Category: 2013 Autumn Newsletter

Weather and Wildfires

It is still so dry here. Looking at the observations for Stawell, there was no rain at all in January, 50mm in February (most of it in one big dump which missed some areas completely), and 3mm by 28th March.  Parts of the Park are looking quite stressed, and hot windy days are scary. Maybe the information on the front page as to the season is incorrect; we are still in Kooyang, late summer, season of eels. A parched landscape with a high risk of bushfires.

With now 85% of the Park having been burnt since 2006, we are hoping that some logic can come into the rigid quota of areas to be burned annually. The next FOP is not yet available for comment. It will be on www.dse.vic.gov.au later.

This map shows the extent of the 2006 and 2013 fires.

2006 and 2013 Fires… Read the rest

From the Park Desk April 2013

Grampians National Park – An Update – David Roberts

Dear Friends of Grampians-Gariwerd,

The Grampians-Gariwerd National Park continues to through up new challenges for our communities, visitors and staff. After a period of recovery post the 2011 floods, the park will now embark on structuring up a recovery program to restore, rehabilitate and monitor the short, medium and long term impacts of another significant bushfire – The Victoria Valley/Victoria Range complex.

This fire grew out of 22+ lightning strikes that hit the park during a 24 hour period on commencing the 14th February 2013. The fire put significant pressure on the Victoria Valley community at Mirranatwa when 4 fires merged and impacted on the park and private property interface. The team work of all the emergency services including CFA Volunteers, DSE, Parks Victoria, Victoria Police and Local Government resulted in only minimal property and asset loss on private property … Read the rest

WIM150 Mineral Sands Project

Australian Zircon had a public viewing of a summary of where the project is up to thus far.

The mine area will be located 1.4 kilometres from the northern edge of the National Park and FOGGs feel there will be impacts on the National Park.

  • The life of the mine will be 25 plus years.
  • The active area at any given time will be around 300 ha.
  • The mining and rehabilitation for any specific area is expected to be less than three years.

FOGGs committee made comments on the scoping study in September last year, and will be looking carefully at the Environment Effects Statement which will be available to the public in a couple of months. It will be a very large document and will be able to be viewed at a few public places, for those who don’t want to print off reams of paper. After its release … Read the rest

Further Thoughts On: To Lobby or Not to Lobby

From time to time we get requests to spread the word about various environmental issues which members of FOGGs or members of the public (via our webpage) ask our group to promote. While most of these requests are reasonable and most of our members would probably agree with ‘the cause’, as committee we have to be careful what we take on board. Our priority is always the issues which affect our Grampians National Park. These may be issues affecting other Parks or may be ones unique to the Grampians.

Our current committee, who are all volunteers, try to organise activities for our members enjoyment and when the need arises write letters to politicians and newspapers on issues which may affect Grampians National Park. Our committee, like many others, are particularly worried about the attitude of both our federal and State governments towards the environment and especially the State watering down … Read the rest

Friends of Grampians Gariwerd