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Nadgee Nature Reserve

Allan Fox

This article is an edited version of Allan Fox’s submission to the Draft Plan of Management for the Nadgee Nature Reserve.
Preliminary

My relationship with the Nadgee area began in 1953 when I spent ten days there investigating the area from Wonboyne to Cape Howe with Allen Strom, member of the Fauna Protection Panel (FPP). Strom and I proposed that the area be considered to become a faunal reserve under the Fauna Protection Act. Following further field inspections by Strom and others, the proposal was agreed to by the Panel on the grounds that it was the most diverse series of NSW coastal and near-coastal montane natural habitats available in NSW.


Where fresh water meets the sea

This assessment was strongly defended by a number of scientific experts. Since that time, eminent scientists and educators too numerous to list have reiterated the scientific and educational values of Nadgee Nature (Faunal) Reserve. The Faunal Reserve was originally proclaimed in December 1957 and subsequently added to.

The principal reasons nominated in discussions of the Scheme of Operations of the Reserve on its proclamation were for:

• the preservation of habitats critical to the survival of species;

• the provision of a system of samples of biotic and their environments for scientific research and investigation purposes;

• the establishment of a system of reserves embracing the diversity of biotic communities upon which can be based educational activity; and

• the provision of a system of reserves embracing the diversity of biotic communities for the purpose of stimulating and inspiring the interest of humans in their natural environment.

Nadgee Faunal Reserve was regarded by the FPP and later by NPWS’s Wildlife Division as the most important property for research in the whole NPWS estate. Recreation of any kind, including wilderness use, was seen to be a bonus use of nature reserves only if such use were strictly controlled and of a non-damaging kind. The integrity of the systems under varying degrees of management, and their use in research and the development of the understanding of living natural systems for the benefit of all humans, was paramount. To quote Allen Strom when Chief Guardian of Fauna:

"The preservation of landscape, wildlife and naturalness in resource storehouses is of paramount importance to humans ... in order to understand the sequences of events which characterise the natural systems ... if many viable representative samplings are not secured now and held free from damaging uses, there will be no way to secure the information which they contain and not yet realised."

Research

In general reading, the draft plan of management appears to have pushed research to a lower priority and, when one looks at education as a comparison of, say, the late sixties or early seventies, it has all but disappeared. With the removal of much of the accent for these purposes, the future is not positive. There needs to be a much greater emphasis placed on the effective uses of Nadgee rather than with those of political correctness. In the early seventies there were some 32 programs of research being undertaken concurrently. The declaration of the Wilderness Area over Nadgee has simply unnecessarily added major constraints to research because of the government’s pursuit of the vote of a minority and to increase the number of areas on the Wilderness list. After forty years as a nature reserve, the area was still more than suitable to be recognised as wilderness … why, therefore, apart from political reasons, was it necessary to give it the additional status which retards the research effort?

In support of this question, let us look at some extremely important pieces of research which were worked at Nadgee because of the control over the reserve, accessibility, the ability to close the reserve for long periods to the public and assistance provided by the Warden-ranger:

1 Dr John McElroy of CSIRO Wildlife Research undertook baseline studies and animal toxicology studies on native species in a natural environment to assess the impact of the poison 1080 on species and populations, as well as working out tolerances for healthy fauna species. In view of the massive and wide use in Australia of 1080 for pest control, this work was essential even though none of us liked permitting or doing it.

2 Dr M Giles and a very large research team of physicists, chemists, biologists and ecologists from the Australian Atomic Energy Commission established a temporary research station on the Little River estuary. The purpose was to work out the physical, biological and ecological dynamics of an estuary. Why? Because at that time, almost nothing was known about the physical and hydraulic forces working in an Australian estuary, the flow of nutrients in the ecosystems, and the rates at which an estuary can clear itself of pollutants. After extensive searching from Gladstone to Adelaide for a workable estuary which was totally unaffected by human activity to use as a baseline for measurement, only Nadgee had the pristine waterway.

3 Dr Alan Newsome’s CSIRO Wildlife team working on the distribution, movements, population ecology and behaviour of dingoes achieved the best of his south-east Australian work of this national program in Nadgee. Nadgee was vital because its population of dogs gave his results relevance to the dog problem in Kosciuszko NP and the other large forested parks and wilderness areas of the great escarpment. It was possible as a long-term study, for over five years, because of the secure tenure of the nature reserve and its isolated population.

I have experienced and studied the three major fires in Nadgee, in 1956, 1972 and 1980. The most important conclusion after the 1972 fire was that every fire is unique and that, after a very severe fire, the distribution of plant species and therefore pattern of animal habitats to a significant degree depends upon the climatic conditions of the two years following the fire. Our study of the 1972 fire was and still is one of the rare integrated studies of pre-fire, ignition and post-fire environments from the geomorphological to the living systems points of view.

These items of research were of national significance and which today, under the proposed changes to the track network, could not be worked in Nadgee and probably nowhere else so effectively. Many research programs requiring wide sampling nets – as in fire research, animal distributions and population dynamics, and the regular monitoring of animal populations and plant communities over an extended period – all require reasonable access.

However, the plan highlights a serious concern when it says, "Research will be managed to ensure that environmental impact and conflicts with other values including wilderness values are minimised …" The projects above would not pass this wilderness conflict criterion.

Education

Education is one of the great losses in the proposed management plan. Whereas "solitude and self-reliant recreation" and providing opportunities for "walking, picnicking, beach and lake-oriented recreational activities" get a mention in the Synopsis, there is not one mention of education or even publicity. Yet in "4.3 Use of the Area", appropriate use is defined as to varying degrees education and promotion, followed by conservation of natural and cultural resources, Aboriginal cultural activities, certain types of recreation, then research followed by Service management operations. If that is an appropriate order of priority then I believe little thought has gone into the list. Education, I suspect, has been shoved in as, "oops, we nearly forgot education". But then, even research has run second to recreation.

The second paragraph under "4.3.1 Public Use", spells out the extra-Nadgee places which can provide for visitors but ignores the very significant educational value which accrued from local and interstate school groups, university teaching groups and adult groups receiving programs at Newtons Flat and from the summit of Mount Tumbledown, as well as actually taking part in management operations. Visitors left the area after this experience convinced of the value of nature reserves and nature conservation generally.

Incidentally, the real initiator of Nadgee NR, Allen Strom, has half his ashes deposited where his spirit can watch the magnificent sunsets up the Nadgee Estuary. Perhaps if the Wilderness is to be, it could well be the "Strom Wilderness" or the "Wilderness of Hope" (after David Hope, a Nadgee Warden-ranger for fourteen years), for they fought so hard for it and to manage it.

Allan Fox is a long-time NPA member. He has spent a substantial amount of time in Nadgee NR, firstly attached to the FPP, then NSW NPWS and later the Federal NPWS.



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