<
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/09/tasmania-pencil-pines-jurassic-era-trees-fire-threat>
"Steve Leonard finds it hard when he goes bushwalking in Tasmania’s high
country these days. “I look at a stand of pencil pine and I wonder: ‘how long
will you be there?’”
The ecologist is just back from a rapid survey of the cost to ancient trees of
the latest lightning-strike fires across the island’s drying landscapes. Among
the losses he found near the overland track, an alpine walking trail through
central Tasmania, were groves of pencil pine.
“We saw a couple of stands that were quite severely burned,” says Leonard, from
the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service. “Others where the fires had
taken out single trees.” This wizard-bearded scientist spoke the fears of many:
that tree-by-tree natural antiquity is being consumed.
Only found in Tasmania, pencil pine dates back to the late Jurassic, 140
million years ago. It is from the small
Athrotaxis genus, with King Billy
pine and a third species that crosses between them called the Lax-leaf. If
allowed, these trees can live a thousand years.
Unlike eucalypts, they are hypersensitive to fire; if burned around the trunk,
they die. And Tasmania is in a new age of fire."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
