Echo NetDaily, 11 June 2021:
Local Minjungbal Indigenous leaders are asking the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to consult with them over a planned hazard reduction burn at Billinudgel Nature Reserve but a scheduled meeting was cancelled by NPWS.
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| Billinudgel Nature Reserve where the hazard reduction burn is planned by National Parks and Wildlife Service. |
The hazard reduction burn was originally scheduled for the Billinudgel Nature Reserve on 3 June with neighbours being informed by letter on 2 June.
‘We got notification that Billinudgel was going to have a hazard reduction burn which gave me time to get in touch with NPWS to discuss some options and ask them to sit down with traditional owners to look at cultural issues in the reserve,’ said Rachael Cavanagh, a Minjungbal woman and traditional owner that covers the Billinudgel Nature Reserve.
Rachael said a meeting was originally set up but was then cancelled by the NPWS who said that they would only speak to the Tweed Byron Aboriginal Land Council (TB ALC).
‘They are not the traditional owners,’ Rachael pointed out. ‘Everyone deserves a voice. We are on the Native Title claim for the Five Rivers and the Tweed Bundjalung people. We are the traditional owners who hold the cultural knowledge on the land values. We still have fire law that has been continued in our family,’ she told The Echo.
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| Billinudgel Nature Reserve. |
‘NPWS legislation states that they need to engage with traditional owners and knowledge holders. By their own legislation they are supposed to meet all registered parties.’
Rachael has been a fire fighter for 20 years with the Queensland National Parks and Forestry Corporation and is engaged with the Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation.
‘I am in a senior leadership team for National Fire Sticks Alliance. We support and build capacity with Indigenous groups nationally to support cultural fire practices and traditional land management for people on country. We look at the whole picture.’
Having been denied the option to meet with NPWS Rachael told The Echo that their lawyer has now sent a letter to NPWS to seek a meeting between the traditional owners and NPWS in relation to the burn.
‘Pretty much our family are fighting to be at the table and be part the discussion,’ she said.
‘They are planning to for a 70 per cent hazard reduction burn over two days which means it will be very hot, raging and overall health of the forest and the cultural values will be at risk, the understory will be and the canopy will be scorched, the animals will have nowhere to go to.
‘Regardless of whether it is Billinudgel or Cudgen. I will be fighting to have a say over the management of Minyungbal Country.’
‘Regardless of whether it is Billinudgel or Cudgen. I will be fighting to have a seat at the table.’…...
BACKGROUND
Billinudgel Nature Reserve was created in April 1996. It's current size is 789 ha. Approximately 75% of the Reserve is within Byron Shire with the remainder in Tweed Shire in the NSW Northern Rivers region.
The Reserve protects the following features:
· a large tract of natural lowland coastal vegetation, a significant remnant in an otherwise highly modified environment;
· an extensive wetland containing Melaleuca swamp forest;
· a diversity of habitat which supports a wide range of fauna and flora including rare, threatened, significant and migratory species;
· Aboriginal sites and landscapes of significance; and
· features of scientific interest.
In the 2016 Byron Coast Comprehensive Koala Plan of Management the North Byron Koala Management Area encompasses an area of approximately 2,814ha located to the north of the Brunswick River and includes the Billinudgel Nature Reserve along with the localities of South Golden Beach, Ocean Shores and Billinudgel.
