Life returns, 10 years after the fires

The regrowth of Kinglake National Park has helped with the healing of the community, ranger Tony Fitzgerald says.

Ranger Trevor Graham at Jehoshaphat Gully in Kinglake National Park in central Victoria. Picture: David Geraghty

The regrowth of Kinglake ­National Park and the return of the lyrebirds has helped with the regrowth and healing of the community, Parks Victoria ranger Tony Fitzgerald says.

The Black Saturday fires ­affected 98 per cent of the park, and this week the walking track at Jehosaphat Gully was reopened in time for the 10-year ­anniversary.

“Kinglake National Park has provided a backdrop to the healing that has taken place in the Kinglake community over the past 10 years,” Mr Fitzgerald said.

“The sight of nature recovering has provided comfort.”

Rangers thought the walking track would never be safe due to the burnt-out mountain ash trees but most of the trees have fallen over the past decade and some had been carefully felled.

Ranger team leader Trevor Graham said lyrebirds were recorded at Jehosaphat Gully last year for the first time since Black Saturday.

“Most of the Australian bush is very well adapted to fire,” Mr Graham said.

He said some species such as the small-leaf pomaderris, which were vulnerable or endangered prior to the fire, had since come back in large numbers: “It’s great, the new growth provides a lot of food for native animals,” he said.

Fire ecology expert Mike Clarke said Black Saturday was “completely overwhelming” to Victoria’s parks, comparing the fires to those of the Black Friday fires in 1939, when 20,000sq km of bush burned. “But this was off the scale in terms of intensity and severity,” Mr Clarke said.

He said it was too early in the recovery process to judge the ecosystems’ recovery when some mountain ash trees were hundreds of years old.

“The losses of big, old trees have been catastrophic,” he said.

Mr Clarke, who heads the La Trobe School of Life Sciences, said it would be at least 2065 before some of these trees would be habitable by some of the wildlife that lives in the forests.

“It will centuries before they will be back to what they need to be,” Mr Clarke said.

He said ecosystems were changing and more frequent fires could actually wipe out eucalypts. There had already been a noticeable shift to acacias and wattles.

Mr Clarke said the risk of bushfires destroying ecosystems meant governments needed to think deeply about whether logging rates were sustainable and also assess the efficiency of fire-reduction burns.

“Where should we be burning to reduce the risk to life and property?” he said.

“Is it really reducing risk or is it just making people feel safe. What’s the ecological cost?”