Australian bush begins its long bushfire recovery

Updated

Fire has sent some of Australia's most popular national parks into an eerie slumber, but new growth is breaking through the blackness.

When plants burn, a few things can happen. Some are killed by fire.

Others lose their leaves, or become branded with scorch marks, their spindly branches seemingly without life, but that does not mean they are dead.

Under the blackened bark and ashen soil, the plants grow on, and eventually, green emerges.

In the Australian bush, "resprouters" have all the ingredients they need to come back from fire on their own.

While the bushfire season is far from over, in the New South Wales Blue Mountains, nature's recovery is already underway.

Ferns that sat dormant in ashy soil are finding the light.

Slowly waking up.

Stretching towards the sun.

The Kosciuszko, Wollemi, Moreton, Mt Buffalo and Snowy River national parks — among many others — still have active fires.

The world heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park is full of eucalypt forest, making it extremely vulnerable to bushfires.

Despite 14 straight weeks of fires, many locations in the national park are open this weekend.

And there are signs of life to see.

Eucalypt buds are sprouting, while hardy grass trees spray colour.

Dr Tina Bell from the University of Sydney is a leading fire ecologist. Her research looks at how Australian plants respond to bushfires.

"These forests will come back," she said.

"The resprouters don't necessarily need rain because the tree or the shrub is still alive, so the moisture still in the tree can be the impetus for the new growth."

"The bark was enough protection — it was enough insulation — to actually protect those little buds living under the bark," Dr Bell said.

For the plants that cannot regenerate on their own, it's a much longer process of germination and for systems such as rainforests, the stakes are a lot higher.

Many may fear these ecosystems won't recover, but Dr Bell is hopeful. However, she warns they need something from us.

After the waterbombers

In Queensland's Lamington National Park, the bushfire season started in the first week of September. The last smouldering log was extinguished on January 14.

Head ranger Wil Buch and his team never left.

As nearby homes were evacuated and the neighbouring Binna Burra lodge burnt down, they stayed to defend their ranger station and to face the greatest fire the national park had ever seen.

"My best description would be epic," Wil said. "I'm extremely proud of my team."

The park is tucked away in the Gold Coast hinterland and is well known and well loved by many south-east Queenslanders. It burned very early in the season and parts of the Gondwana World Heritage rainforest were at risk.

The public interest in the Binna Burra fire was immense.

In his 30-year career as a park ranger, Wil said he had never seen fire behave that way in a natural forest.

He appreciates the magnitude of the "once in a lifetime" event he witnessed.

"There is evidence of a fire of this scale … but it would have likely been somewhere between 500 and 1,000 years ago," he said.

More than 2,500 hectares of the national park burned, including some areas of dry rainforest.

After the waterbombers left and the fire was brought under control, the rangers were left to assess the damage.

Wil and his team were relieved to report only 10 per cent of Lamington was burnt by the bushfire. There will be indirect and ongoing impacts, but for now, the team is cautiously optimistic.

The park remains closed, but the rangers guided the ABC through the Binna Burra section, including to some pockets containing rainforest plants.

"The green flush has only occurred in the last two weeks with the arrival of rain," Wil said.

"The park is now beginning to regenerate."

Despite looking green, Wil warns the true recovery period for a fire event of this size could be decades.

The rangers estimate thousands of trees were lost — no doubt home to countless native animals.

His team must balance the need to go deep into the park to measure the extent of the damage, with their desire to leave it undisturbed.

Still, from under the cloud of uncertainty shrouding so many of our treasured national parks, hope springs.

On the day of our visit, some koalas at least, had found their way home.

There they were, casually nestled among branches that were aflame only weeks ago.

"It gives us confidence the species as a whole will survive in the park," Wil said.

'The best plant wins'

No matter their age or size, if trees are hollowed out or are already very dry, they may struggle to withstand a bushfire.

Eucalypts will sprout, but some varieties, like wattles or banksias, can die.

Plants that are killed by fire have to regrow from seeds — they're called the "reseeders". They need seeds from their seedbank.

"With some nice good, steady, continuous rain, they'll come back," Dr Bell said.

"And then we've got to look after them and keep fire out."

The important thing to note, is these 'reseeders' need to be given a chance.

They need time to germinate, to grow from a seedling and to replenish their seedbank.

If another fire wipes out that plant before it has seeds in storage, it won't be able to replace itself.

For nature to take its course, those native seedlings need to win out over the weeds.

"After a fire, there's lots of space, there's lots of light, and when it rains, there's lots of moisture and nutrients," Dr Bell said.

"As that vegetation grows, the best plant wins."

It's at this time ecologists and rangers would encourage people to put their love for national parks to work.

Near another entrance to the Lamington National Park, ecologist and PHD candidate Brodie Verrall took the ABC for a walk.

He grew up on the Gold Coast and knows this bush well. And when he walks, he weeds.



"You can go and pull a weed. You don't have to have any skill to do that, you just have to be under the guidance of someone else," he said.

"And that's something real you can do in your community, that gets you outside and gets you back into these natural areas and it helps the system along too."

Dr Bell had similar advice: "People living up in the Blue Mountains, if they've got their favourite piece of bush, wander around, stay on the tracks, pull out the weeds and enjoy what's coming back."

Many national parks have regular volunteer days that give you the chance to contribute and Wil says "there is huge potential for citizen science-based monitoring" projects.

The University of New South Wales is running an Environment Recovery Project you can be a part of.

"To me, national parks are a relic to what the world was before," Brodie said.

"They're also the last refuges for the wild places in this country.

"They allow natural systems to operate as they have for millions of years."

Bushfires are still burning across the ACT, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

Swathes of earth have already been scorched, thousands of Australians have lost their homes and, in some tragic cases, their lives.

It's estimated 1 billion animals have died and there are grave fears for threatened species.

Putting the fires out is only the start of the long road back to health for this land and native plants are an essential part of that recovery.

For now, these tiny bursts of life and vital pops of colour need to keep growing; they need to win out over the weeds.

They must stay unmistakably awake.

Credits:

Reporting and digital production: The Specialist Reporting Team's Emily Clark

Photography: The Specialist Reporting Team's Brendan Esposito

Editor: Paige Mackenzie

Topics: science-and-technology, weeds---horticulture, plant-cultivation-and-propagation, plants, national-parks, conservation, environment, bushfire, fires, disasters-and-accidents, australia, nsw, qld, binna-burra-2479, lamington-national-park-4275

First posted