Queensland drought; bush-fire: the eradication of a country’s fauna and flora.

It’s a conundrum, a contradiction, an oxymoron; a green drought, back-burning  for safety, firing to prevent fire, etc.. We have to live with fire in the bush, it seems; there’s no avoiding it. The human fascination with fire. The fire-bugs amongst firemen. The deliberately-lit bush, by both children and adults. Burning by the aboriginal tribes for food:easy pickings, saves much hunting-effort.

Fire has been ravaging Australia for 60,000 years. Changing all environments for the worse, from coast to coast. Impoverishing biodiversity. We may never know the number of plant and animal species lost to fire since humans first colonised this country. Who knows what was the extent of dense tropical forests and rich grasslands before ‘man’ first committed his depredations? The sparse fossil evidence is of huge creatures filling every niche from plains to jungle; creatures which could never survive today on our desiccated landscape.

A landscape created entirely by fire-stick. We humans cannot resist a good fire. Stand with your back to the wind, drop an ember from the carefully-tended fire-pot; watch the destruction, listen to the roar and crackle of the flames, the millions of tons of vegetation consumed with absolutely no effort. Later, when the ground is free of embers, collect the singed and gasping creatures, sufficient for the whole tribe to further roast.

Only a certain amount of burned, crippled food can be eaten. The rest goes to waste. The fire rages on. There’s no one to stop it, only a natural barrier, a dry creek, a rocky bluff. Eventually it will die out, after it has destroyed a vast area, as it has done time and time again over the millennia since the invasion of humans.

Fire has destroyed this continent, and the destruction continues. The lifeless soil of the desert, bereft of all humus and all nutrients is the result of fire. A dense forest can be reduced to a bare plain of sterile ground in a very short time, by constant burning. Eventually nothing will grow there, nothing that can be burned.

Nurture a fragment of rain forest, surviving in a cleft hillside, a hill naked except for sparse eucalypt and wattle. Cancel all fire from that hill. Do nothing else. Nothing will happen, perhaps for years, then rain will come. The hill will bloom, the scrub will become leafy for a while. But seedlings from the tiny rain forest nursery will take root amongst the fire-raddled scrub, and grow up green and strong in the field of grey. Deep-rooted, shady, mulch-creating species that will eventually overpower  the fire-trees and cover the entire hill. The process would take only 200, 300 years.

In certain types of country, for example around the Bunya Mountains, the original dense forest species are hard to eradicate. Cleared hillsides sprout the native species very quickly, before the fire-trees have a chance to take hold. A cleared area will return to its original diversity within 100 years, given ‘neglect’. Assume neglect implies re-afforestation. Perhaps because the Bunyas generate vast numbers of wind-blown seeds, any cleared area quickly regenerates.

But look; now the Bunyas are burning, and all because of Man. Sure, lightning is sometimes to blame, but we humans are the root cause of loss of habitat. Second in importance to protecting housing and infrastructure, is the saving of the diverse forest. Bugger the gum-weeds, protect the Buyas, Mt Glorious and Nebo jungle, Springbrook, Tambourine. Although most of the animal species have been eradicated centuries ago, the seed-bank of those areas is vital. And that is just in the Brisbane environs.

We cannot afford to lose those areas through fire. Fire which etches away at the peripheries of the Great Remnants year by year.

The koala hangs on by a thread. How it has survived so far is a mystery. Such a creature has only one advantage: it can eat gum-leaves. It has adapted to survive solely on eucalypts. That advantage has kept it going since humans interfered with its habitat but at what cost? Every human-lit fire killed all the koalas within the burned area, which would within a year or so be re-colonised by the un-burned  neighbours. There are now few koalas left to re-populate; fire and de-forestation will finally exterminate the few survivors.

At a time when Australia had no humans, say 50, 60,000 years ago, the koala may well have been a different creature. Its present diet of gum-leaves is due to the burning of the original forest habitat. The lack of nutrients now available has caused the koala brain to shrink within its skull, and the little creature to become a fragile shadow of its former robust physiognomy.

Endless artificial, human-induced fire, has reduced the iconic koala to its present sad state; both its body and its environment impoverished. Perhaps, before the arrival of the fire-stick, the little sleepy-eyed, slow-moving creature was a robust, intelligent and active marsupial, with a brain more than twice the size, and a strong and vigorous body. A similar creature to the ground-dwelling wombat, which has retained its body-mass and intelligence, along with its diet.

Not just koalas. The magnificent remnants of the vast Australian jungle harbour much diversity. Should fire destroy those areas finally, after so many thousands of years, we have only ourselves to blame. being cavalier with our flames, and neglect of our duty to protect.

As with virtually all the ailments affecting this planet, humans are to blame, and overpopulation the accelerant . Even the tiny and diverse groups of tribespeople arriving by boat 50,000 years ago had a devastating effect on the fauna and flora of the place we now call Australia. And perhaps even the weather. This Queensland drought had its seed sown all that time ago, with the loss of the giant herbivores and endless, endless burning of the environment.

The Queensland and New South Wales drought, and the droughts that have affected the entire country for millennia, are going to oust us in the long run, unless we can put a stop to this maniacal burning.

Rain forest alone is the final barrier to burning of the bush. We must protect and enlarge that forest at all cost. We must spend this dwindling coal-bonanza on fleets of water-bombing aircraft stationed and ready at all major centres, to protect us AND the environment we rely on. An endless Queensland drought, such as we may at present be experiencing, will soon make it impossible for us to continue surviving. We can’t head to the hills; only to the far north and south………

                                ………………..Tassie here I come!