In an effort to manage my own feelings of grief and helplessness about the impact of Australia’s bushfire disaster on our wild places and the creatures that inhabit them I took my camera into several fire grounds to explore and document what I could see in an attempt to wrap my head around it all. What surprised and delighted me was the prolific regeneration that I discovered, an incredible rebirth in mere weeks of some of our native flora as well as the accompanying return of some native fauna. I am sharing this with you in the hopes that it may also be a balm to others who are struggling with the unfathomable loss. A visual reminder of the magic of Mother Nature. It’s important to note that the oldest rainforest areas take much longer to regenerate as they are populated with trees not equipped to survive fire, as for example our eucalypts are. This was very evident in my explorations of fire ground within Nightcap Nat Park, an ancient subtropical rainforest. This is the unprecedented aspect of the fires. These areas of Gondwana rainforest have been around for centuries, some of the last standing sub/tropical rainforest in the world, usually always damp and wet but now dry and tinderbox like, due to drought and increasing global warming brought about by human interventions (land clearing, water mining, use of fossil fuels etc). This is a wake up call that can’t be ignored.
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AuthorOwl Eyes AKA Nikki Archives
January 2020
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