In the 1970s the Forests Commission Victoria recognised the need to learn more about how its operations affected flora and fauna, in response to increasing public interest and criticism. They established a research team to investigate fauna in pine plantations in north-east Victoria (FCV Bulletin 24) and another to investigate the effects of harvesting for sawlogs and pulpwood on flora and fauna in central Gippsland (Boola Boola State Forest). I was very excited to be employed to run the latter group, based on my interest in forest ecology and fauna (especially birds).

The Boola Boola Project

This project was a wonderful introduction to mixed species foothill forests, and to the people and businesses of forest management and wildlife conservation with all their political nuances and intrigues. It provided great opportunities to learn and participate in activities such as 4WD and firefighting, and appreciate the strong bonds that united people who worked in forest management. And it generated new information on effects of timber harvesting (we were not allowed to use the word “logging”) with a longer and broader perspective than any previous study. We showed that regrowth forests as old as 40-70 years were still not as rich for birds and mammals as mature forest, but the vast majority of bird and mammal species expected in the forest were still present despite its history of intensive harvesting since the 1950s. We showed that retained gullies and other areas of mature forest were crucial for maintaining this diversity: gullies were especially rich but some species were only found on drier ridges and slopes.

For this project, Malcolm Macfarlane joined me with a prime focus on mammals. Ann Morton (now Ann Gunness) had already done the fieldwork on vegetation and Josephine Piggin did further work to describe our study sites, while Evan Chesterfield helped write up the vegetation results. We all owe much to Jean Galbraith, the famous botanist who lived nearby and willingly shared her knowledge. Roger Macaulay had done some initial work on birds and selected four study sites, which we increased greatly for the main study. John Harris and Fred Neumann conducted invertebrate surveys. We developed numerous collaborations including with Gordon Friend (who was doing his PhD on mammals in pines and native forest nearby) and Stephen Henry (who did a PhD on arboreal mammals). Bob McKimm was our very supportive line manager (based at the Mountain Forest Research Station, Sherbrooke) and Bill Incoll also provided support from MFRS, as did Dave Flinn, Fred Craig and Barrie Dexter from the research branch base in the CBD. Bill Edgar and his team (Frank Noble, Ian McLauchlin, Ann Baxter et al.) provided office accommodation and support at the Southern Division office in Traralgon. Ray Baker et al. provided logistic support from the district office at Erica. Rod Incoll (district forester at Heyfield) helped broaden our focus in the Great Dividing Range.

(See FCV Bulletin 28 and Research Branch Reports (RBR) No's - 116,117,118,119,120,121)

The Mountain Forest Research Station

The two research groups were combined in 1977, based at the Mountain Forest Research Station in Sherbrooke (MFRS), reporting there to Bob McKimm and later to Fred Neumann, with Fred Craig and Dave Flinn running the umbrella organisation (Education & Research) from head office, both taking a keen interest in our work.

We had already expanded our interests to include studies of forest harvesting in East Gippsland (Pulpwood Demonstration Areas) (RBR 269), and now we had opportunities for further expansion to examine flood-dependent forests along the Murray River (Barmah State Forest - RBR 240) and box-ironbark forests on the north side of the Great Dividing Range (e.g. Reef Hills State Forest - RRB 218). Denis Read et al. (Cann River) encouraged our forays into East Gippsland, as did local naturalists including David Hollands, Ken Morris, Bruce Pascoe and Stephen Wandsworth. Peter Fagg, Andrew Cockburn, David Cameron, Joy Sloan and many others helped with our work in East Gippsland. Robert Paul (Nathalia), Barrie Dexter, Bryan Walters and local naturalists including Lance Green helped with our work at Barmah.

A Focus on Mountain Ash

From 1977-1980 our main focus was on wet montane ash forests in the Great Dividing Range, and especially on forests of Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans), the tallest flowering plant in the world and a major source of high-value timber, as well as habitat for rare and fascinating animals such as Leadbeater’s Possum and Sooty Owl. Little was known about some of those animals and we were able to help generate a wealth of new information. We showed that some species had a preference for old forests (notably Sooty Owl and Yellow-bellied Glider) while others were more common in regrowth with abundant wattles (e.g. Rose Robin). Parallel work by Andrew Smith and David Lindenmayer had already shown that Leadbeater’s Possums favoured regrowth ash forest with scattered old trees, although we did also find some in old stands. We provided support for David in some of his early work. Gullies were favoured by some species but there was less contrast than in mixed-species forests, as bird species associated with ridges and slopes in mixed-species forest were generally rare or absent in Mountain Ash. We received great support for this work from all at MFRS, and from district staff at Toolangi (Rod Incoll), Kallista (John Lloyd), Marysville and Alexandra.

In parallel with these research projects, we played a peripheral role in developing a system of prelogging surveys, designed to identify sites that might need special protection ahead of proposed logging operations. We conducted pioneering surveys of this sort in East Gippsland, although most of the work was done later by teams based at the Herbarium in South Yarra or the forest research group at Kew.

Birds, Insects, Dieback

At MFRS we also took the opportunity to examine the roles of birds and insects in a syndrome of forest dieback in the Dandenong Ranges, now known as Bell Miner Associated Dieback (BMAD). This resulted in one of the most intriguing examples of complex ecological interactions that I have been lucky enough to help unravel, highlighting the power of common forest birds to control major insect infestations, and the roles of Bell Miners in sequestering populations of psyllids for their own benefit (as potentially sustainable sources of sweet lerps and honeydew). In some places Bell Miner colonies were able to progress slowly along creek systems, or oscillate back and forth, allowing individual trees to recover from adverse effects of high psyllid loads. In other places colonies became stationary and trees were unable to sustain continuous high psyllid populations and suffered dieback as a result: this was particularly likely in fragmented forests such as those in the Dandenong Ranges. This work involved collaboration with Brian Ward and Gail Forward (MFRS), and postgraduate students from Monash University (Jeanie Tyers and Doug Robinson). The main breakthrough came from listening to a local landowner (Geoff Bogle), whose observations inspired us to undertake the crucial experiments where we moved entire colonies of Bell Miners, resulting in dramatic influxes of common forest birds that decimated the psyllid populations.

Fragmented Forests

In the meantime, Graeme Suckling had taken study leave to do a PhD on mammals in fragmented forests in central Gippsland, and I was very happy to take the opportunity to look at birds on the areas he had selected for study. That also proved to be a fascinating study, partly because it revealed a major role played by birds in determining forest health, with Noisy Miners occupying small heavily grazed patches and excluding smaller birds that effectively controlled insect populations, thus playing a negative role similar to that of Bell Miners elsewhere. Hence, small heavily populated? patches supported low densities of forest birds, and suffered greater degrees of dieback. Nevertheless, the study also showed that small forest patches could have substantial value for forest birds (especially if they were not heavily grazed), and that strategies were needed to conserve both small and large patches of forest in rural landscapes. The academic debate about “SLOSS” (several small or single large) did not have a simple answer. We later followed up these studies with experiments where colonies of Noisy Miners were removed, allowing big influxes of other forest and woodland birds: that work involved a PhD student from Deakin and La Trobe Universities (Merilyn Grey), supervised by Mike Clarke and myself.

A New Survey Method

One of the survey methods I developed at MFRS (the timed area-search, specifically 20-minutes) has become the dominant method used for surveys of bush-birds in Australia. Marilyn Hewish contributed to later studies that compared this method with others. I also tested the method against an ingenious system developed by David Morgan (Melbourne Uni) for estimating bird densities by measuring distances of each bird from the observer. His method was a forerunner of the “distance sampling” approach developed overseas (St Andrews University, UK), which became popular in the late 1990s. However, the distance sampling approach was not practical for forest birds when most birds are heard not seen, and large numbers can be found in short periods of time, so it is not practical to measure distances for each one. The timed area-search has stood the test of time and is the primary approach recommended by BirdLife Australia. It has been picked up by a few overseas biologists but I’d like to do more to promote its use elsewhere in the world.

Fire & 1981-1983

The years 1981-83 were extremely dry, culminating in devastating wildfires in early 1983, with severe consequences for people and wildlife. By chance, two of the prelogging surveys we had just completed were in the path of one of the largest fires in East Gippsland, and we were able to return to some of our sites immediately after the fires and again up to three years subsequently. This was a rare opportunity to study effects of wildfire with actual data from immediately before the fire struck: this is not easy to achieve, as it is never known exactly where and when wildfires will strike, or at least not in time to do safe effective studies. The study showed that species varied greatly in their immediate response to fire, with some species surviving surprisingly well and the biggest declines being among the most mobile birds (presumably because they had fled), with different patterns of recovery over the next three years.

The fires highlighted the need for more fire research, and Dave Flinn worked with Kevin Tolhurst and others to secure funds for a planned study of fuel reduction burns in the Wombat State Forest, one of the first of its kind in Australia (5 fire treatments x 5 replicate forest blocks). The study began in 1984 and I contributed by doing bird surveys on the 25 sites then and intermittently until 2008, and in arranging for others to do similar work on mammals and reptiles. District staff based at Daylesford have done a superb job in maintaining the planned fire regimes over several decades. I am grateful to Marilyn Hewish for help with many of the bird surveys.

CFL

In 1986 the Victorian Government decided to combine various agencies involved with public or private land management and conservation, forming a new mega-department of Conservation, Forests and Lands, with service delivery provided initially through 18 regions (dropping over the years to a more manageable five). This reform was a huge step in forcing more constructive collaboration between land managers from different backgrounds. Foresters generally responded positively, embracing the need to conserve wildlife and give conservation greater priority than it had done when royalties from timber production had excessive influence on the culture and decision making processes.

Many foresters and some research staff moved into Regional Management jobs at this time, and the Mountain Forest Research Station became a regional asset and was no longer used mainly for research. Graeme Suckling accepted one of the prized Assistant Regional Manager jobs (ARM Natural Resources for the Geelong Region). I took a senior position at the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research in Heidelberg (ARI). And if I was hoping to continue wildlife research work in areas that were not as controversial as forest management, I was in for a shock, as I was given the task of reviewing the management of duck hunting, and playing a leading role in managing, monitoring and reforming that controversial activity. Actually it was not a huge shock, as there were several ups and downs in that particular career transition, and I knew that a key purpose of public research is to help governments navigate controversial issues. Joan Kirner was the Minister for Conservation at the time, and she took a deep personal interest in our work: it was a great pleasure and privilege to work closely with her on the issue.

My colleague Malcolm Macfarlane also moved to ARI, and so did some of the prelogging survey staff. This opened opportunities to work with renowned ecologists such as Lindy Lumsden and Peter Menkhorst, and skilled administrators such as Rod Gowans. We all became closely involved with policy matters, including complex decisions about the management of threatened species such as Leadbeater’s Possum, Long-footed Potoroo and large forest owls. A management plan for Leadbeater’s Possum was prepared by Malcolm Macfarlane and John Seebeck, protecting old Mountain Ash forest in the range of the species and prohibiting felling of any Mountain Ash trees older than 100 years. The plan also involved processes to identify and protect prime habitat for Leadbeater’s Possum, including abundant wattles (generally a feature of regrowth forests) and scattered old trees as potential den sites.

CFTT & ARI

The forest research group continued under the leadership of David Flinn, as the Centre of Forest Tree Technology (CFTT), which eventually co-located with ARI in Heidelberg, while maintaining its structural independence and then forming the School of Forest & Ecosystem Science (SFES) at the University of Melbourne through their campus at Creswick.

At ARI we continued to work on forest research on contract to CFTT/SFES, including projects linked to the Silvicultural Systems Project (SSP), the Value Added Utilisation Systems project (VAUS), a combination of the two (VSP) and other projects on eucalypt thinning and fire ecology. We mentored a large group of biologists, and some went on to successful careers elsewhere. All of us were passionate about conserving wildlife, and we had a range of philosophical views about the purpose of our research. While we could all see that commercial logging could have negative consequences, many of us also recognised that there would be ways to manage the scale and pattern of operations to reduce the potential negative effects and even gain some benefits. Some considered that commercial forest logging was necessarily bad and that the main need was to oppose commercial forestry, and I believe that reduced their effectiveness in seeking improved approaches to management.

One of the new projects we conducted as part of VSP was a retrospective study of the effects of logging in East Gippsland, in which we surveyed birds and mammals on 42 sites that had been logged at different (up to 40 years ago) or not logged, complementing our work at Boola Boola in showing how animal populations change over time as forests regenerate after logging. We later revisited the Pulpwood Demonstration Areas to see how fauna communities had actually changed in real time after intensive harvesting for sawlogs and pulpwood. We developed a tradition of co-supervising postgraduate students to train the next generation of ecologists and expand the range of projects we could undertake.

At the same time I co-supervised an Honours student from Deakin University (Rodney van der Ree), on a project looking at recolonisation of Mountain Ash forest by arboreal mammals after the 1983 bushfires. One of the most interesting findings from that study was the discovery of Leadbeater’s possums breeding in 11-year fire regrowth 1.2 km from unburnt forest, showing the ability of that species to recolonise suitable habitat (regrowth wattles with scattered old trees) as it regenerates after severe disturbance (fire in this case). Leadbeater’s Possums were an order of magnitude more common in regrowth forest than in unburnt forest in that study, reinforcing results from earlier studies. Rodney has progressed to becoming renowned as an expert on biodiversity conservation in relation to infrastructure such as roads.

More Management Changes

In 1995 there was another administrative upheaval, when a new State government embarked on a program of privatising various government institutions to reduce state debt. The first part of the plan was to separate research and policy functions, with research staff remaining at ARI and policy staff moving to head office in Victoria Parade. Several research staff elected to move to the policy area, including Malcolm Macfarlane. The second part was to combine four research institutes (including ARI and CFTT) into an umbrella organisation to be known as the Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI), and to corporatise that as a stand-alone entity owned by the government. Similar arrangements were made for regional veterinary laboratories, and they proved to be a financial failure, and the government abandoned plans for NRRI. Nevertheless, it was made clear that the four research institutes needed to do more to generate their own income, and we were given greater freedom to do so. This presented new opportunities for all of us. CFTT chose to strengthen their ties with the University of Melbourne, and ARI set out to diversify our client base, building new relationships with Melbourne Water, Parks Victoria, and other clients. I played a leading role in this process as acting General Manager for 3 months in 1995, and then as acting manager of wildlife research from 1995-2000. Our first overseas contract was a joint initiative with ARI, the University of Melbourne and CFTT, on participatory forest management in Kerala in south-west India. It involved a site visit (by Ian Ferguson, Steve Read and myself) and hosting a visit to Melbourne from staff of the Kerala Forest Research Institute.

In the 1990s our forest wildlife group at ARI made a substantial contribution to Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs), through intensive fauna surveys and strategic decisions about how to manage forests to conserve threatened fauna. We had already nominated large forest owls as a key group to study, as potential umbrella species (top-order predators with large home ranges, needing hollow-bearing trees for themselves and the arboreal mammal prey which form important parts of their diets). The Forests Service (Kylie White) commissioned us to start surveys of owls and arboreal mammals before the major effort on other groups of fauna. I appointed Ed McNabb as leader of the field teams for the nocturnal surveys, as his skill and dedication to such work was legendary. The team focused on nocturnal work and successfully completed over 2,000 surveys on selected sites throughout the forested parts of Victoria, on a tenure-blind basis in Parks as well as State Forests. We then modelled the distributions of owls and arboreal mammals to help select Special Protection Zones (each of ~500 ha) to conserve them and the ecosystems on which they depend. We worked with forest planners to select over 500 Special Protection Zones, conserving >300,000 ha of prime habitat: Ed played a crucial role in this process as he had acquired so much local knowledge. This was a very significant contribution to conservation of forest wildlife.

In this period we appointed Graeme Newell to run surveys of other groups of fauna and flora, and to build a wide range of statistical models to predict their distributions. He built a formidable team of modellers to help with this and other work, and their modelling group became a cornerstone of future work by ARI in that area, e.g. on NaturePrint (an electronic portrayal of biodiversity values across the state on GIS). They were among several key appointments that contributed to ARI’s strength in subsequent decades.

Another forest-related project in this period examined effects of fragmentation of old forest patches by logging in Mountain Ash forests. This began as an Honours project by Ryan Incoll at the University of Melbourne, focusing on gliders, and I followed this with studies of birds on the same sites. The projects showed that patches of any size could be useful, though some fauna species needed larger patches than others (e.g. Sooty Owl and Yellow-bellied Glider). The reduced per-hectare bird density that had been evident in small patches in the rural landscape, was not observed in the mosaics of logged and unlogged forest in Mountain Ash forests, largely because two of the key causal agents in the rural landscape (grazing stock and Noisy Miners) were absent from the mountain forests. In other words, small patches of mature Mountain Ash forest retained more value for birds than they did in rural landscapes at lower elevation. It remained equally important to maintain adequate amounts of old forest for the species that needed it (e.g. Sooty Owl and Yellow-bellied Glider), and connectivity between them especially for arboreal mammals.

From 2000 the group at ARI maintained contact with SFES and initiated our own projects through universities and public tenders. These included a major project on wildlife using eucalypt plantations, funded by a consortium of RIRDC, NHT and FWPRDC. This demonstrated that commercial and Landcare plantations had value for native wildlife, to a greater degree than open pasture but less than native forest (no surprise there). Shrub-foraging birds proved to be common in young eucalypt plantations, contrary to expectations. The project led to a series of similar studies in different regions and landscapes, and with pine plantations as well as eucalypts. Noisy Miners and introduced birds were common in old Sugar Gum windbreaks on the Volcanic Plains but pleasingly scarce in most other plantations, again contrary to expectations.

From 2000-2012 I managed a group at ARI (termed Community Ecology from 2005), which I built to a peak of 35 staff, with many major projects including one for Melbourne Water on waterbird conservation at the Western Treatment Plant, now in its 25^th year. The Forests Service and SFES continued to support some of our work on forest and fire, and I continued to analyse and publish some of my earlier studies. We helped form a consortium to conduct studies of fire, flora and fauna in foothill forests, involving ecologists from La Trobe and Melbourne Universities as well as ARI, attracting substantial funds from the Commonwealth Government.

Retirement? I don't think so

In 2012 I took early retirement from the Public Service which gave space for other things including travel (South America is my favourite destination) and at last bringing some of my forest projects together as a thesis, which I submitted to the University of Melbourne for a Doctor of Forest Science (DSc), which was accepted and awarded in 2019. There is more still to publish (and of course much more still to be done), and I hope to keep publishing and contributing in various ways.

Thesis

The thesis is about 144 MB in size. It is too large for a preview and you will need to download it to view.

I am very grateful for the wonderful opportunities to develop my career that came from my early years working for the Forests Commission. Those years gave me the freedom and independence to do things that would have been impossible with the more structured approaches of other organisations, as well as a challenging set of practical questions to address. I learned to be diplomatic in the way I presented results (harvesting not logging, and I resisted when a journal editor wanted that changed to “exploitation”!), but our results were never censored. Sometimes the editorial process was frustratingly slow, especially when results had to be presented first as “unpublished” internal reports, and external publication was seen as a bit of an optional extra, but it was always allowed, and strongly supported by individuals including Bob McKimm, Dave Flinn, Fred Craig and Ron Grose.

Very many thanks to all who were involved.

Editor: While some of the work mentioned in this article is linked to Research Branch Reports there are many others with Richard's name on them. Use the site search function to find them.