DEAR News Of The Area,

MARK Graham’s cogent and heartfelt letter about the costs of industrial logging to taxpayers and the environment prompt me to tell another revealing tale of an ongoing hidden cost to fires.

A great CSIRO scientist in the NT taught me to regard ants as indicators of the health of an environment, as they recycle plant litter, eat weed seeds and perform other hidden ecosystem services.

So when we often walked in the Gibraltar Range and Washpool National Parks, we could see perhaps fifteen species all going about their business in all parts of the bush.

Then came the massive fires of 2019 and afterwards, as we grieved in the shattered ruins of the rainforest and dry savannahs, we noticed there were no ants.

None.

Even the two metre high white ant mounds were dead, turned into pottery crematoria for whole communities.

The red meat ants that kept walking tracks clear of leaf litter and swarmed out as we passed were completely gone.

The little black ants whose earthern collars presage rain were gone.

None.

We have walked and looked every five years since and the ants have not returned.

I am sure they will return eventually, and on fringes that were not burnt you can see some resettlement, but it will clearly take decades, maybe even a century to restore the functioning of these world heritage forests, heaths and hanging swamps.

In Victoria they are closing down their entire state forestry corporation on 30 June this year.

How many more millions of taxpayer dollars will we waste before NSW makes the same inevitable and rational decision?

Regards,
Howard DENGATE,
Safety Beach.