Bob Brown Foundation says dramatic photos of burnt and collapsed Huon pines beside Takayna’s Harman River put the lie to the Rockliff government’s claim that ‘high-conservation stands of ancient trees have been confirmed to be intact and undamaged by the bushfires impacting Tasmania’s rugged West Coast.’
This morning the Foundation released photos by famed Tasmanian wilderness photographer Rob Blakers showing Huon pines burnt and collapsed at the Harman River. Other pines are scorched to their tree tops and will likely die.
‘If ever there was to be a wake-up call, this is it. A significant enclave of Huon pine rainforest did burn at the lower Harman River,’ said Rob Blakers.
‘At the upper Harman, the middle Harman and the lower Wilson, fire burnt to within 10 m of Huon pine groves. The fire also burnt right to the edge of major pine forests at Yellow Creek and the upper Wilson River.
‘With marginally stronger winds and hotter temperatures this entire refuge for the pines may well have burnt and been lost forever,’ said Mr Blakers.
Climate emergency worsening, response needed
‘In the absence of a decisive and dramatic increase in remote area fire-fighting priority, resources and capacity, and with climate change fuelling hotter, drier and more unpredictable conditions than ever before, we will lose this incredible paleo-endemic vegetation, which arose 50 million years ago and is found no-where else on Earth,’ said Rob Blakers.
Bob Brown said the burnt Huon pines underscored the Rockliff government’s ignorance of global warming and the need for a huge change in attitude to wilderness destruction.
‘Our National Parks and Wildlife Service has been cut to ribbons and the lessons of recent fires killing ancient pencil pines at Lake Mackenzie in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area have been ignored,’ said Dr Brown.
‘Now Minister Duigan is falsifying the public record as if no Huon pines have been burnt and all is okay. His government failed to take action for the two, vital first days to put this fire out. By then it was uncontrollable.
‘I challenge Premier Rockliff and Prime Minister Albanese to fly into the burnt pines with us and see the destruction for themselves.
‘Their policies of stoking greater global heating, through more coal mines, gas fracking and forest burning, ensure that future Tasmanian fires will be even more disastrous.’
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