Carnage at Grantville’s Grass Tree forest by Meryl Brown Tobin
Like massacred warriors, ancient grass trees lie sprawled on the ground at a mining site in Grantville, 100 km southeast of Melbourne. Long before George Bass ‘discovered’ Western Port and landed at Bass Landing at the mouth of the Bass River in search of fresh water in 1798, these giants stood 12 km away in the Grantville Grass Tree forest. The spectacular forest is situated in the Grantville Nature Conservation Reserve and the sand extraction site adjoining it.
Hartley’s photo above shows some of the many hundreds of grass trees in the forest. Thanks to intense bushfires in the area on Feb 1-3, 2019, by October many hundreds of burned grass trees had sent up magnificent creamy-white flower spikes, some as thick as an adult arm. A natural botanical phenomenon and the best Grass Tree display Hartley and I have seen in our extensive travels around Australia.
Ever since witnessing this sight, we have tried to find out the protection status of the forest. As no one seemed to have mapped the exact position of the forest, the best we could learn is that much of it was on the sand extraction site and some on its buffer zone on the adjoining Grantville Nature Conservation Reserve and elsewhere in the reserve. As the forest is largely within a sand extraction site authorized under a Work Authority, there is little planning protection over the Grass Tree Forest under the Bass Coast Shire Council Planning Scheme. The Planning Scheme pertaining to extraction sites for the removal of native vegetation states: ‘Native vegetation that is to be removed, destroyed or lopped to the minimum extent necessary to enable the carrying out of extractive industry in accordance with a work plan approved under the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990 and authorised by a work authority under that Act.’
Hardly protection for a forest that has taken eons to evolve and that bulldozers could wipe out in hours. And a short-sighted fate for an environmental and economic asset of value to benefit the community indefinitely.
Save the Holden Bushlands (SHB), an environmental group set up to campaign for the State Government to purchase the Holden Proving Ground to protect its environmental values in perpetuity is leading a campaign to save the forest. Now under the auspices of the South Gippsland Conservation Society and comprised of 100 groups and individuals, SHB has morphed into a group to save the whole of the bio-link/wildlife corridor that sits on top of a rich sand resource between Nyora-Lang Lang to Grantville and beyond to Bass Landing.
The group wants the whole area declared a Distinctive Area and Landscape in the State Government’s Distinctive Areas and Landscapes program for its concentration of unique natural attributes of local and state significance. The Grass Tree Forest at the southern end of this bio-link forms part of the largest stand of remnant native vegetation on the eastern side of Western Port giving the area environmental and biodiversity significance to this part of Victoria. Because the forest is unmapped, those campaigning to save it do not know how far it extends into the mine site. What they know is that most of the forest is on the mine site and much of the remainder is on the buffer zone which is part of the Grantville Nature Conservation Reserve.
It is believed the company had already taken out 28 trees, a mixture of ages and sizes, from the excavation site and replanted them off-site, and ‘only one’ has died. The biggest had a trunk about 1 ½ metres high. It was believed that the company would not be trying to translocate a second batch of grass trees until autumn 2021.
However, as you will see from the photo taken this week, the company has already started to dig out and bag more of the ancient grass trees and bulldoze native bush to the ground in preparation for the expansion of his pit.
SHB member, Mycologist/Plant Pathologist Dr Mary Cole, says, “Grasstrees do not like being disturbed. Some will survive well others do not. They need to be cared for while they are out of the ground to have a successful after life.”
Apart from numerous ancient grass trees many younger ones without trunks yet showing would be being demolished. The biggest trees would have been growing there when George Bass ‘discovered’ Western Port and landed at the mouth of the Bass River 12 km away from the forest in 1798. A priceless tourist attraction in perpetuity if nothing else!
Also at risk is a precious 17.5 hectares of land on the mining site. In 1994, ecologists Kutt and Yugovic recommended consideration be given to transferring the south-eastern section of the gravel reserve, which includes the creek environment, to the adjacent nature reserve. This highly significant 17.5 ha area supports five vegetation communities, including Riparian Forest and Grassy Woodland (p64).be transferred to the Grantville Nature Conservation Reserve.
Authorities are looking into the removal of the grass trees and clearing of bushland. Hopefully, even if they are in accordance with conditions of the Work Authority, they will still move fast to prevent more carnage of grass trees in the Grantville Grass Tree Forest and other precious flora and habitat for fauna in the area and also save the 17.5 ha ecologically-precious site from becoming another example of aeons of evolution sacrificed for short term gain in a day.
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