Highland wetlands conservation

Introduction 

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My name's John Hunter and I'm a - pretty much a researcher in landscape ecology and I've been up here in the Northern Tablelands forever since about 1986.

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These upland wetlands are really precious because there's so few of them and they form in a really unusual way, in a way that doesn't happen anymore.

They're really dynamic they're unlike so many communities in the world, they're ephemeral, they're dynamic they change constantly. They change through seasons, they change through wetting and drying regimes they can be completely dry completely wet, they can be wet for years on end or they can be dry for years on end and every single one of these lagoons is an individual. How do they work, how do we manage them and how do we keep them conserved they have such a variety of systems within them it's so complex that is going to take decades for us to to understand them and that's what makes them exciting. 

Lagoons

One has to be very resilient and being able to pick a moment when everything's just right for itself and so a lot of the species have developed interesting adaptations, both the plants and the animals, in dealing with these unpredictable - predictable changes. The lagoons themselves are listed both on the federal act and on the state acts as endangered and so wherever they occur if they've got enough of the right features and they're not degraded too much, whether it's on private property or on public lands they are actually considered high conservation value.

So there's a number of threatened communities that occur, the Lagoon themselves are considered an endangered system but within them are a number of endangered communities as well, so there's Carrick sedge lands which are listed as an endangered community, which occur along the fringes of these lagoons and also this grasslands around the edge of the systems and these grasslands while not listed at the moment, probably should be because up here on the Northern Tablelands they're dominated by grasses that don't dominate any other grassland anywhere else in Australia. But then we get down to the species themselves and some of these lagoons have very interesting species that don't occur in any other place, there's a whole lot of fauna that need these systems and the dynamic of wetting and drying. 

Fire 

Fire's a really interesting situation with any community and it's always complex. The problem with fire is that people like to have a dichotomous view about, it it's either really good or it's really bad and there's no in-betweens and fire is complex. Within these upland wetlands, these lagoons, fire is not a natural component of them. One of the things about them is even during this really devastating drought period all of them that we know of completely dried out, but there's elements within that Lagoon that even if it could burn shouldn't be burnt and the reason is, is that these have a peaty layer. Some of this peat is really deep - meters and meters deep and that peaty layer is incredibly important during these really really dry periods.

The reason is, is that it's like a sponge that keeps the area moist, protects the seeds that are in those peaty layers and protects some of the animals, frogs and all sorts of insects that will survive in this damp peaty layer. 

In fact, we were surveying some of these lagoons and taking soil samples during the height of this last drought, and some of those lagoons were still damp, were still wet and this isn't from groundwater this is because that peat kept the moisture in having vegetation on the surface of this also stops that peat from drying out and cracking. So if we maintain the vegetation on top where the rejection occurs and we maintain the peat layer, then the system can cope with an extended dry period. 

But if we let fire get in there, fire can open up the vegetation dry out the peat so it cracks and dries out further and then it gets harder and harder for system to recover. On top of that of a fire gets into the peat, the peat can burn away. Now this is a important component of the lagoon that takes thousands of years to develop, particularly if it's very deep and once you burn that peat away, you may never get it back, particularly not in any of our lifetimes.

The importance of this vegetation that surrounds the lagoon is incredible because it's a buffer and this dense vegetation actually takes out a lot of the really bad stuff that comes with that Overland water flow and it's not really a fire threat most of these the lagoons are incredibly small systems with, tiny areas around them and they don't really represent a major fire hazard. The fire actually severely disrupts these systems on so many levels they're not supposed to be burned.

Management 

So managing a reserve sort of from highest-priority down, it's really fire, pests, weeds and then humans as in visitors, neighbours and they're all very important.

So every reserve in New South Wales has a fire management strategy. These strategies are developed first within parks and then together with their BFM see the bushfire management committee which has representatives from the RFS the Rural Fire Service, national parks, forestry, council and members of the public. We try and work out what's the best strategy for the park but the lagoon itself is there's no ecological reason to burn it to us and to the people, with the experience and a knowledge within the RFS and in national parks. 

It's obvious but some some of our neighbours might not have that same experience and and during the drought, there was worries about perceived fuel potentials within within the park and of course during that dry time, if we did have a lightning strike in here, probably would have taken because of the dry conditions.

I would have moved through the park with the wind direction and stopped at the fence most likely. This park is virtually all of it, can we consider the threatened ecological community which makes this this even yeah probably one of the most important national parks or park estate nature reserves within within the region. 

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