Fight To Protect Treasures Of A Wild Valley
The Age
Saturday February 7, 1998
FEW PEOPLE have sat and contemplated the Wongungarra River. A few greenies, a few foresters, a few scientists and a few Aborigines have probably made the journey, but it's not the sort of place you go for fun.
It's a gruelling seven-hour descent from the top of the 1700-metre Blue Rag Range to the small river below.
Visitors have to push their way through the bush. There are no tracks, because this is Victoria's last unprotected wilderness area.
Wongungarra's fate is being decided now. A Regional Forest Agreement, designed to carve the nation's forests into loggable zones and protected areas, is being negotiated in the area. After it is signed, probably mid-year, Wongungarra will become a logging resource or be declared part of the Alpine National Park.
Under Victorian guidelines, an area of at least 25,000 hectares must be essentially untouched by humans to be declared wilderness. Wongungarra is believed to be the last such area standing outside a national park.
The Wongungarra valley is a known habitat for two endangered animals: the long-footed potoroo and the spotted tree frog.
The area is bordered on three sides by the Alpine National Park. Conservationists believe it should be included in the park to preserve its habitat and to provide broader wildlife corridors.
For the past decade, local loggers have wrestled with governments and greenies for the right to extract about 400 hectares of ash wood from designated logging coupes. The State Government has stopped logging until the forest agreement process is completed.
Some observers have suggested that assigning a small timber production area to the greens in the negotiations would help buy back some support for the much-criticised agreement process.
In the meantime, conservationists and the timber industry are keen to claim the area for themselves.
"It would be ecological and economic stupidity to log the area," said a Wilderness Society spokeswoman, Ms Virginia Young.
Wongungarra was high in wilderness value, but would be low in timber productivity. Reforesting the area would be difficult, she said.
Also, the Alpine National Park had been laid out along mountain ridges, missing many of the valleys. Wongungarra would add a range of vegetation types to the park, she said.
In 1992, the former Land Conservation Council recommended that 14,000 hectares be included in the Alpine National Park. Conservation groups were concerned that logging on such steep, fragile soil would silt up the Wongungarra River, which could also damage the last clearly stable population of spotted tree frogs in Victoria, Ms Young said.
In 1991, the council also concluded that there would be enough regrowth to support local sawmills without the use of Wongungarra wood by 2000, she said.
The executive director of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries, Mr Graeme Gooding, said Government scientists were preparing a statement on how to protect the spotted tree frog. Any logging in the area would follow their guidelines.
Mature ash forests were already well represented in the Alpine National Park and the resources in Wongungarra were vital to ensure local sawmills had enough wood until regrowth timber was ready in 2000, Mr Gooding said.
It is clear that the area's remoteness has protected its timber for the past decade. Wongungarra is never going to be good for a campground, or a place to drive the family for a picnic. It's a huge valley, very steep on both sides, about an hour past Bright, on the way to Mount Hotham. From Melbourne, it takes more than four hours just to reach the lip of the valley. From there, it's a precipitous climb to the wilderness.
From the rims of the valley to the Wongungarra Creek is a drop of more than 800 metres. A landscape ecologist from the Australian National University, Dr Brendan Mackey, said the depth of the valley meant there were three forest types within it: snowgums on the ridges, ash forests mid-valley and manna and peppermint gums on the valley floor. The entire slope has old-growth trees with hollows vital for animal and bird habitat.
"The area is important because it has a high level of ecological integrity. It appears not to have been logged or grazed and there is very little evidence of weeds," he said.
Despite the very dry catchment area, the river had a good flow of clean water, illustrating the importance undisturbed vegetation played in regulating water flow, he said. The economic importance of a reliable water supply should not be overlooked in a dry country like Australia.
© 1998 The Age