Mount Canobolas: Tenders due soon for work to start to reopen walks

National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger Steve Woodhall said tenders for the work were being prepared in Sydney with insurance money to cover the work.

Mr Woodhall said recognised walking track repair companies would be invited to tender for the work which should take about eight weeks.

“First they will pull out all the burnt material, it will be flown out by helicopter,” he said.

Replacement timber steps will then flown in to crews on the mountain to complete the work.

“There are 12 kilometres of track on the mountain and 10 kilometres of them were affected by the fire,” he said.

“We were pretty lucky with the signs, only seven directional signs on the walks got burnt.”

Mr Woodhall said it was expected the work would be finished in time for the return of the annual Great Volcanic Mountain Challenge run and walk in March.

He said local companies would not be able to tender for the work as it would be done by recognised bush track construction companies, all of which used by the NPWS were from interstate.

“There’s not that many walking track construction companies around,” he said.

He said the recognised companies were based in Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria.

Mr Woodhall said the Federal Falls camping area was due to re-open at the same time as the rest of the park.

He said that area survived unscathed by the fires.

“People were camping there and they were evacuated,” he said.

The people camping there had to leave their tents and flee but miraculously both tents survived without damage and had since been returned to the owners.

“One was a family from Forbes, I think it was their first camping trip,” he said.

Mr Woodhall said they had been monitoring how the fires had affected fauna on the mountain and he believed most species had survived.

He said they would be placing monitoring devices at about six sites on the mountain to check on how they had fared, including for threatened species such as tiny bats.

Mr Woodhall said they would be establishing 25 vegetation plots to assist with re-growth of the bush.

He said he had been concerned the fire would have destroyed large trees that were home to several species on Mount Canobolas.

“I was worried we would lose some of the big old hollowed trees, we have certainly lost some but the bush is pretty resilient,” he said.

Mr Woodhall and NPWS field officer Stuart Vial spent the long weekend at the summit manning an information tent to advise visitors on the recovery work.

“It has been a bit steady. People tend to come in waves,” he said.

Mr Woodhall said the most common questions were in relation to how the animals, walking tracks and plants had survived the February bushfire.