Richard Hughes of the Wilderness Society talks about the impact of climate change on our nature

Beyond Zero Emissions’ Scott Bilby speaks to Richard Hughes of the Wilderness Society about the science and relationship between Forestry, Vegetation, Bushfires and Climate Change.

BZE interview Richard Hughes

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Scott Bilby: Today on Beyond Zero we are speaking with Richard Hughes and he’s the Wild Country projects officer at the Wilderness society in Australia. He’s going to speak about ecosystems including forests and how we can protect and manage them for the benefit of people, property and the environment. Good morning Richard, are you there?

Richard Hugues: Good morning Scott, yes I’m here.

Scott Bilby: Hi Richard, its good that you could join us this morning.

Richard Hugues: Oh it’s great to be here. I welcome the opportunity to talk about some of these issues.

Scott Bilby: I just want to start off by asking you’re a wildcountry projects officer, what is a wildcountry projects officer?

Richard Hugues: Well, I suppose within the Wilderness society, which of course many people know that as a non-profit environment group that’s got us focused on working to protect and restore natural environments so that’s areas like the tall forests in Tasmania through to the savannah areas on cape york or from arid, semi-arid sort of deserts, Mallee areas in Victoria to the Ningaloo reef areas off the coast of WA. So across all of those natural environments we are aspiring to work on conservation. Our history has been around; well born out of the franklin dam campaign, and we’ve historically focused on trying to protect high conservation areas on public land. More recently we've expanded out from that a bit, so rather than just usually focusing on areas like forests that are under immediate threat on high conservation public land areas which may only be a small component of the landscape, they are kind of like these postage stamps in a much broader landscape and if we’re going to be successful in conservation we need to look across those landscapes. But more recently I suppose with this wildcountry program we have started to work more broadly with a range of other conservation groups and local communities and so on across what may be private land areas or leasehold or other sorts of management other than public land and so my role has been focused on a project in far western Victoria into south Australia and New South Wales in terms of working with groups on the ground but also the last couple of years I've started looking at fire management issues really across Victoria primarily.

Scott Bilby: Ok and I guess a component of wildcountry is the science, which is the link between forests and natural ecosystems and climate and how forests can act as carbon banks. Can you tell us a little about that?

Richard Hugues: Absolutely. In terms of the science we’ve been very interested in science-based conservation in terms of being as successful as possible and really it being fundamental to being successfull in conservation. We, I guess in moving to the wildcountry philosophy or way of program and vision, we were interested in looking at how some of these sorts of larger projects conservation across landscapes was being approached internationally, and were particularly inspired by the wildlands project in north America which was the whole range of organisations working across those landscapes for conservation but underpinned by science and they had one of their key scientists, Michael, who was also interested and prepared to come across to Australia and work with local ecologists here to look at some of the fundamental requirements for larger landscape conservation in Australia. So the wildcountry science council was formed and Michael, together with a bunch of Australia’s eminent ecologists have identified a range of important factors linking together Australia’s landscapes with successful conservation. And of course there are things like the flow of water across the landscape and the movement of birds and animals and I suppose particularly relevant to your program, issues of climate and adjusting to climate change and fire regimes and those sorts of things.

Scott Bilby: And so, say just a quick definition on the carbon bank?

Richard Hugues: Ok, so look, on the carbon side of things, in the context of climate change, forests and natural ecosystems are very important. Australia’s forests and the worlds forests hold vast amounts of carbon, so basically within the trunks and leaves and branches of the tree, within their roots, within the soil of the forest, there’s a lot of carbon that’s effectively stored and held there securely in the long term. Of course most people primarily think about things like coal fired power stations and so on, when we are talking about carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and that’s where the vast majority of emissions of course are coming from and the transport sector and so on. But natural ecosystems are very important components as well, so the existing forests that we’ve got out there hold a very large amount of carbon and people may be surprised to learn that globally 25% of carbon emissions are coming from forest clearance and degradation. So the clearance stuff is probably the easiest to understand of course when your going and you bulldoze or you clear an area of forest then all that carbon that’s held in the trunks, and the soils and leaves and so on, or a huge component of that is released into the atmosphere. It’s a little bit more complicated when we are looking at issues say of logging and degradation. So when you log a forest you may go in and you’ve got big old trees that are then are cut down. The carbon from those trees is eventually released if its you know the waste, the unwanted timber, the tree heads, the branches, all that kind of stuff that is often burned at the site and released into the atmosphere. You suppose trees then go off into paper products and so on, often they are very short lifespan products and the carbon from those are released back into the atmosphere. So there’s a very high proportion of an area of a forest that’s logged that carbons actually released into the atmosphere, and then when young trees are regrown, if that forest being logged is to be replanted, many people think that those young trees will regrow and suck up all that carbon again and its essentially, if you like a carbon neutral process. However if you’ve logged a very old forest which may have taken some of the trees themselves may be hundreds of years old and it may take hundreds of years for a forest to regrow following logging to the stage where its storing the same amount of carbon that it was prior to logging, but of course logging happens on fairly short rotations. In victoria they are often things like around 80 years, so basically the ability of those forests to store carbon is being compromised through these continual cycles of logging and so they are effectively storing a lower amount of carbon and the difference has been essentially released into the atmosphere. Certainly in the short term and obviously with climate issues we are looking short term in terms of being able to tackle fundamentally important issues through our generation and future generations we need to tackle that now, so releasing large amount of carbon into the atmosphere through logging is a major issue. Of course there’s other forms of degradation as well and some of them are quite complex and at least linked into climate change themselves, there’s quite a well known example of what’s going on with beetles basically killing the pine type forest vegetation in mid north American areas that’s been linked to global warming or has been to some degree linked to global warming even though these beetles are natural, there’s much bigger outbreaks than what have occurred previously and large areas of those forests are experiencing tree death. There are issues then around those dead forests being more prone to potentially more frequent fires in those forests releasing more carbon from the carbon stored in those forests. So across that spectrum of clearance through to degradation of various sorts, there are major issues in terms of carbon balance and so we see in terms of existing forest, there is a major opportunity to reduce emissions in Australia and elsewhere in the world by managing and protecting those forests well and restoring those forests in areas that are degraded and when we get beyond that in areas of Australia that have been heavily cleared and some of the areas that I work on in western Victoria and so on there is re-vegetation of natural vegetation potential there as well and of course revegetation of natural vegetation, so that you’re growing these areas into the future they are secure and protected, that’s a very robust form of carbon storage and so these are important elements to consider in terms of climate policy and finding solutions to the current global warming crisis.

Scott Bilby: I guess that makes sense and ill just say we’re speaking with Richard Hughes, he’s the wildcountry projects officer at the Wilderness society Australia, I guess Richard that if logging and such degradation of those natural forest systems and ecosystems, really sort of their carbon is causing something like one quarter, at least of greenhouse gas emissions, stopping that is obviously very important, but as you said letting them grow back from their degraded position they are in now, will also help reduce their current concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so it kind of helps us in both ways there. Now I just quickly would like to move on because its not just the logging and stuff like that’s causing emissions of greenhouse gases in the form of carbon becoming carbon dioxide, its also severe bush fires and as I said earlier, that brings a big risk to people, property and the environments, can you kind of outline how a healthy forest can help reduce the risk of bush fires.

Richard Hugues: Well of course, there’s been a link established between global warming and bush fire. Obviously the risk of a bush fire is related to the temperature of the day: you’re more likely to have bush fires on hot days where there’s low humidity, high wind speed and where there’s been little rainfall on the day and through quite an extended period before that as well, so droughts become relevant. So all of that is of course relevant to climate change, there’s now been modelling and there’s a high degree of confidence that in areas around the world there’s an increased risk of bushfire being projected with climate change scenarios, so they include parts of North America, parts of Canada, parts of Europe and of course parts of Australia. Some of the modelling that’s been done in Australia, I know that the CSIRO, Bureau of meteorology and bushfires CRC were commissioned by the Climate Institute, have looked at some of the issues a couple of years ago and study area across South East Australia, and they found there would be significant increases in risk of bushfire, and they looked at the period to 2020 and the period to 2050, and just to pick an example out of that I suppose, they looked at the risk of catastrophic fire weather, so that’s what is now considered code red days. I’m not sure how familiar people may be with the fire rating system, hopefully a lot more familiar than a couple of years ago. There's now a new category, the catastrophic category - those are the days with the greatest likelihood of large, catastrophic bushfires, and of course the greatest risk to people, property and the environment. So this study looked at South east Australia, by looking at the Melbourne area by taking a low global warming scenario, so a 0.7° warming scenario at 2050, they are predicting roughly a doubling of the number of catastrophic fire weather days going to a high global warming scenario, that’s a 2.9° degree warming at 2050 we are looking roughly up to sixteen times the number of days of catastrophic fire weather in the Melbourne area. So there is very significant risks, for example, I know some of the fire unions have been calling for a tackling and a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to try and tackle this issue which will put communities and their fire fighters at greater risk in the future. So given that greater emissions are increased at risk of bushfires in the future, of course the role of forests and of protecting forests, and restoring forests and managing them well becomes important in Australia and internationally. The other interesting element is I suppose is that fire itself is obviously an important part of Australian ecosystems. Fire has been part of the Australian environment for obviously millions of years; plants and animals have evolved in the presence of fire, and so many people just expect that many plants and animals can cope with any sort of fire. That’s not the case, as they’ve evolved with particular types of fire. So for example, in the various vegetation types, you can look at grasslands, they often need more frequent fires every few years, if you look at dry forest types, they might need fire every few decades, and the wetter forest types may need fire rarely, perhaps hundreds of years and for some rainforests, they never need fire. So the variety of different fire regimes required for the plants, the animals obviously have their own special requirements, they don’t regenerate from seeds, so you can’t just burn a 100,000ha site and expect animals to somehow pop up from seeds [laughs]…

Scott Bilby: [laughs]

Richard Hugues: …Surprisingly enough. When a fire goes through an area with animals, there is natural variation in fire intensity and where fires burn obviously, due to slope and aspect and all these things, and unburnt sites that all set around the edges of fires or small unburnt pockets within fires that wipe animals, need to be able to survive a fire and then recolonize into unburnt areas. So all that becomes significant because the type of fire, so a fire regime, which is the size of the fire, the season, how frequent that fire has been at that part of the landscape, its important whether no plants and animals can survive, and then this becomes important in terms of if you like the forest degradation aspect. So to look at Mountain Ash forest that often if those trees are killed, they can regenerate from their seeds but a Mountain Ash tree may take say 60 years to become mature enough to produce seeds. So if you have a bushfire go through an ash area, and then there’s another intense bushfire in that area within 60 years, before the trees have time to produce seeds then you may lose the ash forest in that particular site. The significant issue in terms of your carbon balance around some of these fire regimes as well and as we’ve just indicated if there’s a risk through climate change of increased fire risk and the potential to change those fire regimes it all becomes quite significant from a carbon point of view. Healthy forests also, where you’ve got your full diversity of plants and animals and there is a fire regime within natural frequencies in that area, also has the potential to reduce your fire risk in that its retaining moisture and so on in the soil, you’ve got less risk of ash and sediment washing into streams and affecting species and water supply catchment and that sort of thing. So fire management is very important to the health of the forest, the ability of that forest to store carbon from a climate change point of view and a future fire risk point of view and in terms of holding water in those landscapes and all of those are relevant to fire management.

Scott Bilby: We’re talking to Richard Hughes; he’s the Wild Country projects officer at the Wilderness society, Australia. So Richard, currently underway is the 2009 Victorian bushfires royal commission. Its been going for over a year now. Are they looking into these sorts of issues?

Richard Hugues: The royal commissions happened in 2 stages I suppose. So they put an interim report out before the last fire season to try and tackle some of the immediate issues. Obviously following the tragic 2009 black Saturday fires, there was a real urgency to try and do something before the next fire season to minimise the risk of something like that happening again. Some recommendations around warnings and communication and clear community understanding of warnings and some of the agency communication arrangements etc. they are about to, at the end of July, at their final recommendations around these broader set of fire management issues including land and fuel management issues and we welcome the enquiry, we have been providing input to the enquiry and there will no doubt be very significant findings out of that for fire management. Some of those will be climate relevant, I know for example, there are looking at issues like from a planning point of view trying to identify areas of high bushfire risk and limit the ability of new housing to be built in those areas and I guess put people at risk in the future etc. and that there should be climate change consideration in that sort of thing, so some of those climate issues are coming in. I’m not sure if there's going to be recommendations around the emissions side of things and the broader climate issues, I haven’t seen anything in that regard, but the commission has been dealing with a very wide suite of issues. The Wilderness society is being focused on the land and fuel management issues and I’ve been attending some of those hearings, certainly we are hopeful that some of the issues like seeing a greater amount of science and research done on fire behaviour and the ecological dimensions and impacts of fires will be in recommendations that comes out of the commission. But of course, that’s in terms of the environment side of things, the main focus of course is around the protection of life and into the future, and so there will be a much broader suite of issues coming out of that. I guess the Wilderness society, we see tackling climate and good environmental management as important components of developing the best possible fire management plan, but its only part of it, I guess they’re the more longer term systematic issues of course you need the more immediate, shorter terms stuff as well. Commission will no doubt be making recommendations in those areas so that’s things like warnings, rapid response to an early detection of fires and the zones, so in areas around houses that we support fire management to prioritize the protection of life and property but away from those houses in more remote areas, we support fire management, planned burns and so on that prioritise the protection of the environment in order to have a healthy natural system, and in that longer term or systematic sense, help with tackling climate change and reducing bush fire risk.

Scott Bilby: Now… just quickly, I think we've only got about a minute to go. So I’d like to ask you about salvage logging, because after each fire we seem to have in South Eastern Australia, there seems to be people falling over themselves to get in there and do a bit of industrial grade sort of logging after a fire has gone through an area with the excuse that ‘oh well the forests have been burned so lets just get in there and log those things as fast as possible and use those logs.’ Can you tell us about that?

Richard Hugues: We were concerned about that, following the 2009 black Saturday fires that Kilmore East, Murrindindi fire areas had extensive salvage logging now, which obviously in terms of the forest itself is the last thing you want to do. Its just been impacted by bush fire, its in a very fragile state, it needs to recover. The last thing you want to do in those forests, is logging them, there’s increased risk of sedimentation, the loss of old trees with tree hollows that provide habitat for native fauna that are probably in low populations and already heavily impacted by the fire itself are major issues and of course there’s papers now by people like David that are raising the issue that actually going in and logging in these areas may increase the propensity of those areas to fire in the future in some forest types. So there is also that element as well, that logging in these areas may be increasing the risk of fire in the future.

Scott Bilby: Well Richard, we’ve just run out of time, but thanks for telling us all about that this morning, and yeah thanks for telling us about that today, and we would love to get you on to talk a little bit more when the royal commission’s findings come in.

Richard Hugues: That would great, thanks for your time today.

Scott Bilby: Thanks Richard, We’ve just been speaking to Richard Hughes, wildcountry projects officer at the Wilderness society in Australia. 

Transcript by: Adnan Savani