An echidna forages for insects in the soil at Tarcombe.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
A spiked creature ambles unbothered across a hilly field that has returned to green in Tarcombe, between Ruffy and Longwood in Victoria’s Strathbogie Shire.
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While the echidna, an insectivore, digs its snout into the earth foraging for and finding no shortage of its food of choice — bugs — the grass carpeting the hillside is not as nutrient-rich for its herbivore friends as it may seem to the untrained eye.
The vibrancy of the green is a classic case of surface versus substance.
Grass that grows directly after a bushfire often lacks energy-dense nutrients and essential protein, among other things.
Intense fires burn into the top few centimetres of the earth, removing essential nitrogen and sulphur from its soil, resulting in low protein regrowth.
The plants use the small remaining energy reserves in their roots to regrow.
Therefore, the regrowth usually has a high water content and is void of necessary proteins and carbohydrates that livestock and other wild grazing animals need.
Soil can be sterilised by intense fire, damaging its microbiome, making it water-repellent, meaning new growth can’t absorb nutrients well.
“The wildlife are certainly coming back, but it's also really stressful because there's no feed, so they're on whatever vacant paddock, and because there's no fencing, that doesn't contain them at all,” Tablelands Fire Recovery Hub volunteer Coll Furlanetto said.
“So we are seeing some here on the roadside and it's really sad for them to live through the fire and then unfortunately be taken out on the road.
“We're asking people to just go slow. Sometimes we do become distracted, but we just need to be watching out for people as well as our beautiful animals, and that includes stock that are still wandering.”
Mrs Furlanetto said random stock were appearing every now then, often pushing through temporary fencing in search of quality fodder.
“We've got to be thinking about ourselves, our stock, the native wildlife and the recovery infrastructure,” she said.
Tiger snakes are perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, but a vital part of the ecosystem nonetheless.
They are in abundance in the area and quite unfazed with the bustling activity at the Ruffy-based hub.
“It was 9.30 at night and it was cool, and we had 200 people out here,” Mrs Furlanetto said, gesturing to the outdoor courtyard at the back of the hub’s Ruffy Hall home.
“A snake just went under a table, over a truck driver's foot, who was in his thongs and into the garden bed where the rubbish goes.
“You've got 200 feet stomping around and the snake was like, ‘no, I know where I’m going’.”
The function was for the community and truck drivers from Need for Feed, who had delivered 2000 rolls of hay on 45 trucks to the fire-affected Tablelands district.
“We had them, you know, as a thank you for them, but we had just minutes before, said just need to be a bit careful of snakes, blah blah blah,” Mrs Furlanetto said, laughing at the irony.
She said the reptiles’ habitat had been, and continued to be, severely disrupted while clearing and fencing took place.
Koala Phoenix pictured shortly after the January bushfire.
Mostly dwelling higher, in trees, resident hub area koala Phoenix has recovered after sustaining burns to his nose during the bushfire.
And, in an exciting development, he has a friend who has moved into the same patch.
“We feel that Phoenix has a girlfriend because there’s two koalas around,” Mrs Furlanetto said.
“Someone said, ‘I saw Phoenix, but it doesn't look as big as Phoenix,’ and then all of a sudden, there were two, so I'm not sure what koala X is, but, hopefully, there might be Ruffy babies.”
17°C