Goongerah Environment Centre GECO

05/05/2026

In the Snowy River area, bushfires were rare before broadscale burning began. Repeated burns created the dense regrowth that now fuels the big fires. The answer isn't more burning. It's investing in remote area firefighting, smaller aircraft, better equipment, and new drone technology that can hit a lightning strike before it spreads. Dr Philip Zylstra on what a real fire management response looks like.

19/04/2026

SNOWY RIVER NP BURNS UPDATE: On Friday afternoon, after days of public pressure, DEECA Gippsland responded with a Facebook post.

A Facebook post. That is the sum total of public accountability for a 'multi-year burning program' of nearly 60,000Ha inside one of Victoria's most ecologically significant national parks.

We reject that as adequate. The open letter stands. The calls of 14 leading scientists remain unanswered:

- Transparency: Publish the full burn plans before any further burns. Social media is not disclosure.

- Strong science: Commission an independent ecological review. The science is unambiguous, fuel reduction this far from homes offers no meaningful protection during the fire conditions that actually kill people.

- Accountability: Refer both burns for federal EPBC assessment. Government agencies cannot mark their own homework on decisions of this ecological consequence. 110+ threatened species are on the line.

This landscape has burned up to four times this century, the last one in 2019-20. It is still recovering. Proceeding without independent review, without published plans, and without credible evidence of community benefit is not fire management. It is a failure of governance.

We will keep the pressure up.

Read the open letter: geco.org.au/stop_the_snowy_burn

17/04/2026

Two days ago, Forest Fire Management Victoria lit a planned burn inside Snowy River National Park. The burn is still active. No public ecological assessment has been released.

This morning on ABC Gippsland, fire scientist Dr Philip Zylstra explained exactly why burns like this are the wrong approach, and what we should actually be doing to protect communities from fire.

His key points:
- Broadscale planned burning was imported from American pine plantation management in the 1960s. It does not translate to Australian native forests.

- Old growth forests are naturally fire resistant. Fires run through dense regrowth and stop at old growth. That dense, flammable regrowth is created by repeated burning and logging, not by leaving forests alone.

- In the Snowy River NP area, large bushfires were rare before the prescribed burning program began.

- Real investment should go into remote area firefighting crews, smaller aircraft that can catch fires while they are small, and emerging drone technology that can detect and attack lightning ignitions within minutes of a strike.

Follow us for more information on forest management.

Read our blog post with the latest updates: https://www.geco.org.au/stop_the_snowy_burn

15/04/2026

SNOWY NATIONAL PARK IS BURNING RIGHT NOW!

FFMV lit the burn started at 12:53pm today. Hours earlier, Steve Dimopoulos was moved on and Erdogan MP was appointed Victoria's new Environment Minister. Steve Dimopoulos has left the building. The fire hasn't.

Residents of Goongerah are already smelling smoke and seeing a light haze. We are monitoring closely.

Here's what the science says about this burn:

- This landscape has already been through catastrophic fires in 2003, 2009, 2014, and 2019-20

- Research published in Nature found wildlife damage is up to 93% larger where fires occur three or more times in 40 years - this area has already crossed that threshold

- More than 110 threatened species live here
There are no major communities nearby that this burn could credibly protect

- On the days that actually kill people, research on Black Saturday and Black Summer found prior fuel reduction makes almost no difference - fire does what wind and heat tell it

That's why Australia's leading scientists signed an open letter calling for this burn to be stopped - including David Lindenmayer, Don Driscoll, Hugh Possingham, and Philip Zylstra. The previous minister never responded. The burn was lit regardless.

To everyone who called and emailed over the past couple of days - thank you! Every contact is on the record.

Now let's deliver the new minister his welcome pack.

If you already emailed Dimopoulos's office, forward it to [email protected]. Nothing says welcome to the portfolio like a full inbox on day one.

The second burn can still be stopped. We're not done yet. Let Enver Erdogan MP know.

Full context and open letter: https://www.geco.org.au/stop_the_snowy_burn

13/04/2026

Ten days. Likely under 48hrs. That's how long we may have before FFMVic ignites 34,000 hectares of Snowy River National Park.

Australia's top fire ecologists and biodiversity researchers have signed an open letter calling on Minister Dimopoulos to stop this burn. The science is on our side. Now we need the numbers.

Read the letter at the link - then call or email Minister Dimopoulos directly:

Phone: (03) 8624 3101
Email: [email protected]

When you call, keep it simple:

- My name is [name] and I'm calling to ask Minister Dimopoulos to immediately pause the Snowy River National Park planned burn
- Leading scientists have signed an open letter asking for this burn to be paused and independently reviewed
- This landscape has already been through four catastrophic fires this century - burning it again now would cause irreversible damage to threatened wildlife
- Please pause this burn before ignition and commission an independent ecological review

https://www.geco.org.au/stop_the_snowy_burn

07/04/2026

For thirty years we walked these forests. We counted the gliders. We sat in the trees. We watched the forests go and the hollows come down. We were arrested, sued, smeared, and told we were standing in the way of what, exactly? All along, Labor had the answer sitting on a desk in Spring Street.

December 2014. Their own top bureaucrats told the incoming Andrews government, in writing, to end native forest logging in East Gippsland. An industry that was bleeding money. The most ecologically destructive. 61 species already gone. Thousands more hanging on by a thread. Shut it down, they said. Make it a priority.

Labor read it. Labor buried it. And for ten more years we kept walking into the same forests to find the same ancient trees on the ground. Ten more years of gliders without hollows. Ten more years of public money poured into a dying industry while Labor stood in front of cameras and talked about Climate.

We were right. And Labor knew it all along.

16/03/2026

Burning Season Begins: Habitats at Risk in East Gippsland - Part 1 Colquhoun Forest, Lake Tyers.

Walking along Blackfellow's Arm in Lake Tyers State Park a few months ago, you might have done what a GECO volunteer did: stopped in their tracks at bird calls they had never heard before. Through a clump of she-oaks, dark shapes huddled in a branch. The phone camera wasn't good enough to be certain.

The recording was sent to the . Their verdict: almost certainly a trio of Glossy Black Cockatoos, two adults and a fledgling.

It was a first encounter with one of Victoria's most threatened and specialised birds. A 2025 FOI request obtained by Gippsland Environment Group estimated only around 100 Glossy Black Cockatoos remaining between Colquhoun Forest and the NSW border. Local naturalists think the number may be even lower, with fewer than 50 birds believed to occur between Lakes Entrance and the Snowy River. The Black Summer fires destroyed nearly two-thirds of their Victorian habitat, and the birds that survived are now almost entirely dependent on small, unburnt coastal she-oak stands along this narrow stretch of East Gippsland coast.

Forest Fire Management Victoria is planning to burn through the heart of it this season.

Three burns are of immediate concern in this area. The Colquhoun burn (GP-TBO-NOW-0504) covers 1,373 hectares of forest along the Mississippi Creek trail, known habitat for Glossy Black Cockatoos, Greater Gliders, Yellow-bellied Gliders, Masked and Powerful Owls, Gang-gang Cockatoos, and Grey-headed Flying-foxes. The S***f Gully burn near Nowa Nowa (GP-TBO-NOW-0641) covers 1,197 hectares around 6 kilometres south of Nowa Nowa, in the same coastal forest corridor where that trio of Glossies was recorded at Blackfellow's Arm. And the Trident Arm burn (GP-TBO-NOW-0298) covers 402 hectares around 10 kilometres south-southeast of Nowa Nowa, in a patch of old-growth forest with almost no recorded burn history. Of the three burns, only 4 hectares of the Trident Arm area has ever been treated, which tells you something important: this is some of the most ecologically intact country left in the region, and it is on the burn schedule.

All three burns are planned for autumn, which overlaps directly with the Glossy Black Cockatoo's breeding season. Nestlings in hollows cannot escape. Adults lose their food source at the moment they are feeding chicks.

The Glossy Black Cockatoo feeds almost exclusively on the seeds of Black She-oak trees. Fire kills these trees outright. Even a low-intensity burn causes the cones to shed their seeds before the birds can reach them. For a population this small, confined to this narrow corridor, losing feeding habitat across any one of these burns is not a minor disturbance. It is a serious risk to the species' survival in Victoria.

The ecological cost extends beyond the Glossies. A DEECA-funded study by Bluff found that hollow-bearing trees in planned burn areas were 28 times more likely to collapse than in unburnt forest, with around one in four collapsing after a single burn. These are trees that take up to 200 years to form hollows large enough for a Greater Glider. Roadside clearing by contractors is already underway ahead of these burns, and the damage to habitat is cumulative and largely irreversible.

For old-growth forest like Trident Arm, which has largely escaped fire for long enough to develop the structural complexity that threatened species depend on, a single planned burn does not just set back recovery. It destroys what took generations to build, on a management rationale that the science increasingly does not support.

GECO is calling on Forest Fire Management Victoria and the Minister for Environment to:

- Immediately halt the Colquhoun burn (GP-TBO-NOW-0504), the S***f Gully burn (GP-TBO-NOW-0641), and the Trident Arm burn (GP-TBO-NOW-0298) pending proper ecological assessment.

- Refer all three burns to the Federal Department for assessment under the EPBC Act, given the likely significant impact on nationally listed threatened species including the Glossy Black Cockatoo, Greater Glider, and Powerful Owl.

- Publicly release the ecological risk assessments for all three burns, including what species surveys have been conducted, how threatened species impacts have been assessed, and what safeguards are proposed.

No burn of this scale, in habitat this important, should proceed without that information being publicly available.

You can call or write to decision-makers now:

FFMV Nowa Nowa: 03 5162 0100
FFMV Bairnsdale: 03 5152 0400
Peter Brick, Tambo District FFMV: [email protected]
Steve Dimopoulos, Minister for Environment: [email protected]
Murray Watt, Federal Environment Minister: [email protected]

05/03/2026

The March edition of The Monthly has published something important. "Fire in the Bully" by Katherine Wilson asks whether a macho culture inside FFMVic is overriding science, safety, and First Nations knowledge in bushfire management. It is a rigorous, deeply reported piece, and everyone who cares about these forests should read it.

What Wilson documents is something the community should be aware of: broadscale prescribed burning is not protecting our forests or making our towns safer. It is destroying hollow-bearing trees, fragmenting habitat, and driving biodiversity loss, all while the science supporting these practices in reducing fire threat remains contested at best. Meanwhile, the Victorian Government continues to defund the biodiversity and conservation programs that are supposed to safeguard what remains.

We have seen the consequences on the ground. GECO reported the destruction of Watson's Tree Frog habitat in Errinundra National Park by DEECA's own operations. If the government cannot protect a signposted frog site inside a National Park, the question has to be asked: what exactly are these programs protecting?

Wilson's piece also makes clear what genuine reform would look like. Fire management grounded in ecological science. First Nations people leading, not advising, the way we care for Country.

Pick up the March Monthly. Read it. Share it. And keep asking hard questions of the people responsible for managing these forests.

15/02/2026

Compelling article by Katherine Wilson challenging outdated approaches to bushfire management that continue to leave regional communities like East Gippsland at risk.

The long held assumption that more fuel reduction burning automatically means lower fire risk is increasingly being questioned. New science, along with modern detection and rapid suppression tools, is shifting the debate.

As fire ecologist Philip Zylstra notes, Australian studies have found fuel load had no effect on rate of spread and only a minor effect on flame height. Recent research also suggests planned forest burns may reduce risk in the short term, but can increase risk over the long term.

The real challenge now is twofold. Securing serious state investment in modern detection and suppression capability. And shifting a deeply entrenched fire management culture that continues to conflate fuel load with hazard reduction.

If we are serious about protecting communities and ecosystems, we need policy grounded in evidence, not habit.

Read the article and join the conversation in the comments.

Bushfire experts say Victoria’s firefighting strategy is in urgent need of upgrading, given its overreliance on back-burning and underinvestment in early detection.

10/02/2026

Every time the Victorian Government talks about the Forestry Transition, the price tag seems to grow. Another $500 million here, another $500 million there, until we are told the total is now more than $2 billion!!

How much of that money has actually gone directly to regional communities priorities? How much to restoration and biodiversity programs? A tiny fraction if any!

As one resident of Swifts Creek put it in this article, “I feel like the money that was meant to be going into forestry transition has actually transitioned into paying the loggers.”

Did Pentarch Forestry receive transition funding from the State Gov? If so, what was it used for, and how did it support genuine local transition?

Job losses mean Swifts Creek in Victoria's High Country is facing an identity crisis, but it is not the only small town undergoing a transformation.

05/02/2026

New on our website: Rethinking Fire Management

Since the end of native forest logging, one issue has moved to the forefront: how we manage bushfire risk.

This isn’t a new concern, but it has now become the most critical threat: to how we care for forests, and how we keep communities safe from the impacts of climate change and extreme fire events.

The evidence is building. Research shows that our current fire management approach - especially the reliance on planned burns - is outdated, ineffective, and doing more harm than good. It’s damaging ecosystems, putting communities at risk, and costing the public significantly.

GECO has always stood for accountability. We continue to expose harmful practices, like the destruction of habitat trees by logging machinery, often justified by backroom deals and poor policy design.

At the same time, we’re offering solutions. Strategies that protect and restore forests and biodiversity, while increasing safety for towns and regions on the frontline of the climate crisis.

We back this work with robust science. And we’re here to have a mature conversation about how we got here, and how we move forward.

Read the new section and leave your email to stay connected:

Real safety means tackling climate change, protecting natural fire refuges and investing in rapid response when fires strike.