Closer to Nature, Episode 5: Resist Accept Direct, Tackling Climate Change
Wednesday 4 September, 2024
Overview
- In episode five of Closer to Nature, we take a look at the unprecedented fire front which raged across southeastern Australia in January 2020. In the line of fire was a critically endangered population of Eastern bristlebirds. A daring rescue and emergency extraction was undertaken to save the species
- Underpinning Parks Victoria’s response to climate change is the Resist Accept Direct Framework. It represents a new way of approaching and reacting to climate change in Victoria.
- Closer to Nature is a new podcast by Parks Victoria, about how the climate crisis is unfolding across Victoria.
Subscribe to Closer to Nature wherever you get your podcasts.
“Overnight, we had half of East Gippsland turned from a range of lush, green, vibrant ecosystems to charcoal and ash," said Mark. Image credit: Parks Victoria.
In a grove of tall tea-trees in Wilsons Promontory National Park, Dr. Mark Antos, Manager of Biodiversity Science at Parks Victoria, is describing the catastrophic scenery he saw during the bushfires of January 2020.
During the 2019/2020 summer, unprecedented bushfires raged across south-eastern Australia. An area twice the size of Tasmania was burnt. Mark, and a tactical team from different areas.
This quirky native bird was once found all over eastern Australia. But due to changes in climate, severe habitat loss and the addition of pest species such as feral cats, they’re only found scattered in a few locations near the east coast, from south-eastern Queensland down to far eastern Victoria. of state and federal government, were deployed to save a small, threatened bird: the Eastern Bristlebird.
Rescuing the Eastern bristlebird in Victoria
“Bristlebirds are a funny creature. They don't really look or behave like a bird. Even though they've got feathers and wings, they choose not to use the wings too much... They've got the most wonderful song”.
Mark Antos
In late December of 2019, Mark and his team predicted that the Victorian population of Eastern bristlebirds located in a tiny section of Croajingolong National Park was at risk of disappearing entirely.
Marks description of the scenery was haunting.
"Up into the hills was just gray and burnt to a crisp”, said Mark. This image was taken in the aftermath of the fires in January 2020 near Martins creek Nature Conservation Reserve. Image credit: Parks Victoria.
“Because Eastern bristlebirds are found in these tiny isolated remnants, it means they're super vulnerable to extinction, which places the onus on us as land managers to elevate the importance of conserving that species”, said Mark. Image credit: DEECA (Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action).
But the work to save the Eastern bristlebird began well before the bushfires started. The Department of Environment, Energy and Climate Change (DEECA), Parks Victoria, Zoos Victoria and others had been doing the groundwork to set up a new Eastern bristlebird population as an insurance policy to prevent local extinction.
“The extraction was a bit of a blur. You can imagine trying to get all the planning done, all the personnel together, and all the permits to get a critically endangered species out of its habitat and remove it and take it somewhere else. It's a huge process”.
Mark Antos
After the permits were approved in record time, Mark and his team were ferried into this remote part of Victoria. With the fast-approaching fire and ash nearby, they tried to catch as many birds as they could.
"We use fairly specialised methods to catch these birds. One of the techniques is called mist netting. It's where we use a monofilament net which is meant to look like a very fine mist. The amount of times we had a net set up, and we saw a bird duck its head down and run out the other side, was infuriating", Mark said. Image credit: Mark Antos.
While all this was happening, the fires were getting closer. The team needed to catch 10-20 birds to give them a good foundation population.
“Despite all the challenges, we were able to catch 16 birds in that truncated window of opportunity”, Mark said. Image credit: Mark Antos.
Transporting the birds wasn’t straight forward. The caught birds were carefully carried in their own wooden box to a four-wheel drive vehicle, then driven to a boat and later flown to Essendon Airport by fixed wing aircraft. From there, Zoos Victoria took care of them until they could be rehomed.
After the Black Summer bushfires, a small area of Howes Flat habitat in Croajingolong National Park was impacted. Many of the birds saved during the extraction were able to go safely back to their original location. The other birds provided valuable lessons on how to keep and look after this species in captivity. These lessons helped with the establishment of a new population at Wilsons Promontory which has since been supplemented by more bristlebirds from Howe Flat and two groups of bristlebirds brought from Jervis Bay and Booderee National Park in New South Wales. This brings genetic diversity to the population, and they appear to be thriving.
Following their release at the Prom, there has been a lot of monitoring.
“Last time we monitored the population was in October, last spring. We ended up detecting a minimum of 21 individuals. Given that we released a total of 27, that's an exceptional detection rate”, said Mark. Image credit: Mark Antos.
The Eastern bristlebird rescue project is an example of how Parks Victoria is applying the RAD Framework. Changes are happening on dramatic time scales, and this new framework is shaping the way parks are managed in the face of severe climate change. Image credit: Zoos Victoria.
The RAD Framework in Victoria
The climate crisis unfolding in front of us is alarming. These changes are occurring all over the world and in response to these transforming ecosystems, a way of thinking known as the RAD Framework – standing for Resist – Accept – Direct, was developed by the United States National Park Service and the US Geological Survey. It has also been adopted by Parks Victoria.
“In Victoria, the RAD Framework gives us a lens for how we can do more for nature. Our best example of resist is Wilson's Promontory National Park, where the whole landmass sits out in the cool waters of Bass Strait and is always 5 to 10 degrees cooler than the adjacent mainland. We think of this place and the Prom Sanctuary project as a clear resist candidate,” said Dr Mark Norman, Chief Scientist of Conservation and Climate Action at Parks Victoria. Image credit: Parks Victoria.
Mark inspects areas within eastern Gippsland affected by the black summer fires two years on from the event.
“The times we're living in, and the climate change challenge is sort of shocking everybody. The speed and scope of what's going on is pretty dramatic”, Mark said. Image credit: Mark Antos.
This 2016 aerial photo of the landscape in Avalon shows an area with sparse vegetation
This site is an old saltworks and a critical location for conservation-listed shorebirds that migrate annually from the northern hemisphere, such as the Curlew Sandpiper, Eastern Curlew and Grey-tailed Tattler. These vulnerable birds forage and roost on the historical saltpans but rising sea levels are coming. Image credit: Google Maps.
The saltmarsh community has been fast to bounce back. This aerial footage was taken in 2024.
“In this reserve, we’re ‘accepting’ that sea level rise is inevitable, and a staged retreat is required. Allowing the seawater to come in gradually will lead to new saltmarsh and seagrass communities forming naturally in the flooded areas, while we stage new sites inland for these migratory birds to roost and forage on,” Mark said. Image credit: Google Maps.
This project will build on a wealth of science information, the knowledge of the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners and a multi-stakeholder partnership to create nature benefits in all the future stages of this complex site.
The third category represents setting up new nature combinations and direct a different type of system, such as planting trees from another region to maintain forest structure.
“There are large forest areas in the east of the state that were badly burnt during the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-2020. Some areas have now been repeatedly burned at a frequency that challenges the survival of the giant alpine and mountain ash trees. At places like Jones Creek, near Coopracambra National Park, rainforests burnt in bushfires in the 1980s still haven’t come back as rainforest.”
Mark Norman
For these areas, novel nature combinations may need to be considered, where non-local tree species might need to be brought in to create the physical forest structure and habitat that many other plants and animals rely on – under the RAD framework these places would be considered as direct sites or actions. Parks Victoria helps manage the best examples of natural and cultural values in Victoria and the RAD Framework is allowing us to find the best ways to help nature in challenging times.
“The mindset has to be one of action. We resist where it's appropriate. We accept what we can't change but do other constructive things, and then we direct where we can, to provide a better future for native species.”
Mark Norman
Links
• Wilsons Promontory National Park
• Prom Sanctuary project
• The RAD framework (United States Geological Survey)
• Restoring Avalon’s Coastal wetlands – Deakin university
• Avalon Coastal Reserve
• Coopracambra National Park (Jones creek)
• Eastern bristlebird translocation from Jarvis Bay (DEECA)
• Croajingolong National Park
• Emergency extraction for Eastern bristlebirds (DEECA)
• Eastern Barred Bandicoot (project page – DEECA)
• Pookila (project page – Zoos Victoria)
• Southern Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby (project page – Zoos Victoria)
• Museums Victoria research institute
• Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria – Seedbank
• RAD Framework – United States Geological Society
For more information and updates about our latest discoveries, sign up for our new E-newsletter with Chief Scientist Conservation and Climate Action, Dr Mark Norman.
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