Environment report cards track SA’s big challenges

From bushfires and air quality, to vegetation and the health of the Murray, here’s how SA’s environment has changed since 2018. And sadly, there’s not a lot of good news.

Disturbing climate trends, declining biodiversity and loss of native vegetation on land and at sea are laid bare in the state’s latest environmental trend and condition report cards, released on Monday.

But there are indications the River Murray is recovering from drought and air quality is improving.

Environment and Water Minister David Speirs said a fire danger report card showed December 2019 recorded the highest monthly Forest Fire Danger Index value on record – 24 per cent higher than the previous highest.

“This data will now enable us to track the trend and condition of indicators relating to bushfire, as bushfire events become more frequent and severe in response to a changing climate,” he said. “This will better support fire management decisions now and into the future.” The new fire danger weather card was added to the climate theme, in response to the 2019-20 bushfires.

The Kangaroo Island bushfire. Picture Brenton Davis

Flinders Chase National Park after the bushfires swept through on Kangaroo Island in January 2020. Picture: AAP Image/David Mariuz

During the fires, two people and 60,000 stock animals were killed on Kangaroo Island, and 119 homes were significantly damaged or destroyed.

More than 200 bushfires also burned across the state on December 20, 2019, including a major fire at Cudlee Creek in the Adelaide Hills that threatened the townships of Mount Pleasant, Springton, Palmer, Cudlee Creek, Mount Torrens, Harrogate, Inglewood, Gumeracha, Lobethal and Woodside.

“The latest River Murray report cards show the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is working, with positive improvements in a number of ecological indicators, but more work is still required to achieve all of the objectives of the plan,” Mr Speirs said.

The 2020 report cards were developed in consultation with the Environment Protection Authority, Department for Primary Industries and Regions, regional Landscape Boards, the Bureau of Meteorology, and Country Fire Service.

Nature Conservation Society of SA president and University of Adelaide researcher Associate Professor Patrick O’Connor said the challenge was now to improve the connection between measuring environmental factors, then “doing something” about the results.

“One way to improve this would be to make it live, so that every time something gets updated you would see it change,” he said.

Associate Professor O’Connor said more effort could be made to use data from partnerships because research institutions could fill knowledge gaps.

Ironbank resident Peter Ashenden, right, holds a Montpellier broom weed with his wife Katrina Matthews and neighbour Norm Allan. They are part of the ‘OliBel Project’ for conservation efforts on private land. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Owners get help to care for bush

Owners of private land that has important conservation significance are being given state government grants to protect and restore their properties.

Nine two-year projects involving properties around the state will share $1m in the latest round of a program directed at private land conservation.

This includes work to restore nearly 400,000ha of mallee in the South Olary Plains – north of the River Murray and west of NSW – and the expansion of wildlife refuges at Secret Rocks on the Eyre Peninsula.

The Woodcutters Road Environment Protection Association is among the recipients. It won $181,800 to support conservation work on 30 neighbouring properties covering 217ha surrounding Belair National Park and Mark Oliphant Conservation Park.

Association president Craig Baulderstone said the area supported many threatened species such as the southern brown bandicoot.

He brought the community together and wrote the application for funding “to try and change people’s attitudes towards the land that they’re managing, so they become custodians of their land”.

That also involved making sure all the landholders had, or could obtain, a native vegetation heritage agreement with the state government – a “permanent covenant on the land title, which recognises conservation land”.

Norm Allan has a “beautiful place” with a heritage agreement at Ironbank. “When I go for a walk in the bush I can feel the stress floating away,” he said. “I absorb the bush and the birds and the koalas and everything.”

The government has allocated $3m over two years towards its Revitalising Private Conservation Program, delivered through the Nature Foundation.