the Pines

A few days ago wildlife biologist, Hans Brunner, came to see me to ask me to publish the following report on the continuing failure of Victorian government to responsibly protect bandicoots. He also reported his personal experience on a recent visit to the Department of Environment and Primary Industries (accompanied by Gillian Collins, Michelle Thomas, and David Nichols).

He described what I have experienced myself in two past visits to the Department several years ago. What seems to happen is that citizens concerned about wildlife ask for a meeting with those responsible in the Department. A meeting is granted but in the manner of an audience with a dignitary. For years now the people in the department have worked in a high building in the city where the entrances to actual offices are guarded by security guards. This gives the impression that they know that they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing (actively protecting fauna under the Fauna Guarantee act) and fear public anger. Visitors must sign a book and wait under the eye of the guards until more staff come to escort them. Meetings are brief and conducted in barren, isolated offices that do not look as if they have any permanent occupants. There are no cosy couches, no friendly and understanding ears, citizen to citizen, just a distant official taking notes. Criticism is fielded with statements implying that the matter is in more qualified hands than yours. Maybe they will put you on some marginal email list for a while. Numbly, you walk back out through a large foyer where glossy posters give the impression that all is well with our fauna, and public servants sell and distribute glossy pamphlets on the same note. You leave feeling that you have had a conversation with a disapproving brick wall and drive back through the city and back into the areas of bushland you are trying to defend with a deep sensation of wasted energy and disempowerment.

The awful and unnecessary plight of the Southern Brown Bandicoot

After such a visit, Hans Brunner writes:

The Southern Brown Bandicoot scenario is so extremely frustrating and full of contradictions!

1. Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI) argues that because there are possibly no more bandicoots in the Pines, where there were hundreds before, that they will not re-introduce them into the Pines anymore. Yet, they introduced the Eastern Barred Bandicoot on at least four occasions into areas where there were none in existence before. What is the difference?

2. Department of Environment and Primary Industries and Parks Victoria accepted the conditions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Donservation Act’s (EPBC) request to install a predator proof fence around the Pines at the completion of the freeway. Yet, they suddenly decided not to do so. Is this honourable ?

3. Department of Environment and Primary Industries and Parks Victoria stated that the Eastern Barred Bandicoots could not be protected by fox control alone and that they had to be enclosed within predator proof fencing. Yet, in one of their recent strategies they recommended that the Southern Brown Bandicoots’ protection will depend on fox control alone and even scrap connective corridors. What has changed?

4. Parks Victoria elaborately explained why dog-walking at the Devilbend Reserve is totally unacceptable form many reasons but they recommend dog walking in the Nature Conservation Reserve in the Pines with prime habitat for the nationally endangered SBB. Hypocritical!

5. Parks Victoria used a 17 page report, with lots of irrelevant and ridiculous arguments to explain why a predator proof fence does not work to keep out foxes. Yet, predator proof fences have recently been constructed for the protection for the EBB’S. So, what is behind this?

6. The number of recent strategies recommended by DEPI for the so-called protection of the Southern Brown Bandicoots are constantly changing, each contradicting the previous one. This is total incompetence.

In contrast, our own people, concerned with the ultimate protection of the Southern Brown Bandicoots have, right from beginning, lobbied without changes to our plan to put the Southern Brown Bandicoots back into the Pines where they belong, within a predator proof fence and to make use of the $ 20.000.000 of underpasses already spent and provided for them. When do Department of Environment and Primary Industry and Parks Victoria finally come to their senses and accept their responsibilities?

[1] The reference to Kafka and to DEPI's castle relates to Franz Kafka's novel of this name. Here is a description, from Wikipedia: "The Castle (German: Das Schloss, later also Das Schloß) is a novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist, known only as K., struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle who govern the village for unknown reasons. Kafka died before finishing the work, but suggested it would end with K. dying in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there". Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, bureaucracy, the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system, and the futile and hopeless pursuit of an unobtainable goal."

The recent strategy of these organisations for the management of the Southern Brown Bandicoot is based on 99% of bias and negativity. It is a declaration of war against this species. Their barbaric program is full of hypocrisy as well as hiding the real evidence in order to bolster their arguments. Their proposals are too opaque and misleading and often quite ridiculous, simply all in order to save money!

The Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI) and Parks Victoria propose to monitor Southern Brown Bandicoots in the Pines for the next ten years while they, at the same time, suggest that they have become extinct there. (This amounts to funding window dressing.)

They propose to monitor for many years how the $20 million worth of underpasses work for the absent Southern Brown Bandicoots. (A waste of public money)

They carry out re-vegetation activities especially suitable for the Southern Brown Bandicoots but don’t want them in the Pines. (Hypocritical)

They propose to conduct regulars fox and cat control programs in the Pines for the protection of this species knowing very well that Southern Brown Bandicoots are not there anymore.(Already costing well over $ 100,000.00. (Failed every time because of presence of dogs)

They refuse to install a predator-proof fence around the Pines which is the only realistic way to protect the Southern Brown Bandicoots in the Pines once re-introduced. (The DEPI and Parks Victoria just want that money, not the responsibility.)

They refuse to tell the real truth why the Southern Brown Bandicoots were lost in the first place in the Pines. (Parks Victoria’s total mismanagement and neglect)

They make it sound unnecessarily difficult about the re-introduction of SBB’s into the Pines. (Scaremongers)

They now want to spend the money specifically provided for the fence in a biodiversity damage-mitigation undertaking with EastLink in an area where they have, in their last strategy, severely undermined the safety of this species by axing connective corridors. (They will spend it elsewhere.)

They now depend entirely on fox control to protect this species in the Sub-Regions of Koo Wee Rup which they insisted did not work for the protection of the Eastern Barred Bandicoot. (What has changed?)

They have deliberately misinformed the politicians, hence the wrong decisions were made. (Common practice)

They play unfair politics with both these critically and nationally endangered bandicoot species, both close cousins of the much loved Bilby. (Cannot say what I am thinking on paper)

They really HAVE declared war on them both.