey is done, while insisting that its work is recovery, not harvesting, subject to external audits and independent sustainable forest management standards.
Another worry for locals, says Mr Stephens, is that six B-double trucks have been seen on narrow bush roads, concerning parents of children at Bullarto Primary
School.
Such was the worry that a woman, pictured, supported by about 20 peaceful
protestors chained herself to some equipment on January 30. After talking to
authorities she undid her lock and was allowed to leave but is expected to be charged
by police. Logging has stopped in this area.
Mr Stephens, long a community activist and mentor to forest community groups,
says up to 20 hectares have been cleared at Barkstead, off the Daylesford-Ballan road.
“We would like to see a moratorium on all industrial-scale extraction until laws
are introduced to protect Wombat Forest.
“We have seen logging protection lifted in 2019, allowing drainage lines to run
into Wombat Creek. Anything dead on site is washed by rain into the catchment.”
After an exacting inquiry, state government agreed to adopt almost all
recommendations, including preserving and protecting the forest, but no laws have
been introduced.
The Supreme Court agreed to protect the vulnerable greater glider in the Central
Highlands, but there is no such protection in the Midlands.
Logs from here go to mills in Sale, Orbost, Beaufort and Heyfield. “This,” says
Mr Stephens,” is the last resort.”
And the future? More than 7000 hectares are listed for logging. As for VicForest,
it said “recovery work” in the forest is in response “to removing debris and treating
hazardous trees” after the 2021 storm.
“Timber removed through these operations will be going to the highest and best
end use. This potentially includes community use, utilisation by traditional owners,
customers, as well as community firewood.”