Gippsland beekeepers warn "total ecosystem collapse" is risking the habitat of local honey makers
“You can see extensive areas of alpine ash that have been burnt too frequently for them to be able to regenerate.”
Jacob Wallace
February 11, 2026
Neil Barraclough says a lot has changed about Gippsland since he was trout fishing in the Alpine Ranges, camping under the stars, and surrounded by native bees in the 1960s.
For starters: the water has dried up at his old fishing spots – and the local bees are suffering because of it.
It’s just one example of how a slow degradation of the ecosystem has, as Barraclough puts it, collapsed.
What happened: At a Wellington Shire Council meeting on February 3, Barraclough told the council he had witnessed a “total ecosystem collapse” in the Alpine Ranges over his lifetime.
Barraclough told the Monitor he thought there were a few reasons for this collapse, including:
The historic bushfires in 1926, 1932 and 1939 eliminated nearly all the eucalyptus trees in the ranges, which has meant fewer small bushfires and denser tree growth.
The state government’s decision to end native forest logging in 2024 has also contributed to denser forests.
Selective trimming an option: Future Fire Risk Analyst at the University of Melbourne, Dr Tom Fairman, told the Monitor it was too soon to tell if the end of native forest logging had led to denser tree growth – but he thought selective trimming may be necessary to maintain the alpine forest’s health.
“If we've stopped people going out and [thinning trees] then [denser forests] may be an issue that arises with time, but it’s hard to say just yet whether that has necessarily happened,” Fairman said.
What is tree thinning? A selective removal of a number of trees from an area that may help manage a forest's health and prevent bushfires.
Fairman said there've been four or five major bushfires in the alpine region in the last 20 years.
“You can see extensive areas of alpine ash that have been burnt too frequently for them to be able to regenerate.”
How do frequent bushfires impact bees?
“Eucalypts are a pretty important floral resource, so if you are losing them from the system then it's definitely going to impact beekeeping and bees that require that flower,” Fairman said.
Barraclough said a combination of a decline in rainfall and a denser, fire-prone forest was creating a grim scenario for bees in the area, putting their habitats at greater risk.
The Gippsland Apiarist Association wants to see a return to tree thinning, where only a small number of trees in an area are cut down.
The group believes this is a more environmentally friendly alternative to plantations where large plots of trees are grown and harvested.
🗣️ “When we were kids, we would go trout fishing in all these little creeks,” Barraclough said. “There would be bees nearby. We would go out and catch ourselves a fish every night. We were camped out in the bush with our bees. Now, there's no water in those creeks, and in association with that, we’ve got far more trees and far more scrub on the ground, and that's what's taking up the water.”
Fairman said to maintain the health of Gippsland’s alpine forests the government and landcare groups may have to look at areas that are really dense from regrowth and severe disturbances and see if they need more management, which might include controlled burns or tree trimming.