The Avon Wilderness in Victoria was proclaimed around 1987. What is now DSE cleared all tracks after the gates were erected.
A huge outcry because there is not supposed to be any management in a wilderness. It must be allowed to "grow naturally".
Local observers watched as the area increased natural growth and was left alone.
When the dead fuel load became extreme, two firefighter friends said that when a fire started they wouldn't go near it.
Lightning started a fire in December 2006 and the whole area burned out. Flora and fauna habitat was burned to an ash. The ash has been blown and washed into waterways where it has extinguished acquatic life. The Gippsland lakes received a lot of sediment. They have deteriorated - swans looking for food invaded farm land and were culled. Fish spawning has been affected.
The Avon Wilderness is forest. Forest needs cool burning fire to protect flora and fauna from megafires.

Responding to the few but very noisy letter writing 'environmentalists' and to their own academic advisors, governments have tightly controlled wilderness reserves for decades and the effect has been the proliferation of exotic plant and animal pests. Asparagus fern, umbrella trees and Lantana are everywhere, aided by the continual supply of exotic pest weeds from garden shops.

It is the handling of exotic animals that most concerns me, where animals are commonly poisoned with 1080, a most terrible poison that by some weird thinking animal welfare organisations and 'environmentalists' don't seem to object to, yet it offers the most painful, lingering death and not always of the target species:

http://www.youtube.com/user/thewynman

http://www.youtube.com/user/thewynman#p/a/u/1/wrCQZ1B4ks0

http://www.youtube.com/user/thewynman#p/a/u/2/Smp2TdbOPaI

I am not entirely opposed to 1080 for very confined uses, however 1080 is an easy way out for government (eg NSW govt and deer or Tas govt and wallaby) both in NZ and Australia where there are regular widespread drops.

A quick bullet from licensed hunters operating under a strict game conservation council framework would be a better solution and has been proved (NSW Game Council) to significantly reduce exotic animals. As a bonus, meat and furs can be used rather than left to rot in the field, poisoning wedge tail eagles and other predators through eating carcasses (1080 can kill up to four times over).

Kelli Tranter has made sophistry an art form.