Upper Blue Mountains Sunrise was fortunate to have a great speaker at our meeting on 9th March.
The speaker was Mr David Crust, Director, Park Operations, Blue Mountains Branch. In this position he is responsible for management of the reserves that make up the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
David has worked in a variety of natural resource management roles across the Blue Mountains for over 30 years including as Field Officer, Ranger and Area Manager with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. He has a particular interest and significant experience in fire and incident management and has led fire fighting contingents on a number deployments to the USA and Canada so saving the Wollemi Pine was of definite interest to him. The Gospers Mountain fire in 2019/2020, was the worst fire to hit the area in living memory.
His talk covered the major efforts taken to protect the only known area of natural growth of Wollemi Pines in the world. The use of helicopters to take Parks Staff on many trips to set up a watering system to protect the majority of the 200 pines. Luckily, majority of the mature trees were saved but there was a loss of some of the immature trees. The State Government has recently given special protected status after being saved from bushfire disaster. This is the first site in New South Wales to be given special protected status to try to ensure its survival for future generations.
Time lapse Video records of the approach of the fire showed the protection worked. Now the need to look at the long term protection of the Pines which is now under way.
A separate population has been set up in a different but similar site to ensure protection of this rare species.