naturaldisaster.royalcommission.gov.au... · Web viewMR TOKLEY QC: Commissioners, the theme to be explored today is the impact on the natural environment by the bushfires in 2019

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

ACM MARK BINSKIN AC (Retd), Chair

THE HON DR ANNABELLE BENNETT AC SC, Commissioner

PROF ANDREW MACINTOSH, Commissioner

IN THE MATTER OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION INTO

NATIONAL NATURAL DISASTER ARRANGEMENTS

HEARING BLOCK 1, DAY 3 TRANSCRIPT

CANBERRA

10:00 AM, WEDNESDAY, 27 MAY 2020

MR A TOKLEY QC, MS JPS AMBIKAPATHY and MS A SPIES appearing as Counsel Assisting

HEARING BLOCK 1, DAY 3 - 27.5.20 P-157

<RESUMING 10:00 AM>

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Mr Tokley, are we ready to proceed?

MR TOKLEY QC: Ready to proceed, Commissioners.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you.

MR TOKLEY QC: Commissioners, the theme to be explored today is the impact on the natural environment by the bushfires in 2019 and 2020, and interagency coordination in responding to the bushfires. Commissioners, as you are aware, the terms of reference set the parameters for this inquiry and they require the Commission to look into, amongst other things, the responsibilities of, and coordination between, the Commonwealth and State Governments. More specifically, the terms of reference also direct the Commission to have regard to wildlife management and species conservation, including biodiversity, habitat protection, and restoration.

It may be convenient to mention at this point that the Commission has received a substantial number of submissions from individuals and organisations addressing matters of concern to them relevant to the natural environment. Several themes have emerged from those submissions: the scale of the impact of the last bushfires on ecological communities, on its biodiversity, on Australia's world heritage listed sites and not least, of course, its fauna.

Time does not permit us to address all of those matters in great detail but we are aware of the many concerns that have been expressed. Commissioners, you may be aware that in the response of the National Bushfire Recovery Agency tendered yesterday it was estimated that over 8 million hectares of land was burned, of which approximately 3.7 million, or almost 45 per cent, was nature conservation reserve.

The Commonwealth of Australia has a shared responsibility for the management of the natural environment with the States and Territories. More specifically, the Commonwealth has responsibilities for matters of national environmental significance under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act which is colloquially known as the EPBC Act. As a result of intergovernmental and bilateral agreements, States and Territories have the day-to-day management of most matters of national environmental significance within a State or Territory.

There is a vast array of different States and Territory legislation which put in place regulatory arrangements for dealing with the natural environment and matters of national environmental significance. The State or Territory legislation is not the subject or focus of today's hearing, and it simply provides relevant context. Today, I and other counsel assisting, will be presenting four special focus studies. Before each of those special focus studies, a brief introduction will be made by counsel assisting of what is to come.


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For the purpose of today's hearing, I propose to tender documents listed in the tender list provided by counsel assisting and, Commissioners, you could find that tender list at tab A of your book. The documents in the tender list include for each witness either a witness statement or an institutional response to one or more notices issued by the Commission and other material such as photos and videos. Commissioners, we propose tendering all of the documents in the tender list as a bulk tender in order to save time. We seek a direction that the documents identified on the tender list, together with the document identification number, be recorded on the transcript as the documents tendered today. May I have that direction from you, Chair?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: I so direct.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you very much. We propose that a tender document will be referred to by the exhibit number during the hearing. The first witness to be called this morning is Ms Emma Campbell from the Department of Agriculture Water and Environment. Ms Campbell will give an overview of the Commonwealth’s responsibilities under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act for matters of national environmental significance to give context to the more specific evidence that is to follow later today. I now call Emma Campbell, please.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Ms Campbell, thank you for joining us today.

MS CAMPBELL: Hello. Good morning.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Mr Tokley.

MR TOKLEY QC: Ms Campbell, will you take an oath or affirmation?

MS CAMPBELL: An affirmation.

<EMMA CAMPBELL, AFFIRMED>

EXAMINATION BY MR TOKLEY QC

MR TOKLEY QC: Ms Campbell, I understand that the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment has provided two responses. The first is dated 21 April 2020 and the second, 22 May 2020, in response to notices issued by the Commission.

MS CAMPBELL: That's correct.

MR TOKLEY QC: And you are able to speak to those responses?

MS CAMPBELL: Those are institutional responses. I can speak to certain elements of those responses as you've outlined earlier today.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you. Commissioners, those documents are exhibits 3.1.1 and 3.1.2, and those documents can be found behind tab B of your bundle.


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Ms Campbell, in giving your evidence today, I will identify a topic upon which I wish to seek your response, and I may have other questions in relation to that topic, but there will be three topics covered today. The first of those topics is: can you outline the present matters for which the Commonwealth has responsibility under the EPBC Act?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes, I can. So the - as you've outlined, the EPBC Act is an essential piece of Commonwealth legislation that provides for the protection of the environment, and it provides a legal framework to protect matters of national environment significance. It does this by identifying things that are - that needed to be protected: listing the key threatening processes for species and communities, environmental communities, developing management plans for these nationally important things, assessing and improving actions that could significantly impact on these matters of national environment significance, and having compliance and enforcement activities for these approval decisions. And the Act covers nine matters of national environment significance. Those are threatened: species and ecological communities, migratory species, Commonwealth marine area, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, national heritage areas, world heritage, Ramsar wetlands, nuclear actions and water as it relates to coal seam gas and large coal mines. Those are the things, I think, will be of most interest to the Commission, but the Act also provides for the control of international movement and trade of wildlife; for example, for zoos, importing animals for zoos. It allows us to create and manage Commonwealth reserves, and there are six terrestrial Commonwealth reserves, Uluru, Kakadu and Booderee, three reserves on islands - Norfolk, Christmas, and Cocos Islands - and then 58 marine reserves. And it also allows us to make decisions about actions taken by the Commonwealth or on Commonwealth land or in the Commonwealth marine environment that could significantly impact on any part of the environment.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you. I just want to ask you a question, please, about national parks and reserves, first of all.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

MR TOKLEY QC: Because I understand that there are parks in Australia that are called national parks but, in fact, they are not national parks within the meaning of the Act.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes, that's correct. The Act sets up the director of national parks and the terrestrial parks that are covered by the Act are Kakadu, Uluru and Booderee. A range of States have a range of reserves that are, what we call, part of our national reserves system but they are not covered by the EPBC Act or established under the Act.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you, and I think you mentioned there were six of those terrestrial parks.


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MS CAMPBELL: Yes. Kakadu, Uluru, Booderee at Jervis Bay, and then Norfolk Island, Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Island also have parks on them.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you very much. I will be coming to some of the matters you have outlined but before I do so I want to go to another topic now and we will come back and tie up all the relevant topics. The second topic I wanted to ask you about is: what intergovernmental arrangements are presently in place concerning Commonwealth and State responsibilities for the environment?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. So, under the Constitution it doesn't mention the environment and so responsibilities fall to the States. You talked about the intergovernmental agreement and the heads of agreement on Commonwealth roles and responsibilities for the environment. Those were made in 1992 and 1997 respectively. And those clarify roles and responsibilities. And, in summary, these agreements with States and Territories have primary responsibility for most land use planning and environmental protection. And you talked about the numerous State frameworks and pieces of legislation that allow them and support them to do that.

And then the Commonwealth has a more narrow set of roles, focusing on those matters that are nationally significant; and the EPBC Act is part of the framework that allows us to meet those responsibilities and that allows us to regulate matters of national environment significance. Often those matters come out of international agreements, and it also allows us to regulate actions taken by the Commonwealth or on Commonwealth land. But we work together with the States to implement processes under the EPBC Act and State legislation. We do that when we're considering what species need to be protected and how; and each State and Territory has their own list, as does the Commonwealth. Up until 2015 - well, in 2015 we signed a memorandum of understanding with the States and Territories to start to bring those lists together, so that we use common methodology, common terminology and common processes.

Up to now, and still in some cases now, a species can be listed as vulnerable in one State, extinct in another, and endangered in another. So it can be very confusing and not in the best interests of the species. So we've agreed to work together with the same criteria and the same processes. And that will be a long process but it's under way. Similarly, on the approvals and assessment provisions of the Act we have bilaterals in place with many of the jurisdictions.

So that different States and Territories have their own environmental assessment provisions that are similar in many ways to the Commonwealth but slightly different. And so proponents of actions may have to, without cooperation, go through a State process, and then go through a Commonwealth process that's slightly different. And so we've agreed to work together and effectively accredit a process in many States and Territories. So if a State assessment is undertaken in that way, then we come together and the Commonwealth can approve that assessment based on the State process.


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MR TOKLEY QC: Yes, I will be asking you.

MS CAMPBELL: .....

MR TOKLEY QC: I beg your pardon? I will be asking you some questions about some of the matters you've just mentioned - - -

MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

MR TOKLEY QC: - - - a little later. Do I understand that there are intergovernmental agreements, there are bilateral agreements and there are also intergovernmental memoranda that deal with matters?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. So we have - an intergovernmental agreement is really the framework agreement which was agreed in 1992, and that sets out broad parameters for dealing with the environment, biodiversity that we're talking about today, but also air quality and standard setting for chemicals, for example. Then, under the EPBC Act, there's a memorandum that is agreeing to work together to have common listings, details of processes under their relevant environmental assessment Acts.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: We might get Ms Campbell just to repeat that answer please. She dropped out for about 15 seconds there.

MR TOKLEY QC: Yes, certainly, Chair. Ms Campbell, would you be so good as to repeat your answer, please, because there was a slight delay in - and we lost a little bit of your answer.

MS CAMPBELL: Okay. So, yes, there's a number - the intergovernmental agreement of the environment is sort of the headline agreement. It was agreed in 1992. It covers biodiversity but it's also the principles for a range of matters; for example, air quality and chemicals management and how States and Territories will work together on those. Then under the EPBC Act, we have - supporting the EPBC Act, we have a memorandum of understanding about how we can streamline our listing processes and work together on those. And then formally under the EPBC Act there's - the EPBC Act provides the provision for bilaterals on assessment approvals of the environmental assessment processes under the Act. And so we have bilaterals with a number of States that allow us, effectively, to accredit State assessment processes and adopt those, when making decisions under the EPBC Act.

MR TOKLEY QC: Is the consequence of the intergovernmental agreements, the bilateral agreements and the memoranda that you have mentioned, that the States and Territories have primary responsibility for environmental matters within their jurisdiction; that is the State or Territory concerned?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. Yes, the States have the primary responsibility. Commonwealth deals with matters of national environmental significance, and where


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those things overlap, the bilaterals and the memorandum of understanding help us navigate a way through the overlap.

MR TOKLEY QC: And so the day-to-day responsibility for such matters is dealt with by the State or Territory?

MS CAMPBELL: That's correct.

MR TOKLEY QC: Can I ask you now, going to another topic, if you could identify and explain the material features of the processes concerning matters of national environmental significance under the Act?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. So, as I flagged earlier, the Act really has four key processes to protect matters of national environment significance. It's determining what those matters are, and we use the word "listing" for that. There's a planning framework instituted. Then there's the approval assessment decisions, and then there's compliance. So if it suits you, I could talk to each of those in turn?

MR TOKLEY QC: I would be grateful.

MS CAMPBELL: So if we talk about the listing process, this is really the process to identify matters of national environment significance protected by the Act. They're slightly different for different matters of national environment significance. For threatened species, the process is really based on a scientific assessment of the status of the species, using international criteria established by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature and reflected in the EPBC Act, in the regulations, and it really looks at considering changes to habitat distribution or species numbers.

We have over 1800 listed threatened species and they're listed as either vulnerable, for example, the koalas in New South Wales and Queensland and ACT, endangered, the Eastern Bristlebird, or critically endangered, the Wollemi Pine, or extinct such as the Bramble Cay melomy. So the process for threatened species, which is similar for other processes, is a public nomination, so we call for people to put forward their suggestions. These nominations are considered and prioritised by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee, and they look at data available, level of imperilment, and capacity within the committee.

They're provided to the Minister who ultimately decides on what the priority list for threat assessment is. Then there's quite a significant process to gather the science, consult with States and Territories but also stakeholders and scientists, on the level of threat and the threat assessment, and how the species meets the criteria. The Threatened Species Scientific Committee consolidates that advice and provides that advice to the Minister, and the Minister ultimately makes a decision.

It's very similar with ecological communities. There's slight differences but I don't think they're material. And with national and Commonwealth heritage, the process is broadly the same except for, instead of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee,


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the Act establishes the Australian Heritage Council, which is a group of heritage experts who are the experts advising the Minister and the department through that process, and the criteria for heritage listing, our natural historic and indigenous outstanding heritage values.

MR TOKLEY QC: In - - -

MS CAMPBELL: The process for listing - - -

MR TOKLEY QC: I'm sorry, I beg your pardon.

MS CAMPBELL: Sorry, keep going?

MR TOKLEY QC: I interrupted you, I beg your pardon.

MS CAMPBELL: I was going to move on to heritage and Ramsar which are a bit different as well. And these processes are really - for Ramsar, world heritage and migratory species, effectively the EPBC Act adopts international lists. And so the processes are set by the Ramsar Convention, the World Heritage Convention or the Convention on Migratory Species or bilaterals for some of the migratory birds. And once those conventions adopt a species that's relevant for Australia, those species are therefore protected under the EPBC Act. And once something becomes on the list then it becomes a matter of national environment significance, and that triggers the planning framework provisions and the approval of assessment provisions under the Act.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you, Ms Campbell. Just before we get to the planning and assessment provisions, could I ask you whether, in dealing with the listings - for example, the endangered species or ecological communities - whether regard is had to natural hazards such as bushfires and the like?

MS CAMPBELL: To a certain extent. When we're looking at whether a species, for example, should be listed we look at the range of threats. So fire is listed as a threat on many of the species, including the Wollemi Pine, Eastern Bristlebird and the sphagnum bogs and fens, ecological community specifically list changed fire regimes and fire as a threat for those species. Similarly, in some cases, or at least one case, floods are listed as a potential threat for a snail species. So if natural disasters are impacting on the status and likelihood of that species, they're noted in the documentation.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you, Ms Campbell. Now, you were going to move on to plans, if you could deal with that topic?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. So the EPBC Act provides the planning framework for matters of national environment significance, and those plans set out the protection, conservation and management for some of the matters. Again, a bit like the listing process, they're slightly different matters but I will talk through, if it's okay with you,


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the process for threatened species and ecological communities as an example. So the Act requires that for each species, listed species, and ecological community there be, what's called, a recovery plan for a conservation advice in place, and those documents aim to provide the long-term recovery of the species and management actions needed to recover the species.

Both of those documents draw on science, information and advice from the Threatened Species Scientific Committee. We work with States and Territories, including to implement the memorandum of understanding to have similar listing processes and we consult with stakeholders in developing these plans, and ultimately the Minister, or his or her delegate, make a decision to adopt those plans. Once those plans are adopted, they have regulatory effect and are a formal part of the decision-making for assessment approvals under the Act. For example, the Minister must have regard to an approved conservation advice when making an approval decision under the Act.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you.

MS CAMPBELL: Similarly, for other species the planning process is similar, relying on experts, consultation and ultimately Minister's decision, and ultimately having regulatory effect in the approvals part of the Act.

MR TOKLEY QC: You mentioned of the plans. One was the species recovery and conservation; is that correct?

MS CAMPBELL: There's either a recovery plan or a conservation advice, and that's based on, effectively, how complex the species is to manage, and how much consultation and rigor is needed in the planning for that species.

MR TOKLEY QC: Are there also threat abatement plans?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. So in a different part of the Act it does go to threats. So there's a number of threats that, you know, threaten our native plants and animals, and the Act provides to list these as a key threatening process under the Act. Things are listed as, or could be listed as a key threatening process if they could cause a species or a community to become endangered, or threatened, or to become more threatened or endangered. Examples of key threatening processes that have been adopted under the Act are competition and degradation by rabbits, and the loss of climactic habitat caused by anthropogenic emissions from greenhouse gases.

There's fire regimes that cause biodiversity decline has been nominated as a key threatening process under the Act. And following the recent fire season, the Minister and the Threatened Species Scientific Committee have agreed to prioritise looking at that and seeing if that deserves to be a listed key threatening process. Once a threatening process is made, the Minister must decide whether it needs what's called a threat abatement plan under the Act. And, really, the decision to make a threat abatement plan is: is such a plan under the Act, does it provide a feasible, effective


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and efficient method of reducing that threat? If the Minister agrees and a threat abatement plan is developed, it's developed a bit like the species recovery plan with scientific input, consultation and ultimately a Minister's decision. And once a threat abatement plan is made, the Minister must consider those when making the assessment approvals under the Act. Rabbits is one of the examples of a key threatening process that has a threat abatement process in place.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you. So I understand that, in terms of the structure of the matter we're approaching today, we've dealt with listings and plans.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

MR TOKLEY QC: The third part is assessments?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. So the Act provides for the minister to assess and approve an action that have, will have, or is likely to have, a significant impact on one of the protected matters, and those protected matters are the matters of national environment significance but also those actions that relate to the Commonwealth. A person proposing to take an action that they consider must - sorry, has, will have, or is likely to have a significant impact on a matter, must refer that proposal to the Commonwealth for decision. The onus is on the person proposing the action, but the Minister does have the power to call in an action if someone does not put it forward.

The Minister considers - if the Minister considers that the action would have such an impact on a matter of national environment significance, they can - they can decide that it goes into the next phase. It's a controlled action and it triggers approval and assessment provisions under the Act. So there's a range of different assessment methods under the Act which go to how complex the matter is, the scale, the magnitude of the potential impact and the level of public interest. So the Minister decides those, and a proponent in the department works through that assessment process.

Then following that assessment process the Minister must make a decision on whether to approve an action or not, and he or she can approve an action with conditions that require developers, for example, to undertake certain actions which could include, for example, offsets. And to make a lawful decision, the Minister must comply with the terms of the Act which, again, going back to the planning documentation includes having regard to relevant planning documentations. And then following the approval of a project, there's commonly an ongoing role for the Minister and the department in relation to monitoring and compliance with the approval condition upon that.

There are a few exemptions to assessments and approvals. Actions that had prior authorisation before the EPBC Act came into effect, or are a continuing use, are allowed to continue. Forestry operations undertaken in accordance with the Regional Forest Agreement are exempt from the approval and assessment provisions of the Act. And there is a power to exempt actions for all or some of the EPBC Act


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assessment and approval processes if it's in the national interest, and this is under section 158. And in January the Minister gave exemptions to Victoria, South Australia and WA in relation to the taking of firefighting activities, fire prevention activities, and fire recovery activities in response to fires in the '19-'20 season. And the aim of that was to protect life, property or matters of national environment significance. And my understanding is that the Victorian Government used that exemption when they went into East Gippsland to remove some of the surviving Eastern Bristlebirds which are endangered, and brought them into captive breeding until it was safe to re-release them.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you. I would like to ask you, please, some questions about strategic assessments.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

MR TOKLEY QC: And, in particular, whether you could give us an example of where, in a strategic assessment, the fire management plan, for example, is taken into account?

MS CAMPBELL: So, yes, the strategic assessment is another way to provide approvals under the EPBC Act and it looks at how a group of activities will affect matters of national environment significance on a regional scale. And by looking at cumulative impacts on the environment and the compounding impacts of threat, such as climate change, over the whole landscape before projects begin we can get some really good outcomes and also give greater certainty for business and developers. So the process really is, there is a strategic assessment of the impacts of actions under a policy plan or program. And normally State governments are the proponent, so it's their policy plan or program.

The Minister considers and, if appropriate, endorses that policy plan or program. Then the Minister can approve actions undertaken in accordance with the plan or program. And then, once the strategic assessment is complete, project-by-project approval is not required if actions are consistent with the processes I have just outlined. So they're really useful for complex, large scale, or ongoing activities; for example, major urban growth and development. South Australia did apply and does have a strategic assessment of its regional fire management policy, which effectively allows the South Australian Government to have confidence that when they're doing their fire management activities, they have EPBC Act approval, and any significant impacts that might occur on matters of national environment significance are avoided and allowed under the Act.

MR TOKLEY QC: And is South Australia the only example, or is that just one example?

MS CAMPBELL: South Australia is the only example, to my knowledge, with a fire management activity. One of the reasons that may be is some of the fire management activities, if they were ongoing and nothing effectively has changed in the way a


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State does it, it may be exempt pause because it is a pre-existing approval, or some of the fire management activities might be in a regional forest agreement area and so might be exempt. So South Australia, I think, looked, my understanding - and, again, it was before my time - wanted to just have that legal certainty on their new fire management regime that they were implementing across the State.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Mr Tokley, can we just explore that, and Ms Campbell, just a little bit more. With South Australia, as that's the only State you've just mentioned there, how does that actually translate into action there, just for the layperson, that exemption?

MS CAMPBELL: So my understanding, and it's not my direct area of expertise, is that South Australia put forward its fire management plan. It went through the process, and as long as - and the Minister at the time agreed that if action was undertaken in the way that was approved, there wouldn't be a need for further assessment or project-by-project approval. And so South Australia is doing its fire management, as far as I know, in accordance with that plan, and so it's effectively exempt under the Act or exempt from further assessment under the Act.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. Thanks. What we will do, as a part of the ongoing hearings, when we talk with South Australia, we will try and get a little bit more around that and how that helps them in their actions for natural disaster; in particular, the bushfires that we're looking at. But please continue. I've got a couple of other questions but I will wait until the end. Thanks.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you, Chair. Ms Campbell, the matters that the Chair raised with you really illustrate the way in which the primary responsibility for matters of national environmental significance with the Commonwealth, those, the primary responsibility, the day-to-day responsibility lies with the States and Territories that have those matters of national significance within their jurisdiction?

MS CAMPBELL: That's correct. And, again, when organisations or people or States are proposing an action, the onus is on them to consider what - whether it would trigger the Act and should be referred to the EPBC Act.

MR TOKLEY QC: So, in dealing with assessments, have you covered then both strategic and environmental assessments?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you. And the fourth topic you were going to mention was compliance?

MS CAMPBELL: Which I've covered at a high level. The Act provides for the Minister, ongoing compliance and enforcement on the condition, or any conditions, or how actions are being undertaken in accordance with the Act - well, in accordance with the decisions made under the Act.


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MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you, Ms Campbell. And one final question, if I may. Do you know when the impact from bushfires was nominated in relation to the threatening process, the listed threatening process?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes, it was changed fire regimes, which includes changes to traditional - traditional burning, for example, not just natural hazards, and that was first nominated in 2007. So it was nominated quite some time ago.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you very much, Ms Campbell. Commissioners, I have no further questions for this witness.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: What I would like to just highlight, as we work with the States and our other agencies and look further into the hearings, we do need to look a bit at how the intergovernmental agreements, frameworks, strategies, MOUs, acts and all that translates into action and associated funding. We won't go into that today because we're looking at an overview today, but we will need to do that and work how that then coordinates across the States. We will look at a little bit more about the current actions to go towards common classifications, and the like, to look to simplify that.

One question I do have, if we just went back just a little bit, you were talking about bushfire being recognised as a threat and that isn't currently the case in a particular or a specific area that you were talking about, are we looking at that or not?

MS CAMPBELL: So I think your question is about whether fire is a key threatening process?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: That's right, yes.

MS CAMPBELL: And how it impacts. The fire isn't listed as a key threatening process under the Act and the Threatened Scientific Committee and the Minister have agreed to look at that and see if it should be, and the Threatened Species Scientific Committee is meeting about - is meeting this week and next week, and will specifically consider that process. However, fire is listed as a threat or noted as a threat - "listed" probably has a different meaning - in a number of specific species, nominations on the list and in their conservation advices and recovery plans. So Wollemi Pine, for example, notes risk of fire for that individual species.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you for that.

MS CAMPBELL: And similarly world heritage ......

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Yes. No, because we noted in some of the evidence that was provided there were specific areas that had been factored in, so I was just trying to clarify that.


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MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you for that. Commissioner Bennett.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Yes, I would just like to get an idea of some of the matters in a broader context that you have listed, if you could help me here. First, just picking up on the thing - I mean in the notice, and you mentioned the listing of world heritage properties, okay. So you've got world heritage listings, that's primary Commonwealth responsibility. But my understanding is that you were saying that if there is like a fire management plan, it's up to the States to manage the protection of that world heritage space; is that right?

MS CAMPBELL: We put forward a world heritage nomination; we do so in conjunction with the States and the States - - -

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Yes, but once it's got world heritage listing.

MS CAMPBELL: The States - - -

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Sorry.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. The State is still the primary land manager but, again, we work with the States and do that cooperatively but they're the ones doing the fire management, doing the weed management day to day.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: And, what, do they report to your department about what they're doing and what plans they have in place?

MS CAMPBELL: We work with them on reports and on risk managements, and often many of those go to the World Heritage Committee. For example, the World Heritage Committee asked for a State conservation report on both the Gondwana and the Greater Blue Mountains after the fires, and worked closely with relevant States to pull that information together and submit that to the committee, the World Heritage Committee.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Okay, I think I understand that. You also made a comment about how the States - back on the question - the States have primary responsibility and so, as I understand it, even for matters that have been listed as being of national significance. What happens? Do you know what happens if there's something that has national significance and it crosses borders, State borders? What happens in that situation? Do different States take responsibility for the bits in their State or does the Commonwealth come in at that point?

MS CAMPBELL: The different States take responsibility and when I talked about the common assessment method for the listing, that's part of the reason we have really some disjointed listing processes. So the States take individual responsibility but we work cooperatively with the States on planning frameworks. And so that's a


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really helpful way to bring it together. For example, we've been doing a lot of work with New South Wales and Queensland recently on a recovery plan for koalas that meets the needs of both States and brings it together in a coherent whole.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: So is it that the Commonwealth can get involved in a planning process or setting up a framework, but it's up to the States to implement that within their own jurisdictions; is that the case?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes, that's the case.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: One more. Just so I understand some of the status of characterisations and information and listings, I think you mentioned at one stage a 1992 agreement; you've mentioned another point at 2015, whatever it was.

MS CAMPBELL: Memorandum.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Memorandum, thank you. I'm just trying to have an understanding of just immediately, let's say prior to the bushfires, and any learnings that you've had on characterisations and information, the need for more standardisation since the bushfires, and then what's happening with regard to that. So, in other words, where the information was just prior to the bushfires, did you see any particular issues arising in this question of common description, common listings and what's happening now, if anything?

MS CAMPBELL: So, yes, we've known that inconsistent data, taxonomy, descriptions haven't been helpful, and that's part of the reason why there's an MOU, and so we've been working on that for some time. The bushfires, because of the - the urgency of some of the action, I think there were some real strengths in that we had good relationships with States and Territories and could work together, but the frameworks underpinning some of that work weren't in place. For example, it was harder than it should have been to actually get a map of where the fire - fire scar was, because everyone was working on different systems for example, and we were looking at where species are. It worked well, I think, because we worked with States and Territories - "This is what we understand. No, this is what we understand" - and there was conversation. But again that probably was more based on knowledge and workshops rather than systematic information.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: So is there now a more intense or active process in place with regard to attempts to standardise things a bit more?

MS CAMPBELL: I would probably frame it - - -

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Or is it just continuous?

MS CAMPBELL: I think it's probably continuous with different areas of focus. For example, the fire, the fire scar mapping wasn't necessarily - I think it, as far as I know, wasn't necessarily high on the radar and now it is, and that's appropriate. But,


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in terms of species mapping and bringing species together, that's a continuum which continues.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Actively?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. Yes, very actively. There's funding going into it, there's working with States and Territories and some of those are outlined in our notice to give.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Thank you very much. Thanks, Chair.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Just before I hand to Commissioner Macintosh, just to take that - you're talking about going on for some time, so what have been the barriers to date that have caused this to go on for some time, and are you seeing those changing as a result of what happened in the 2019-2020 bushfire season?

MS CAMPBELL: So, in terms of some of the barriers, if we think about the listing process as an example, different legislation with different rules and different processes was a significant barrier. There's a long - there's a long legacy. So while the MOU was signed in 2015, it can often take a year or so to get the scientific evidence together to change a species listing or to make decisions under the Act. We have 2000 species, 1800 listed threatened species at the Commonwealth. Victoria has 2000 species listed under its legislation. There are probably a different 2000 species in many instances, so that's a long legacy to get that back on track. So that's one of the barriers.

And then investment and data, and that has certainly been expedited probably over the last two years’ datas and systems. The bushfires, I think for me, has been a huge amount of goodwill and support with the States and Territories but also with non-government organisations, and it's - I'm hopeful that that will continue although it's early days, so - but it certainly has been great cooperation in getting that data together.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you. I appreciate that. Commissioner Macintosh.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Good morning, Ms Campbell. Thanks for joining us and thanks for your evidence. I just want to take you to your statement, or the department's statement of 21 April. That's AWE.501.001.0016. Hopefully you see what I see.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. I've got that one.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Fantastic. There, you describe some of the initiatives the department is taking in the wake of the event, particularly around improving the collection of fire extent data and the improvement of your processes around fire severity. I wondered whether you could just give a bit more colour. I


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know you've been talking to it now about the nature of the difficulties you encountered and I'm particularly interested in whether Department of Ag is taking a lead on this or whether it's Geoscience or CSIRO or any other body?

MS CAMPBELL: This isn't my specific area of expertise but the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment is taking the lead and has produced the fire - the fire maps for the Commonwealth.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Okay. Thank you. I think we might come back to that a bit later but that's useful information. Thank you.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: I just have one more if I may. Back on the concept of the World Heritage Properties, in the initial one, which is AWE.501.001.0003, there was a listed example of World Heritage properties and national heritage places and a very broad summary of what happened, what percentages of them were affected by the recent bushfires.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: You know, you've got the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, Fraser Island, Gondwana, Greater Blue Mountains, etcetera.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: I guess I just wanted to have an understanding of whether or not you were aware of whether there were any specific fire management plans in place or arrangements in place with regard to those specific World Heritage Properties, as a general proposition, prior to the 2019-20 bushfires?

MS CAMPBELL: As a general proposition, my understanding is yes, but I don't have that level of detail.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: That's fine. Thank you very much.

MS CAMPBELL: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Commissioner Macintosh has one more question on the broader environment.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Sorry, Ms Campbell, I just wondered, were recovery plans a useful source of information in preparing your response to the disasters and trying to assess the impacts on threatened species and threatened ecological communities?


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MS CAMPBELL: Yes, in many instances. So when we were working to look at impacts of species we looked at the species that were overlapped with the fire scar and then the characteristics, and those recovery plans and conservation advices are part of that key, key document, especially for the ones that are more recent. Some of them are relatively out of date. And so those ones we draw more on experts, but many especially of the newer ones are very useful.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: And is it similar in relation to conservation advices?

MS CAMPBELL: Yes. Yes. Similar.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Nothing more from me, thanks, Chair.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you. Mr Tokley, do we have any more for Ms Campbell?

MR TOKLEY QC: No. No, Commissioners. No, Chair. If Ms Campbell could be excused from attendance?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Yes, Ms Campbell we have a lot more questions out of all this in a more detailed sense for the next block of hearings, but the overview you've provided has given us a very good understanding of where the Commonwealth sits and the issues, I think, of enacting those Acts, memorandums, agreements, frameworks, strategies and down, and sort of flowing it across the various States. I thought military operations were complex, but thank you very much for your time this morning. I appreciate it. Thank you.

MS CAMPBELL: Okay. Thank you.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you, Chair. The next witness is the Threatened Species Commissioner and Ms Ambikapathy of counsel will be examining the next witness.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Thank you. I call Dr Sally Box. There might be a short pause.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Dr Box, thank you for joining us this morning. We appreciate it very much.

DR BOX: Good to be here. Thank you.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box, will you take an oath or an affirmation?

DR BOX: An affirmation.

<SALLY BOX, AFFIRMED>


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<EXAMINATION BY MS AMBIKAPATHY

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box, you provided a witness statement dated 22 May 2020 under a notice issued by the Commission?

DR BOX: I did.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: This document is exhibit 3.2.1 and it's behind tab C1 of your bundle.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: We have it. Thank you.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box, do you adopt this statement as true and correct?

DR BOX: I do.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box, I will start with a little bit of your background and your qualifications. You have a PhD in plant sciences from the ANU?

DR BOX: That's correct.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And you're currently the Commonwealth Threatened Species Commissioner?

DR BOX: That's right.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And you were appointed in 2018?

DR BOX: That's right. I commenced in the role in January 2018.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And that role sits within the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment?

DR BOX: That's right. It's a senior executive officer band 1 role within that department.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And you report to Ms Emma Campbell, the First Assistant Secretary of the Biodiversity Conservation Group?

DR BOX: I do.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box, are you able to give the Commissioners an overview of Australia's natural environment in terms of species distribution and share of global biodiversity?

DR BOX: Australia is one of 17 mega diverse countries with globally distinct levels of biodiversity, and significantly more unique species than most other countries. We


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possess more than 80 globally unique families of plants and animals, and these species have a very high degree of endemism, so they're only found in Australia. There's still much basic biodiversity discovery work to be undertaken in Australia. Only around 30 per cent of Australia's approximately 620,000 species that are estimated to occur in Australia have been discovered and named. So we are a country that's very rich in biodiversity and we have a lot of unique plants and animals.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So prior to the 2019-2020 bushfire season, were there any trends in relation to species numbers in Australia?

DR BOX: Yes, I will refer to the 2016 State of the Environment Report which stated that, based on the information available about vegetation extent and condition, and the small number of species for which there's some understanding of trends in distribution and abundance, the status of biodiversity in Australia is generally considered poor and worsening.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Are you able to just provide a bit more detail when you say "poor and worsening"? To explain that to the Commissioners.

DR BOX: So we have approximately 1800 species that are at risk of extinction that are listed nationally as threatened under the EPBC Act. That list does continue to grow. So we are seeing an increasing number of species on our threatened species list and declining trends for many of our threatened species. Our threatened species are, I guess, subject to a range of pressures. The main threats to biodiversity are clearing, fragmentation and degradation of habitat. The impact of invasive species, climate change, changes in fire regimes, grazing pressure and changes in hydrology, and many of our species, I guess, suffer from the cumulative impacts of multiple threats and pressures.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Can I just ask one question here, because I just want to put that in perspective: how does that compare globally, out of interest, rather than just specifically on its own in Australia? I just want to get a perspective of it, please?

DR BOX: So, I mean, I don't have details of different countries in front of me, but I guess as an example, according to the IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Australia has the fourth highest rate of animal extinction globally.


COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Just to understand that in perspective, I don't know - if you take it the fourth highest rate of extinction, is that also though, when you look at it mathematically, or something, relative to the very diversity that we have? I mean, if you have a country that does not have a similar sort of diversity, then they will not have the same percentages or absolute numbers tending to go to extinction. Can you put that into perspective for me?


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DR BOX: Yes, I think that probably depends on a number of factors. Obviously, it's related to our species richness. We have a huge diversity in Australia. It also, I guess factored in the time frame over which we have been collecting this sort of information, and probably the fact that Australia has also experienced a high degree of change in the last 200 years since European settlement. So I imagine there are a number of compounding factors that contribute to that. There is biodiversity decline globally. Australia is not unique in that sense.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Thank you very much.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box, if the Commissioners have no further questions, I might turn to the next topic. Dr Box, if we could move to your involvement in the 2019-2020 bushfires, as Threatened Species Commissioner, did you have any role in either mitigation, response or recovery?

DR BOX: So, as Threatened Species Commissioner, I've really had two roles in relation to the 2019-20 bushfires: firstly, as chair of the Wildlife and Threatened Species Bushfire Recovery Expert Panel which was established in January 2020 to provide advice to the Australian Government on the impacts of the bushfires on animals and plants and ecological communities and other natural assets, and also to provide advice on the species requiring intervention and the recovery actions needed.

My second role has been as a member of the department's senior leadership team providing advice to government on the bushfire impacts and response. In both of those roles my involvement has been in the response and recovery phase post-bushfires, particularly as it relates to the assessment of impacts on, and recovery of, species and ecological communities following the fires.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: We will expand on that particular topic later in your evidence, but if I could now just turn to the topic of the impact of the 2019 and 2020 bushfires. Could you tell the Commissioners - give them a sense of what the impact was on the wildlife in Australia?

DR BOX: Certainly. So my assessment of the extent of impacts of the 2019-20 bushfires on flora and fauna, and including threatened species, is really informed by the assessments undertaken by that expert panel and the department in collaboration with a range of species experts and States and Territories government agencies. So the impact of the 2019-20 bushfires on threatened species and other flora and fauna has been severe. The expert panel, in their communique of 15 January, which is at annexure A to my witness statement, described the bushfires as an ecological disaster.

The fires covered an unusually large area and, in many places, they burnt with an unusually high intensity. As I mentioned earlier, there are currently approximately 1800 species listed as threatened under the EPBC Act, and more than 300 of these nationally listed threatened species were in the path of the fire. So they had more


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than 10 per cent of their known or likely distribution within the fire extent. The entire known range of some species was burnt.

Of the 327 species in the path of the fire, 49 threatened species had more than 80 per cent of their known or likely range within the fire extent, and a further 65 threatened species had more than 50 per cent of their known or likely range within the fire extent; and this includes plants and mammals and birds and frogs and reptiles and fish and invertebrates. So, for some species that were considered threatened before the fires, the fires have now likely increased their risk of extinction but there are also many other fire-affected species that were considered secure before the fires but have now lost much of their habitat and might be imperilled. There's an illustrative example and a map at annexure D

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box, I apologise for interrupting, if I just ask one follow-on question, and that is do you have any indication of how many additional species may now be threatened or endangered in that category that you said they were secure but now as a result of the bushfires their status may change?

DR BOX: I don't have a number. That's something that the Threatened Species Scientific Committee is looking at the moment. They're taking the assessments that the expert panel has done on these species that aren't currently listed as threatened, and looking at whether they are candidates for assessment for listing under the EPBC Act. So I can't put a number on that at the moment. But if you consider the expert panel's assessment, which considered both threatened species and non-threatened species across a range of taxa, so far they've identified more than 750 taxa that are in need of urgent management intervention. Now, some are those are already listed as threatened but some aren't. So I anticipate that there are a large number of species that will be considered for listing under the EPBC Act but I don't have an exact number to put on that right now.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I think from the number you just gave us, are we talking in the scale of hundreds?

DR BOX: Quite possibly. Again, there are quite specific criteria that the Threatened Species Scientific Committee look at when they're making a decision about whether a species is eligible for listing. So they really need to look against those criteria, but there certainly are hundreds that have been impacted by the fires and need help.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I think before I interrupted you, Dr Box, you were intending to provide an illustrative example of some of the destruction that occurred during the 2019 and 2020 bushfires.

DR BOX: So there's a map at annexure D to my witness statement which is at Kangaroo Island.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box if I can just give a - that is exhibit 3.2.1.4. It's at tab 4 of the document bundle and that is document ID DSB.501.001.0085 at 86.


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DR BOX: That's the one. So you can see on Kangaroo Island there, the dark pink - - -

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Just - I beg your pardon, Dr Box.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: No, that's not on the tab I've got. It's up here. I will just look at it on the screen. Thanks.

DR BOX: So this is a map of Kangaroo Island. On the west of the island you can see a dark pink patch, and that's the known or likely distribution of Kangaroo Island dunnart. This is a native marsupial; it's endemic to Kangaroo Island. It's listed as endangered under the EPBC Act. So that that dark pink area shows where it's known or likely to occur and that patched area shows the fire extent based on the national indicative aggregated fire extent dataset. So you can see that more than 90 per cent of the known or likely range of that Kangaroo Island dunnart was estimated to be within the fire extent. This species shelters in the skirts of grass trees. It has got a poor ability to flee fire, so likely suffer from high fire mortality, and it's now subject to post-fire predation from feral cats, having lost that protective vegetation cover. So this is an example of a species that was already listed as endangered and is now that much closer to extinction as a result of these extensive fires on Kangaroo Island.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And in following the assessment and prioritisation, are you aware of what action is now being taken in relation to this particular species?

DR BOX: Yes, there's a range of action being undertaken on Kangaroo Island for this species. One of the key actions is feral cat control. Having lost their shelter, their vegetation shelter, following the fires, these sort of ground-dwelling mammals are now really susceptible to predation by feral cats. So there's a range of feral cat control happening on the island. There has also been a predator exclusion fence erected on part of the island where they've found surviving dunnarts; they've got rid of the cats out of there and so they're now protected from feral cats. There has been some small shelters put up so the dunnarts can hide in these shelters and move around the landscape. So there's some artificial shelters that have been put up as well. So there's a range of activity happening to protect that species.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Ms Ambikapathy, can I just ask a question of Dr Box?

Dr Box, I read in the newspaper recently that there is a Citizen’s Science project going on to identify and try to measure the number of dunnarts left. Do you have any information on the status of that project?

DR BOX: No, I don't, I'm afraid. I know that they have - I'm not aware of the details of the Citizen’s Science project. There's definitely been dunnarts seen on camera traps on Kangaroo Island. So we know that some have survived the fires but I'm not up with the latest on that Citizen’s Science project.


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COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Thanks.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Sorry, I have one question on the dunnarts as well. Just as an example of that, when you say, "That's what's being done and we're doing it", is that being done by Commonwealth or State bodies, the actions that have been taken to protect the dunnarts?

DR BOX: So there are, I guess, a range of contributors to work on Kangaroo Island. So, as part of the $50 million wildlife and habitat recovery package, the Australian Government provided support to the South Australian Government for recovery work on Kangaroo Island. So the Australian Government is supporting South Australian Government there. The Australian Government is also supporting Kangaroo Island NRM which is the regional natural resource management body that manages the island. With that money, they're doing things like feral pig control on the island but there are others involved as well. So Australian Wildlife Conservancy supported the erection of that predator-proof fence. Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife is a local Land for Wildlife organisation and they've been actively involved in the work on Kangaroo Island. So there are a range of contributors to general recovery action on the island.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: I understand that now. I'm just trying to work out exactly who's doing the work on the ground. So you say that there's been a lot of Commonwealth support and by that I am assuming you mean both financial and advisory support. Who is responsible for actually going in and implementing the actions that need to be taken?

DR BOX: So - I probably don't have a full list in front of me but - - -

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: I don't need a full list. I want to get the idea of - - -

DR BOX: A bit of a sense, yeah. So South Australian Government Parks staff, that's Flinders Chase National Park on the western end of the island there, they would be very involved. Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife is private landholders, so there would be private landholders who are actively working on their properties. And then Australian Wildlife Conservancy have definitely been on the ground erecting that fence and supporting - supporting cats. In the advisory capacity you mentioned there was a workshop on Kangaroo Island to talk about threatened species recovery and map threatened species recovery on the island and a range of organisations were involved. I was there, along with staff from my department. Scientists from the National Environmental Science program came to support that assessment. And then, of course, State government staff, local community members from the island, members of the Kangaroo Island natural resource management body. So there really are a wide range of players doing the work on the ground and providing advice.



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MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box, who initiated that workshop that took place on Kangaroo Island?

DR BOX: That was initiated by - if my memory serves me correctly, it was initiated by the South Australian Government. They were very keen to do a workshop on Kangaroo Island. They were very keen to have support of the National Environmental Science program's threatened species recovery hub. There are many scientists from that hub who have done work on the island and have relevant expertise. So the South Australian Government approached the Australian Government for support for a workshop for us to be able to financially support the National Environmental Science program to essentially facilitate and support that workshop and have experts come.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And do you have a recollection of actually when that occurred; how soon after the bushfires?

DR BOX: I can find that date out for you. It was - it was certainly before COVID restricted our movement. So I think it was either late February or early March but I can check on the date.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I will be now moving to another topic, if the Commissioners have any further questions?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: No, I just - in case it doesn't get covered in other topics, I'm just interested from Dr Box, in an overall sense, how does your input translate to State preparedness activity, such as hazard reduction and that, and how does that advice provide the balance between maintaining the habitat and preparing for disasters like a bushfire?

DR BOX: So, in terms of preparedness, I think that the main advice for species, in terms of what are the threats and what are the activities that are acquired to manage those threats, that advice is - really sits in recovery plans and conservation advices, those formal documents. So the advisory role of the expert panel was a very specific advisory role post-bushfires focused on recovery. But in terms of thinking about general threats to species and how that informs land management, that advice is what's set out in the recovery plans and conservation advices that are either developed by the State governments or jointly made between the Commonwealth and the State governments. And they're - that's part of the role of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee in providing advice on those plans and advices.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: So there is advice provided in those - for those preparedness activities but your current activities are really more in a recovery sense rather than a preparedness sense. Do you see that what's learned out of this recovery actions that's going on now, do you see that translating into more input into preparedness?


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DR BOX: So I certainly think that we've learnt a lot about the impacts of fire - well, we are learning and will continue to learn a lot about the impacts of fire on different species through this process, partly because we're seeing some areas burn that don't traditionally burn, areas like rainforest ecosystems. And so we will learn from this about the types of impacts that fire can have on those ecosystems and upon those species, and this is the sort of - these are the sort of learnings that can then be incorporated into recovery plans and conservation advices. They can be updated so they can reflect our better understanding of potential impacts of fire and the types of recovery actions that can potentially help following - help in terms of building resilience and/or recovery from fire.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay, thanks. Commissioner Bennett, do you have a - - -

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: No, I'm assuming, Ms Ambikapathy, you're going to go to some of these issues, because I have a few questions in that but I won't do it now if you're going to be dealing with that because Dr Box deals with a lot of these issues broadly in her very helpful statement which is quite detailed in terms of past, present and future, if I can call it that, with regard to this. But I will go now, you're not going to be covering it.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: My plan is to run through the expert panel’s process that Dr Box was chairing during assessment, prioritisation and recovery. That will throw up some of these issues, and then go through the next steps following the expert panel and what is proposed to be done but - - -

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: No, no, that's fine, because I'm just picking up on a couple of matters. One is that Dr Box made it clear that her involvement in all of this has been since the bushfires, that she didn't have a role - there was no role for her as the Commonwealth Threatened Species Commissioner prior to that in the planning for it. And I understand the expert panel was set up in January I think, January of 2020. And I think Dr Box just said there were a lot of steps taken, you know, that the focus - because she has come in at that time, it has been on recovery and resilience. But I think in her statement she has also identified, if I can call it that, missing information that has been identified and very, very - a very helpful series of suggestions going forward which I found very interesting. So I'm only saying that now so that when you ask the questions and Dr Box gives the answers, I, for one, speaking for myself, will be very assisted if there could be a little bit of discussion about some of those matters.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Thank you.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Box, just as a matter of clarification, do you sit on the threatened species expert panel that advises in relation to EPBC listings?


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DR BOX: No, I don't. That's the Threatened Species Scientific Committee. No, I don't sit on that. When they meet I usually have a meeting with them to update them on my activities and vice versa. So we do communicate with each other, but I'm not a member of that committee and I don't have a formal role in that statutory process.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So the next topic that I'm going to move to is the expert panel. Now, you were appointed as chair of that panel in January 2020?


MS AMBIKAPATHY: And that panel first met on - was it 15 January 2020?


MS AMBIKAPATHY: What is the membership of that panel?

DR BOX: So the members include experts in conservation biology, bio-ecology, environmental decision-making, captive breeding as well as indigenous cultural knowledge. So the members include Professor John Winowski, Professor Sarah Legge, Dr Steven van Leeuwen, Dr Libby Rumpf, Associate Professor Dale Nimmo, Dr Jenny Gray, Dr Dan Metcalf and Dr Dick Williams.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Are the States and Territories represented on that expert panel?

DR BOX: Yes. So in addition to those members that I just mentioned, representatives of all bushfire-affected State and Territory governments participate in the expert panel as advisers, and this was established right at the beginning to ensure that we had State advisers who could provide local knowledge and so that we could promote collaboration and coordination of our assessment of the impacts of fires, but also fire recovery activities across the country. So yes, State and Territory government representatives participate in expert panel meetings.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: If you could identify for the Commissioners which particular States and Territories were represented and were acting as advisers to the expert panel?

DR BOX: So all States and Territories, with the exception of Northern Territory which wasn't affected by the fires in southern and eastern Australia in '19-'20 are represented on the panel. Different representatives from the agencies come to the meetings, depending on the topics to be discussed, but we regularly have representation from those States and Territories at expert panel meetings.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: What was the role, or what is the role of the expert panel?

DR BOX: So the expert panel really has three roles. It's to advise on the spatial and ecological information to assess the bushfire impacts on animals, plants, ecological


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communities and other natural assets and their cultural values for indigenous Australians. The second is to assist the Minister and the government to prioritise species and locations requiring intervention and to inform the delivery of the government's response to the fires. And, thirdly, to advise on the recovery actions needed to support the immediate survival and the medium and long-term recovery and resilience of fire-affected animals, plants and communities. And that's outlined in the expert panel's terms of reference, and that's also included as annexure A to my witness statement.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So if I could ask you to elaborate on the spatial analysis that you identified was the first role of the expert panel?

DR BOX: So the expert panel, in collaboration with the department and a range of species experts, has worked on identifying the species and the ecological communities that were - are within the path of the fire. So one of the first exercises that was undertaken was to assess the nature and extent of the impact of the 2019 bushfires on threatened and migratory species listed under the EPBC Act, essentially by assessing the spatial overlap between the fire extent which was compiled from State fire agencies which was later published as that national indicative aggregated fire extent dataset. And then the modelled and known - modelled, known and likely distributions of listed threatened species and migratory species under the Act.

So there was that spatial overlay between the fire extent and the modelled known and likely distribution of threatened and migratory species under the Act, and as I noted earlier, that identified that around 330 listed threatened and migratory species had more than 10 per cent of their distribution within the fire extent. That similar spatial overlay was also undertaken for threatened ecological communities listed under the EPBC Act as well.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: It might help, Commissioners, if we take you to an example of that overlay and mapping. If you go to tab 6 in your bundle and that's exhibit 3.2.15. And, evidence operator, that's DSB.501.001.0088. And, Dr Box, are you able to explain to the Commissioners the process that you have just talked about in terms of the fire extent mapping and the overlay of species distribution?

DR BOX: So, yes, this is a map of the bushfire impacts on the EPBC listed ecological community, the Upland Basalt Eucalypt Forest in the Sydney Basin bio-region. You can see that that pink area is the area where the threatened - the spatial distribution of the threatened ecological community, and you can see from that, that I think the estimate was around more than 50 per cent of the distribution of that threatened ecological community was in the fire extent.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so the grey shading is the fire extent and the pink shading is the known distribution of that particular species?

DR BOX: Yes, it's the estimated spatial distribution of that threatened ecological community.


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MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so once that overlay was done, what was the next step in the analysis?

DR BOX: So for threatened ecological communities?


DR BOX: So for threatened ecological communities, so essentially they did an overlay of the fire extent with the range of threatened ecological communities listed under the EPBC Act, and I think they identified - this is the department's analysis - I think 20 threatened ecological communities that had more than 10 per cent of their estimated distribution within the fire extent. And this is one of them that had more than 50 per cent of its distribution within the extent. And then from that initial, sort of, fire overlap assessment, the department identified seven, I guess fire threatened ecological community communities of greatest initial concern and highest priority for detailed impact assessment. And these threatened ecological communities were based - were identified on the basis that they're likely to be more fire sensitive because they typically experience infrequent fire or no fire at all and they're consequently poorly adapted to fire. And this includes ecological communities like peatlands and rainforests and wet sclerophyll forests, and also a highly threatened heathland that's burnt too frequently in recent years to maintain its characteristic traits.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr - - -

DR BOX: Sorry.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I apologise, I just have a few questions to take you back. In terms of that analysis, was that a desktop analysis or was it a boots-on-the-ground analysis?

DR BOX: No, this is a desktop analysis based on, firstly, that spatial overlap and, secondly, on what we understand to be the characteristics of those ecological communities and whether or not they're fire - they're likely to be fire sensitive or they're likely to be adapted to fire. So that was an assessment based on this desktop fire extent analysis, but also based on the department's understanding of the characteristics of those threatened ecological communities. The next step is obviously boots on the ground, so we do those on-the-ground assessments, yes.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So, in terms of that desktop analysis, in terms of the fire extent information, where did that information come from?

DR BOX: I'll just refer to my witness statement, if you just give me one moment. So this national indicative aggregated fire extent was developed, sort of, quite rapidly by the department. The department wanted to develop a, sort of, a reliable and agreed sort of fit-for-purpose and repeatable national dataset of burnt areas across Australia.


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So that national dataset sort of presents a cumulative national view of fire extent. There was a pre-existing national source of information on fire extent, which was available to the Australian Government to do this analysis. So colleagues in the department drew data together from multiple different sources, including from State and Territory agencies responsible for emergency and natural resource management, and from the Northern Australia Fire Information website. So they needed to source that data and put agreements in place and develop up a process for aggregating that data and for understanding it limitations. So this was a fire extent dataset that was developed by the department with - sourced at multiple data sources from different State agencies.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Do you have a sense of how long it took to gather all that information together and then validate it and put it in that fire extent map that could be used for this process?

DR BOX: Sorry, I don't - I don't have a good sense of exactly how long that took. I could find out from colleagues exactly how long that took.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And in terms of limitations, you mentioned that there were some limitations. What were the limitations of that dataset?

DR BOX: So I'm advised by colleagues who are in that geospatial area of - mapping area of the department that the dataset has a few known issues which are described at its place of publication on the website. Firstly, some data in the dataset is known to be of low accuracy. The data draws on a variety of mapping methods. So, because of that, it sort of lacks national coherency. One of the limitations - - -

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I beg your pardon, Dr Box, just in terms of different mapping methods, is that because there are different mapping methods used in different States or is that because in different types of terrains a different mapping method needs to be used and that can vary within a State and between States.

DR BOX: My understanding there are different mapping methods between States. Again, it's not my area of expertise. But I do understand there are different mapping methods between States. It's also quite possible that there's different mapping methods within a jurisdiction. But I just don't know. So I guess another limitation is that it only shows the outline of burnt areas, so it doesn't have information on fire severity in those areas. So it could include areas within it that are completely unburnt. And also it's an intentionally precautionary map, so it could overestimate the size of the burnt areas. So they're some of the limitations but I'm still advised by my colleagues that it's the best national dataset currently available for this purpose but those limitations would have affected the accuracy of the derived analysis.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And then the other input into the assessment process, I think you identified, was the species - or known or estimated species distribution which was used to overlay with the fire extent maps. Where did that information come from?


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DR BOX: So for listed threatened - for listed threatened species and listed migratory species - if you just give me one moment - the species distribution data for listed threatened species and migratory species comes from the species of national environmental significance spatial dataset which is maintained by the department. So that was the primary source of spatial information used for EPBC Act listed threatened species and migratory species.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And was there any limitation with those datasets in the context of the assessment that was being done by the expert panel?

DR BOX: So I guess our species distribution - all of our assessments require species distribution data to be able to do this sort of assessment. For many species there's insufficient available observation data, both historic and current, to inform the species distribution models, which inform that assessment of overlay. It varies between species. The availability of species observation data is particularly acute for invertebrates, for example, and it's much better for, say, birds. So it does vary between taxa. But, yes, those distribution models are only as good as the observation data that feeds into it, and that does vary in availability between taxa.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Where is that sourced from, that observation data that is held by the department?

DR BOX: You're probably getting a little bit beyond my area of expertise here, but I think that species observation data comes from a range of sources: through agreements with the States and Territories from the Atlas of Living Australia. So that data comes from a range of sources. I think that more detail on where that data comes from is in the department's response to its second notice to give.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So if we can now move through the process of the expert panel, unless the Commissioners have any - so once the fire extent map and species distribution overlay analysis is done, Dr Box, you mentioned then there was a prioritisation process in relation to particular taxas, and could you please run us through that process?

DR BOX: Absolutely. So, as I mentioned, that assessment, that spatial overlay, was really just the first step in analysing the potential impacts of bushfires. It was based on fire extent only and it only examined listed threatened and migratory species and listed threatened ecological communities. So then the expert panel coordinated some further analysis for different groups of species or taxa. So the first group was animals, mostly vertebrates. So the expert panel coordinated further assessments by extending that analysis to species not already listed as threatened under the Act; and that was considered important because some species not considered threatened before the fire have now lost a lot of their habitat and so may now be imperilled.

And the second thing that was taken into account was to incorporate variation in species responses to fire. So species have different characteristics and that makes


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them more or less vulnerable to fire, and not all species react in the same way. So this work on animals was led by Professor Sarah Legge who is an expert panel member, with input from species experts, expert panel members, departmental officers and also State government representatives. The assessment considered mammals and birds and frogs and reptiles, a selection of fish species, some terrestrial invertebrates, and some spiny crayfish.

Then priority species for urgent management intervention were then identified based on three factors. So the first factor was the extent of fire overlap, so how much of its range had potentially been burnt. So the higher the fire overlap, the higher the risk. The second factor that was considered was the species pre-fire imperilment. Was it already listed as threatened and in what category? So, for example, a species that was already listed as critically endangered is at higher risk than a species that wasn't currently listed as threatened. And then the third factor that was taken into account was the species traits or characteristics that makes them more or less vulnerable to fire. So that would include physical attributes, like their ability to flee a fire. Do they - can they fly away or are they pretty sedentary?

That's going to affect mortality during the fire or it could also take into account behavioural and ecological attributes and it's ability to find food post-fire. Is it a specialist that requires just one particular plant that has been burnt or is it susceptible to predators? And those sort of factors affect post-fire mortality. So the group of experts considered a range of animals against those three criteria, and out of that they identified 119 animal species in need of urgent management intervention. This included a number of species already listed as threatened like the Kangaroo Island dunnart and the Eastern Bristlebird but it also included species not previously considered threatened, such as the Albert's lyrebird and the yellow-bellied glider.

That report was released on 11 February and then updated on 20 March with some new information. And the summary report from that assessment is at annexure F1, and the technical report is at annexure F2. And as part of that assessment of what are the priority species that need urgent management intervention, that technical report also provides some guidance, considering what actions are likely to benefit a particular species. So that was the assessment for animals. There was also an assessment for plants and an assessment for invertebrates. Would you like me briefly to describe those?

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Not at this stage, unless the Commissioners - no, thank you. So those assessments were done for different taxa; correct?

DR BOX: That's right.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So if you could just run through the different categories of assessment that were done for each taxa - sorry, as in animal, invertebrates, if you could just list those.


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DR BOX: So there was - that work that was done for animals, which was mostly vertebrates but it included a few invertebrates. Then there was an assessment done of about 19,000 plant species, and that assessment considered fire extent and traits, and then a number of other factors like other stressors, like drought and things like that. That identified 709 plant species at high risk from the fires, and within that 709 there was identified a subset of 471 plant species that are in urgent need of management intervention, including the Wollemi Pine and the Forrester's bottlebrush and the Betka bottlebrush.

For the invertebrates the expert panel also coordinated an assessment of fire-affected invertebrates. Many of Australia's invertebrates are likely to have been severely impacted by the fires. But assessing the impact was quite challenging because for most of Australia, there's about 320,000 invertebrate species, there really is limited available information on their distribution or susceptibility to fire. So - but the initial assessment which was released in late April at the same time as the plant assessment, identified 191 priority invertebrates for urgent management intervention, and a further 147 invertebrate species that they thought were likely to meet those fire overlap thresholds but unfortunately there wasn't enough information, so they were prioritised for on-ground assessment. So that's, sort of, the high level summary.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Commissioners, I have one more topic that I wish to address with Dr Box, but I do notice the time.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: No. We will continue with Dr Box and we will finish this as a block before we take a break.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So, Dr Box, the process that you've described, what were the outcomes of that process? What was produced?

DR BOX: So there are a range of publicly available reports on the department's website which I - which describe - identify all those species that have been identified as high priority for management intervention across the animals, plants and invertebrates. And also the associated technical reports do describe, you know, why they were considered as priorities; and within those reports there's some guidance there on the types of management actions that are referred as well. So they have been identified as priorities, and then those priorities are now informing on-ground action.

So the work that the panel has done in collaboration with the States to identify protected species in the path of the fire and to identify those priority species and ecological communities for urgent management intervention, they're really informing the Australian Government's investment in on-ground surveys and management actions to support recovery. For example, there's an open - recently an opened competitive grants round called the Wildlife and Habitat Bushfire Recovery Program.

The priority, animals and threatened ecological communities, form the priority matters for the first tranche of that grants round. And the priority plants and


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invertebrates have now been added to that priority list and informing the priorities for that grants round for the second tranche which is open at the moment. And those priority lists have also informed the activities undertaken by State governments with Australian Government funding, and also the activities that have been undertaken by the natural resource management regional body.

So these have informed those priorities for on-ground investment by the Australian Government but, of course, that information is also available as a public resource. So for others who are involved in on-ground recovery they can use that information to guide their efforts as well if they choose to do so.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Do you have an example of how the prioritisation and technical information that sits with the prioritisation has been used to inform a government decision about funding?

DR BOX: So, for example, the State governments are receiving funding under the Wildlife and Habitat Bushfire Recovery Package, that $50 million package. Those State governments were invited to submit proposals to the department. And the expert panel provided advice and endorsement to those proposals and, in doing so, they had reference to the priority - the EPBC Act listed species that were in the path of the fire, and also the work that was being undertaken at the time to identify those priority animal species, which the State governments were aware of as well because they participated in the expert panel.

So they are there as a way - they provide guidance. Of course, the State governments and other experts bring their own local knowledge and may have identified species through their own assessments that they think are in need of as well, and obviously the governments are very receptive to that on-ground local knowledge. But this is an example of how we're using these lists to look at whether or not the proposals coming forward make sense and are being targeted at the highest priorities.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: You mentioned that the States may have been doing their own assessments, and then the expert panel was also engaging in an assessment. How did those assessments fit together?

DR BOX: So the expert panel and the department were really leading a national assessment looking at the impact of the fires nationally on matters. The State government experts were involved at different stages of that process. So for each of those processes, the animals, the plants and the invertebrates, that was - there was a lot of consultation with experts as those lists were being developed. So many of the lead authors on those proposals were consulting with State governments as they developed that work. But then those technical reports and the assessments came to the expert panel for review, on more than one occasion for review and endorsement, and as advisers to the expert panel the State government representatives were there as well to be able to provide advice on: does this align with our assessment? Actually no, we've got more information from on the ground here. We know that that ecological community actually hasn't been impacted. That one can come off the list,


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for example. So some of their own local knowledge contributed to adding or removing matters from those national priority lists.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And now that these lists have been published and are now available, is further work being done on those lists or do they now just stand as a moment in time?

DR BOX: No, there's further work being done on all of them. So, for example, there's further assessment happening on the vertebrate species. This is now being - this new research project is being led by Professor Sarah Legge but through the National Environmental Science programs, Threatened Species Recovery Hub. And that initial assessment of prioritisation of animals is now being revised to consider fire severity information, to improve the information on species' traits, and to gather more comprehensive information on the sort of actions that are likely to support recovery. So that work is continuing to be refined with new information as it comes on board.

And, similarly, there's further assessment happening of the plant species. For example, Rachel Gallagher, she has already assessed 19,000 plant species but she is revising her assessment to include an additional approximately 2000 plant species. And she's getting additional data on species occurrence from State agencies and revising the trait data as well. So there is an ongoing refinement process happening also with invertebrates and threatened ecological communities too.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Does this assessment and prioritisation process that has taken place, does that inform any of the advice on listing applications under the EPBC Act?

DR BOX: So certainly the assessment work that the expert panel has done will, I think, be very informative for the Threatened Species Scientific Committee which has that statutory role in advising the Minister on threatened species listings and conservation advices. So the Threatened Species Scientific Committee is now accelerating the process for assessment of unlisted species and ecological communities, reassessing species that are already listed or ecological communities that are already listed that may now require a conservation status update, and also revising conservation advices and recovery plans. And I think the work that the expert panel has done is providing, I guess, a foundation of information to support the Threatened Species Scientific Committee in deciding which species it needs to look at and to help inform that assessment.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And when you say that process is being accelerated, what do you mean by that?

DR BOX: Well, I think that the Threatened Species Scientific Committee has identified that. Because of the large impacts of the fire, they've got, I guess, quite a job to do; that there are a number of - a much larger number of species that now need to be looked at, and so they're really giving additional - they're doing some additional work, really, over the next couple of years to do that assessment. And they're being


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supported to do that through this new $150 million funding package announced by the government.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I have no further questions, Commissioners.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: No. That was a very good summary. I think Commissioner Bennett has a question.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: I do have a question, Dr Box. Just going back, some of the things you've mentioned here today and also highlighted in your statement, were some of the missing information and the inconsistencies of information around the country with respect to information held by the different States, and the way measurements and characterisations were done, and I think you've explained some of that with the map that's still on the screen, and how the Commonwealth has, you know, tried to bring together some information. I would also, for my own part, like to congratulate the expert panel because although it wasn't in existence prior to the fires, it seems to have hit the deck running. And I think, it would seem to me, and I would like you to comment on it, that a number of the matters that you've identified as problems before, may have been, or either have been dealt with by the panel or the panel is planning to deal with those.

But in that context, in your statement, in particular around paragraphs 148 and 151, you've identified ongoing matters as to which you say there is still scope for improvement. You've identified a number of matters earlier, you know, in paragraphs 123, 131 and matters such as that, of things that are missing. But then you turn, in 148 and 151 to looking, at matters that are still perhaps outstanding. I suppose what I would like to know, if you could just identify perhaps very shortly just in point form, two things for me. One is, what is still missing? You know, what is there that is still missing and are there barriers that you see in implementing what you have identified or do identify as areas that need to be fixed, if I can use a general word, that is not currently being effected. And I mean effected, I don't just mean being thought of but actually being actioned by the expert panel?

DR BOX: Commissioner, sorry, are you referring to my comments here on the wildlife care sector or - - -

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: No, it's just generally. You say the fact there's scope to improve coordination and operational capability.

DR BOX: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: You talk about the fact that preliminary discussions with State governments and wildlife care organisations on how we can work together to look at pathways for improvement. Bearing in mind that we're here now and a lot of the work of the expert panel has been done, and hopefully even though it wasn't there for preparation for the last bushfires, the work that you're doing now constitutes not only recovery work but preparation for - and not that we want to have one - but


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preparation for any future problem, that the work you're doing and the identification is actually also preparation for another event. But you've identified particular areas where you still see improvement, and I would like to have a better understanding from you as to what is still outstanding that the expert panel does not "have in hand" and any barriers that you can identify in the context of the Commonwealth and the States in particular in making a better system, I suppose, as you've identified. You know, the sort of system that you've foreshadowed?

DR BOX: Yes. So I think we've certainly - I guess I would say that I think the response to the fires has been characterised by a high degree of collaboration between the Commonwealth and the State governments in assessing the impacts and undertaking, sort of, a coordinated recovery effort. So I think that the lessons out of what has worked, I think, from the fire in terms of working together on assessing impacts and supporting recovery, I think it would be - you know, I see it as a real opportunity to continue that good coordination and collaboration between governments. And a lot of what we've learnt in terms of the impacts of fire on species, as I mentioned earlier, will, I anticipate, be captured in those recovery plans and conservation advices. So that all jurisdictions have that up-to-date knowledge about fire risk and how we manage the threats to those species.

I think I mentioned a number of challenges around data, mapping and species observation data, and species distribution modelling data. I'm not a data expert but I am aware that there are a number of projects underway to improve species observation data and to improve our modelling data, and we've certainly learnt about the benefits from having a national fire extent data. So I would - I think there's - there will be huge benefit in making sure that that sort of resource, you know, in a standardised way, is available to jurisdictions for future events.

I think one of the - one of the opportunities I raised was for the jurisdictions to potentially work together to identify critical biodiversity assets and prioritise critical biodiversity assets and incorporate those into our fire planning and response. We did see some good examples of the Wollemi Pine and of the Eastern Bristlebird where those assets were identified and factored into the planning and response. And I think there's an opportunity for the Commonwealth and States to work together to identify those critical assets and build them into the fire response planning in the same way we build - built infrastructure and community infrastructure into those plans. Obviously, those plans and responses are the responsibility of the States and Territories but I think there's an opportunity for us to all work together to identify those critical assets and build them into those systems.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Any barriers that you can see at the moment?

DR BOX: I think there's a - I guess a degree of work involved in doing that, agreeing on those criteria for what constitutes a critical asset, and working together to identify those assets, based on the information we have, but I think it would be possible to do that. And then I think, in terms of understanding the barriers into how that's


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integrated into those emergency systems, I don't really have a good sense of that because that's really not my area of expertise.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Thank you very much, Dr Box. That was extremely helpful.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you, Dr Box, I appreciate that. Ms Ambikapathy, any further questions?

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I don't have any further questions, Commissioner, thank you.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Dr Box, thank you very much, thanks for providing that detail. It has been a huge task since you and the panel started in January, and we appreciate you giving the summary of that today. Thank you very much.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: May the witness please be excused?

DR BOX: Thanks for the opportunity.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: The witness may be excused. Thank you very much.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Thank you.

MR TOKLEY QC: Is it time to take a midmorning break?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: I think it's a very convenient time to take a mid morning break. We will take a break until 12 o'clock, local time.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: We will take an adjournment. Thank you.

<ADJOURNED 11:48 AM>

<RESUMING 12:00 PM>

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Mr Tokley.

MR TOKLEY QC: Commissioners, this afternoon we will have a special focus on particular interagency operations and activities to protect particular matters of national environmental significance, and these will be explored by me and other members of the counsel assisting. The first of those matters concerns the alpine sphagnum bogs and fens, and Ms Ambikapathy of counsel will take conduct of the next stage of evidence which focuses on matters in the ACT.



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COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Ms Ambikapathy.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Commissioners, the focus of this session will be conservation activities undertaken by the ACT during the 2019-2020 bushfires, and in particular in relation to the fire in the Orroral Valley and the activities that were undertaken in respect to the alpine sphagnum bogs and fens. Evidence will be given by three individuals: Mr Ian Walker who's the Executive Director of the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate; Mr Julian Seddon who is a senior ecologist in the same directorate; and Dr Margaret Kitchin who is a director of Strategic Coordination and Planning with the Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate. Their evidence will be given concurrently as a panel. I now call Mr Ian Walker, Mr Julian Seddon and Dr Margaret Kitchin.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Mr Walker, Mr Seddon, Dr Kitchin, thank you for joining us today. We appreciate you taking the time this afternoon to be with the Commission.

MR SEDDON: Good afternoon.

DR KITCHIN: Hi.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Walker, will you take an oath or an affirmation?

MR WALKER: Affirmation, thank you.

<IAN WALKER,AFFIRMED>

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Seddon, will you take an oath or an affirmation?

MR SEDDON: An affirmation, please.

<JULIAN SEDDON,AFFIRMED>

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Kitchin, will you take an oath or an affirmation?

DR KITCHIN: Affirmation, please.

<MARGARET KITCHIN, AFFIRMED>

EXAMINATION BY MS AMBIKAPATHY

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Walker, the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate has provided a response dated 24 May 2020 to a notice issued by the Commission.

MR WALKER: Correct, yes.


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MS AMBIKAPATHY: Commissioners, that document is exhibit 3.3.1 and is behind tab D1 of your bundle. Mr Walker, you were involved in the preparation of that response?

MR WALKER: Yes, I was.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Seddon, you were involved in the preparation of that response?

MR SEDDON: Yes, I was.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Kitchin, you were also responsible or involved in the preparation of that response?

DR KITCHIN: Yes, I was.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Walker, if I may start with you, you're the Executive Director of the Environment in the Environmental Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate?

MR WALKER: I'm the Executive Group Manager, Environment within the Environmental Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate, yes.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Thank you, and you're also the Conservator of Flora and Fauna under the Nature Conservation Act.

MR WALKER: I am, yes.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And, Mr Seddon, you are a senior ecologist?

MR SEDDON: That's correct.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And you work within the Conservation Research Branch of the Environment Division of the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate in the ACT?

MR SEDDON: Yes, that's correct.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And you were also a values officer in the Incident Management Team during the 2019 and 2020 bushfires?

MR SEDDON: Yes, correct.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Dr Kitchin, you have a PhD in fire ecology?

DR KITCHIN: Yes, that's correct.


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MS AMBIKAPATHY: And from 2012 to 2019 you were the Director of the Conservation Research Branch of the Environment Division in the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate?

DR KITCHIN: Yes.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And you were the leader of the Rapid Risk Assessment Team in the Incident Management Team during the 2019-2020 bushfires?

DR KITCHIN: Yes.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And you led the preparation of the Rapid Risk Assessment Report on the Orroral Valley fire in the Namadgi National Park?

DR KITCHIN: Yes.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Commissioners, that document is exhibit 3.3.2 and is behind tab D2 of your bundle.


MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Seddon, would you please explain to the Commissioners what the alpine sphagnum bogs and fens actually are?

MR SEDDON: Of course. So alpine sphagnum bogs and fens are a type of wetland that occurs in higher elevations throughout the Australian Alps, including in the ACT, and they are characterised by what's called a peat soil which is a soil high in carbon and that is waterlogged that is - occurs in permanently moist environments in these higher altitude areas. And these peat soils, because of their acidic nature and their high carbon content and the water logging, support a unique collection of plant and animal species, an ecosystem which is different to the other ecosystems in the region.

Typically, they're treeless areas in low-lying parts of the mountains. And the nature of those peat soils deports particularly heath-like shrubs throughout the bog. And also characteristic of alpine sphagnum bogs is the sphagnum moss itself which is the underlying layer on the top of the surface of the soil which is basically a sponge-like, cushion-like layer of moss that can be up to, or even more than one and a half - or a metre and a half in some places but a half a metre in others. So it's quite a large spongy layer which retains water.

These alpine sphagnum bog environments are unusual, and because of the circumstances where they occur - which is waterlogged low-lying areas in the mountains - they're quite fragmented across the Australian Alps and occur in isolated patches. They also support a range of unique fauna or animal species, most notable of which is the northern corroboree frog in the ACT, which is a critically endangered frog species that we have in our area. And the sphagnum bogs, because of their


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isolated small extent and clear threats to their persistence in the future posed by climate change and by fire, they are considered to be vulnerable to loss over time, and they've - for that reason they've been listed under various legislation as endangered ecological communities.


MR SEDDON: But can I just add one other additional comment? So the nature of the sphagnum bogs is that they retain water because of the moss and the soils, and that means they play quite an important hydrological function within our catchments within the ACT.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Could you explain a little bit to the Commissioners what the importance is of that role that they play in relation to the water catchment for the ACT?

MR SEDDON: Yes. So they sit high up in the mountains around the ACT and, because of the nature of the soils and the mosses and where they are in the landscape, they actually retain water that falls as either rainfall or snow melt throughout the year, and they hold that water, filter it, and then release that water slowly back into the catchment. And the analogy that's often used is like a sponge: they soak up the water and the release it slowly back out. And that slow release means that the water is highly filtered of various impurities and sediment, and also it means that the water is released at a lower energy than if it was falling from rainfall, and that allows the water to maintain its clarity and its clean condition.

And that - that leads to a significant improvement in the water quality in the Connor Catchment particularly, the west of Canberra, and the sphagnum bogs play a significant role in the high quality water that comes from that catchment and provides Canberra with a lot of its high quality water source.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And you've briefly touched on this earlier, but can you explain the conservation status of the alpine sphagnum bogs and fens in the ACT?

MR SEDDON: There are alpine sphagnum bogs and fens - I should say that fens is an associated vegetation community around the edge of the bog. So sphagnum bogs are the woody ones with shrubs and sphagnum moss. Fens are basically sedged lands around the edge. So collectively they are a unique environment. Those alpine sphagnum bogs and fens are listed as endangered ecological communities under the Commonwealth EPBC Act, and also in the ACT as endangered community under the Nature Conservation Act. And the reason for this, as I said earlier, is that they’re a rare environment across the Australian Alps, and they are threatened by climate change and fire.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And is there a particular patch of the sphagnum bogs and fens that are also part of a wetland?


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MR SEDDON: Yes. So they - they all form a type of wetland but there's a particular sphagnum bog wetland complex in the ACT which is the Ginini Flats Wetland Complex that is of highest conservation significance in our region, and this is because it's the largest intact sphagnum bog in the Australian Alps and it occurs within the ACT but near the border on the western side of the ACT. And this particular wetland, the Ginini Flats Wetland, is listed as a wetland of international significance under the Ramsar Convention, which is an intergovernmental agreement around protecting wetlands of significance across the world.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And in terms of the Commonwealth EPBC listing and the ACT conservation listing, are they aligned?

MR SEDDON: Yes. The ACT listing has come in fairly recently but in - well, Mr Walker might like to comment here, but the alignment of ACT or State and Commonwealth listing processes is a matter that's underway at the moment. But, essentially, in the case of alpine sphagnum bogs they are aligned.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Walker, would you like to make a comment?

MR WALKER: Thank you. Mr Seddon is correct. In recent times the Commonwealth and State and Territory jurisdictions have gone through a process to harmonise the legislation and listings across all threatened species in the country. So that if your threatened species is listed nationally as endangered, as in the case here, likewise in a Territory or State jurisdiction it is also listed as endangered, so that people are very clear that it is an endangered community or an endangered species. That's an ongoing process that States and Territories and the Commonwealth have agreed, and we are continually updating those listings on that basis. It actually doesn't change the status in any context. It's just making sure that they're consistent with each other.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so are the same ecological communities identified and protected under the Commonwealth regime as - and the same ecological communities are identified and protected under the ACT legislation?

MR WALKER: That is correct. So both communities or both ecological threatened species are protected both under Commonwealth, where they are listed as Commonwealth listed species, and in the ACT.

MR SEDDON: Sorry, can I just clarify that?

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Of course.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: We were just discussing at the side here. So if it's classified as endangered at the Commonwealth level in the Act, it goes down to the Territory or the State, the question is: is it a bottom-up or top-down? And so if it's endangered in the ACT, does that feed the Commonwealth? And the reason we're asking this is, if Victoria doesn't see it as endangered then who has - which State or


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Territory has the primacy in it coming up to the Commonwealth level? So it's not an easy question. Sorry about.

MR WALKER: That's all right. Historically, that has been the disconnection between the two listings. At a Commonwealth level the Commonwealth may list it; at a State or Territory jurisdictional level, the State or Territory will list it under their relevant legislation. So, historically, there has been variation because you may have a high presence of some species in a State/Territory jurisdiction compared to what might be occurring nationally. So you might have the stronghold for, let's say, corroboree frogs in the ACT and, therefore, see it as a significant species that is of conservation significance, but has good numbers compared to the rest of the country.

So there has historically been that variation, and both the States and Territories and the Commonwealth have been working over the last couple of years to, as I say, to harmonise those two pieces of listings. And there is a discussion - there are discussions that occur that rationalise those, depending on where the Commonwealth and/or the State or Territory sit. So it's a negotiated space.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: We appreciate that. Thank you. As you say, it might not be endangered in one State, but when you take a national view, actually it is totally endangered. And so I understand, from the previous witnesses, we're working to align that.

MR WALKER: Correct. And in the ACT we've taken significant steps, and I'm comfortable that we've actually progressed and have aligned it with, and I won't say all, but most of the threatened species at the Territory and Commonwealth level.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. Thank you.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I might ask a follow-up question to that. Where there is a species that's listed as threatened or endangered under the EPBC Act but is not listed under the Territory legislation, is there a different - what's the impact operationally from your perspective and your department's perspective.

MR WALKER: Yes. So irrespective of the Commonwealth and/or Territory listing, the on-ground action remains the same. There is no variation between what would occur under a Commonwealth listing or under a Territory listing. We both recognise that there's a threat status and the emphasis is then how do we mitigate or reduce the threats to those threatened species. And that's a really important point because the actions are fundamentally the same. So you need to prevent fire coming into these - in the case of bogs and fens, fires coming in. You need to reduce grazing pressure from hard-hoofed animals. You need to protect them from weeds and from other invasive species. So they're the sorts of actions that, irrespective of a Commonwealth or a jurisdictional listing, would be undertaken.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Can I just clarify one thing. I think you said initially that there was very good alignment between the ACT and the Commonwealth in this


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regard, both to attempt to align it in theory but also operationally. To your knowledge, is that uniform across the country with regard to different - - -

MR WALKER: There is - there is variation and it depends on how quickly each of the other jurisdictions pick up and run with that - that process that is currently ongoing.


MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Seddon, I might come back to you and just finish off that description that you were giving of the alpine sphagnum bogs and fens in the ACT, and I might refer to a map. This map is EPA.500.001.1096. It's exhibit 3.3.2 behind tab D.3. Mr Seddon, you will see this coming up on the screen.

MR SEDDON: Yes, I can see that.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Sorry, it's 1139. Thank you. So, Mr Seddon, are you able to, with reference to that map, just describe for the Commissioners, if you can see it, where the alpine bog locations are?

MR SEDDON: Yes, it is difficult to see it in this format because this is - this map is showing a number of ecological values from the Rapid Risk Assessment Report. But the alpine sphagnum bogs, which are referred to in this map as high country sphagnum bogs, are the lighter blue coloured areas, and they're distributed throughout the burnt area of the map which is the coloured area, primarily along the western border amongst that pink colour which is snowgum woodlands. And also in the central area there's a number of sphagnum bogs. So it's not possible for me to point to anywhere in particular on the screen, I don't think, but if you can see those pale blue coloured areas you can see that they're quite small.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: We can see those, yes.

MR SEDDON: Okay. Thank you, Commissioner. So you can see they're distributed throughout what is the burnt area of the Namadgi National Park and that they're they in small fragments throughout the landscape.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Thank you. Now I might turn to Mr Walker, and if you could please explain to the Commissioners what hazard plans and strategies were in place, from a strategic perspective, at a strategic level, leading into the 2019 and 2020 bushfires in respect of Namadgi National Park.

MR WALKER: Certainly. Thank you. And I will take it from two different perspectives: one being the perspective of the Nature Conservation Act and outline the plans and strategies that are significant in that context, because that Act and the purpose of that Act is to conserve and protect biodiversity. So that's one of the primary pieces of legislation that we have, and I will talk to that in one second. The Emergencies Act is the other Act that has relevance here, and its primary object of its


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Act is in relation to emergency management and to protect and preserve life and property. Can I stress that those two Acts are, I guess, the drivers behind what we do in the ACT and how we then protect and manage both the environment and also ensure protection of life and property.

So in terms of the Nature Conservation Act, and I will start there, the Nature Conservation Act describes the need to conserve and enhance biodiversity in the ACT. We do that through a number of plans and strategies. The Nature Conservation Strategy outlines across the ACT where particular actions are required to conserve species, communities that are listed under ACT legislation. Those strategies and actions will cover all communities, all threatened species, and all environmental aspects in the ACT.

You step down through that hierarchy to geographic park management plans and in this case, the Namadgi Park Management Plan specifies specific geographic information of where those values, natural cultural and also recreational or visitor values are, and outlines objectives to manage and support the conservation of species within that geographic patch. So each park and reserve across the ACT has a plan of management. I will also highlight that plans of management sit within the jurisdiction of Territory, or State jurisdictions. So, despite being called a national park, there is no national park context for that at the Commonwealth level. Commonwealth recognises them as national parks but there is no hierarchy. It stays within each State and Territory jurisdiction.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And, Mr Walker, just to clarify, when you say that it stays within State and Territory jurisdiction, you mean it is the responsibility of the ACT?

MR WALKER: Correct. So there is no - so under the Nature Conservation Act, the Act describes the need to develop a management plan and the establishment of a national park. So the Namadgi National Park is sitting within that frame and is the responsibility of each jurisdiction like the ACT. How the national park came into being comes back to the point Mr Seddon made earlier, around the importance of water. The Namadgi National Park provides, and is the key source for 80 per cent of the ACT's water supply and fundamentally that was one of the reasons the area was set aside and protected under the Nature Conservation Act and listed as a national park. If I cascade further down, sorry - no, you were going to ask another question.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Yes, I was going to direct you to two particular plans so I may be pre-empting where you were going but if you could please tell the Commissioners about the regional fire management plan and where that fits into that hierarchy you just described?

MR WALKER: All right. I will provide one more example just to cascade down under the Nature Conservation Act and that relates to species and/or communities. So under the Nature Conservation Act we produce species conservation plans or conservation action plans. For our bogs and fens, our corroboree frogs, species listed under the legislation would have action plans specific to that species, and we have


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particular implementation aspects in that space. So, as I was explaining, that all sits with- under the Nature Conservation Act and I can talk about other areas but that's the primary relationship there.

Under the Emergencies Act we also have a hierarchy of plans. So the Emergencies Act, as I said, is about how we protect life, property and the environment in that order, and that's what, in our jurisdiction, the emergency services agency leads and responds to, through an incident management team. In terms of preparing the environment, and I use that as a generic term, for potential threat from fire or other areas, it is an ongoing, 12 months of the year process. And EPSDD implement a range of actions to mitigate the threat of fire by reducing fuel loads. That's described in three plans. It's described at the Strategic Bushfire Management Plan level, which is a longer-term strategic plan across the Territory. And that's really, I guess, describing the principles of what we want to achieve, the key areas where we need to focus our energy and the energy of all agencies in the government to mitigate and reduce the risk of wild fire.

At an operational level we have a long-term operational plan called the regional fire management plan, and in this plan it describes the key areas, and maps those areas, where we would reduce fuel loads. And that plan is prepared by Environmental Planning Sustainable Development Directorate because it's about particular patches of land and reducing fuel at that, over a five-year horizon. That plan is guided by the work of our residual risk process which, for the Commissioners, that's a process developed out of Melbourne Uni, adopted in Victoria, and we've picked that up and started to use that in the Territory. That residual risk modelling is exactly that. It's a modelled process by which we can assess where a fire is likely to have the greatest risk to life and property, and therefore put in actions to mitigate that.

The final plan is an annual plan and that's what we refer to as the Bushfire Operations Plan, and that describes the year-in activity to reduce fuel in parks and reserves across the ACT. And each land manager, landowner, is required, under the Emergencies Act, to have a bushfire operations plan. EPSDD is the manager of approximately 80 per cent of the ACT. It has a fair stake in making sure that that operation plan is implemented on this annual basis.

It outlines the areas to be burnt, the training requirements of our staff, the preparedness around reducing things like - reducing fuel loads by grazing, by slashing, by other means. It also identifies access and the sorts of things that we would need to do to manage fuel across land in the ACT. That was - I'm happy to take questions of clarification, counsel.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: And, Mr Walker, a couple of the Commissioners had a chance to see this firsthand on one of our visits with a couple of you. You've talked about the plans. It would be worthwhile, I think, talking about the practical - a practical example of how that's enacted. And so with the map that's up there at the moment, with that exhibit, 1139, either with the Ginini Wetlands or that part of the southern part of Namadgi National Park, could you give us an example - either you


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or maybe Dr Kitchin - how you balance the need to protect the environment, the habitat with active measures that you use to manage the risk, so that you could manage against those three priorities that you were talking about?

MR WALKER: Yes. So part of our process associated with the regional fire management plan is that we step through with our ecologists - so Dr Kitchin, Mr Seddon and others - to best understand the use of fire in the landscape. We do that in conjunction with our Parks and Conservation Service team who are the implementers of our prescribed burning program and other fuel reduction measures. They outline the areas from a life and property perspective that they think should be burnt, and together it's worked through what that would look like on the ground and any impacts associated with the environment considered and adjustments made to try and get the best result we can, both from a life and property perspective but also from an ecological perspective.

Acknowledging also that during all of those discussions, ultimately if we're talking about prescribed burning, the window of opportunity to do that will ultimately dictate the level of area burnt and the reduction in residual risk. You would appreciate that under the climate scenarios that we're dealing with at the moment, our window of prescribed burning has reduced and, therefore, our ability to collectively balance these outcomes is also diminishing and hence why our residual risk process is highly important to us going forward. I might ask Dr Kitchin to give a - I guess a firsthand practical example of what that looks like on the ground.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: That would be great. Thank you.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Sure.

DR KITCHIN: Okay. What I can add to that outline is, in the development of the regional fire management plan, we ran a number of scenarios which was measuring the risk, firstly, for life and property but then looking at the risk to the catchment and some of the other ecological identification. So, as you can imagine with land managers, there's a number of objectives that are needing to be understood and supported ..... And so the idea of running those scenarios and those models was initially to come up with some landscape mosaic burning frameworks.

So our initial part at our regional plan is to look out across the landscape, what are the areas that can be burnt and then a logical time frame over - we take a 10-year time frame to look at planning - and identify how a mosaic of fuel patterns can be determined for each of those risks. So, obviously, life and property are the first ones but then the second cut is really looking at where burns are implemented over the landscape that protect our water catchment and our biodiversity values. That's how our regional fire plan was developed.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. If I can bring you down a level then and use it in some examples, where the southern part of Namadgi that has not been burnt, why that was important and what actions you actually took to protect that. And then


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Ginini, the wetlands, a similar thing: we know the importance of it but you took some specific actions in preparedness and then during the response to the fires to try and balance the need to maintain them, but there was a use of techniques and technology to try and protect them.

DR KITCHIN: Yes. Look, I will very briefly just touch on the long unburnt down in southern Namadgi which we've done a number of planning actions around that. But then I might hand to Julian because on the day where there was quite a significant threat to Ginini Wetlands, we actually put in some very significant, as you know,a fire retardant line and we can move to that. But I will just touch briefly on the long unburnt. As you know, ACT was impacted by significant fires in 2003. There was 90 per cent of Namadgi burnt in that time and there was only 10 per cent that was unburnt after that fire. So while long unburnt is not a technical term, for us it was one of the 10 per cent of the park that represented a long unburnt time period after that 2003 period.

So in our fire plan ..... 2008-2009 we identified that this was a patch that we needed to preserve, particularly in the short-term, while we got a variation in the regrowth of the vegetation in the park from 2003. So this has followed through, right through from 2003 right into our recent fire plan, and we've done a number of actions. So there was a patch, it's called Potters Hill, so there was a patch in the middle but there was a decision to burn that, to actually break up the fuel load. So that was identified on the first fire, regional fire management plan. There was a fire trail also along the western edge that was upgraded.

So there were some very specific actions that were implemented in that regional fire plan, and they were actually carried over into the next plan, and they were then the focus of protecting some of the long unburnt in the Orroral Valley fire in February, and it was just recognising the biodiversity value of this area.

So I might go to Ginini Wetlands because it was an area that was of particular interest in the Orroral Valley fire in February, but I guess it was based on a lot of planning that had gone on in the years before that, and expert opinion that we had actually received on how to manage that - that wetlands.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And Commissioners - I beg your pardon, Dr Kitchin, the plan is to come to that and - - -

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: That would be good, okay. Yes.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: - - - the planning process that preceded the operations during the bushfires.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: All right. I will hand back to you and you can bring us up to that. But the practical demonstration, I think, will be good thing for the Commission.


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MS AMBIKAPATHY: Yes. And just finally, Mr Walker, with you, could you please explain to the Commissioners what the Pre-suppression Atlas is?

MR WALKER: Yes. So the Pre-suppression Atlas is a collection of maps, fundamentally. It highlights all of the known values across the ACT and it provides a way of informing incident management teams of where those values are in the landscape. So it's a - I guess in two forms: a hard copy map but also a GIS layer of information that can be interrogated in real-time during a fire event. So it's both, as I say, hard copy map but also a GIS layer that is fundamentally what the incident management team and the planning team use to determine the strategies and actions through the incident plan when they're putting out - trying to put out a wild fire.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And in terms of the Pre-suppression Atlas, when is this put together?

MR WALKER: We update the information in that annually and we have that available as a product annually across the Territory. And it - it is updated in that context because we might undertake a survey for a particular species or cultural values that will update the particular layer that that relates to. So you will see this constant building of information and, essentially, that atlas represents that build of information over time.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And if you could please explain to the Commissioners, you talked about that atlas identifying the values within the ACT. If you could please explain to the Commissioners what you mean by that term?

MR WALKER: I mean values, including ecological values; so things like bogs, fens, corroboree frogs, other values of threatened ecological significance. It will identify areas of long unburnt. It will identify areas of high catchment value areas and/or catchments. It will identify cultural heritage sites, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal sites. So it becomes the foundation information that supports decision-making through the incident management team. And it's a very good piece of information for planning in any context outside of the fire environment as well.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so if I might now, Mr Walker, take you more specifically to the 2019-2020 bushfire season, when did you realise it was going to be a dangerous fire season?

MR WALKER: So, like most jurisdictions, we do receive BOM advice and other advice routinely through their quarterly updates. We're also heavily involved with the Australasian Fire Emergency Services Authorities Council. So we're receiving that information, you know, quarterly. And, in the context of this season, we were already starting to brief in the middle of winter that we were looking like having a particularly significant fire season, and we briefed certainly our executive and others that - in September, that this was an important year in a fire context. The reason, I guess, we're quite in front of that, being a small jurisdiction, we do sit on a range of different bodies and are able to integrate information relatively easily.


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For example, New South Wales were in drought during the course of 2019. We had extremely dry conditions as well. We were very conscious of that environment, and our own information collection through those bodies that I mentioned just reinforced that message that we were coming into a particularly significant fire season. I guess when it started to become very real was in our first deployment of Parks and Conservation Service staff and others to Queensland. And that - that occurred in September which was quite early, and what that means, we have that relationship and agreement that where we have fires in other jurisdictions, we will support each other and deploy staff and resources to do that. So we were doing that from September through October, November into, as I say, Queensland, south-eastern Queensland, but also into New South Wales. So we were very aware of the context around us at that point in time.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So if I could take you back to something you mentioned in the beginning of your answer, and that was you were aware of the conditions in New South Wales and that they had particularly dry weather conditions leading up to the bushfire season. I think we might have some technical issues, so just bear with us for a moment. Mr Walker, can you hear us?

MR WALKER: I can now. We disappeared for a second and I think we're back.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Thank you. So I was taking you back to an earlier answer where you said you were aware of the dry conditions in New South Wales leading up to the 2019-2020 bushfire season and that was informing your assessment of risk. How were you made aware of that information?

MR WALKER: Can you just repeat the last part of that question?

MS AMBIKAPATHY: The awareness that it was a dry season in New South Wales and there were risks because of the drought that was in New South Wales at that time, the information about the conditions in New South Wales, how was that made available to you? Where did that information come from?

MR WALKER: It comes from multiple sources. So - so, for example, I sit on the senior officials for agriculture ministers, so there were briefings going to ministers in the agricultural space. So in the ACT Minister Gentleman is both the Minister for the Environment and Heritage which also includes the agricultural area. So through those processes, at the very highest level of government, we were receiving information around drought, how various jurisdictions were responding to drought, and how we were supporting rural landholders. So that's how, at a, I guess, a high level across government and all jurisdictions and the Commonwealth participate in those, that information sharing is occurring at that level. At a more officer level, AFAC, and we have a representation at AFAC from our Parks and Conservation Service, so that body was also sharing information during - during 2019 and very early on in the piece.


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MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so how did December and - December 2019 unfold?

MR WALKER: Yes, that's a very good question. For the ACT, we were, I guess, significantly aware of the fires going on around us. So there were a number of fires that kicked off in late November through December and particularly fires like the Dunns Road fire, the Mary's Hill fire were quite significant for us, and what later became known as the Adaminaby Complex. And if you refer to your map, they were the fires that were on the western edge of the ACT and southern edge of the ACT. The reason that they were quite significant is that that's where we first established an incident management team in the ACT when those fires were - were going, and became very significant.

We were concerned of the risk of those fires travelling east into the Territory and impacting on Namadgi National Park and, in particular, our high value Cotter Catchment area. So that's when the ACT Government first put in place an incident management team, and that was operating through our emergency services agency and we put that in place at about 2 January.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And, if I understand it correctly, at that stage you said you were planning, and all activities were focused on a fire coming from the west?

MR WALKER: Correct. So they were on the western - western border of the ACT.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Right. And I might now - - -

MR WALKER: Sorry, our - so we established an incident management team. A state of emergency was called in the Territory. At that point, we did not have any fires in the ACT. So the threat was coming from the Adaminaby, Mary's Hill, Dunns Road fire to the west of the ACT.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Now I might turn to you, Mr Seddon, and if you could please explain to the Commissioners your role, both when the incident management team was set up in relation to the fires that were threatening to come from the west, and then moving into the Orroral Valley fire.

MR WALKER: Counsel, could I just make one comment, just to kick off before Mr Seddon moves in? One of the steps we took during December and then subsequently through January, was to close particular areas of Namadgi National Park, including Bimberi Wilderness and that's quite a significant, I guess, point to make. By closing the park, and Bimberi Wilderness within the park, it meant that we greatly reduced the risk of accidental ignition by people. So the park - so one of the functions of the conservator, my role, is the ability to open and close parks. So we closed Bimberi Wilderness on 12 December because of the perceived risk of fire in that area.

We then closed Namadgi in totality on 19 December. And there were a range of progressive openings and closings but ultimately during that period of time, Namadgi National Park was closed and remains closed until - actually, it remains closed as of


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today. And that's a very important, I guess, risk mitigation tool to reduce potential fire in the landscape. Thank you, counsel.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Seddon, you were going to explain your role as a values officer in the incident management team?

MR SEDDON: Thank you. Yes, so I should probably clarify what's referred - what is meant by the term "values officer", what that role involves. It's actually not a formal role within the Australian integrated incident management framework, but it's a role that we've been using for a number of years in the ACT in the context of prescribed burning and smaller wildfires. And it's about providing subject matter expertise into the incident management team around the area of ecological values and cultural heritage values.

So there's a small number of individuals in the ACT who have performed this function over the years. Margaret - Dr Kitchin is one of those people as well. And basically we're drawing on our existing expertise and knowledge of ecological values and cultural heritage values across the Territory to provide an input into decision-making which is the responsibility of the IMT. In the context of the 2019-'20 fire season, this was the first time that we actually had a values officer embedded into an incident management team run by the ESA for a large emergency fire. As I mentioned, we had previously had that role in prescribed burning operations to provide ecological input, but this was the first time it was done in the context of an emergency and a large IMT.

So the role is essentially around providing subject matter expertise into the IMT decision-making, providing - and the important thing is there is existing knowledge or knowing who to contact to find that knowledge in the real-time situation of a - of an IMT; being familiar with the data layers that provide that spatial reference to where those values are; and having an awareness of the sensitivities of those different cultural and ecological values to both fire but also the fire suppression options that are available to the IMT.

So the critical thing here is that by having a values officer embedded in the IMT there is a resource available to focus on the cultural and ecological values and maintain them on the radar of the IMT. That's the - once these operations start getting big and complicated, it's the IC, the incident controller, and the other key IMT officers, such as the planning officer and operations officer, are very focused on a complex environment, and naturally life and property becomes the highest priority. And some of the cultural and ecological values can start to - start to be lost in the complexity, so having a values officer available can keep that on the radar and raise the profile of high priority values.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And if you could explain - Mr Walker talked about the regional fire management plan and the Pre-suppression Atlas, how did you use that resource when you were embedded in the IMT team?


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MR SEDDON: Okay. Thanks for that. That's - so the Pre-suppression Atlas, its primary purpose is to provide maps of where valleys and other important considerations are across the landscape to assist firefighters in the first, you know, 12 to 24 hours after the incident kicks off, before other expertise can be brought in. So the Pre-suppression Atlas is quite complicated. It has got a lot of detail on it. Not all of that detail is relevant as we go forward into managing an incident, or as relevant. So the values officer can actually access all the separate layers that are used to build up that atlas and compile them or interrogate those spatial layers in a way that's sensitive to the exact situation that is panning out.

So to give you an example, as the Dunns Road and Mary's Hills fires were threatening the western side of the ACT, values officers in the IMT in the ACT would access the underlying layers that provide the basis of the - of the Pre-suppression Atlas, in particular the alpine sphagnum bogs layer, as well as cultural layers such as scar trees, European cultural sites, such as the border markers along the ACT/New South Wales border along with the location of threatened plant species that might be fire sensitive. There's a whole lot of different values that can be interrogated as separate layers and then re-compiled, provide a simpler picture to the decision-makers, focusing on the values that are currently highest priority and under threat.

So, in the context of the Mary's Hill and Dunns Road fire west of the ACT, the Ginini Wetland Complex and other sphagnum bogs along the Brindabella Range on the western border became a very high priority, and that was through the existing - knowledge of existing listing levels and policy and conservation documents. So we knew that those were high priority conservation assets to consider in operational planning. So we produced maps which would highlight those values to the IMT.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Okay. And IMT was established in response to the risk coming - potential risk or threat from the fires in New South Wales. But ultimately there was a fire in the ACT in the Orroral Valley and was the threat coming from the same direction?

MR SEDDON: No, that's - there was a change in the direction of threat as a result of the weather - previous weather slowing down the Dunns Road and Mary's Hills fires to the west, but then the ignition of a fire in the Orroral Valley in the ACT which, on the map that's on the screen, is that lime green section, sort of roughly in the centre of the map. That's the Orroral Valley. So the fire started at the very top end of that Orroral Valley and then proceeded to the west and south-west, and then over a period of time expanded out from there. But, essentially, from the point of view of conserving alpine bogs and fens and in particular the Ginini Flats Wetlands Complex, the threat was now from the east rather than from the west.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And then can you run us through what the decision-making process was in relation to what action would be taken, or not, in relation to the alpine sphagnum - alpine bogs and fens?


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MR SEDDON: Yes. So it's - Dr Kitchin referred to this earlier and so did Mr Walker, that some of these priority actions have already been thought through and they're a part of the action plans to address those various conservation values. But also in considering the regional fire management plan, the sensitivity of different ecological values to fire, but also to fire mitigation actions, has already been worked through and discussed within the agency. So we had sort of a fairly good understanding of the hierarchy of options to protect particularly the Ginini Wetland Complex.

So I've already mentioned that it's an internationally recognised wetland. It's listed at Commonwealth and the ACT level as well. So it was already at the top of our list of ecological values in terms of priority for protection from fire. The reason that protection from fire is important in this case is that the Ginini Wetlands were burnt in 2003. And fire is a threat to sphagnum bogs because they are very slow to recover. Being in high altitude, waterlogged environments, they grow slowly and recover slowly. But also there's a threat that fire can get into the peat soil that underlies the bog, and if that happens, you have a subterranean fire which can burn for weeks or even months and essentially destroy that peat soil which takes thousands of years to form.

So fire is considered a very high threat for bogs. It had previously been burnt in 2003, just 17 years before and we had technical advice from a published report from a bog specialist at hand which suggested that, or said that use of firefighting retardant would be preferable in the case of Ginini Wetlands instead of allowing it to burn again in such a short interval. The other option that might have been available to fire managers and the IMT was potentially putting a bulldozer firebreak around the bog but the disruption of the hydrology of the bog is actually probably the highest threat to their long-term existence.

So to put a bulldozer line around the bog under an emergency situation where it would be potentially difficult to supervise that work adequately, could potentially destroy the hydrology and cause that bog to be ruined or lost forever. So the advice from the technical report, which we had access to, was that under limited circumstances, the use of fire retardant was probably the best option. And we, the values officers, compiled that information and presented it to the planning cell within the IMT as an option to have aerial retardant laid down on the south-east and north sides of Ginini Wetland Complex which was the side that was becoming threatened by the Orroral Valley fire.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: In terms of that plan that was put to the incident management team, who was involved in putting that plan together?

MR SEDDON: Well, values officers compiled it, that was myself and another individual, and based on that technical advice that I referred to, scientific advice, we proposed that as an option to the planning cell which then was then agreed to and was presented to the incident controller, whose decision it is to make that - to make that call. The incident controller - - -


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MS AMBIKAPATHY: Sorry, if I could just take you back.

MR SEDDON: Sorry.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And you can explain the different agencies from an ACT perspective. So the values officers that were involved in initially developing the plan are they from the environment directive?

MR SEDDON: In this case they were, but there's no requirement for that to be the case, but naturally that's where the expertise would normally lie.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And then you mentioned a planning unit or a planning group, and which agencies are represented in that particular group?

MR SEDDON: So the composition of the IMT is not - is based on expertise and availability of suitably trained or expertise staff. It's not related to a specific agency. The actual running of the IMT is underneath the emergency controller who is the Commissioner, ESA Commissioner in the ACT, and is the responsibility of ESA. But the component staff who make up those different roles is based on availability and expertise. As it turns out that in the ACT because a large amount of the fire management, on-ground fire management activities are conducted on conservation estate, there's a large body of expertise within the Parks and Conservation Service.

On the day, I can't tell you - I was not the values officer on the day that that proposal was put to the incident controller, although I was in contact with the values officer to make - to collaboratively make that decision. So I can't say off the top of my head who the incident controller was or which agency they represented.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: But in terms of - - -

MR SEDDON: The key thing - sorry, go ahead.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: No please, go ahead, Mr Seddon.

MR SEDDON: So the key thing is that the functional roles with the IMT, what their purpose is, rather than which agency they came from, the way it generally works is the planning cell is headed up by a planning officer; and they look at the bigger picture around where the threats are, what resources are available, what tactics might be appropriate and effective at addressing the threat. They then propose that to the incident controller and if the incident controller then makes a decision around priorities, and directs the operations officer to make that happen on the ground. So the - my role or our role as values officers is to provide expertise and suggestions around cultural and ecological values to the planning officer, who would then present that, a set of options to the incident controller.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And in terms of those sets of options, to the extent that you're aware, how are those options then considered by the incident controller?


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MR SEDDON: I think the incident controller was well aware at this stage that the sphagnum bogs were a high value conservation asset, and that in particular Ginini Wetlands was a high - was the highest value conservation asset and they were keen to, where possible, to - to utilise resources to protect those assets, but in consideration of what other priorities existed across the fire in the region and the availability of appropriate assets, in this case a very large air tanker retardant-dropping aircraft.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so if I understand what you're saying, it is that when a request is made, there are a number of considerations that are taken into account. One is the resources that are available to implement that request. The other one is the resource priorities as to what other needs are required, and I think we've heard evidence earlier that there is a hierarchy in the ACT in terms of which assets get priority over others, and then whether the conditions themselves may be conducive to that particular operational request. Is that a fair summary?

MR SEDDON: In general terms I think that's a fair summary. If you wanted to understand the nuances of that, then it would be best to talk to incident controllers and ESA around how they make those judgments. But the last comment you made there around the conditions being appropriate is important. I haven't mentioned that. But to use an asset like a very large air tanker requires certain weather conditions. So even once the decision was made to support that operation, to provide retardant break around the edge of Ginini Wetlands, then it needed to be a case of those assets being available and the weather conditions being suitable.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And from your knowledge of being in the incident management team area, how are those resources actually engaged and sourced by the ACT? So in the case of the aircraft required for the retardant deployment, how were those resources obtained by the ACT?

MR SEDDON: Well, in this particular case, the very large air tanker is not something that the ACT has as its own asset. So it needs to request access to that asset for operational uses from, my understanding is the New South Wales air desk. But that's - that's something that the ICs or the operations officers would be best to answer. But my understanding is that it goes outside of the immediate ACT context to get access to those resources.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And then in terms of - so that request was approved?

MR SEDDON: Yes, that's correct.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And then how did that actually unfold and what was your involvement in that operation as it unfolded?

MR SEDDON: So the request was approved when a different values officer was in the IMT, and then we shift - we changed shifts and I was available and in the IMT


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when the weather conditions became appropriate, to support that operation. So there's a few days where there was low cloud base and it wasn't possible to get the DC10 to fly over the area and drop the retardant. The weather improved and there was a small window of opportunity in which the aircraft was available and the weather conditions were suitable.

So the aircraft - the mission was conducted, and during the mission I was able to have direct contact with the air attack supervisor who is in an aircraft in the same air space as the DC10, very large air tanker, and was able to have a conversation with them about ensuring the retardant was dropped according to the map we provided but as close to the edge of the bog as possible to - to maximise the likelihood of that retardant line actually stopping the fire if it came to the bog. The important thing there was if the retardant was dropped too far away from the bog in the woodlands that surround it, there's a pretty good chance that the fire would then have jumped across the retardant line into the tree canopies on the inside of the retardant.

On the other hand, we didn't really want retardant being dropped onto the bog if we could avoid it. So my conversation with the forward air controller or the air attacks adviser was to bring it in as close to the edge of the bog as possible, and that was exactly what was achieved. The very large air tanker has a lead-in aircraft, a smaller aircraft which guides it in, and they were able to put a line in very precisely on the edge of the bog. And a later stage - sorry, just one moment, Mr Walker - at a later stage we had the opportunity - I think Dr Kitchin will speak to this - to go and observe the outcome of that operation from the air, and it was apparent that the retardant lines were laid down in a fairly precise manner right on the edge of the bog.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Mr Walker.

MR WALKER: Counsel, I just highlight the point Julian made before. The role of the incident management team is drawn up from people across the ACT Government, and they are individuals that are trained in fire management, trained in fire behaviour, trained in a whole range of skills to support fire management. Because the Parks and Conservation Service in particular manages 80 per cent of the ACT land, we have a large number of people who are experienced in fire management and have particular skill sets. So in IMT, depending on its location where the fire is, may be made up predominantly of particular skill sets coming from the Parks and Conservation Service within the Environment Planning Sustainable Development Directorate.

So that would include some of our incident controllers, some of our fire behaviour analysts, through to situation officers, planning officers. And as I say, because we're in this space year in, year out, we do perform that function of providing that resource to support ESA. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that the operational staff who are out on the ground putting the fire out are also predominantly, in the context of this fire, Parks and Conservation Service staff, both rangers and field officers.


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MS AMBIKAPATHY: Commissioners, I'm conscious of the time. There's still one portion and one topic that I would like to address, particularly with Dr Kitchin, but I'm in your hands as to whether you would like to continue or like to have an adjournment?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: I think if we can finish this by 1:30 we will keep going and we can control the time a bit better.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So just finishing up, Mr Seddon, what course did the fire ultimately take?

MR SEDDON: Yes. So the - as it turned out there was rainfall from around 7 to 9 February, but then heavy rainfall from 10, 11 February which effectively halted the fire in its tracks, at least on that western and north-western area. And the fire never made it - never made it to the retardant lines that were laid down in the Ginini Wetlands area. So we didn't get to find out whether it would have worked or not. But on the positive side, you know, the wetland was not impacted by fire this season.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Okay. And so, Dr Kitchin, thank you very much for patiently waiting.

DR KITCHIN: That's all right.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: In terms of your - you led what is called the rapid risk assessment team. Could you please explain what the purpose of that team is?

DR KITCHIN: Sure. So the rapid risk assessment team is a multidisciplinary team and its primary purpose is to come in at the end of an incident to work in the IMT, and assess very rapidly the risks in the fire zone that have been caused by the fire but also by the changes that have occurred due to the fire, like the loss of the top soil, loss of grass, ground cover, which increases the risk for soil erosion, debris movement. So you can imagine in the ACT, with this very large-scale fire, we had impacts on threatened species, assets, the water catchment, and those are the kind of risks that the rapid risk assessment team looks at. They look at impacts and risks to life and property, to the assets, but as well as biodiversity. They don't look at the impact on built infrastructure such as houses.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so - - -

DR KITCHIN: So we do come in and do that risk assessment.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So when was the- that team first initiated and when did it actually come together?

DR KITCHIN: Okay. So in the middle of January, we actually had some early discussion about deploying the team, recognising the high risk to Namadgi National Park. There were fires on the western side and we had already had this summer of


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fires moving through New South Wales. There was some early discussions but, really, on 3 February there was a meeting with Ian Walker, myself, and the head of the park service. It was after the Orroral Valley fire had taken off and there was major impacts.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I beg your pardon, sorry. If I can just ask - - -

DR KITCHIN: Sorry?

MS AMBIKAPATHY: If I can just ask, so the initial discussions about setting up the team actually started before the Orroral Valley fire started; is that correct?

DR KITCHIN: That's correct. So the initial discussions about deploying a rapid risk assessment team were when the perceived threat was on the western edge and recognising that many of the biodiversity assets in that national park are on the western edge. However, the actual risk then came from the east, but then they were still impacted, yes.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so when was the rapid risk assessment team stood up?

DR KITCHIN: So we had an initial debrief but we got the team to formally start on 12 February. So we had a 13-person team, which is slightly larger than some of these - some of the teams that I've worked with in the past. I should just put, for context, that the rapid risk assessment process came to Australia in 2009 and is based on a US model of the burnt area emergency response, they're called the BAER teams. And they actually came to Australia from the Victorian fire deployment and there's been a small program to try and develop these across the country. However, Victoria and we've partnered with New South Wales, are the main States that are doing it.

So I've worked with Victoria and New South Wales. I knew the process and how this team would be deployed over five days. However, we had to pull the staff in, which we did on 12 February, get the team .....

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I think we've lost Dr Kitchin. I think, Mr Seddon, did you have some involvement in the rapid risk assessment team?

MR SEDDON: Yes. I was a member of the team.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so in terms of if - how did that team actually operate?

MR SEDDON: So the team operates - there's a number of specialists who focus on different areas, different areas of risk. There's a biodiversity flora and fauna specialist. There's an erosion specialist, a cultural heritage specialist and also infrastructure specialist around park infrastructure, and Margaret Kitchin is the team leader and there was a deputy team leader from New South Wales Parks as well. And that was in recognition that some of these issues were shared across the border and that that member could take back that learning back across the border to their park


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areas as well. So, essentially, the specialists - well, first day or two is about compiling data to inform the process. So the fire severity mapping is a key dataset. Another key dataset is the terrain, the landscape.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Sorry. So in the middle of February that fire severity dataset was already available?

MR SEDDON: Well, we had a spatial analyst specialist in our team who was able to rapidly produce a severity map from satellite imagery. So it basically compares vegetation sequences from the pre-fire and post-fire and then makes an estimate of severity.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Sorry - - - I interrupted you

MR SEDDON: And that's the really critical dataset.


MR SEDDON: Yes. So that's overlaid with other data layers like the one we have on the screen which is sensitive plants and ecosystems to fire; also terrain to feed into erosion modelling, which one of the specialists would produce. So the first few days is pulling those data together, making those initial analyses of where the high risk areas in the landscape are, and then by, sort of, the middle of the deployment, there's some validation of those models through both on-ground inspections where it's possible, and as well as aerial inspections using helicopter resources provided by the IMT. So this is why it's important the rapid risk assessment team is deployed while there's still an IMT stood up because there's a whole range of resources available which are being used for suppression that we can draw on to facilitate investigating the risks and the impacts. So there's a period there where there's validation of the assumptions and the predictions of the results of the different specialist areas. And then the last day is pulling together those analyses, writing the report, and then it was presented to the conservator of flora and fauna, and the ESA Commissioner, I think on the fifth day, from memory.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So it's a five-day implementation plan?

MR SEDDON: That's correct. And the whole purpose of that is that it's rapid because what you want to be able to do is identify the really high priority risks which need immediate attention to avoid further damage. And they may be around putting erosion controls in around sensitive areas to avoid water quality impacts on important rivers. It could be around biodiversity values that need to be addressed straight away, such as, you know, impacted threatened species that might need to be recovered and taken to other unburnt areas or even looked after in captive breeding areas until the environment recovers. It could be around risks of infrastructure such as walking trails that pose a risk to the public. So the idea is - sorry, go ahead.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: No, no, please go ahead, Mr Seddon.


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MR SEDDON: I just wanted to reinforce the idea is it's rapid so that information is available to the land managers as soon as possible, so they can start addressing the highest priority risks, the extreme risks.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Does that information, in terms of the highest priority risk, does that only get acted upon once the report is compiled or is there a process for that information during the rapid assessment process to be made available and actioned?

MR SEDDON: Where there's high priority risks that need urgent attention, the liaison with the land manager is ongoing during the rapid risk assessment process. And also the availability of some of the IMT resources allows for some actions to be taken during the process. And in this case, there may have been Australian Defence Force equipment and personnel available to get in and actually start dealing with things like erosion risk. So, ideally, the high priority risks that have been identified in the initial processes of the deployment can be fed to the land manager straight away.

Once the report is complete there's a whole series of other risks that the land manager then develops a strategy for addressing, and that is the case, the Parks and Conservation Service and our directorate is implementing a number of actions, or all the actions out of the rapid risk assessment report in a prioritised strategic way, looking at what needs to happen straightaway and what's the longer-term recovery actions that might take three to five years.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And so just one final question. So this is a new process that was put in place and it was the first time that the rapid risk assessment was done after a bushfire in the ACT. In the 2003 bushfires, just by way of comparison, how long would it have taken you to get to the position you were at, after five days from the rapid risk assessment?

MR SEDDON: So I wasn't directly involved after 2003 but my understanding is that some of those processes took a number of months to provide findings and prioritised recommendations. Some of them may have been quicker than that, but there were certainly elements around the recovery of alpine bogs, sphagnum bogs, and what actions needed to occur in those environments after fire, that took a number of months to come to light. So the advantage of the rapid risk assessment team is that it is supported by the IMT to get in there and make those assessments as soon as possible. And that creates a great advantage in terms of avoiding further damage, particularly in the early post-fire recovery period when erosion is a very - is another source of environmental damage. Sometimes the effects of post-fire erosion are more severe than the actual fire itself.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: One moment, please, Mr Walker. I have no further questions, Commissioners. Do you have any further questions?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: I've got just a couple. Mr Seddon, that was a great summary, thank you for jumping in there as Margaret went offline


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MR SEDDON: Thank you, Commissioner.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: For Mr Walker - you can add a little bit, Mr Seddon, in a second - but the question I have got for you is, the ACT obviously doesn't own a lot of the risk that sits to the west of Namadgi in New South Wales. Just stepping back: in a preparedness sense, how do you coordinate with New South Wales to manage the fuel loads and the hazards that are there? If you could just briefly give us what the coordination process is?

MR WALKER: Yes. Certainly. So, Commissioner, I think that's a really good question. In considering fuel in New South Wales, we work closely with our colleagues in New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service so there's a collaboration that occurs there. At a high level in government, we have an MOU between ACT and New South Wales that also articulates the need for fuel management on the, if you like, on the border. In our residual risk modelling and assessment, we don't stop at the border. We do that into New South Wales; though we recognise the threat coming from New South Wales to our west has an impact on the ACT but we also recognise the risk from ACT going into New South Wales on the east. So, in considering all of those elements, I guess that's how we've prepared and engaged with our colleagues in New South Wales.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thanks for that. I should acknowledge, I should have added to that, that this fire did burn out to the east and affected New South Wales. So it's a vice versa process.

MR WALKER: And our IMTs are often also, both - we populate IMTs within New South Wales. So the Tumut IMT had ACT staff on that fire, and likewise New South Wales will have members - New South Wales staff on the IMT in the ACT incident management team.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: I appreciate that. Mr Seddon?

MR SEDDON: Commissioner, I would just like to add an example of how - a real example of how, what Mr Walker has discussed around the fire planning, pans out. So, for example, in the southern part of the ACT, that's not considered a normal - normally considered a higher risk direction for risk to Canberra suburbs, because most of our - most of the fire weather comes from the north or north-west. But we do conduct fuel reduction activities and fire trail maintenance in the southern part of the ACT around the bottom of Namadgi National Park; specifically, the purposes of reducing risk to neighbouring New South Wales areas, including Kosciuszko Michelago that – and Bredbo area. So as Mr Walker said, the regional fire management planning process extends beyond the ACT borders, both in terms of looking at fire history and fire risk but also in terms of the significance of ecological assets within our park within the broader context of the region.


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COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thanks a lot. That's a good example of how a Territory and a State are working together to manage each other’s risks, so I appreciate that summary. Commissioner Macintosh.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Thanks, Chair. Just a quick question on just that issue about your modelling around residual risk. I will just state my understanding of it. You run a series of simulations in order to identify where's the best place to locate your fuel management activities in order to reduce risk to life and property, to the water catchment, and then to ecological assets, and obviously also to neighbouring assets as well. When you're doing that, do you evaluate the extent to which fuel management activities can reduce the severity of impacts on environmental values when wild fires do actually go through areas, or is it just about identifying where fuel management activities can be used to exclude fire out of areas. Do you understand what I'm saying?

MR WALKER: If I'm understanding your question, the modelling does consider fuel reduced areas. So it builds into the model the areas that have been fuel reduced and, therefore, how the 3000-odd simulations across the area would vary, depending on those areas that have been prescribed, reduced in fire load. Likewise, if there's a wild fire event that modelling will also pick up that and will change that risk profile, recognising that.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: So I was just going to say, do you consider the extent to which that reduced severity can help in conserving environmental values?

MR SEDDON: Can I jump in here, Mr Walker? The level of interrogation of the modelling depends on the quality and data that goes into it and the number of resources that are available to do that modelling. So, in theory, modelling could be used to look at the change in severity of any potential wild fires as a result of the way fuels have been treated across the landscape. In reality, the complexity of the modelling is limited by the capacity of the, and the time frame to do it, and in the weather conditions under which those modellings are simulating. So we've started this process in the ACT for our current draft 10-year regional fire management plan, and there's room for improving and making those models more detailed, if you like. And in the context of the 2019-2020 fires, now the regional context is quite different in terms of its fire history after this last summer. So we actually need to go back and re-run those models, and considering the effects of fuel management on fire severity would be certainly one aspect we would like to look at.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: No more from me.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you very much, I appreciate that. Mr Walker, one final comment?

MR WALKER: One final word. I would just like to close out the conversation from Mr Seddon about the rapid risk assessment work. So that work, while it has been the first use of it in the ACT, Victoria also uses that approach and has done so on a


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number of occasions following fires. Importantly, the rapid risk assessment transitions from an incident management team into ongoing land management delivery through a recovery program. And, as Mr Seddon highlighted, that's the space we're now operating in. Though if - in this case, the incident management team hands over the rapid risk assessment to the parks agency, who then go about mitigating those risks in a recovery context.


MR WALKER: Thank you, Commissioners.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: No, that's good because the one question Commissioner Bennett had was, how does this go on a bigger context, like a bigger state and so you've answered that for us. We appreciate that. Thank you very much. Mr Ambikapathy.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: I have no further questions.

MR TOKLEY QC: Commissioners, if it is convenient to the Commissioners, what I would like to do is to introduce the lunchtime video that we have.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: May the witnesses please be excused?

MR TOKLEY QC: I'm sorry.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: My fault. So Mr Walker, Mr Seddon and if you could also thank Dr Kitchin for us as well, we went well over time but you gave us some very good information that we can use now as we progress through the Commission. So we appreciate you spending the time with us this afternoon very much. Thank you.

MR WALKER: Thank you for the opportunity.

MR SEDDON: Yes, thank you for the opportunity.


MS AMBIKAPATHY: Chair, if you wouldn't mind, if it's possible, for Dr Kitchin to also to be formally excused even though she's not present?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Yes, formally excuse her as well, thank you. So, Mr Tokley.

MR TOKLEY QC: Yes, we normally have a lunchtime video, we can still do that.


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COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Yes.

MR TOKLEY QC: And resume at 2.30. There's some time available this afternoon, so we can make up time, and that would enable us to complete today's evidence by the end of today of all the matters we've got today.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: So, based on the timing, I think we've got for the coming events, we will complete today. It might be late but we will complete.

MR TOKLEY QC: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: If you would like to introduce the next evidence. I'm just going to find out how long is it?

MR TOKLEY QC: It's 59 minutes.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: So it will be an hour. Yes. So if you do that, we will - if you introduce that evidence and then I will give you a time once we've gone through that whole process, or we have done that as part of the bundle and you're happy with that?

MR TOKLEY QC: It will take me less than one minute.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Go for it.

MR TOKLEY QC: Next we're going to hear from Ms Caroline Paterson. Ms Paterson was the ranger in charge of the Kangaroo Island parks prior to 2019 and she's now an environmental consultant working on Kangaroo Island. She and her family lost their rental home in the fires on Kangaroo Island. Her evidence was taken by video link from Kangaroo Island on 8 May this year by counsel assisting, Ms Kess Dovey. The video of Ms Paterson's evidence is exhibit 3.4.1. The transcript of her evidence is exhibit 3.4.2. Her evidence has been edited to include several photographs and a video referred to by her, and the original footage of her evidence, along with the separate documents referred to, are also available. We can now play the video which lasts for approximately one hour.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. So we have already tendered that evidence and we will play the video, and then we will re-adjourn at 14 - sorry, resume, not re-adjourn - resume at 14:35.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you very much.


<VIDEO RECORDING OF CAROLINE PATERSON PLAYED TO ROYAL COMMISSION


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MS DOVEY: Can you please tell us your name, occupation and address?

MS PATERSON: My name is Caroline Jane Paterson. Currently I’m an environmental consultant. I would like to acknowledge the First Nations peoples of Kangaroo Island, which include the Ngarrindjeri, Ramindjeri, Narungga and Kaurna people, and pay respect to their elders, past, present and emerging.

MS DOVEY: Can you please tell us your background and how you came to live at Kangaroo Island?

MS PATERSON: Yes, sure. I have been a park ranger with the National Parks and Wildlife Service working for State Government since early 2000s; a park ranger in three regions, being Yorke Peninsula, Fleurieu Peninsula and most recently Kangaroo Island. I came here in 2011 in a leadership role and accepted a redundancy package in February 2019 because my values no longer aligned with the department, and I was having mental health issues and stress issues relating to that. And when I left I was the ranger-in-charge of Kangaroo Island Parks.

MS DOVEY: Thank you. Prior to the recent fire season, where were you living on Kangaroo Island?

MS PATERSON: We were renting a large house from the Forestry industry, Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers, west of Kangaroo Island, which was in amongst a blue gum plantation but we also own an acreage of about 320 acres out on the north-west coast of the island.

MS DOVEY: Thank you. Can you describe the roles that you and your family have, and have had, in the community over the time that you've been in Kangaroo Island?

MS PATERSON: Yes. I guess more so before I was on Kangaroo Island, I was an active member of the Department of Environment's Country Fire Service Brigade for about 16 years, and I have also been involved in emergency response planning and management as part of my role as ranger-in-charge. In the community, my daughter attends the Parndana Campus of the Kangaroo Island Community Education which is our local school. She also plays netball for the Western Districts Community Sports Club. My partner is a plumber and gasfitter, so he has his own small business. And I'm a member of the Kangaroo Island Friends of Parks Volunteers for the Kangaroo Island Western Districts Group. I'm also in Kangaroo Island Eco-Action and I volunteer for birdlife Australia as well. That's - - -

MS DOVEY: You're a very active community member.

MS PATERSON: I'm exhausted.

MS DOVEY: Can you describe the natural environment of Kangaroo Island, as it was before the recent fire season?


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MS PATERSON: Yes, sure. Can I just turn pages, my notes? Yes. Okay. So Kangaroo Island is one of Australia's 15 biological hotspots. It's been separated from the mainland for probably, you know, 7000 years approximately, which has meant that it has been kept free of a lot of diseases and also some feral animals, like foxes and rabbits.

Aboriginal occupation, for some reason, ceased for a long time and it's not really clearly known why, but the island wasn't therefore subjected to the same fire regimes that Aboriginal people did on the mainland. But what it's ended up with is an environment that has a large - around about a third of the island which is old growth intact native vegetation and really critical habitats.

The biodiversity hotspots places with a huge amount of different species, and so we have got 900 plant species, 400 that are endemic or only found here. We have 25 land mammals, seven microbats, around about 270 birds, 500 different fungi species and 18 reptiles, and we also have two of only three of the world's monotremes, being the Kangaroo Island echidna and the platypus. The platypus was introduced.

But the value of the wilderness landscape on Kangaroo Island was recognised by conservation visionaries in the late 1800s when they saw the value of these wild places as a place to conserve species that were declining on the mainland, and they fought for 30 years to have the west end set aside. And 100 years ago, last October was the anniversary of the Flinders Chase fauna and flora reserve being established. And so there's a - I have got a photo of what it looks like now which is, unfortunately, quite different than it did a few months back.

Because of the absence of foxes and also rabbits, we still have a lot of small mammal species left, and they include a lot of threatened species. So the critically endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart, the Southern Brown bandicoot. We have so many woodland birds that are threatened on the mainland, and also glossy black cockatoos, bush stone-curlews, Bassian thrush, southern emu wrens, and they're all here because there's this diversity of habitats, and lots of different storeys of vegetation from leaf litter and fungi through to old growth, fallen logs and stags and hollows.

MS DOVEY: Thank you. Turning now to the ways in which the community prepares for the bushfires, can you describe your knowledge of community bushfire education, not specific to this but, sort of, over the years running up to what people are told about bushfires?

MS PATERSON: Yes. I guess - there are people who have been living on the island for generations who are quite familiar with fires. You know, every 10 or 12 years they usually have a big one, is what I've been told. But there is a little bit of complacency, I think, in the preparedness, and I know that the Country Fire Service have tried to engage with community and also tourism industries in trying to educate people to have, you know, response plans for their family and also to spread the word


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to tourists and visitors to the island about their need to have their own bushfire survival plan.

But I'm not sure how much engagement there's really been. I think, you know, the community meetings have been quite small. They do the Firey Women Workshop which is, you know, preparing, I guess, you know - not just women but often the person at home - for how to plan to stay and defend, and how to prepare properties. Some people are very prepared. I know of one particular property who, his house was saved a couple of years back - well, actually just over 12 months ago by the fact he had planted kikuyu on the north side of his property, and that acted as just a break and saved - saved the house.

So there are different levels. You can't brand the whole community with the same brush. But I would say that because we have a third of our visitation to the island being internationals, there needs to probably be a much better focus on pre-visit awareness of the danger of visiting bushfire-prone areas; and also I guess the planning of both tourism and accommodation developments needs to really think very long and hard about the design of facilities and the location of facilities, because there are a couple of examples like Hanson Bay and Vivonne Bay which are one way in, one way out and we were very lucky not to lose Vivonne Bay in the recent fires.

And, of course, over in Victoria there were entrapments in those areas where lots of visitors - the visitation season aligns with the fire season making it very, very dangerous and it was really, really concerning to hear, you know, the marketing that Kangaroo Island was open for business even when the fires were going, because that is high risk. It's attracting more people to the island, putting them in danger, putting pressure on the resources and putting pressure on the emergency services who then have to manage them. So that was very concerning.

MS DOVEY: Thank you. On the education front, specifically with children with your daughter at the local school, do you know if there are any education programs around bushfires that are run through the school?

MS PATERSON: They do have drills. The Parndana Campus is one of very few last-resort refuges because they've got the great big oval there. So I know that they do drills. On days of catastrophic fire danger the schools close in South Australia because the buses are having to travel through dangerous areas. But I'm - I can't tell you if there's any specific programs by CFS directed at the school, I'm sorry.

MS DOVEY: That’s fine. When it was in the lead-up to this particular bushfire season, were there particular planning or organisation or preparations that were done in advance of potential for fires?

MS PATERSON: Well, I guess every year landowners are sent notices to reduce their fuel loads, and that's not just, you know, vegetation, native vegetation, that's also grasses and fine fuels and weeds, which carry fire very quickly. Having said that, there's still some very, very long grasses and weeds along the roadsides which,


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up until the break in the season, every time I drove through I was starting to sweat. All I could see was a wick. But then there are people who see the same when they see the corridors of native vegetation.

So, with regard to council, I guess council has limited resources on the island to do all of the deliverables that are required for roads and fire prevention, and so I guess they're limited as to how much they can achieve. But the same goes for the Department for Environment and Water. And following the 2007 fires there was a huge amount of resources thrown into the State Government's Fire Management Branch within the Department for Environment, Water and Natural Resources, or one of its - one of its many names, and they did fire management plans, one of which I've attached if you want to have a look at the degree of planning that goes into the department's management plans.

They also employed a lot of staff, bought plant and equipment, and started implementing a lot of fire prevention measures, and that includes prescribed burning and it also includes physical removal of fuel loads. However, each year the budgets get cut. Each year the department expects that you do more with less, work more efficiently. You lose staff and you just cannot deliver everything.

At the same time, the climate is changing. So we're getting longer, drier summers, and there's less of a window of opportunity to do a prescribed burn, which is called a prescribed burn because there are very strict prescriptions to enable it to be lit, which is about relative humidity, temperature, wind speeds, wind changes, soil moisture, vegetation moisture, all those types of things.

So you've got longer bushfire seasons, shorter periods in which to actually do any sort of fire prevention methods, then you also have quite a high rainfall which means trying to do works on tracks results in bogged vehicles, very difficult to traverse some of the west end parks even in the fire season because there are some very swampy areas there that make access quite difficult.

Yes, so you do what you can with the resources that you have. And I know that there has been a number of prescribed burns in the west end over the last recent years and one of those burns did protect, or helped to protect, a rather large strip of native vegetation which will be very critical habitat on the north-west. But then there's also large tracts of hard and soft wood forestry which have been planted more than 20 years ago. Currently, there's no way to get them off the island and so they haven't been as well maintained over the years as they would be if they were actually being sold and replanted, I guess. And they don't have very good resources either in which to maintain and also suppress fires when they start. Yes, so - - -

MS DOVEY: Thank you. In respect of your property and your home at that time, were there any preparations that you and your family specifically took?

MS PATERSON: In the home that we were renting, it was not defendable, so every year we did a bushfire survival plan regardless of where we were living. Previously it


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had been in Kelly Hill Conservation Park. Our plan was to evacuate and that house burnt down. After that, we were in the Karatta Parks residence.

Our plan was to evacuate. That house burnt down, and now more recently in the Blue Gums house. We didn't have any outside water, so we had no way of defending that house. It was in the middle of a blue gum plantation. It had timber decking. There was no way we could - we could actually defend it, and so we planned to evacuate.

Because the Duncan fire started on the 20th of December - and the fires actually started much earlier this year. So, as we know, the rainforests were burning in September. Now, you know there's climate change when rainforests burn because they're a closed system. So something is going on. But we also had fires on the island before the fire danger season. Then in December, the 20th, the Duncan fire started. Ignition was by a lightning strike.

Now, historically, in my experience, the lightning strikes do start fires. It's a natural way of igniting native vegetation, and usually there is enough moisture in the soil and vegetation to allow a fire to trickle around and burn a patch, and then leave other areas unburnt, go out, and that provides a natural break for next year. But it also provides a range of different habitat types and age classes which provides for the needs of a whole heap of diverse species, so from, you know, little seedlings right through to old growth hollows.

Now, those lightning storms since I've been on the island, we've expected them around about October/November and, you know, these ones were December/January. It would be interesting to see what the patterns have been over time. However, that lightning strike lit up very close to my own - or our own property, and we had very little fuel in the form of grass on our property because we haven't - never improved the pastures, we just have eight fairly happy cows out there, but it did take out our fences, three patches of native vegetation and some creosote posts that we had laying on the ground which - it was only minor damage. We were very, very lucky.

MS DOVEY: Before we go on, and I will move on to the fires but just so we don't lose track of it, you referred to the fire management plan.

MS PATERSON: Yes.

MS DOVEY: The Fire Management Plan Flinders Chase that you're looking at, can you please describe that document for me?

MS PATERSON: Yes. So this is the management plan that was updated in 2009 and I think was due to expire in 2019. It sets up the Department for Environment's planning for suppression, prevention and also management of fires, and also it zones the park and identifies areas of high asset value for the protection of human life and property, and also high conservation value for the protection of habitats and threatened species. This document has to be - has to go out to public consultation, so


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there's a - you know, there's a team of people involved in writing it. So that's what the Department for Environment work under.

MS DOVEY: Thank you very much. Now, if you're comfortable doing so, I'm going to turn to the period of time when the fires came over. How many people do you normally have in Kangaroo Island in an off-season?

MS PATERSON: That's a good question. So we've got a resident base of about four and a half thousand - four and a half thousand people. Then you have your off-island rate-paying people who have holiday homes, and either utilise them throughout the year or rent them out. We get, I think, around about 250,000 visitors a year but I couldn't tell you - I mean, most of the visitation, the peak period coincides with fire danger season. So it's really Christmas, September school holidays, Easter, but the Christmas period is the kicker; like, Christmas, New Year's and that's the big school holiday break and that's when the place is quite manic for at least a couple of weeks.

MS DOVEY: So this year, in that early January period, can you describe what kind of numbers of tourists you had?

MS PATERSON: Well, after the - up until the 3rd of January which is when the ravine fire actually took out everything, the island was marketing that it was still open for business. So there were still people coming to the island. After the ravine fire took out 89 homes and about 40,000 head of livestock and assets and fence lines, thousands of kilometre of fence lines, and livelihoods and pastures and native species and habitats, they finally put the brakes on "We're open for business".

But, yes, usually it would be our busiest time, yes. There were enough people - let's just say on the 3rd of January there were enough people to make it really difficult to manage them on a catastrophic day when the parks and the council camp grounds are closed because there's no - well, to my knowledge, the commercial tour operators and accommodation providers don't have a consistent approach to managing visitors.

I was driving for - for a commercial tourism operator on the day, the catastrophic day. I had a family from America, they were from California who were very, very aware because of what they had been through with the increased amount of fire activity. They had been evacuated themselves, they were so understanding, and I ended up dropping them off at their hotel early. But the whole day we were just avoiding smoke and on the phone to base to find out what the latest was. And it was really scary but I know that at that time there were still people who were - had left people in accommodation in areas with high fire danger with a going fire, and there were also some tour operators going into areas which potentially were putting people at risk.

So I'm not - I just think that there needs to be consistency between all level of governments into how we manage it, and also between tourism and accommodation providers into - into how we manage it. We know that tourism and agriculture are


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our most important economies on the island but we need to put public safety above the dollar at this time.

MS DOVEY: If you're comfortable doing so, I would like you to describe what your personal experience was through that couple of days. You can do it at a high level if you prefer or with detail if you feel comfortable with doing so.

MS PATERSON: Okay. Yes. So, good to go. So then, when my friend who lives in the highlands in Queensland was evacuated by fire in September, and that really scared me to hear that the rainforests were on fire. So I was already at a heightened sense of awareness, and because I had been, you know, the regional fire duty officer and the parks duty officer through my role as a ranger, I was constantly checking the CFS website, the Bureau of Meteorology's sites for the forecast.

And so it was just - it became an obsession, to be quite honest, and I wasn't feeling very comfortable about driving on those - on the catastrophic days in particular. And I was in communications with my employer to actually help them to write a response plan for days of heightened fire danger which we didn't get to do because it all started on the 20th of December, and I was driving on that day as well. That was a catastrophic day. And then on the 3rd I was driving.

So from the 20th of December my partner and I set up our farm fire unit. We burnt out two pumps in the first week, and so then we got a slip-on unit and got our old ute going and put that on. He was out for about three weeks, fighting fires day and night, helping friends and strangers, you know, previously with - with no experience. On Christmas Day - - -

MS DOVEY: I'm just going to interrupt for a moment there, because I understand that he was a farm fire unit - in one.

MS PATERSON: Mm-hm.

MS DOVEY: Can you describe that for us?

MS PATERSON: Yes. So particularly local farmers and landowners have their own unit. Usually it's a four-wheel drive with a, you know, four to 600 litre tank on the back, or it could have a, you know, a clear cube on a trailer with 1000 litres of water on it. Basically, they're set up to, you know, defend their pasture, their stock. They can get into some places where big trucks can't get, and they're not bound by the constraints of government and bureaucracy so they can hit the ground and go.

On Christmas Day, which we spent the morning until 7.30 opening presents with my daughter and then the phone rang and they - someone said, "You need to go and defend your property, it's on your boundary" and so my daughter and I ended up there that day as well. But that evening I remember a phone call to the CFS hotline that I made saying, "We need to get a bomber to Middle River" because there was a


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fire roaring up the gully but, of course, there was a fire also in the Cudlee Creek vicinity on the mainland, so the resources were stretched.

The houses that the fire in the valley across the road from us, the houses that were in the line of that fire were only saved because of those farm fire units. There were 30 of them, 30 blokes, protecting those assets, and they did save them. And the CFS didn't come at all, and I'm not criticising the CFS because as I said we had going fires across Australia and multiple big fires in South Australia but, yes, the benefit of those fire farm units shouldn't be underestimated.

Coming from a parks background, I'm also aware that there are issues with them not being trained under the CFS banner. They don't have the same GRN communication that the CFS have - government radio network communication. There are some issues with safety, personal protective equipment, and there's also a little bit of - or in some cases there are things that are done probably illegally which is, such as clearing scrub and back-burning. But I will say some of the back-burning actually resulted in properties being saved. Others probably resolved in more environmental assets definitely being lost.

MS DOVEY: Yes.

MS PATERSON: So - yes, so it just - it was the fire that just kept on giving. There were - there were landowners who had that fire come back through burnt forestry land three times and managed to save their house the first time, the second time, and then on the third time they lost their house. They had moved - they lost a heap of sheep but they had moved a herd over to the east of Parndana. The fire, the ravine fire, wiped out half that flock. It was just a horrendous fire.

The loss to this community - I've had conversations with people who have said to me, "Oh, we weren't directly impacted" or "But at least we didn't lose our house" but they've lost everything else. They have lost their income, they have lost their pasture, their tools, their vehicles, their machinery, their house and the contents of their house in some cases. Everyone feels like they're doing better than everybody else; whereas, really, it's impacted the whole community - small businesses. Everybody knows someone who has been directly impacted.

You know, half of the families at the Parndana school, those children have been directly impacted. The Western Districts Football Club, the club in the scrub, was lost in the fire. Yes. Little shack settlements down at Hanson Bay. Yes. Tough stuff.

MS DOVEY: Yes. Do you have a view on whether the firefighting resources that were available were sufficient when you take into account the farm units as well as the additional resources that were brought on to the island?

MS PATERSON: That's really difficult to answer because you need to recognise that with so many going fires, incident management would be very, very difficult. I don't think there's enough resources actually on Kangaroo Island, and because of the - just


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the sheer numbers of residents on the mainland compared to over here, obviously when you do a risk assessment there's a risk for higher loss of life in some of the larger localities on the mainland. So I don't think the resources are good enough, and I don't think they're based on the island. So I know from the parks' brigade the numbers of fit, active members has been declining over the years.

And we relied, over here, on the resources from around the State to deliver prescribed burns, or come and support us with fire suppression. The people in the CFS, and including the Joanna brigade which is a highly skilled brigade, do a great job at first response. There is no doubt - and they know the land. So that is really, really important. And the support we get from the mainland is amazing, but, really, I think the first response is potentially the most important if there are fires that are - that are threatening or if there's forecast weather conditions that look like turning it into an inferno which is what happened. Like, we had multiple burn-overs with the ravine fire, including on the South Coast Road where a CFS truck was actually overtaken from behind by the fire.

Now, that's not normal fire behaviour. It's - it's just a holocaust. And it's not stoppable. It doesn't matter how many - how many fire breaks you've got or how much you knock down native vegetation. That thing's - you know, ember attack can be happening like kilometres and kilometres ahead, setting alight to anything. Like, these asbestos houses that have burnt have exploded. Now, I thought asbestos was supposed to be sort of a bit of a - bit of a fire - a bit of a fire wall. That's not my experience, and, you know, you can refer to the photograph that I've got of our house and what was left of our house which was just a pile of smashed-to-pieces asbestos. We - - -

MS DOVEY: Do you want to take a moment to look at that?

MS PATERSON: Yes, sure.

MS DOVEY: Take a moment.

MS PATERSON: So, house remains with asbestos debris. Yes, so I've actually had a house burn down before, not in this type of event. But I was really hoping to salvage something out of that, and I had firearms in a locked standard safe in there, which I was not able to access for months until April because of the presence of asbestos, and the fact that I don't own the property and that I know about the danger of asbestos. So I was hoping, when I went to the clean-up, that we may have been able to find some small things and I did but most of them were just totally destroyed, as you can see. Even crystal caverns that I had, are actually that fragile that they're crumbling. So, yes.

MS DOVEY: Thank you. As part of the assistance resources that came onto the island, either during or possibly shortly after, I think the Australian Defence Force came.


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MS PATERSON: Yes.

MS DOVEY: Did you have any involvement? Would you like to describe that assistance, what you thought of it?

MS PATERSON: Yes, look, I guess the ADF were quite remarkable. They did so much for the community. We didn't have them assist us per se because we didn't own the home that was lost and we had very minimal damage to our actual land. So we sort of let the people who really needed the assistance get the assistance. And they put on concerts for the community. They sang for us. You know, they were really quite amazing. Everyone was amazing. Like, the community, the local community was incredible.

The South Australian community was incredible. The Australian community was incredible, and even people from overseas, everybody loves Kangaroo Island and they seem to love Australia but Kangaroo Island really seemed to resonate with people from around the world, and I think it's largely to do with the connection with our beautiful wildlife and our wild places. But it wasn't just the ADF; like, there were so many local businesses, organisations, churches. We're still getting things arrive.

Like, last night I had delivered from the community down in the Limestone Coast - or Naracoorte area, sorry, doonas for people who had lost their homes. Like, they have done this fundraiser, "Dollars for Doonas", and they have bought everyone who has lost their homes doonas and pillows. There has been so much kindness and support. People coming over and doing free massages for people. You know, local beauticians doing pedicures.

Like, it's just - I've never felt more like part of a community than what I do now, and I really appreciate that. Yes, and honestly the support has been overwhelming. Like, Salvation Army, Red Cross, you start naming them and you know you're going to upset someone but there was so much support. There were issues, though. Do you want me to talk about - - -

MS DOVEY: Yes - - -

MS PATERSON: - - - some of those now?

MS DOVEY: .....

MS PATERSON: Yes, so one of the things I found quite stressful in the days that followed the - the ravine fire, it was great to have the community meetings, but we were really running on adrenaline and we were just at such a high level of stress and trauma, and when we went to the recovery centres or the relief centres, each time we went there, we had a different person meet us.


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They were all trying to help, but to have to relive that trauma every time you go in there - you can't remember which form you've filled out, what grant you've applied for. You're freaking out that you're going to have to pay the money back if you duplicate the effort.

It would be awesome to have like a database with everybody's name and details on it, that whoever you talk to can access and a case manager straightaway. I found out who my case manager is yesterday. I'm so excited. But I had phone calls that weren't returned from the - the recovery team, and then I had different people ringing me trying to touch base and I was out of range and when I rang it was someone else.

And so just to have a case manager assigned to each family in need would really help navigate through those avenues of what you're entitled for, what you're not entitled for, where are you going to live. Just, I know it's a big - a big ask but it would really help.

MS DOVEY: Yes. In terms of the effect on the community, are you able to talk at all about physical and mental health, the support that was offered, what the issues are?

MS PATERSON: Yes. So I guess I have been getting some help from a psychologist which has been absolutely invaluable, but also we had Dr Rob Gordon come over and present to a small group on how children respond to fire, and he also - I'm sorry I'm distracted by a restless flycatcher that just flew to the window. He came to talk to us about how we can support our children after fire trauma and he's had significant experience interstate with that, and also he went into detail about the differences between men and women, I guess, and how they respond. MS PATERSON: And I really worry about the kids: the kids who may have experienced the fire at its worst, the kids who, in some cases, their families have lost multiple homes and multiple properties. Pets: like, we had a fire plan. Our pets, all but stick insects, got rescued and Toby the turtle got left in his tank because he didn't like travelling in the car, but Nigel did an emergency dash and managed to get him out because it was Jessica's Christmas present, which changed the series of events in a good way.

It put him out of a more dangerous situation and into a location where the wind changed early and the house he was trying to protect was saved. But then it took out our house, so - - -

MS PATERSON: There's a lot of hardened locals, you know, fifth generation islanders, crusty old farmers and crusty old tradesmen who don't need any help, "We've got this" and you just hope that they take the time to actually be good to themselves and to nurture their families and don't end up losing more. Dr Gordon said something which really stuck in my head and he compared the activities of a lot of men who have been fighting fires as, the activities afterwards, as being like epicormic activities. Now, the epicormic growth is what our eucalypts and other native species do after a burn and they sprout out all these new leaves, but


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unfortunately that doesn't mean the tree is going to survive. A lot of those branches will die and often the tree itself will die, and that's what can happen to the family, I guess, of the men who don't take the time to actually slow down and - and, you know, grieve, I guess, for what they've lost and face the trauma.

MS DOVEY: Yes. Would you mind talking for a bit about the long-term effect of the fires as you understand it to be on the natural environment?

MS PATERSON: Yes.

MS DOVEY: If you want to go to any of your photos, let's do that so you can show us what it looks like.

MS PATERSON: Yes, sure. Okay. So I'm going to go to a photo that I took in - we're going to go to a photo that I took on a bus trip with the Friends of Parks Kangaroo Island through Flinders Chase, and this is what was once our iconic national park. And - it's not going to go small for me, I don't know what I've done.

MS PATERSON: What you can see is that there are basically dunes of moonscape. So there's very little standing material.

There's no seeds left on the charred sticks. There's no seed that has fallen into the sand that's covered in ash. And it's likely, due to the intensity of that fire, that there has been burnt soil and seed stock in the soil for quite a depth. Now, even our local fungi expert is concerned that the colonising species of fungi, which help with regeneration, need to have plant matter to attach themselves in, in the soil, and there is very - places where there is very, very little of that left.

There are also places, more so in the Duncan fire footprint, where there are still lots of seeds that have cracked open, and it was beautiful to see in those places the yellow-tailed black cockatoos feasting on the toasted hakeas and banksias and seeds that had been opened, as nature intended, by the fire, dropped into the fertile ash bed, and with the rains they will - they will, you know, regenerate. But in these very heavily burnt areas, yes, there is some recovery of eucalypts and yuccas mostly, but it's the loss of biodiversity that is the big concern.

It's those complex systems that support all of our lives, the services that they provide, you know, from pollination through to clean air, soil, water; you know, keeping the moisture in the soil. Our pharmaceuticals all go back to these - these things from nature. I can't emphasise the importance of healthy functioning ecosystems enough. We don't even know some of the species that could have been lost in this intense fire.

We don't know how small populations have become, which will mean that they're not genetically viable to reproduce. I suspect we will lose species. There's a high level of endemism, or things that are only found on Kangaroo Island, and it's highly likely that a lot of species will no longer have either the population size or the habitat to


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survive. Now, I may be being pessimistic but I think I'm actually just being a realist from what I know about the importance of habitat.

MS DOVEY: Thank you. You spoke to the forum, and some couple of months ago, early March and we're now in May.

MS PATERSON: Yes.

MS DOVEY: How are you going since then? How is the community going since then? What has changed?

MS PATERSON: What has changed really is - the big change is that it feels like, because of the global pandemic, that perhaps the fire and the climate change issue has been a little bit swept to the side. And I understand the magnitude of COVID-19, and it really scares - it scares everybody but I'm really concerned that a lot of the people who need assistance may be forgotten with the global pandemic.

And it's also made it harder to engage with your social networks, obviously; you know, all the sports shut down. The very thing that holds our remoter communities together, they've lost their sports club. They were still out there training and then COVID-19 came. The support from the other clubs on the island has been amazing. They were letting us train at their facilities and now we don't have that. Hopefully, we might get a season this year but I think, you know, that isolation as well from others.

So a lot of us were hermits anyway, that's why we want to live in the west end of Kangaroo Island because we actually prefer the natural environment to being in town, but you still value, you know, your support networks and the community when you do get together. And so that has been taken away. I worry that perhaps some of the promises that have been made by the overwhelming generosity of Australians may not come through; things that, you know, have been promised to our children and that. Hopefully, they're just on the backburner but - that's a really bad pun, sorry.

MS DOVEY: What kinds of things in particular are you thinking of?

MS PATERSON: Well, look, people have been incredibly generous with donating things, and one of the things that our kids were promised were bikes. We got trampolines which is incredible. Like, what a positive thing to give to a family. You know, a trampoline, the kids can burn off energy, it's healthy, it's fun. Yes, a fantastic thing. Country kids and bikes, same deal.

But, you know, some of us haven't replaced bikes because they - they had been said that they were going to be donated which is amazing, and we didn't expect that. But it's just like - I understand if it can't happen but maybe just let us know so we can go and try and prioritise getting bikes because getting these kids back into their normal routines is really important.


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MS DOVEY: Yes. Thank you. We've covered a lot of things and your thoughts have been great to hear. Is there anything else that you would like people to know about what could have been done better either in a preparation sense or during the fires or afterwards?

MS PATERSON: Yes. Look, one thing that really affected me personally was the fact that I couldn't - I didn't know if I was going to be able to go through my house. And, as I said earlier, I knew that there was a chance that there would be things that were salvageable, and, in fact, I had a motorbike in the shed which was - the shed was not asbestos - it was an old Triumph. I had been hoarding it for years, and it had sentimental value and it would have been great to get the badge off it, if it was still intact, or at least to see it wasn't.

So I had been in liaison with SAPOL and Forestry about negotiating to be at the house site when the clean-up occurred. That happened. I was advised and given a date. I had to change my work shift to be able to make it. When we got out there, the shed had already been removed and so, you know, there was no chance to look for my late dad's tools. You know, Nigel didn't get to salvage anything from there. I didn't get my badge off my Triumph, or we just didn't get to see because I think, as hard as it was going through the asbestos debris and finding hardly anything, at least I know now what I haven't got. And when you haven't got very much, having the opportunity just to see that for yourself I think is really important. That may not be important to everybody but it was important to me.

I think that the housing pods that are being provided are really important, particularly for farmers to be able to be on their land, to be able to start cleaning up, repairing. It's really hard, and I know this from having a property that I don't live in for five years, how hard it is to do stuff on your property when you don't live there. And so much of the housing that is being kindly offered by the community, often at no cost, has been a long way away. So those pods are really important.

I know a couple who had a conservation block, or they still do have a conservation block, right in the hottest part of the burn, who actually had accommodation at the east end of the island but chose to go and live in tents and caravans on their property so that they could start to get their life back together. Now they've got a pod a week ago, and that's fantastic because it provides them with shelter from, you know, the big winds. There's no shelter from vegetation any more, so the wind, the rain, the cold, the hail. 70-year-old people, really important to actually make sure that people have adequate housing. So there's that.

I think taking advantage of the fact that we can manage pest, plant and animals while there's so much open space. So when you open up areas to disturbance, weeds will get in. Very important to manage those. Feral animals are attracting now, pigs and cats, around the unburnt areas where the remnant populations, particularly of threatened species, are sheltering. Very important that they are focused on.


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There's a big push in the community to review and overhaul the Native Vegetation Act. This is a huge concern. There is going to be so much competition for natural resources on our island in the future. The apiarists are going to want to put their honey bees on every last patch of native veg that produces flower, but these flowers also provide nectar for threatened species - pygmy possums, woodland birds, honeyeaters. You know, we need to make sure that there is a balance. We're going to have pressure to reduce the numbers of macropods because they're going to be competing with livestock for both pastures that are planted and feed as it comes back. And so pushing down native vegetation is really a huge concern.

There were areas during the fires of 7 kilometres of roadside veg that was knocked down and just left laying. Next year that's going to be a fire hazard. It's laying down now. It's at least providing some shelter and a corridor, perhaps, for ground-based species to move through. But yes, I've got big concerns about how we balance the apiary industry with conservation goals. Also, the tourism market, there's going to be the expectation by - by commercial operators to be able to access areas that are not burnt, so then opening up more wild places which is a big concern.

It's been a priority of the government for several years now to access all areas and to develop and put infrastructure into remote areas, which is just fragmenting habitat. So it's just this ongoing fragmentation of habitat that is happening. So we need to actually use science-based decision-making to tackle climate change and to prepare Kangaroo Island and Australia for the future fires that will come along with climate change.

MS DOVEY: Yes.

MS PATERSON: Planning and development of building standards needs to be revised to ensure that settlements, with only one way in and one way out, are discouraged in the future. Rather than setting up housing in native vegetation, maybe we set up the housing in areas that actually already have a break around them. Yes, we need to work together with the community to prepare for the future, balancing environmental integrity, tourism, agriculture, social needs and the economy. Yes.

<END OF VIDEO>

< ADJOURNED 2:32 PM>

<RESUMING 2:34 PM>

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Mr Tokley, are we ready to proceed?

MR TOKLEY QC: We are indeed, Chair. Chair, the next special focus study is the Wollemi Pines in New South Wales, and Ms Spies of counsel will take the conduct of the next stage of evidence which focuses on the Wollemi Pines.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Ms Spies.


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MS SPIES: Commissioners, the next witness to be Mr David Crust who is the Park Operations Director for the Blue Mountains within the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service. Mr Crust was responsible for the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area during the 2019-2020 bushfires and the operation to protect the Wollemi Pines during those fires. The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area was significantly impacted by the fires and we saw, in response to the notice to give by the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment, which was tendered this morning, that 82 per cent of that World Heritage area was burnt.

The focus of Mr Crust's evidence today will be on the planning and operation in relation to the Wollemi Pines, rather than the fire management strategies and the impact on the area more generally. Mr Crust's evidence was tendered this morning and is behind tab F of the Commission's bundle. It is document 3.5.1 to 3.5.1.16 of the exhibit list. I call Mr Crust. Mr Crust will take an affirmation.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you. Mr Crust, welcome.

<DAVID CRUST, AFFIRMED>

EXAMINATION BY MS SPIES

MS SPIES: Mr Crust, have you provided a witness statement to the Commission dated 25 May 2020 under a notice issued by the Commission?

MR CRUST: Yes, I have.

MS SPIES: And do you adopt that statement as true and correct?

MR CRUST: Yes, I do.

MS SPIES: And you are currently the Park Operations Director for the Blue Mountains within New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service.

MR CRUST: That's correct.

MS SPIES: And how long have you held that position for?

MR CRUST: I've been in that role since December 2016.

MS SPIES: And what was your position before that?

MR CRUST: Prior to that I was an area manager, as part of Blue Mountains region of the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, and I was responsible for the management of Wollemi National Park and Wollemi Pine populations.

MS SPIES: And how long did you manage that area for?


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MR CRUST: For nearly 19 years, so a considerable period of time.

MS SPIES: And what's the conservation status of the Wollemi Pine?

MR CRUST: The Wollemi Pine is critically endangered, so it's listed under the Commonwealth and the State legislation as a critically endangered species. And it's obviously a highly significant species, with - with less than - less than 100 mature plants surviving in the wild.

MS SPIES: And why is that species so significant?

MR CRUST: It's significant because (a) there's very few of them left, but I think probably most importantly, it was a species that was known from fossil records, and it was - it was known from the Jurassic period and thought to be well and truly extinct. So its rediscovery in 1994 was an incredibly significant botanical find that has drawn worldwide attention and I guess it's given it an iconic - iconic status in the eyes of the community.

MS SPIES: I understand that the location of the Wollemi Pines is confidential, so if any questions that I ask in the course of today would require you to disclose information about the location, please just let me know and I will see if I can re-ask the question in another way.

MR CRUST: I will certainly let you know.

MS SPIES: So prior to the 2019-2020 bushfire season, what long-term plans were in place in relation to the protection of the Wollemi Pines?

MR CRUST: There's a series of recovery plans that have been developed to support the conservation of the species. So the first recovery plan was completed in 2007. There was a - sorry, the first recovery plan was completed in 1998, and then a revised plan was developed in 2007. We're currently in the process of drafting a new recovery plan and that should be available later this - this calendar year.

MS SPIES: And who was involved in the development of the original recovery plan and in the further updates of that plan?

MR CRUST: So we've got a recovery team that's responsible for providing expert advice on the management of the species, but also on developing recovery plans, so that recovery team includes scientists, ecologists and botanists from the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service and the science division of the Department of Planning, Industry, and Environment. It also includes field managers, so obviously myself, and the area manager that's responsible for managing the population within Wollemi National Park.

MS SPIES: And have you been involved in the development of those recovery plans?


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MR CRUST: Yes, I have been. You know, I've been involved in managing the pines from 1997, including the development of the first recovery plan and, you know, I'm still involved in that recovery team.

MS SPIES: And you mention in your statement that the plan was adopted by New South Wales and the Commonwealth. Where is the responsibility for the implementation of the plan?

MR CRUST: The implementation of the plan sits with the recovery team, and the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service is the manager of the Wollemi Pine populations.

MS SPIES: In relation to the threats to the Wollemi Pines listed in the recovery plan, is fire listed in there as a threat?

MR CRUST: Absolutely, yes. So fire has always been considered one of the most significant threats to the survival of the wild populations.

MS SPIES: And is it known whether there have been any fires previously?

MR CRUST: There's certainly evidence of fire impacts on the populations previously. So most of the mature trees in the wild populations have - have got evidence of fire scars on their bark. It's not completely clear how long since they've been impacted by fire, or the intensity of that fire. But certainly work that has been done since their discovery has indicated that they have been impacted by fire in the past.

MS SPIES: So what actions were put in place to manage the threat of the fires to the Wollemi Pines?

MR CRUST: So we have a couple of levels of fire planning across all risk areas in New South Wales but specifically for Wollemi National Park. There's a detailed fire management strategy and then there's a series of more tactical operational fire planning documents that provide for - provide for fire management across the whole park, but also in terms of protecting the Wollemi pine populations. As well as that, that detailed fire planning, there's another number of on-ground actions that have been implemented to help protect the Wollemi Pines. So there's been a regular program of prescribed burning in the vicinity of the Wollemi Pine populations to reduce fuels, and to provide advantages for managing fires that might impact on those populations. And we also have a rapid aerial response program which we operate across many of our reserves, but targeting Wollemi in particular, where we have very experienced remote area firefighters that are available to respond to remote area fire ignitions by helicopter.

MS SPIES: If I could take you back to the highest level, which I think you mentioned was the Wollemi National Park fire management strategy.


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MR CRUST: Yes.

MS SPIES: Who developed that document?

MR CRUST: So the document is prepared by - by the National Parks branch. So we have a fire management team within the Blue Mountains branch that's responsible for developing fire management strategies for all of our reserves. And they - they've developed that strategy in consultation with the staff that are directly responsible for managing Wollemi National Park and the Wollemi Pines.

MS SPIES: Are any external agencies involved in developing that strategy or is it only the parks?

MR CRUST: No, absolutely. So the strategies are - are shared with the district bushfire management committees in the Rural Fire Service. So they - they form part of the risk management plan for - for fire districts as - as they would for reserves across New South Wales.

MS SPIES: And then you mentioned that there were some more tactical operational plans. If you could just tell me a little bit about them - sorry, tell the Commission about them?

MR CRUST: So there's a detailed - certainly, yes. So there's areas of detailed operational strategies which are based on maps that are available for all of the reserve and all of the reserves across New South Wales. Those - those detailed plans are reviewed regularly. They include information on assets at risk, both ecological and built assets. They include detail on fire history, where prescribed burns have occurred. They provide detail around the fire management advantages that are available to help suppress fire - so things like fire trails, rainforest gorges, asset protection zones, and that sort of thing - and some detailed guidelines that guide suppression operations across the whole reserve.

MS SPIES: I might ask for one of those maps to be brought up on the screen that you've provided to us. It's document PIN.501.001.0224. And Mr Crust - - -

MR CRUST: Yes.

MS SPIES: - - - that's referred to as document 1.4 in your statement, and, Commissioners, it's tab F3. Now, I don't think anyone is going to be able to read that on the screen, given that it's, I assume, intended to be blown up very large, but if you could just speak to generally what are the different aspects that are covered by these maps?

MR CRUST: Okay. I can't see the map particularly well but - - -

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: You're not Robinson Crusoe there.


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MR CRUST: Yes. Thanks Commissioner. So these - these operational plans are a standard template format that we use in New South Wales. So I think there's - there's over 800 of these - of these plans available, and then, depending on the size of the reserve, they could be broken down into smaller chunks. In the case of Wollemi National Park because it's a very large National Park, it's almost 500,000 hectares, from memory I think there are 12 of these maps that cover the entire park. So what it does do, it provides - it provides a map which - which details the vegetation communities across the park.

It provides some detail around fire history, and I think on the big map in the middle, I can see a hatched area and that would indicate an area that had been burnt previously and, from memory, I suspect it was probably a fire that occurred in the park in 2009. It provides detail on the fire trails across the reserve and the classification of those fire trails, whether they're dormant, strategic, important or essential fire trails and what sort of vehicles or firefighting appliances that they're suitable for.

It would provide some information around the fire status and the thresholds of those vegetation communities across the park. So it would indicate how frequently those vegetation communities had been burnt, and whether they were within or outside of the acceptable parameters for fire threshold for those communities. It has got some more detailed operational information. So it has got things like contact numbers for other fire agencies, for the Rural Fire Service, for the fire control centres. It has probably got contact details for key neighbours. It would typically show the location of some threatened species, but certainly not the Wollemi Pines.

It would show the location of historic heritage items that could potentially be threatened by fire, and would show the location of Aboriginal cultural heritage items that could potentially be impacted by fire or fire suppression operations. So that's - and I guess the other thing that it will go to is the fire management ..... to fire management across all of the reserves in New South Wales.

MS SPIES: Mr Crust, I might just stop you there. We lost half of your sentence. If you wouldn't mind just repeating what you said there.

MR CRUST: So it would also provide information on the fire management zones across the reserve. So it's got things like contact numbers for other fire ..... thank you. So - - -

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: It appears you phoned a friend there, Mr Crust.

MS SPIES: .....

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Was that what it was?

MR CRUST: Yes. So all of our reserves are broken down into fire management zones, either asset protection zones, strategic fire advantage zones, or land


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management zones, that all have different management objectives and different management prescriptions from a fire management perspective, and the - the fire management strategies would detail that.

MS SPIES: Thank you. And so does this assist you to determine what priorities to give for protection, for example, to threatened species?

MR CRUST: It's fire management across all of the reserves in New South Wales.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: I'm getting some feedback.

MS SPIES: Mr Crust, if I might ask you to stop there for just one moment. Mr Crust, we're having a little bit of technical difficulty.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: It sounds like you might be having a 60-second delay of what you're saying to us. If there's someone in the room or if you've got it playing, it sounds like that's what's coming through. If not, we will check it here.

MR CRUST: No, I'm all by myself, but I think - I think - I think the New South Wales' counsel is in another room.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: I think they are. They've popped up a couple of times on the bottom of the screen. So it might be feedback through them; not sure. We will just chase it up for a second.

MR CRUST: Thank you.

MS SPIES: Mr Crust, are you playing the webcast in your room where you are at the moment at all?

MR CRUST: No.

MS SPIES: No?

MR CRUST: No, not that I'm aware of.

MS SPIES: We might continue and if the problem continues, we will pause again.

MR CRUST: Sure.

MS SPIES: I'm going to now move to asking you about the 2019-2020 bushfire season. At what stage did you realise that there might be a threat to the Wollemi Pines?

MR CRUST: I think we were - we were aware quite early in the season the conditions were extraordinarily dry, and that we were quite clearly facing a serious fire season. There were a number of ignitions across the park from late October


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onwards, and I think pretty well from that period onwards we knew that there was potentially a threat to the Wollemi Pines and I guess we started to make preparations based on that.

MS SPIES: So what were those first steps in preparation that you put in place at that stage?

MR CRUST: Well, look, obviously we had fire operations going through a number of incident management teams right across the park and across my operational branch. You know, following - following those initial ignitions we started to think about options to protect the site, including the installation of irrigation systems. We identified some key personnel that would be involved in those operations, and we organised inspection - we organised an inspection of the Wollemi Pines sites to do an assessment of just how dry the fuels were, and also to try and get an idea of how much water was available on the site.

MS SPIES: And you mentioned you put together a team. Who was that team comprised of?

MR CRUST: The team involved a number of people from our science division who were also members of the recovery team and had been involved in research and management operations at the Wollemi Pine site, and some experienced local staff. So it was a mix of people from across DPIE, or the Department of Planning, Industry, and Environment.

MS SPIES: How did that strategy that you put in place at the start build on previous plans in relation to fire management?

MR CRUST: You know, look, there has been fires in the park that have potentially threatened the pines over the 20-odd years that I've been involved, but obviously, you know, this season things were different in terms of dryness. We had been through an exercise of obviously thinking about and documenting how we would approach managing fire as it approved the site. You know, we had organised equipment previously and we had developed strategies to install irrigation systems on the site. What was different this time is there was no running water on the site, and there was - there was basically just a couple of small pools of water that were available for pumping to an irrigation system.

I think the other constraint that we - that we had to consider too was that there were extensive areas of fire across the State. There were a number of significant fire operations going on, and we - the availability of resources was going to be constrained.

MS SPIES: So how were those resources coordinated or prioritised between the different operations that were underway?


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MR CRUST: So resourcing is coordinated pretty well at a State-wide level. So I mean, we obviously ended up in a situation where a large proportion of the State was involved in section 44 fires, so state of emergency fires, that were under the control of the Rural Fire Service Commissioner. The relative prioritisation of those fire operations and the resources that were allocated to them are undertaken by the State Operations Coordination Centre with the RFS at Homebush, and we're obviously, as an agency, involved in that process.

MS SPIES: What I might do now is I propose to play an edited extract of footage that has been provided by the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment of the operation in relation to the Wollemi Pines.

VIDEO PLAYED

MS SPIES: That footage is exhibit 3.5.3. Mr Crust, what I might do is ask you to speak to a number of those different elements of the operation.

MR CRUST: Sure.

MS SPIES: Perhaps, firstly, if you can explain why there was someone going up and down in a helicopter.

MR CRUST: So the sites are located in an extremely remote and rugged area of the park, and basically the only reasonable access in a situation like that is via helicopter. So we - all of the firefighting operations and most of the pre-fire impact irrigation operations involved winching national parks remote area firefighters into the site. So we - we - every day we, while we could, while visibility and conditions allowed, we winched a team of parks firefighters into the pines site to operate the irrigation equipment. So, like I said before, the water availability was really limited. We could run the pumps for about two, two-and-a-half hours before the water sources were depleted. So the crews went in each day and went through that operation, and then were winched out by helicopter at the end of the operation.

MS SPIES: What was the purpose of the pumps?

MR CRUST: The pumps were about supplying water irrigation system; the irrigation system was set up so that the majority of the mature trees at the main Wollemi Pines site could be watered, and the intent of that watering was to increase the moisture content of the fuels on the site. So that it was less likely to burn effectively or, if it did burn, to burn with a reduced intensity so that the impact on the trees would be minimised.

MS SPIES: I might ask for a photograph that you supplied to be brought up. It's in document PIN.501.001.0211 and it's at page 0215. You're able to describe to the Commissioners what's in that photo?


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MR CRUST: So that's a helicopter. That's a Black Hawk helicopter water bucketing the fire as it approaches the gorge that the Wollemi Pines are in. And the intent of that operation was to try and - try and stop the fire as much as possible penetrating into the rainforest gorge and impacting on the trees. So, you know, we had - we had two helicopters, effectively, that spent several days above the Wollemi Pine sites strategically water bucketing fires as it approached the cliff edges to reduce the potential of the fire dropping into the gorge.

MS SPIES: And were any other aerial assets used in the operation?

MR CRUST: Yes, absolutely. So there were - there were, sort of, three helicopters that were primarily involved and their roles were to fly in equipment, to winch in the national parks remote area firefighters, to undertake strategic water bucketing that you can see from there, and obviously to provide intelligence and information on the fire progression. The other significant aerial assets that were used were the LATS and the VLATS, so the large aerial tankers and the very large aerial tankers, which were utilised to drop retardant as the fire approached the Wollemi Pines in an attempt to either stop it or reduce its rate of progression and the intensity that it burned into the Wollemi Pine sites.

MS SPIES: And who was responsible for determining how the aerial assets were used and what operations were undertaken?

MR CRUST: So in New South Wales there's a State air desk, which again operates out of the Rural Fire Service State Operations Control Centre. It's an interagency air desk, so it includes representatives from all of the firefighting authorities. The State air desk is responsible for, I guess, prioritising and tasking aerial assets to the fire operations across the State. The actual on-ground management of those resources is generally the responsibility of the incident management team that's responsible for that particular fire. And within that structure of that incident management team there would be an operations section which would include an air operations manager and an air attack supervisor that coordinated and controlled the aerial operations over the fire ground.

MS SPIES: I might turn to the air attack supervisor who, from your statement, I understand was from the US; is that correct?

MR CRUST: Mike. Yes, Mike was from the US.

MS SPIES: So how did that come about that he was involved in the operations?

MR CRUST: Well, there was a large deployment of North American firefighters to - to Australia and to New South Wales. From memory, I think there was well over 200. A number of those firefighters were allocated to the incident management team that was responsible for fires in Wollemi National Park. I think there was - there was operations officers, there was planning officers, and there was air attack supervisors. They were all very experienced staff. I think the majority of them were from the US


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Forest Service. And Mike, the American air attack supervisor, was one of those - one of those people.

MS SPIES: And was he familiarised with the Australian environment and the Blue Mountains National Park?

MR CRUST: He was familiarised very quickly. Mike - Mike was a pretty experienced air attack supervisor. I took him out personally, so I put him in a helicopter and took him out. I orientated him in terms of the broader fire operations, but more specifically, I showed him where the Wollemi Pines were. I walked him through strategies that we had developed and were proposing to use, and made sure that he was comfortable and familiar with those. I gave him a crash course in Australian fire suppression operations, and gave him a crash course in - in fire behaviour in Australian vegetation communities, and then I left him to it.

MS SPIES: So what were the main impediments to the operation to protect the Wollemi Pines?

MR CRUST: Look, I think that the main impediments were largely environmental. So, you know, look, this incredible dryness, so we - we saw fire behaviour that we wouldn't normally see. We saw fire burn in areas where it wouldn't normally burn. The Wollemi Pines are in a very deep rainforest gorge that normally wouldn't be penetrated by fire, you know, under normal circumstances, you know, we would be using that gorge as a containment line to help to contain a larger fire. So I think that's probably the primary issue. We - we obviously had difficult weather. We had very high temperatures, we had exceptionally low humidities, and we had strong winds for the duration of the operation.

So, you know, as a result, the forest fire danger indexes for that period were exceptionally high and certainly higher than has been recorded in the last 50-odd years. Smoke was a major constraint for us. So, you know, obviously it was a highly aviation dependent operation and reliant on access by the fixed-wing air tankers and also helicopters; and repeatedly the site was smoked out and we couldn't get access due to poor visibility. We often had to wait, you know, all day and then when the winds picked up or changed and we had a - you know, a clearing of the smoke, we had a small window to get into the site and operate the irrigation gear or do suppression work or water bombing work. So that was a constraint. And obviously across New South Wales ..... the sources for constraint - - -

MS SPIES: Mr Crust, I might just pause you there.

MR CRUST: You know, there was lots of competing demands. Yes.

MS SPIES: The video is breaking up a little bit. You said "across New South Wales" and then the rest of your sentence cut out. If you wouldn't mind just repeating that?


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MR CRUST: Yes. So I mean, across New South Wales there was an incredible level of fire activity and there were obviously competing demands for firefighting resources. So, you know, that was - that was the constraint, obviously.

MS SPIES: Then I might take you next back to the series of photographs.

MR CRUST: Sure.

MS SPIES: Which was document PIN.501.001.0211, and a photograph at page 0217. The photograph at the top of the page there.

MR CRUST: Yes.

MS SPIES: If you could just tell me a little bit about what we're seeing here?

MR CRUST: So this is a shot of the mature Wollemi Pines at site 1, following the fire. So you can see there's a little bit of scorch in the lower canopies of the trees. You know, pretty well all of the upper canopies of the trees at all the sites was - was not impacted by fire but, to a varying degree, some of the lower canopies were impacted, and you can see the brown scorch quite clearly in that image.

MS SPIES: And in the footage that we saw earlier, in the middle of the footage, was that a video of the fire moving through the pines?

MR CRUST: Yes. So the crews that were operating on the ground set up a monitoring camera. So they did that, obviously, prior to the fire impact. So it recorded the progression of fire through the site, which was - which was interesting. That happened at night only. So that - that footage is an interesting record.

MS SPIES: If I might then move to the photograph at the bottom of that page 217 and ask you to describe to the Commissioners what that photo shows?

MR CRUST: So this is an aerial image of the gorge where the Wollemi Pine populations are mainly located. So what you can see obviously is the fairly intensely burnt area either side of the gorge. So that's - that's obviously drier, more exposed vegetation. But the most important thing here is the rainforest gorge that the pines are located in, the canopy's intact. So the canopy is green. What the image doesn't show is most of the under-storey below the canopy did burn with varying degrees of intensity. But the important thing here is that the actual canopy of the populations is intact and, you know, that's the most significant contribution towards the survival of the plants. If the - if the canopy had burnt, you know, the results would have been catastrophic.

MS SPIES: Then on the next page of that document, page 0218, I understand this is the post-fire assessment team?


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MR CRUST: Yes, I think so. So, yes, that's - that's a team on-site post-fire doing assessments. So, as soon as we could following the fire impact, when it was safe to do so, the - we put a team of scientists into the population to do an assessment of - of the impacts in terms of the areas that burnt, the intensity of those burns, and the impacts on the plants. And that was the basis for a rapid initial assessment of - of the impacts on the species.

MS SPIES: Are the impacts known or is it still too early to tell?

MR CRUST: Look, you know, this is obviously the first time that - that fire has impacted on the site since their discovery, so, you know, this is new territory for us from a science point of view. You know, the longer-term impacts are going to take us a while to - to get a handle on. You know, I would have thought probably four or five years before we've got a really clear idea of what the - what the longer-term mortality is going to be of individual trees within the population. But look, you know, in the short-term, it looks like the sites are generally okay. Most of the mature trees were impacted by fire but appear to have survived.

There's a couple of trees that were impacted by fire that was quite intense, but also impacted by rock fall from surrounding areas, and from other trees falling over which had the - had the effect of damaging, you know, branches and stripping bark which - which we will have to see how they recover in the long-term. But the most significant impact is, you know, most of the juvenile plants across all the sites, around about 200 juvenile plants of, sort of, you know, two to four to five metres were impacted by fire. It looks like that there has been quite a bit of mortality amongst those juvenile plants. But many of them are actually re-sprouting now, so we're just going to have to wait and see what the long-term impacts are and if those individual plants do re-sprout and survive.

MS SPIES: Commissioners, do you have any questions?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Yes. Dr Crust, thank you for that, and I think there's a lot that can be taken out of it. And, in fact, well done to your team. I think in the conditions and what we've seen, you've done a fantastic job. The first question I had you answered, was this the first time you enacted the plan and this looks like the first time you have enacted the plan. Just confirm that for me, please?

MR CRUST: That's correct, yes. I mean there's been fires in the vicinity of the populations previously.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Yes.

MR CRUST: But that's the first time we've actually had to enact the plan.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: All right. And so with that, and going to para 53 of your statement which, and I will read it, it says:


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"It is imperative that further fires are excluded from the four sites for an extended period (decades) to enable post-fire recovery and re-establishment of the juvenile plants."

The question for you is, do you have a plan? How do you have a plan to protect them for decades?

MR CRUST: Yes, look, we've got the start of a plan. So obviously we're reviewing all of our fire management strategies for all of our fire impacted areas. The Wollemi Pine is obviously going to have some very special attention. But, you know, in the immediate period the broader area has been burnt, so for the next four or five years there won't be any - any significant fire threat. The challenge will be for us after that period how we manage fire into the future, and we're going to be highly reliant on our rapid initial attack remote area response teams in terms of suppressing remote area fire ignitions across the national park, but also at some point we would be looking to start to reintroduce prescribed burning across the landscape to help to protect the pine populations.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. And another question: the international participants in the response, is there a recognised certification standard for international air attack supervisors and fire controllers and the like, or do you give them a quick on-the-job training, or how does that work?

MR CRUST: Look, interestingly, most of our training and accreditation matches up pretty well. I mean, there isn't specifically an international standard, but - but we - we have a very similar approach. We have very similar systems. And, you know, I have to say it's remarkably - it's remarkably easy, the transition from fire management in Australia to North America; and, you know, those guys certainly had a baptism of fire but they rose to the challenge and they did - they did fantastically well.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thanks. Thank you for that. One final question: in para 8 which is page 0234 of your statement, in sub-para (a) - sorry, sub-para (b) you talk about rapid area response teams providing a quick response to the ignitions are critical to this and we often hear comment about early attack of a fire is the best way to contain a fire. Was that a lesson learnt out of this on such a broad scale? Did that rapid attack work in areas in attempting to protect the Wollemi Pines?

MR CRUST: Look, at a broader level it absolutely worked. You know, across the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area there were 50 something ignitions this season and 20 of those ignitions were contained to around about - well, an average of less than 1.2 hectares. And that made a significant contribution to areas not burning within the World Heritage area but also in terms of slowing the progression of the development of the broader fires. So, look, it was - it was a successful strategy. Unfortunately, this year conditions were such that it was exceptionally dry and it was exceptionally hard to get fires out, and resource availability was - was constrained, particularly the availability of helicopters.


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COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Yes, and what I will do is I will just - I appreciate that because that's often a discussion point about that rapid attack and whether it's effective or not. So I appreciate the evidence you have given in specific cases here. What I will do is I will go to Commissioner Macintosh first and then go to Commissioner Bennett for a couple of questions and then we will need to finish up.

MR CRUST: Thank you.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Thanks, Mr Crust. You just said then that in terms of reintroducing fire into the landscape that you will wait, sort of, five years and then you will reintroduce into the landscape. When you say that, do you mean that you will be concentrating those fuel management activities in the immediate proximity around the Wollemi Pines or do you mean a broader strategy of introducing fire across the landscape away from the pines in order to give you some sort of tactical or strategic advantage during fire events?

MR CRUST: Look, both of those approaches. So certainly, you know, we will be looking to reintroduce prescribed burning for asset protection right across our reserves, but also to protect particular ecological communities. And - and, like I said, I would have thought the next five to six years we would be looking at - looking at doing some burning in the vicinity of the Wollemi Pine population specifically.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Thanks very much.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Thanks. I just have one question. You referred to the fact, of course, that there are competing demands.

MR CRUST: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: And this seemed to be quite a resource intensive exercise, both in the lead-up and the management. I was just wondering, I mean, can you give me an idea of how many different sort of sites in New South Wales would have this pre-planned application of that sort of intensive plan and resource application, and did you find during the recent bushfires that you were able to apply those teams and those resources to such identified - or all such identified locations?

MR CRUST: Look, you know, obviously it was an incredibly challenging season.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: I know.

MR CRUST: Prioritising life and property, asset protection over ecological protection is always a challenge and a balance. You know, I think generally all of the IMTs took into consideration the importance of protecting those sort of natural values and cultural values. And look, I mean, there's no simple answer to that. I mean, it's a difficult prioritisation process. You know, obviously we were very focused on the Wollemi Pines because of their significance but also their iconic status. But certainly there were other sites across New South Wales in our national


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parks where we had a focus on protecting threatened species, threatened communities and cultural assets, wherever we possibly could.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: So just thinking about, say, ecological and cultural assets at the moment.

MR CRUST: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: You do have a series of such plans in place that you're able to bring to bear then in a situation such as this?

MR CRUST: Yes. Yes, so our fire management planning that we ran through before, you know, obviously considers natural and cultural values, and in some cases, like the Wollemi Pine, there are more detailed specific plans in place for fire protection for those sorts of assets.


COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Mr Crust, that's the questions. Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. It was a detailed discussion. We appreciate you fitting into the time that we had. Thank you.

MR CRUST: Thank you, Commissioners.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Ms Spies.

MS SPIES: If there are no further questions, might Mr Crust can be excused?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Mr Crust can be excused. Thank you very much.

MS SPIES: Commissioners, I would like to draw to your attention that the New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment provided a response to notice to give issued by the Commission. That is document 3.5.2 and is at tab F18 of the Commission's bundle. That response explains that the New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service is undertaking a series of after-action reviews to improve land and conservation management in the aftermath of the fire season.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you for that. Just noted that. It will be interesting to see how they do that and also protect the location of the plants at the same time. Mr Tokley.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you, Commissioners, Chair. The next special focus study is the Eastern Bristlebird, and for that we have two witnesses who will be giving their evidence concurrently: Dr Rohan Clarke who is an ornithologist and Ms Kylie White who is from the department in Victoria. I would call Dr Rohan Clarke and Ms Kylie White.


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COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Mr Clarke, Ms White, thank you for joining us this afternoon. We appreciate that.

DR CLARKE: Our pleasure.

MS WHITE: Likewise.

MR TOKLEY QC: And the evidence will be taken by myself and also Ms Ambikapathy. Dr Clarke, I might start with you first of all. Will you take an oath or an affirmation?

DR CLARKE: An affirmation.

<ROHAN CLARKE, AFFIRMED>

EXAMINATION BY MR TOKLEY AND MS AMBIKAPATHY

MR TOKLEY QC: Dr Clarke, you've provided a witness statement dated 19 May 2020 under a notice issued by the Commission, and do you adopt that statement as true and correct?

DR CLARKE: I do.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you. Commissioners, that statement is exhibit 3.7.1 and is behind tab H of your bundle. And Ms White, will you take an oath or an affirmation?

MS WHITE: Affirmation, thank you.

<KYLIE WHITE, AFFIRMED>

EXAMINATION BY MR TOKLEY AND MS AMBIKAPATHY

MR TOKLEY QC: Ms White, I understand the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning has provided a response dated 19 May 2020, from notice issued by the Commission, and the response comprises a written response together with a bundle of photographs?

MS WHITE: That's correct.

MR TOKLEY QC: And Commissioners, the response is at exhibit 6.6.1 and the bundle of photographs is exhibit 3.6.2 and those documents can be found behind tab G of your bundle.

We might begin, Ms White, with Dr Clarke. Dr Clarke, you're a senior lecturer and the head ornithology and conservation management research group at the School of Biological Science at Monash University, Victoria.


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DR CLARKE: Yes. Yes, that's correct.

MR TOKLEY QC: I would like to begin with you, Dr Clarke. If you could just give or assist the Commissioners to have an understanding of the Eastern Bristlebird, its characteristics and behaviour, and then we will move on to its habitat.

DR CLARKE: Yes, sure. So the Eastern Bristlebird is a small bird, it's a ground foraging bird and it's about 20 centimetres long, so it's not that large at all. It's brown and drab, so no striking sort of plumage features. And it's relatively cryptic, so it spends most of its time foraging on the ground or near the ground. The - it's also quite a secretive species, so we tend not to see it that frequently and most of our detections and observations are based on its call. So it has a very loud and distinctive metallic call. So when we're searching for it and when we're surveying it we're typically listening for that call and that can be really important in terms of detection but also, as I will talk about a bit later, the survey technique and for capturing.

Because it's a ground forager, it's also quite a weak flyer, so it's not a bird that you would ever expect to see flying overhead like you might a pigeon or a Magpie and, rather, typically when you do see it it's flushing and flying ahead of you low to the ground and seeking cover. And because of those attributes it means that it's particularly susceptible to fire because it's got, you know, relatively few opportunities to flee, and in the event of a large fire we would expect that most birds ahead of a fire front of this species would succumb to that.

MR TOKLEY QC: I might just ask for a photograph - I'm sorry, Dr Clarke, I interrupted you.

DR CLARKE: No, go on.

MR TOKLEY QC: I might ask for a photograph to be brought up so we can identify the bristlebird. Can we have document DELW.500.001.0019. Commissioners, that's behind tab G, number 1. And Dr Clarke, I take it that's a photograph of an Eastern Bristlebird?

DR CLARKE: That's right. That's actually my hands and my jacket in the background as well.

MR TOKLEY QC: Now, is the Eastern Bristlebird an endangered species?

DR CLARKE: It is. So it's listed as both nationally endangered under the EPBC Act but it's also considered endangered in all three States in which it occurs. So it occurs in Victoria and New South Wales and Queensland, fairly much hugging the eastern seaboard, listed as endangered in New South Wales and Queensland, and considered threatened under the FFG Act, which is essentially the highest rating that exists in Victoria as well.

MR TOKLEY QC: And is it endangered because of its low population numbers?


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DR CLARKE: So the population is quite small. It's estimated to be somewhere around 2000 to 2400 for the global population. And the population is divided into three subpopulations. So there's a small population on the Queensland/New South Wales border which we refer to as the northern population, there's about 30 birds there. There's a central population from about Wollongong south to about Jervis Bay where the majority of birds persist and then there's the southern population, which is Nadgee Nature Reserve on the New South Wales border. And then just on the south side of the New South Wales/Victorian border there's Howe Flat and there's birds at Howe Flat as well. So the southern population is about 140 to 160 birds in Victoria and a similar number, perhaps slightly more prior to the 2019-2020 fires on the New South Wales side of that.

MR TOKLEY QC: Could you describe its habitat, please?

DR CLARKE: Yes. So the habitat is low dense cover. It seems to be a key requirement for the species that the - the vegetation between ground level and, say, waist height is dense. It can occupy anything from sedgelands and heathlands through to dense grass and in some areas, particularly those on the Great Dividing Range it has an over-storey of eucalypts but in most of the coastal sites the vegetation is simply the low heath or sedgeland structure that the bird occupies.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you. Now, you've mentioned already, I think, that the bird is regarded as an endangered species under both State and Commonwealth legislation?

DR CLARKE: That's right.

MR TOKLEY QC: We might now go to Kylie White because I believe Kylie might be able to speak about some plans that are in existence for the protection of the bird and the like.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Ms White, are you able to speak to the plans and strategies that were in place prior to the 2019 and 2020 bushfire season to manage or respond to fire that may threaten the Eastern Bristlebird population in far East Gippsland?

MS WHITE: There are three key plans or strategies for the Eastern Bristlebird that existed prior to the fires of '19-'20. The ecological fire management plan for Eastern Bristlebird was completed in December 2019 and a national recovery plan for the Eastern Bristlebird was prepared in 2012, in which Victoria participated in that. And there is an action statement under the Victorian legislation for the Eastern Bristlebird completed in 1995.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Now, I can see from your statement that you have identified that the national recovery plan, which was developed under the EPBC Act, was prepared by the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage, and the -


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Victoria participated in that process. Could you tell me a little bit about why it was a joint effort and how that coordination came about?

MS WHITE: The recovery plan is a requirement of the EPBC Act and as the Eastern Bristlebird occurred across multiple jurisdictions, that meant that Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland input was put into that recovery plan, together with the Commonwealth Department of Environment.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And was that coordinated by New South Wales or was it a jointly-coordinated effort across the three States?

MS WHITE: New South Wales took on the responsibility of preparing the documents, so writing that. But it was, of course, coordinated with the other States and the Commonwealth and a variety of experts that could contribute to the recovery plan, though New South Wales took the lead.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And in terms of the practical activities, were there any undertaken to mitigate bushfire risk to this particular population of Eastern Bristlebirds prior to the 2019-2020 bushfires?

MS WHITE: As I mentioned, the ecological fire management plan was prepared in December, so just prior to the 2019 fires. So it had not had a chance to be promulgated widely or to have the actions contained within it put in place. But prior to that, there had been quite a lot of consideration from the department experts as well as others, about how it would be best to protect the Eastern Bristlebird, noting that it had been protected for some time due to its location.

It's bordered by Mallacoota Inlet to the west, Lake Barracoota to the south and east, and has rainforest gullies to the north. So it had been largely protected in that way for many decades. Considerations around options for fuel reduction burning or ecological burning had not been pursued given that the environment was very fire prone and there was a very small habitat area and being able to ensure the fire didn't damage the habitat and, therefore, the small population had not been pursued.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Thank you. Excuse me for one moment. So Ms White, if I can now take you, please, to the period leading into the 2019-2020 bushfires, in particular the fires in January. Could you please explain to the Commissioners the process that your department went through in early January regarding assessment and prioritisation of threats to biodiversity values in that area?

MS WHITE: Early in January, it became apparent that the fire severity and extent of fires in Victoria was such that large areas of - forested areas had already been burnt but were likely or could have the potential to be burnt should the summer and the prevailing weather conditions continue. And with fires, both North, South of New South Wales and South Australian border, the New South Wales and Victorian border, staff in my department and in conjunction with our partner agencies, including Parks Victoria and Zoos Victoria commenced some analysis of what are


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the environmental values that may be impacted as the fires progressed, particularly as those fires progressed in East Gippsland which is known for its high flora and fauna values.

So early in January some analysis was undertaken utilising some of the data that we hold in our department, using our expertise at Arthur Rylah Institute, which is an environmental institute within the department and we started to understand what were the likely impacts to endangered species due to the fires. And in that analysis, in that early analysis, the Eastern Bristlebird, with the characteristics that Dr Clarke has just outlined, became a focus of our attention.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And could you explain a little bit more as to why the bristlebirds were identified as a priority concern?

MS WHITE: The population of Eastern Bristlebirds at the Howe Flat is the only population that exists in Victoria and that small area in the far east is, if you like, our stronghold. And so noting that, as Dr Clarke has outlined, that this is a bird that prefers low heathland areas and that it doesn't fly, but it - and because of its small numbers and only one occurrence in Victoria, with all of those features or characteristics, it came to our attention as being at very high risk of fire, should the wildfires continue into the far east of the State.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Once that prioritisation exercise was done, or assessment and prioritisation, what was the next step that took place?

MS WHITE: Following that initial prioritisation, and there were a range of both flora and fauna species identified as being at risk, but because of the characteristics of the Eastern Bristlebird in particular, we then commenced a more in-depth planning phase. So by about the middle of January we had brought together experts from Zoos Victoria, who had commenced conversations with other experts that exist in other zoos such as Currumbin wildlife sanctuary and experts such as Dr Clarke were also contacted as we started to build the planning arrangements around how could we and at what stage would we consider an extraction of the Eastern Bristlebirds based on fire risk.

We started to build that plan out to better understand logistics, how we would be able to keep the personnel safe, given that it was extremely dangerous and that there were fires still burning out of control in the region, and then we also need to understand the implications of a very small population of birds, and if we were going to extract both some birds, what number would that be, and how would we go about it to ensure their safety as well.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: So I understand that a seven-day plan was created?

MS WHITE: Yes, that's correct. A seven-day plan which identified a range of environmental issues that had strategic importance was prepared, and this was updated on a daily basis. And in that seven-day plan, it outlined the operational


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details of what extraction would look like, including things such as being able to get the crews into a very remote part of Victoria to be able to undertake the extraction work. We need to think about the numbers of people we would need to move, the kind of expertise, the kinds of vehicles that would be able to get into such a remote place. And so considerations along those lines started to progress at pace during those weeks leading into the end of January.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And was it at that point that you identified the various vehicles that - and modes of transport that were going to be needed to be engaged to be able to undertake this operation?

MS WHITE: Yes, and that was a critical part of being able to successfully extract the Eastern Bristlebirds from their habitat on Howe Flat. It's more than 500 kilometres away from Melbourne. As I described its location earlier, it's bounded by Mallacoota Inlet and Lake Barracoota and there are not a lot of tracks or roads into the area. So we had to think of a variety of ways.

We had a team of experts, including Dr Clarke based in Melbourne, which we needed to be able to get on-site and they had equipment and they needed to be prepared. Originally we planned for them to be prepared to be away for five or six days in order to do the capture and then be able to transport them back to Melbourne Zoo. So we had to think about the ways in which we would be able to get the equipment and the people on-site.

The State Control Centre was approached in order to or to seek the appropriate aircraft which was decided that that was the best way to be able to transport people down and to also transport the birds back to Melbourne Zoo where they would then be released and kept in captivity post their capture. We also had to consider how we would move people on-site and so four-wheel drive vehicles, all-terrain vehicles were considered and it also became apparent very quickly that the quickest way back, or the quickest way to bring the birds back to Mallacoota and then fly them from Mallacoota Airport was to go by boat. So we engaged with Victorian Fisheries Authority around boat access as well.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: If I could just ask you to explain to the Commissioners each step of the logistics, so the Commissioners can get an understanding of the different modes of transport, vehicles and coordination that needed to take place to get, number one, the people from Melbourne, and number two, I understand that there were also people embedded in the Orbost incident management team or incident management centre that was located there that was managing the fire risk around that area. If you could please explain, just in a very overview, in terms of each of the steps or logistics that needed to be managed and needed to be coordinated to get people in, birds and people out?

MS WHITE: So a detailed operational plan was prepared by the planning team in the incident management team and, as you've just mentioned, a number of those had expertise and then assisted with the extraction program on the ground as the days


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evolved. In that operational plan, all of the logistics and all of the considerations around safety, transport, health and wellbeing as well as bird welfare were all considered.

And in doing that, in preparing that plan, it became logical and these requests were made through the incident management team through to the State Control Centre, resources such as an aircraft, a suitable aircraft to be able to transport the people from Melbourne to the location where all of the team grouped together to commence the extraction exercise at Marshmead just on the far side of Mallacoota Inlet. The request for a suitable aircraft was made. That - there were requests made for suitable vehicle on-ground, vehicles, four-wheel drives, all-wheel drives, types and all-terrain vehicles.

There was a consideration of, as I mentioned, a boat through Victorian Fisheries Authority to be able to transport both the team and the birds back to Mallacoota. And then there was also the consideration of how to have the birds returned safely to Melbourne Zoo. So in each case there was considerations along those lines. In the case of being able to transport people from Melbourne, the State Control Centre liaised with the Australian Defence Force who were also located at the State Control Centre at the time, and a Chinook helicopter was provided. It was a Singaporean Chinook helicopter that was provided and it transported people to Mallacoota where the people in that transport then met others on the ground and then commenced the operation.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Okay. This might be -

MS WHITE: ..... sorry.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Go ahead, Ms White.

MS WHITE: I was just saying the return journey though then, particularly the birds and the keepers and the experts who returned with the birds became something that Dr Clarke may be able to speak to, given he was on the ground, but there was a really efficient and really coordinated effort by all the parties involved, Zoos Victoria and the Victorian Fisheries Authority, Parks Victoria and our experts in the field to then be able to capture the birds rapidly, be able to assess them, be able to put them in purpose-built boxes. Then travel them to a jetty where they were met by a boat of the Victorian Fisheries Authority.

It was transported across. The birds and the keepers were transported across the lake where they were met on the other side of the lake at Mallacoota and put into a fixed-wing aircraft which had been - been made available by the incident management team and then the birds were then transported by fixed-wing aircraft to Essendon Airport and then to Melbourne Zoo.



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MR TOKLEY QC: Dr Clarke?

DR CLARKE: Yes.

MR TOKLEY QC: Dr Clarke, I understand that you were on the ground during the operation?

DR CLARKE: Yes, that's right.

MR TOKLEY QC: And you actually had to go into the area and capture the birds?

DR CLARKE: That's right. Yes, I led one of those teams.

MR TOKLEY QC: Could you tell the Commissioners what that was like?

DR CLARKE: Yes. So as Ms White talked about, there was considerable planning in place to get us there and to get us on the ground safely with the necessary equipment, and so once we were in at Marshmead on the first day, the Monday that we arrived, we had a fairly substantial planning meeting at Marshmead at the facilities there, and then we drove by four-wheel drive down to the site which is a distance of about seven or so kilometres, the site where the bristlebirds occur.

And then over that afternoon, several hours, we basically did a reconnaissance trip. So being on the ground, seeking out bristlebirds by their call and locating where the birds were at the time so that we were really well prepared to start catching them the next morning. And once we had sort of concluded that, we were back at Marshmead for more planning and, you know, essentially allocation to teams to optimise the outcomes.

And we were back out at the site in the half light, the following morning, so back at Howe Flat on dawn, and a team of 11 of us were working at that stage together across the various agencies that have been mentioned. And once you're on the ground, essentially we had teams of two to three people and those sort of - really like little strike teams to catch birds - were focused on finding birds by their call, rapidly setting mist nets which are a very fine black cotton net stretched between two vertical poles, typically sort of metal or bamboo poles.

We set those where we think we can hear the birds calling, and then we use call playbacks, so we used bluetooth speakers to attract the bird into the location where the net is. And there's lots of little tricks and nuances. So we typically use two or more speakers and we play the call of the bristlebird through one speaker until we're confident that the bird is close to the speaker, and then we turn that speaker off and switch to the other speaker remotely and start playing calls on the different speaker, a different location, and if we get the positioning of the speakers right that has the effect of drawing the bird across the net. So essentially we attract the bird into the net using speakers and the bird's call. And yes, I guess that arises from sort of years of experience. And so there was at least half a dozen people in the team that were very


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experienced in the mist netting requirements and that sort of core to catching the birds successfully.

As soon as we caught a bird, it was placed in a cloth bag and then moved to a processing tent. So if the bird was captured, or inadvertently released while it was being processed it could be recaptured because it was within a sealed tent with the handlers, the Zoos Victoria staff that were handling it. The birds got a vet check, they were measured and they were fitted with a numbered band which is particularly important to be able to track individuals through the process of captivity. And then they were placed in purpose-built carry boxes which had been built quite literally in the days, the evening even, before we had travelled down, by Zoos Victoria.

MR TOKLEY QC: Did you have - - -

DR CLARKE: On the first day - sorry.

MR TOKLEY QC: I'm sorry, Dr Clarke, I meant to ask: was there a certain target number of birds that you were aiming for?

DR CLARKE: Yes, the target was 15 to 20 birds for the program and, as Ms White said, the original plan gave us five days on the site in terms of the logistics and the structure for support for those activities. On the first day, we managed to catch nine birds, which is right at the upper limit of what Zoos Victoria could manage. And indeed, they were preparing the aviaries as the birds were being flown back, sort of such is the logistics that was going on to keep it all organised.

We - we needed to finish all of the catching on any given day by 11 am. So we start at dawn but we're done by 11 because the logistics that Ms White referred to, four-wheel drive vehicle to the jetty, the fisheries officers providing support for the vessel across Mallacoota Inlet, another vehicle to the airport and then the charter flight waiting to go to Essendon Airport, all of those things had to take place with enough time to get the birds to Melbourne Zoo in daylight so that we could release them into the aviaries, or Zoos Victoria staff could release them into the aviaries. It's critical so they get enough time to settle down in the evening.

MR TOKLEY QC: So do I understand that the birds you caught were transported to Melbourne Zoo that day?

DR CLARKE: That's correct.

MR TOKLEY QC: And then birds you caught subsequently were transported on subsequent days?

DR CLARKE: That's right. So the logistics structure was all of those operational considerations were in place for every day that we caught birds. And so I think on the first day, by 5 pm we had a text message back to the team on the ground to tell us that the birds were already safely in the aviaries, following a vet check at the other


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end as well. On the second day, the process was pretty much the same, and we managed to catch six birds. So by 11 am on the second day we had 15 and so we had achieved the lower end of the target.

The one difference with the second day was that the winds had increased noticeably and fire activity was substantially higher. There was a - a good tower of smoke in the sky and, you know, you could smell the smoke all the time. In fact, you could see, on the nearby ranges, visible flame and at the site we were working there was ash falling. So not embers, rather, you know, burnt and extinguished leaves were falling at the site where we were catching birds. And so that really changed things in terms of how we behaved on that second day.

MR TOKLEY QC: Was the decision made sometime on the second day, or at the end of the second day, that you had to leave the area?

DR CLARKE: That's right. So we were essentially embedded within the operations for the fire, and so the incident management team or the - based at Orbost had sort of oversight in terms of when and what we would do. And so our role was to continue planning to extract birds whilst we had that approval and we were actually in a planning meeting in the afternoon, recognising conditions were getting worse, that we may be able to extract a couple more birds that afternoon, when we got word we would be evacuated and moved back to Mallacoota, which happened on that day, the second day.

MR TOKLEY QC: And on the third day, did you then travel back to Melbourne or did you remain in Mallacoota?

DR CLARKE: No, that's right. On the third day we simply overnighted in Mallacoota. The birds were already gone by that stage on a charter flight and we overnighted in Mallacoota and we ourselves flew back to Melbourne on that third day.

MR TOKLEY QC: And did you then participate, once you were back in Melbourne, with the birds going to the Melbourne Zoo or being looked after in the Melbourne Zoo or did that complete your involvement at that stage?

DR CLARKE: So the bulk of the task for the captive management fell to the expert keepers at Zoos Victoria. But we continued to be involved with a role in terms of planning for release and future actions after the captive program had ended. So we were involved in weekly teleconferences for a full update on progress, but we were also involved in a half-day debrief around the program that we achieved in the field and substantial forward planning for release in terms of a monitoring program, should the birds go back to the site from where they were taken.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you, Dr Clarke. I understand that some of the birds were eventually returned, and it may be - - -


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DR CLARKE: That's correct.

MR TOKLEY QC: It may be appropriate for Ms White to speak about the return of the birds at this stage.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Ms White, if I can just take you through, once the birds were - arrived at Essendon Airport, what was the process that occurred after that?

MS WHITE: The birds were transported from Essendon Airport to Melbourne Zoo. With them, they had expert keeper staff that had travelled with them from Mallacoota. They were met at Melbourne Zoo and the birds received veterinary checks, as Dr Clarke's mentioned, and they were released into aviaries at Melbourne Zoo that had been cared for Eastern Bristlebirds in particular, and then they were monitored from then on by Melbourne Zoo staff in association for a couple of weeks with some expert Eastern Bristlebird keepers from Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary who joined the crew for two weeks in order to assist with, if you like, settling the birds and being able to bring some of their knowledge to Victoria.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And when were the birds ultimately taken back to Howe Flat and released?

MS WHITE: A number of the birds were released on 1 April, and they were returned back to Howe Flat from where they were originally captured, and released there. And - and also there are still two birds that still are - still at Melbourne Zoo at the moment that have not yet been released, and it's likely that one of those will also go back to the site.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: What was the total number of birds that were extracted from Howe Flat?

MS WHITE: There were 15 that were extracted.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And how many were returned?

MS WHITE: We have seven that were returned. Two that have been retained at Melbourne Zoo, and six died while in captivity.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: What was the cause of that death or those deaths?

MS WHITE: So the cause of death, at least to - at least four of the six and perhaps all six related to a fungal infection that can be exacerbated by stresses, such as the capture, stresses that these birds may have experienced.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Okay. It might be helpful, I think there's some photos in your statement that show the birds being released, and will inform the Commissioners, some of the visual aspects of it in terms of the - I understand purpose-built boxes were made and some of the logistics that were engaged in to actually return the birds.


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So if I could go to document DELW.500.001.0020. Ms White, are you able to, or Dr Clarke, just describe for the Commissioners some of the different elements of the purpose-built box for the bristlebirds?

MS WHITE: This might be one for Dr Clarke.

DR CLARKE: Sure. So these are heavy plywood boxes, heavy in that they're robust. They have solid sliding doors on them so that the doors can be readily removed. And at one end they have a sliding door with a baffle that's made of rubber so you can push your hand through that when you're putting a bird in without the chance of it escaping. And at the other end, as you can see in this photograph, when you remove the slide from the far end there's complete access for the birds to be able to exit.

So these are the two birds, presumably a pair, that have been returned and the door has been lifted off and they're flying out. So when they're being released, they don't need to be handled again. You can simply remove the door and they can exit as they're doing.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And is my understanding correct that there's some soundproofing that's built into that box?

DR CLARKE: That's right. So yes, making the boxes solid improves or reduces the noise that can access them. They also have soft material on the - the roof of the box which both soundproofs but it also provides a buffer if the birds leap while they're in the boxes. So they hit something soft rather than the hard roof of the box.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Can we please, operator, go to document DELW.501.001.0001. And Ms White, I might ask you to describe these photos?

MS WHITE: This is the team that was involved with the capture and then subsequent return. And they're holding those purpose-built boxes as they're walking along the - if you like, through that environment, that is the Howe Flat habitat area.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And operator, if you could please go to DELW.501.001.0002. Ms White, if I could ask you to describe what we're seeing there too?

MS WHITE: Once again, this shows that the birds are being transferred from the fixed-wing aircraft that - that was taking them from Melbourne, back to the site at Howe Flat.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And what was the reason that they couldn't be transported in a helicopter and it had to be a fixed-wing aeroplane?

MS WHITE: The experts who advised us around the use of aircraft to be able to transfer - transport the birds, advised that something - an aircraft that could be as quiet as relatively possible and also as smooth as relatively possible would be


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preferable for transporting the birds. And so it - with that advice, a fixed wing was considered to be the most appropriate way of being able to transport these birds safely. Dr Clarke might have something to add.

DR CLARKE: Yes, I agree, and there was on-ground discussion after we had arrived in the Chinook that it wasn't suitable for transport and that included a couple of Zoos Victoria staff that had travelled on that aircraft and made the, you know, the decision that it wasn't a suitable aircraft given extreme noise and shudder from the rotor movement.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And operator, if we could please go to DELW.501.001.0006 And Ms White or Dr Clarke, if you can describe what we're seeing here?

MS WHITE: Once again, these purpose-built boxes are transporting the birds and now are being, you know, prepared for the birds' release.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And whereabouts is that photo taken?

MS WHITE: I don't have the exacts of where that is, but it is on Mallacoota Inlet. Dr Clarke, you may have been at this point?

DR CLARKE: Yes. So this is what's called Brokewell's Hut which is Parks Victoria managed land, as I understand it, and it's the jetty that is on the eastern side of Mallacoota. So nearest to Marshmead and the Howe Flat side, and Mallacoota is on the far side of this inlet from here.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: Thank you. And Ms White, has there been a review of this particular operation since the birds have been released back into Howe Flat?

MS WHITE: Yes, there has been a debrief that has commenced, of which it has not yet completed. But a debrief commenced 14 February and we will continue to build out that, if you like, the experience and the knowledge that we've gained over coming weeks in order to complete that analysis of - of the extraction and what we can build into the learnings for the future.

MS AMBIKAPATHY: And are there any particular learnings that have been identified at this stage?

MS WHITE: I think there's a couple of things that were new in the '19-'20 bushfire situation that at the time those - not insurmountable issues because, of course, this was a terrific collaboration of a lot of seasoned experts and delivered a really professional and efficient bird extraction which was remarkably successful. But a couple of things stood out.

One was, it was the first time that we've done a bird extraction in - in a situation such as this in advance of fire. So there was some of that learning about how we would do it and how we would do it better, including how we would engage with people who


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are involved in it, who did not have fire training and had to arrange for them to have fire training and so on and so forth. And Dr Clarke was part of that. And we also, if you like, had to work very quickly and Dr Clarke also mentioned that some of these boxes were really being - being finalised the day before the - the extraction party left Melbourne. It was just about the speed in which we had to do it. And we've learnt from some of that, along the lines of what could we prepare for differently in the future.

MR TOKLEY QC: Dr Clarke, from an ornithologist's point of view, the operation was successful in the capture of the birds, given the constraints under which you were working. But unfortunately, some of the birds having died, from the ornithologist's point of view, that's an unfortunate outcome. But in terms of the balancing acts, or the balancing that takes place for the ornithologist, on the one hand you have the risk of almost complete destruction of a bird population, on the other hand there are risks associated with their extraction. From your point of view was the operation a success?

DR CLARKE: Yes, I would consider it a success. These types of emergency interventions are really hard and so we know that, you know, before we started they come with some risk and, as it transpires, you know, there's risk to individual birds. But that's also traded off against the threat of a fire that had a very high prospect of burning the entire site that supported bristlebirds in both the Victorian side of the border and the New South Wales side of the border.

And as it transpired, whilst the fire on the Victorian side of the border just burnt into the edge of the Eastern Bristlebird habitat, the very same fire, several days after we had left, burnt out the vast majority of Nadgee Nature Reserve and effectively the other half of this southern population of Eastern Bristlebirds. We don't know yet how many of those birds in Nadgee side of the border survived the fire because the monitoring hasn't occurred yet. But we do know that a very substantial portion of their habitat has been burnt and is rendered unsuitable for the short to medium term in those sites.

So when you appreciate that, you know, the threat that was imminently sort of posed by this fire was realised for half of the site that we were concerned about, half of the southern population, it really does demonstrate that, you know, actions like this are important to take when there's those opportunities. And then, you know, the trade-off is the very real risk, when you're dealing with secretive and shy and perhaps fragile species like this and the risks associated with captivity, some of that is factored in directly in terms of the estimates of numbers that you would need to be able to develop an insurance population.

And so, you know, you do need to go a little higher than you might need ideally because you need to recognise that there's risk with this and some birds may be lost as a consequence of your actions.


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MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you very much, Dr Clarke. I have no further questions for Dr Clarke or Ms White. I wonder if the Commissioners have any questions?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: A couple of questions and I appreciate Dr Clarke and Ms White for briefing us today on what was a highly complex logistical exercise and international, Commonwealth, State and contracted assets there. And so we've had a lot on the seven-day plan that was developed in January. I just want to step back before that and get an understanding of a couple of things.

So Ms White, from your statement you talked about before, I understand that there's three key plans and strategies in place for the Eastern Bristlebird. It started with an action statement in 1995 and then, over the course of 25 years, we had two additional plans, which was then the fire management plan in December '19. So is that a natural progression for planning or did people look at what was about to occur with fires at the site that that really needs to drive a fire management plan, or am I missing something there?

MS WHITE: An action statement had been prepared in 1999 in Victorian legislation, as was the recovery plan prepared according to the Commonwealth legislation. It had been recognised for many years that aspects relating to the habitat of the Eastern Bristlebird needed to be considered really carefully, given the small number of birds and that it's in only really one location, and a very small location in far-East Gippsland. And so consideration of what might be a suitable way of being able to, if you like, manage the habitat for the ongoing survival of the bird while also trying to protect it from the impacts of bushfire had been under consideration for a long time.

The timing of the preparation of the ecological fire management plan really, and its completion in 2019, did not - that preceded the bushfires of '19. But it had come about because a biodiversity strategy, Biodiversity 2037, had been released in Victoria in 2017 and that identified a number of biodiversity response planning activities needed to occur. And one of those that was identified was the Eastern Bristlebird and funding was made available for that fire management plan. So it wasn't related to the bushfires, but it had been prepared knowing that there was a need to consider fire in the landscape and how the habitat could be best protected.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. I appreciate that. Especially considering it looks likes the bird lives in an area of high fuel loading anyway as its natural habitat, that would make that difficult. Funding of the plans, is that a State responsibility or is it a Commonwealth responsibility or funding of the actions that come out of that plan?

MS WHITE: The Victorian Government funded the work for the - for the ecological fire management plan. So that was Victorian funding that went towards that. Under - or circumstances there can be situations where the Commonwealth can contribute funding, or contribute resources, but in this case it was Victorian.


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COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. Thank you. Now, I will just call up your statement, which is para 35 of your statement. I just want to clarify something in that, and that's 0012 page, on document DLW - here we go. Is there a 12? And it's para 35. I just want to explore this one, just briefly. So on 7 January, which I gather was leading into the seven-day plan:

"Following outbreak of bushfire in the vicinity of the national park there was a desktop analysis -"

Led by your team, I'm assuming?

MS WHITE: Yes.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: "- informed by experts from a variety of organisations who recognised Howe Flat and Howe Range areas as places of high significance for biodiversity and critical refuge."

Surely that's not the first time that that was - that area was recognised for that, if I get that right? Or if it was - even if it wasn't, is there a database where you can access that actually has all the areas of significance for biodiversity and critical refuge for other species that need to be protected? Is there a standard plan that comes off a shelf in a database somewhere that people can go and have a look at it and go here's what's there and why that area is particularly important?

MS WHITE: We have databases that describes the location of many of the known rare and threatened species in Victoria, right across Victoria, and so including this area in East Gippsland. Often it's then supplemented by what's known as habitat mapping and habitat modelling where you can then be able to not only be able to locate where the records of where these species are, but where are the likely occurrences of it.

The actual, if you like, documentation that supports what do you do for each one of these species varies for each species, largely because they often have key attributes that are different. However, a number of species may occur in a similar area. In this case, we know that there are other rare species that occur within the vicinity of Eastern Bristlebirds, so that when you're thinking about Eastern Bristlebird management you would also be thinking about maybe diamond python or long-nosed potoroo or other species that are in the area. Does that answer your question?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Yes, it does. So there is a database or there is a document or database that has all the endangered species, listed, where they are, and so that as a fire is starting to - as a fire starts and you're looking at a response, then your CFA or the emergency responders have the ability to access that and see what's there, or one of your team provides advice on what's there and what may need to be managed as they respond to the fire? Is that the correct interpretation?

MS WHITE: Correct.


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COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. Thank you very much. Commissioner Bennett, any questions? Commissioner Macintosh?

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Just quickly. Thank you both for your evidence. Just a quick question to either one of you, probably Dr Clarke, I just wanted to clarify what happens in terms of the fire. You just said, Dr Clarke, the Howe Flat area on the Victorian side wasn't that badly affected by fire, but it sounds like on the New South Wales side of the border that there was decent fire activity and as a consequence they've lost heath and the other habitat that's needed for the species. And as a consequence of that, that that might affect the population on the Victorian side of the border. Is that - - -

DR CLARKE: Yes, that's correct. So the day that we were evacuated as fire activity picked up, in the following two to four days the fire continued to move, and it actually burnt across the access track that we were using from Marshmead to Howe Flat, and it burnt into the very northern edge of a small known population on the access track. So possibly as little as tens of metres of suitable habitat were lost if we take the aerial images as the guide for where the area was burnt.

The fire activity then settled a little bit of the next frontal system moved through but then it picked up yet again a few days later and made a substantial run to the north, and that fire activity is when it burnt into Nadgee. So it essentially became very active and burnt back into New South Wales, and it's that fire event that sort of, you know, maybe a week or two after we had been there when most of Nadgee was razed by fire. So it's reasonable to expect, based primarily on the fire mapping rather than on the on-ground survey, that about half of the area that supported bristlebirds in the southern population has now been burnt.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: And just again for the dummy, it sounds like with this species you don't actually need ground scorching fires, just even a moderate fire will change the under-storey habitat enough in order to make it unsuited for the species?

DR CLARKE: I suspect if it's a very slow-moving fire, so low intensity and it's leaving pockets of suitable habitats, then that will provide sufficient refuge that some birds will get through and, as the habitat comes online through the years as it grows back, then it would be suitable again for them. If the fire moved through as a high intensity fire, recognising that the areas in Nadgee and in Howe Flat don't have canopy, so there's no sort of opportunity for ground scorch, it's simply a fast-moving fire in heath, if it's a fast-moving wide front in heath, then effectively the birds are gone, would be the consequence of that fire.

COMMISSIONER MACINTOSH: Thanks very much.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Ms White, one of the things you said in the previous statement about the bristlebird was there, but there were other animals as well.


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Question for you: why all this for the bristlebird and not the other animals or is this a first-time attempt and you kept it to one species, or what?

MS WHITE: No. We had also extracted a number of fish from small streams where they were vulnerable as well; not so much from fire, from the subsequent, known asblack water events when it rains in very badly burnt catchments and a whole lot of dirt and rubbish ends up in the stream. So we have also - have salvaged fish and a couple of crayfish species and fresh water mussel species. So we have done it for other species.

The focus on this particular one really came down to the Eastern Bristlebird in Victoria, it was our only population, it was a small number of birds, and that it was very vulnerable to fire. Some of the other species I mentioned, their occurrences are more widespread or there are other populations of them, Victoria or across a broader range of habitats interstate. So that's why the Eastern Bristlebird, if you like, came to the fore.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. And then my final question is: noting it's right on the border, do you work closely with your counterparts in New South Wales around this population, and did you talk to them about what you were doing with this plan and did they provide any advice, and now the habitat on that side may well have been destroyed, are you working with them to bring this colony - if that's a correct term - back to a suitable level of sustainment?

MS WHITE: Yes, we do liaise with our colleagues in New South Wales, and during the fires there were a number of conversations and exchange of information across the border. Through the incident management team and the arrangements around fire suppression, of which this operation was embedded within areas of very close relationship and close exchange of information, not only about the actions that each State is doing but where they can work together in order to be able to achieve mutual outcomes. Since the birds have been returned, we have visited the site again.

We haven't gone out there deliberately to try to capture the - capture birds to see if the returned birds are okay, but we have been there to check and we know that in Howe Flat there are - the presence of the Eastern Bristlebird is still occurring. So that's very positive. I'm not aware of any work that we've currently done, though, with New South Wales with their parks program or other institutions about determining the fate of the population at Nadgee.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Thank you. Commissioner Bennett.

COMMISSIONER BENNETT: I was only going to ask if Dr Clarke has any more information on the other parts of the population?

DR CLARKE: Sorry, could you repeat the question?


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COMMISSIONER BENNETT: Ms White said that she's not aware of what was happening in New South Wales and what happened to the other parts of the population of bristlebird. I just thought perhaps you might have more information on that.

DR CLARKE: There was actually a planning meeting this morning for the southern population and for an expert elicitation process to identify ways forward. So there is action underway. I am not sure what level of involvement there was from the New South Wales agency, but I would expect there was, and I'm certainly aware that representatives from University of Wollongong, who have expertise in the New South Wales population, were involved in that discussion today.


COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Dr Clarke and Ms White, thank you very much for taking the time this afternoon to talk to the Commission. We really appreciate it. It was a very complex operation in very trying times, and we appreciate you sharing that with us this afternoon. Thank you.

DR CLARKE: Thank you very much.

MR TOKLEY QC: Chair, if the witnesses could be excused from further attendance?

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: The witnesses can be excused. Thank you.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you very much. Commissioners, that concludes the oral evidence that will be presented this afternoon from witnesses, but we do have one final piece of evidence. There is a video of evidence given by Mr Denis Rose of the Gunditjmara people. He will give evidence of his personal perspective and impressions of the impact of the 2019-2020 bushfires on some of the traditional land of the Gunditjmara people. His evidence was filmed on country in Victoria on the site that formed part of the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape. By way of introduction to the video, I would mention that the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape is a UNESCO World Heritage listed site of approximately 40 square kilometres, and it includes the Budj Bim National Park in western Victoria.

As a World Heritage listed site, it is a matter of national environmental significance under the EPBC Act, the Commonwealth Act. The site was listed in 2019. Budj Bim is protected under that Act and also the Aboriginal Heritage Act of 2006 in Victoria. The cultural landscape is unique because it contains stonefish traps and eel traps, an aquaculture system that is considered by archeologists to be over 6600 years old as well as the stone remains of houses. The video goes for approximately 40 minutes, at the end of which our evidence will be concluded for today. If we could now play the video.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: Okay. And on completion of that video we will look to adjourn today?


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MR TOKLEY QC: Yes, Chair.

COMMISSIONER BINSKIN: And we will resume at 10 am on Friday.

MR TOKLEY QC: Correct, Chair.


<VIDEO OF UNCLE DENIS ROSE PLAYED TO ROYAL COMMISSION

MR TOKLEY QC: Can you tell me a little bit about the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Corporation?

MR ROSE: Yes. We're a PBC, a prescribed body corporate. We received a Native Title determination in 2007 and also we have a shared determination with our - the Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation, a little bit further east, which is part - what we call Part B and that was a determination sorted out in 2011. So, we - essentially manage the Native Title rights of our - of our members of our organisation. MR TOKLEY QC: I take it that you are Gunditjmara?

MR ROSE: Yes, I'm a Gunditjmara person. I'm a Gunditjmara traditional owner. I have ancestors who I can demonstrate links with, a recognised Native Title holder.

MR TOKLEY QC: Do you know for how long the Gunditjmara have been in the area, the location where you are at the moment?

MR ROSE: Look, many thousands of years. I - as always, as technology improves, dates tend to get pushed back. We just found that out with some volcanic activity just recently. But many thousands of years. We’ll looking at a fish trap today that's six and a half thousand years. Certainly, people were around well and truly before that, but this is a geological lava flow which didn't settle.

It erupted around about 37,000 years ago and settled in its current shape and form around about 8000 years ago. So Gunditjmara people quite clearly lived here for many thousands of years. We have midden sites on other parts of our country, down on the coastal areas where, again, there's a scientifically accepted date of at least 12,000 years. And that was after the sea levels were a lot lower. So a lot of the evidence for antiquity of probably out under the water there somewhere.

MR TOKLEY QC: Did you grow up in the area where you now find yourself or did you grow up somewhere else?

MR ROSE: A bit of a mixture. I sometimes, if my family - we shifted to Melbourne. I think from when I was about five, I started school in Melbourne in 1960, and then


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shifted back home in 1965. I lived here until - I lived here and worked on country until 1984. I was a national parks ranger and then I went up to the Mallee for a couple of years and then I spent around about eight or nine years in Gariwerd, or the Grampians national park and subsequent to that I shifted to Canberra for nine years and worked with Australian - what was Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service. And back home since 2002. So, I had about 18 years away and a couple of times in Melbourne prior to that.

MR ROSE: I live in Portland but I work - my office is in Heywood. It's only 25 kilometres away.

MR TOKLEY QC: From where you live to where you are at the moment, how far would that be, approximately?

MR ROSE: Around about 35 kilometres.

MR TOKLEY QC: Could you give me a brief description of how large is the area that we're talking about, or will be talking about involving the Kurtonitj national park.

MR ROSE: Yeah, the total - the total area for the World Heritage boundaries which incorporates the national park plus the Aboriginal owned properties, is nearly 9000 hectares. Around about 6000 of that is the national park, the Budj Bim National Park and 3000 hectares primarily freehold, Aboriginal freehold title. There's a couple of exceptions. We have a little bit of land at the Lake Condah Mission that's under the Aboriginal - the Commonwealth Aboriginal Lands Rights Act.

MR ROSE: This is the Kurtonitj property. We've acquired this over - over a number of years. I think the first part of the property was purchased through the Indigenous Land Corporation in around about 2006. We then acquired a little bit more of the property around about 2008 and in 2014 the third part of this property. So this is Kurtonitj which means border crossing, and we've - we manage this as a - as the sign says, it's an Indigenous protected area. So management for the protection of its national and cultural values.

MR TOKLEY QC: Roughly how far are you from Melbourne?

MR ROSE: Around about 360 kilometres to the west, pretty well due west.

MR TOKLEY QC: Are there any significant townships, first of all any significant large townships nearby?

MR ROSE: The largest town nearby, or the largest city nearby is Warrnambool which is about 90Ks to the east of here and Mount Gambier which is over into South Australia is about 80 kilometres to the west.

MR TOKLEY QC: Are there any smaller townships nearby?


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MR ROSE: Lots of small towns nearby and Heywood, and Heywood is certainly one of them. Heywood is a town of around about 1300 people, population-wise. Portland is around about 8000. It's nearby as well and we're also not far from Hamilton, which is around about 9000 people. So we're south of Hamilton.

MR TOKLEY QC: Is it fair to say, Denis, that apart from the 18 years I think you mentioned that you spent away from that - where you now live, but for most of your life, you've lived in the area?

MR ROSE: That's correct, yeah. Yeah, most of my life, 18 years. Around about five years in my early days in Melbourne and - and a couple of years in Melbourne as a - after leaving school.

MR ROSE: I've worked as a national park ranger down in - down this way and Discovery Bay Coastal Park and also Lower Glenelg national park. I was acting ranger in charge at Budj Bim National Park when it was known as Mount Eccles national park, again back in the early 80s. So I have worked out here, yeah, quite regularly over the years and worked on country as well, which is always important.

MR TOKLEY QC: Thank you very much, Denis. Now, looking behind you, looking south from what I can see, it looks relatively flat.

MR ROSE: Yes, it is. Most of the lava flow is relatively flat. There's some geological formations within there and there's some - but there's no - no hills or such other than Budj Bim itself which was a - which is a collapsed or extinct - it's not extinct, it's a volcano, it's still active, apparently. But - but other than that, yeah, it's fairly - fairly flat country.

MR TOKLEY QC: I can see you're standing in front of a background there. Where are we in terms of the national park? Is that on the edge of the national park?

MR ROSE: We're near - we're a few kilometres from the national park but - and where the fires were. Yeah, probably about 4 kilometres. We're actually further south than where we were at the top of the Kurtonitj property where - down a little bit lower.

MR TOKLEY QC: And in the background there can I see there that you have carried out some - actually, I should ask has some burning been carried out in the background there?

MR ROSE: Yes. Last Friday we did a cultural burn. This is a wetland that's behind me and we - we burn for a number of reasons. One, for fire protection, fuel reduction. We also do cultural burn so this particular fire we wanted to burn around wetlands to see if we could uncover other fish trap systems that we may not have recorded before. And also there's an environmental component of it as well that we


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want to get the health of country back and cultural burning is certainly an important part.

MR TOKLEY QC: Do you undertake cultural burning?

MR ROSE: It's a - it's a partnership arrangement with the Forest Fire Management Section of DELWP. They certainly assist us. So we do all the planning that's required. We have a good neighbour policy, we don't want to burn any of our neighbours out or ourselves for that matter. So we do a lot of burning. This fire which was conducted last Friday was postponed from the week before because of predicted high winds, high wind. So we have some flexibility there but we work very closely in partnership with both the Country Fire Authority and the Forest Fire Management sections to ensure that our burns, whilst they're culturally important and also environmentally important, just to make sure that we don't cause undue damage.

MR TOKLEY QC: And you mentioned DELWP. Now, that's obviously a department. Could you give me its full name?

MR ROSE: The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.

MR TOKLEY QC: Does the cultural burning take place as part of an overall fire management plan?

MR ROSE: Yes, it is. We've developed - it's still in its draft stage at the moment but what we call the Weeyn Yakeen which essentially means fire dreaming. So, again, that's a partnership arrangement between the CFA, between DELWP, ourselves and Gunditjmara Aboriginal Corporation, who are another land owner on the - within the Budj Bim World Heritage area.

MR TOKLEY QC: Does it take place throughout the year?

MR ROSE: Primarily in the autumn and into the winter. Because of the nature of the - of the lava flow, it's not advisable to do much burning in the spring. You need to be sure that there's going to be some good rains after you burn. Fires can get in underground, under the rocks and in cracks and pop up, you know, a week or two later. So primarily we burn during the autumn and then - and into the winter, I think, last year. Last year we burnt either - it was either late June or early July as one of our burns. But we are looking at wanting to expand our burning season, the window of opportunity. So we're - we will start to work on maybe some spring burning in the next couple of years.

MR TOKLEY QC: In terms of identification of the areas where the cultural burning takes place, can you say a little bit more about that?

MR ROSE: Yeah, look, we have a - as part of our Indigenous protected areas, plan of management. Fire management is an important part. So this Weeyn Yakeen plan, we will identify potential burn areas for the next three years to, again, ensure that we -


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you know, we have a coordinated approach to burning. We're not burning the same areas necessarily.

MR TOKLEY QC: I understand that in 2019-2020, that some fires occurred in and around the Gunditjmara National Park?

MR ROSE: Yeah, that's correct, Andrew. The fires first ignited on the 20th of December. I'm standing at - on the Muldoon's property and the fire was caused by a lightning strike approximately about a kilometre to the left of me or to the south, and it burnt for approximately till about the 30th of December.

MR TOKLEY QC: Can I see in the background some trees that were affected by that fire?

MR ROSE: You certainly can. You can see the impact of the fire. This is the northern edge of the fire line. To my right is the Darlots creek, which is approximately five or six metres wide and it had a reasonable amount of water in it. The fire never escaped to the north. The trees that you see to my left and behind me, there's quite a few trees in there, tall eucalypts, particularly manna gums that weren't fire impacted or very had minor impact and there are a few trees that - that their canopies have been burnt out. It was - it was a fire that sort of got hot in spots but not - not completely hot.

MR TOKLEY QC: Did it burn close to a significant area, from your point of view?

MR ROSE: The first fire burnt just over 800 hectares and that was under control by the 31st of December but on the evening of the 30th, directly behind me and probably about three or four kilometres into the national park, there was another lightning strike that ignited the second fire. It burnt approximately 5000 hectares, a little bit over, over a few days - over a week or more, yeah.

MR TOKLEY QC: Did the fire reach where you're standing now or was it the clump of trees behind you?

MR ROSE: The clump of trees behind me and in front of me there's some trees that are about 40 metres away from me. So it did burn up and around here but it didn't burn where I'm standing.

MR TOKLEY QC: I understand from here that we're going to be going to a site that is of particular significance to the Gunditjmara.

MR ROSE: That's correct, yes, we're going to what we call the Muldoon's fish trap. It has a scientifically accepted date of 6600 years when it was first constructed. And as I tell people, that there aren't many things left on this planet that were constructed that are older than - than that.


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MR TOKLEY QC: And do the fish traps form part of the Gunditjmara cultural landscape?

MR ROSE: That's correct. The World Heritage listing, to get World Heritage listing, you have to have - demonstrate outstanding universal value. You have to have a world value. Our value essentially is that we have one of the world's oldest aquaculture systems out here. We have, as I said, a scientifically accepted date of 6600 years. There are quite a lot of fish traps around the world, you know, there's lots in Australia, probably some that may be older. But we're actually talking about aquaculture here. We're talking about farming fish, a complex system of diverting and manipulating the natural system to enhance and increase the food resource, over many, many thousands of years.

MR TOKLEY QC: When was the Gunditjmara cultural landscape listed with UNESCO?

MR ROSE: July the 6th 2019 it was officially announced at a meeting of the World Heritage Committee in Baku in Azerbaijan.

MR TOKLEY QC: And how extensive is the cultural landscape?

MR ROSE: Well, it's a - it's a - it covers an area of about 40 kilometres as the creek flows and the lava flow - flows. And it's - it's - it varies in width and depth. Where we're standing at the moment is a very wide area. It's probably about 5 kilometres across and other parts of the lava flow it's sometimes only three or 400 metres in - in width. So it varies a bit.

MR TOKLEY QC: What sort of impact did the fires have on country?

MR ROSE: Look, particularly the first fire, it was - you know, we were certainly much more fortunate than other parts of the country. We had a few hot days but we also had some relatively mild conditions for - you know, out of that first week, I would guess that we had, you know, five days of mild temperatures and - and not too much wind speed where two or three days were fairly - fairly concerning. And yeah, so, you know, the fire - you can see here behind me the fire up this end of it just trickled, trickled through. It didn't roar through the bush, it trickled through and we were in the fortunate position that, you know, we can control it reasonably okay.

MR TOKLEY QC: What sort of people were involved in fighting the fires?

MR ROSE: Again, to the right of me is the creek. Over the other side of the creek I think on Monday the 30th, which was Monday the 30th of December, was an extremely hot day. It was predicted for 41 degrees, which it reached. It was up to 70 kilometre an hour winds which also occurred. We had, I think, five or six CFA tankers over the other side of the creek into the sort of the more conventional farmland waiting for the fire to jump, which fortunately it didn't. So we had CFA crews. Behind me we had a hose line from the lake, from the creek, a hose line of


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around about 2 kilometres. It was run down beside the fire retardant line. It was our eastern edge. And we had quite a number of DELWP and CFA crews and also some of our rangers out on that fire line, you know, with hoses at the ready. And the good news was that the fire line held.

MR TOKLEY QC: Can you just describe the area for me where you are at the moment?

MR ROSE: Okay. We're in the - right into the Muldoon's aquaculture system, the Muldoons fish trap. I'm standing at the entrance to where the water actually ran into the - into the system. To the left of me is the system that's about 300 metres in length. There are two channels that interconnect and they run around the back. And it was a place where fish were farmed, fish were ponded. It was an intensive aquaculture system that we have here. And it's a very complex system. To the right of me, we're on the south-eastern edge of Tae Rak or Lake Condah.

To the right of me on the edge, around the edge of the lake they operated at various levels but there are in excess of 70 individual fish trap systems around the lake to my right. In front of me, over the back a little bit are some stone house sites where people - people were living. And there are about 10 house sites here that I'm aware of. I think there's probably more but certainly at least 10 here and again around the edge of the lake there's quite a number.

MR TOKLEY QC: Is this all part of the Budj Bim cultural landscape?

MR ROSE: That's correct, yes. Yeah, this was a really important part of the World Heritage process, in that we - this is the place where we got the 6600 year old date for the system. And so that has shaped our thinking and our World Heritage nomination because of what we found here, or what the archeologists had found here.

MR TOKLEY QC: Did the fire come through this area? It looks like it did?

MR ROSE: It certainly did. Again, it burnt through some of the trees behind me - have some fairly serious fire damage to them. Some have only been burnt at the base and quite a few of them are untouched or very - very, very little damage by fire. So yeah, again, we're in the northern boundary of the Muldoons fire. I think they called it the Lake Condah fire actually was the official title, and so we - we're at the northern edge of it and this is where it trickled through. It didn't come roaring through.

MR TOKLEY QC: Did this fire burn itself out naturally or was it extinguished by the firefighting crews?

MR ROSE: The firefighting crews spent, I think around about 10 days here. There was no follow-up rains or anything. So it - it was really - I think after Monday the 30th of December, once the - once the fire - the fire was under control essentially and


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it was more about keeping an eye on things after that rather than actively fighting the fire.

MR TOKLEY QC: In fighting the fire, what sort of equipment was used? Was there any aerial firefighting?

MR ROSE: Certainly was. There was quite a lot of - I don't really know the technical terms but certainly there was quite a few fixed-wing smaller planes that were bombing the fire. But they also got the Boeing 737 in. It dropped retardant on the eastern edge, on the eastern line. We aren't - we don't want, and we don't encourage, heavy earthmoving machinery in on the lava flow. We wouldn't want a bull dozer to accidentally knock over a 6600 year old fish trap. So DELWP and the CFA, and they should be congratulated, come up with an active method that actually demonstrated that you can use other techniques for fire suppression other than a D8 or something like that.

The fire retardant, the retardant line held. We also had hose lines, hose lays that ran for about 2 kilometres down the line as well. There was quite a few DELWP and CFA crew and our rangers that were on the hoses along that hose line. And on Monday, the 30th, the 41 degree day, so up to 70 kilometres an hour winds, no mineral earth line, this fire retardant and hose lines had actually held and so that was - it was a win all around, I reckon. It was a really good news story that we, as I said, the agencies should be congratulated for holding their nerve. I know that they are under pressure, you know, there were fires across the state and interstate, probably more - certainly more severe than here. But nevertheless the local agencies were under a bit of pressure trying this new technique and, thank goodness, it worked.

MR TOKLEY QC: Was there an incident control room managing all of the response to the fire?

MR ROSE: Yeah, there certainly was. I was called in as a sort of cultural heritage adviser. I was called in, I'm pretty sure it was Sunday the 22nd. The fire - this fire behind me really only - it was a lightning strike on Friday evening, the 20th, but it really got going the next day. So I was in at the Incident Control Centre as a cultural heritage adviser, pretty much every day for about 10 or 12 days. I also - I was extremely impressed by what seemed to be, from an outsider’s point of view, a well-coordinated, well-planned - people knew their roles and they just got on with their job. And I think that, again, they do a wonderful job in coordinating these responses.

The other role I had was to attend community meetings. We had four community meetings - this is the broader community - throughout the region, and on that Sunday, Sunday the 19th, which was the day before the danger day, we were at the Bessie Bell, the Bessie Bell community hall and probably expecting a bit of - a bit of a grilling about, you know, what we were putting into place for fire suppression. That's when we talked about the fire line and we again got a good response, I reckon. I think the community, the broader community understood what we were trying to do


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out here. I think the other point is that from what we can see that to put a bulldozer in within the lava flow is not a very efficient way of fighting a fire either.

And one of the local bulldozer operators reckoned it was the hardest work that he and his machine have ever done, was on parts of the lava flow, you know, 10 or 12 years ago and that wasn't just clearing - clearing rock that day, it was on an existing track. They were just widening it up. So it's hard work. It's well and truly after the event. So these other techniques are - not only are they culturally important but they also seem to be a much more efficient way of doing it on lava flow country.

MR TOKLEY QC: Does it appear to you that the lower vegetation is growing back okay?

MR ROSE: Yes, it is. Yeah, we've just - they're not here now, they had just left but our Budj Bim rangers have been out here doing some work. Because this is a place that we take a lot of visitors, we do tours out here, now that we've got the vegetation down we really want to keep it down. So they had been out doing some work on bracken and some other plants out here to keep the - these aquaculture systems more visible.

MR TOKLEY QC: I understand that an unexpected outcome of the fire was that the fire uncovered some new stone arrangements is that correct?

MR ROSE: It certainly is correct. Where I'm standing, this is the path that we walk into the Muldoons system. We walk into the left here. Behind me, about 20 to 22 metres behind me was a system that - now, we've been out here for quite a few years. We've had this property since the 1980s. It has been researched prior to that and subsequent to that, that time. There was a fish trap that was recorded but it was about 140 metres from where it is. The fire actually uncovered that. We hadn't, as I said we've been out here many a time working, taking tours and the fire actually uncovered a system that we didn't realise was there, yeah. It was part of the - this broader larger scale aquaculture system.

MR TOKLEY QC: Denis, do you feel that there are some lessons that one has learnt from the most recent fires about looking after the land?

MR ROSE: Yes certainly. I think the number one - the number one lesson has been the great relationships we have as traditional owners. We have - and we've worked on these for a long time. It's not something that occurred just prior to the fires. It's - you know, we work with the Catchment Management Authority, with the CFA, with Parks since 2002 onwards. So we have these robust partnerships and we have a lot of trust and confidence in each other that we can - we can, you know, sometimes make the hard decisions.

As I said, the fire controllers, they had to make a hard decision about what fire suppression method they could use. They did listen to our concerns and our advice, and it worked. You know, so, look, we have really good partnerships. We - we train


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together. We work together. We fight fires together. And we also - this latest virus thing has slowed us down a bit but we were going to have a celebration, a thank you, to all the fire fighters out on country, probably in March we had planned to do that but obviously it couldn't go ahead. We’ll do it at some later stage.

MR TOKLEY QC: You mentioned earlier that tit used to be called the Mount Eccles National Park; is that correct?

MR ROSE: That's correct, yes. So it's part of our Native Title determination. We also decided to restore the traditional name, Budj Bim, and we, as part of that Native Title determination, we as Gunditjmara have a co-management agreement with the State Government to manage the park. We have a board of management that consists of a Gunditjmara majority and that has been in place since 2007.

MR TOKLEY QC: What does Budj Bim mean in - what's the translation of Budj Bim?

MR ROSE: Yeah, Budj Bim is where the - is the volcano that erupted around about 37,000 years ago, and Budj Bim means big head. And if you're out on some of the flat country around - around the park and you look across, it just looks like a large head sticking up out of the landscape. Yeah, it's relatively flat landscape pretty much right around it but Budj Bim certainly stands out.

MR TOKLEY QC: I understand that not only did the fire uncover some of the stone arrangements that were not previously uncovered and now discovered, so to speak, but also it has given you, or the corporation, an opportunity to do some further work in relation to the fishtrap stone arrangements.

MR ROSE: Yes, that's correct. We've been working with the spatial mapping section of DELWP, based in Melbourne. Prior to the fires, we were - they had received some funding to do a project, to do a LiDAR survey of the area. Essentially, LiDAR is about measuring and identifying where the ground surface is, and it has the ability or the capacity to strip away - with the software to strip away the vegetation and they just leave images of the ground. So 3D, 2D areas. So we are looking forward to using this - this system. They did their aerial photography after the fires. Again, the fires cleared a lot of the vegetation.

So we think we will have some comparisons about burnt country and unburnt condition. We believe we will be able to either identify undiscovered sites or at least have a predictive model about where sites might be, such as the fish traps and also other agencies will be able to use the technology as well, the imagery, for firefighting purposes or fire planning purposes, for water purposes, where is the water running, biodiversity purposes. So it's not just about cultural heritage but certainly that was the focus of it. So we're looking forward to using this technology. We've seen snippets of it. It certainly does work. And we hope to utilise that in a wide range of management practices and planning over the next few years.


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MR TOKLEY QC: Am I right in thinking that some of the fires commenced in or burnt in the national park?

MR ROSE: Yeah, the second fire on the - that was caused by lightning strikes on Monday, the 30th, in the late evening, it was in - right in the middle of the national park pretty much and it burnt not quite 5000 hectares, about 4600 hectares of national park. And we, we - we lost about 1600 hectares of - well, we had 1600 - 1400 hectares, sorry, that was impacted by fire. We didn't lose any, or very little assets, a bit of fencing, an old storage shed that was an old woolshed that burnt down, but yeah, there wasn't - there wasn't a lot of assets that were lost either on the park or our properties, nor other private property.

MR TOKLEY QC: I take it you could see the smoke from where you were?

MR ROSE: You certainly could. It was - it was fairly thick at times and I think the other thing I noticed, that as I come out, particularly out here and out to Muldoons and Tae Rak or Lake Condah, that you could see, you know, where trees were smouldering. So, really, over the back behind me about 2 kilometres, about a kilometre and a half was what we call Murphy's Hut and there's quite a few old elm trees and pine trees there, and, you know, I remember coming out pretty much after the fire was under control and seeing the a fair bit of smoke coming up from the pines that were burning there, for example.

MR TOKLEY QC: Is there anything else that you would like to mention?

MR ROSE: No, I - again, I would just like to reiterate that I think that this was really, you know, a partnership arrangement. As I said, we worked closely with these agencies prior to this. I think it's reinforced that we all have a valuable role to play in looking after country and improving country, and we look forward to even better cooperation and consideration into the future with - but I think the agencies, the staff on the ground, the staff at the Incident Control Centre must be congratulated because they - they held out in a pretty tough call, really.

MR TOKLEY QC: I understand that behind you is one of the fish traps?

MR ROSE: Yes, that's correct, Andrew. Right behind me you can see the opening of the channel. There's a V-shape here that directs the water in. And it runs in the channel beyond - beyond there. It then curves - there's another channel over around about 20 metres across this way. If they connect up, they go back and around and then they back through - over the back even further is a sort of a pond that was used to store the fish, eels in particular. So this system actually goes for about 300 metres. It's a very extensive system, and right behind me is the, what we call, the Muldoons fish trap. And that nice little green patch in the middle of it is where they did the excavation that come up with the date of first construction of 6600 years ago.

MR TOKLEY QC: Do the engineering works tell us something about the lifestyle of the people back then?


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MR ROSE: Most certainly. There are quite a number of lava flows in western Victoria but this is the only one that has the scale of - of fish traps of stone house sites. One of our properties, the Allambie property, has 146 recorded stone house sites. So we're talking about a small village out there on the edge of the wetland. And we - we have a - quite a, you know, a really great water supply. That's why Gunditjmara people were able to invest time, effort and resources into these more permanent structures, because there was an ever-reliable water supply. In fact, the creek which is just behind me to my left, it's European name is Darlot's Creek. It's traditional name is Kallara and Kallara means always there and it's a very appropriately named creek, that this creek never runs dry. It does get a little bit sluggish but it has such a large catchment area that Gunditjmara people, as I said, were able to invest time, effort and resource into these permanent structures. Over to my left here there's about six stone house sites on the ridge beside me and other parts around here as well. So people lived a sedentary lifestyle but a very permanent lifestyle; had access to very good food resource, not just the fish but certainly the animals and, you know, ducks and swans and eggs and all sorts of things; lots of fruit and vegetables that are in the bush tucker out here. So a very well balanced lifestyle. And they were able to devote more time to the other practices such as, you know, their spiritual side of life, children, education and then social life. So it was very good.

MR TOKLEY QC: It's a very important part of our heritage.

MR ROSE: Yeah, it certainly is and I think that, you know, we want to share it with - with the broader Australian public and community and internationally as well. We do run tours here, we have Budj Bim tours and we're always proud to show what we have out here on country. It is a robust bit of country. It's a lot of stone, so, you know, it can stand the impact of tourism but, you know we certainly want to educate people. It's so much - there's certainly a commercial aspect to it but it's also about letting people know that not every Aboriginal community in the country was nomadic and that. And I think here and other places certainly shows that people, where they had the good resource, they had the ingenuity to manipulate a natural system but not to the point that it was not reversible from the damage.

MR TOKLEY QC: And thankfully fire resilient as well.

MR ROSE: And very much fire resilient as well, yes, certainly in parts.

MR ANDREW TOKLEY QC: Thank you very much, Dennis. I think we can finish on that note.

MR DENNIS ROSE: Yep.

<END OF VIDEO>

<ADJOURNED TO FRIDAY, 29 MAY 2020 AT 10 AM>


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Documents

naturaldisaster.royalcommission.gov.au... · Web viewMR TOKLEY QC: Commissioners, the theme to be explored today is the impact on the natural environment by the bushfires in 2019