Kirsha Kaechele spoke at the Forestry Australia conference last year and it was a real treat. She brings an insightful outsiders perspective to the otherwise mind numbing forest war debates. www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion...

A review in 2021 showed that more tree fern tags from from the Otways in Vic than all of Tasmania. And Victoria collects no fee for tag which means there is no monitoring. Always baffled me where all these ferns come from - plantations as they are harvested? Private land? It's just so much.

The Victorian Government is establishing a suite of long promised national parks but quite interesting to see the last paragraph sends a pretty clear message about the prospect for any future parks. www.premier.vic.gov.au/best-bush-op...

Our silviculture manual for Alpine Ash is now freely available in PDF form. This reference manual covers the past, present and future of stewarding and restoring alpine ash in Victoria. www.vgls.vic.gov.au/client/en_AU...

When people walk into my office and see this, they know they're in the company of a scientist operating at his peak

Ah right! I click elsewhere and it says the large fire is not.

Interesting to look at the planned burn history of the area, which was not included in my initial map. Black is the last ten years, red 2000 - 2010, and each fading red colour is the decade prior going back to 1970 (white). Less extensive burning than I expected, particularly in the last ten years.

The Little Desert fire burning ~65,000ha in a day is crazy. Interesting to see how this fire compares to fire history. Left is mapped fires from 1970 by decade, more red = more recent. Fire is a key part of this landscape, but this recent one seems to be homogenising the historical mosaic of fires.

Wake up babe. New ball and cup model just dropped

Which has always confused me - here's two stacks of timber we milled from a couple blue gums planted along our driveway. It's good wood. I've often wondered whether California could have some kind of urban forestry program that mills the gums and uses the proceeds to fund ecosystem restoration.

Close, Juli. Current estimates are about 54,000 ha and conditions today (and the day is just beginning) will likely make it bigger than that.

The Grampians fire appears to have reached the fire scar of the Pomonal fire from February this year. Would expect/hope these 10 month old fuels to provide a buffer on the east flank of the head of the fire. Otherwise 10 month interval between fires is serious interval squeeze.

Our findings are stark: 3,600 ha of the forest abruptly lost >50% of canopy cover in the storm; this in effect constitutes a relatively extensive shift from forest to non-forest formation.

And for my second post - a collage of some forests I've been in recently, in the Labertouche State Forest. Beautiful range of forest types and ages.