Australian Broadcasting Corporation


LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2002/s454607.htm

Broadcast: 08/01/2002

Regeneration begins in fire-ravaged national park

Reporter: Julia Limb

MAXINE McKEW: With fires still raging on the New South Wales south coast, the bushfire crisis is not over yet, by a long way.

But thanks to the extraordinary efforts of firefighters from all over Australia, only around 100 homes have been lost so far.

Devastating of course for those affected, but given the intensity of what the state has been through, the loss of property could have been so much worse.

As for other losses, an estimated 300,000 hectares of national parkland have been turned into black and smoking wastelands.

The Royal National Park, which borders Sydney's southern suburbs, was one of the worst hit.

Badly burned in 1994, there were fears that this year it would be completely destroyed.

Undoubtedly, there's been a heavy toll on native wildlife in the park.

But, as Julia Limb reports, the Australian bush has an extraordinary power to regenerate.

BRIAN GILLIGAN, NATIONAL PARKS & WILDLIFE SERVICE: Certainly, it was pretty depressing standing outside the Sutherland bushfire control on the afternoon of Boxing Day, when the firestorm was approaching from the south-west, and certainly the advice we were getting at that stage was that we were likely to lose the bulk, if not all, of the park.

JULIA LIMB: It's been a tough couple of weeks for Brian Gilligan, the man in charge of New South Wales' National Parks.

He's watched fires race through over 50 reserves under his command and, despite massive efforts to control the blazes, there is still no end in sight.

BRIAN GILLIGAN: We don't have some crystal ball that enables us to predict where the next lightning strike's going to come from or where the next arsonist is going to do their lunacy.

And so, as a result, there's always going to be some uncertainty in the work that we do but we'll keep working with others and do everything that we possibly can.

JULIA LIMB: It's Australia's oldest national park and second oldest in the world, behind Yellowstone in the United States.

More than 2 million people visit this park every year.

Not only famous for its spectacular coastline and bush walks, it's also home to over 700 plant species, making it a hotbed of biodiversity.

Two weeks ago, fire took out around 60 per cent of the Royal National Park, which sits on the southern fringe of suburban Sydney.

The park is now black and empty.

It's closed to the public, and likely to remain that way for some time.

There are no signs of the hundreds of native species which make their homes here.

The only life, ants crawling through the charred remains of what was once lush undergrowth.

MIKE DOHERTY, SUSTAINABLE ECOSYSTEMS, CSIRO: There is a difficulty with animals in relation to fire which is far greater than for plants.

Plants tend to survive on the site which they're burnt.

They either re-sprout or come back from seed.

Animals will either perish or flee a fire and, if they do perish or flee from the area after an intense fire, you'll need recolonisation from an area which hasn't been burnt.

JULIA LIMB: While the blackened landscape seems a depressing site, it is not as bad as it looks.

Already, there are signs that plants are starting to regenerate.

BRIAN GILLIGAN: The ones that are shooting are the ones that have managed to have a root stock under the ground that has survived the heat of the fire, and even though the top's been burnt off, they're now able to shoot away, whereas these others that rely on seeds are the ones that are a bit more vulnerable to that fire frequency.

JULIA LIMB: The real concern here is not that the bush was burnt but that it is the second fire in this park in a decade.

BRIAN GILLIGAN: Fire frequency is the critical issue and particularly in a park that's surrounded by urban areas and so on, like Royal.

People were generally acknowledging, from our biodiversity survey work and so on, that, after seven years, the park was part-way recovered from the 1994 fire, but it probably needed 10 to 15 years without fire to really recover and to be able to sustain those vulnerable populations.

The fact that a significant portion of it has now burnt is a setback to that recovery process.

JULIA LIMB: In early 1994, almost the entire park was burnt out.

Animals were forced to flee to neighbouring Heathcote National Park for refuge and had only just begun to return.

While this time the Royal has fared better, Heathcote has been ravaged by fire, which is likely to make animal recolonisation difficult.

MIKE DOHERTY: If you have a large area which has refuges in it, where the animals can expand from when the park regenerates, the chances of extinction are fairly small.

Where you have a park which is fragmented by roads, or has a surrounding of houses and settlements, the chances of recolonisation are much smaller.

So there is real possibilities that some of our small mammals could become extinct in these smaller reserves, if they're not managed appropriately.

GARY DUNNET, AREA MANAGER, ROYAL NATIONAL PARK: If you look around you there are patches where the fire hasn't been working at that same intensity but this section -- this is comparable to what went through in 1994, where much of the park was hit by these really intensive fires.

JULIA LIMB: Rangers Andrew Horton and Gary Dunnet are some of the first to survey the damage, and they are confident the park will recover.

ANDREW HORTON, REGENERATION OFFICER: It's got to be remembered that Australian landscape is constantly evolving, and that you will get changes and that it won't stay the same over a great period of time.

So, probably in my lifetime, the community structure in this part of the Royal National Park has more than likely changed three or four times because of events.

JULIA LIMB: There are some concerns about individual plant species, like the banksia, which will struggle to regenerate so soon after the last fire, and there may be a battle looming as weeds invade the battered landscape before many native plants have a chance to sprout.

To those familiar with this famous park, it's a shock to see the devastation, but as the first green tips break through, there is hope.

BRIAN GILLIGAN: First of all, that significant sections of the park have been protected from the fire, and also that there are signs of life here, whether it be in the insects or the first few green shoots, or just the array of the seeds that are on the ground ready to regenerate as soon as the weather gives them half a chance.