00:00A hole in the forest where a giant once stood.
00:06Walpole on WA's south coast is home to some of the oldest and rarest plants on earth.
00:11Tingle only grows in 60 square kilometres and that is on the whole planet.
00:17Red tingles live for hundreds of years reaching heights of 75 metres tall and they only grow
00:22in the protected valley of the giants.
00:25But conservationists say a contentious practice is putting the trees at risk.
00:29The severity, the frequency and the scale of prescribed burns are very concerning.
00:36Last month the state government conducted a burn in the forest aiming to reduce the
00:40likelihood and severity of summer bushfires.
00:43Such burns are meant to protect the trees but locals say they're having the opposite
00:47effect.
00:49This tree you can see it burned like it was scorched to here and the rest of the tree
00:56is not impacted by the fire at all, which shows that the tree actually fell during
01:04the fire.
01:05I believe that these trees which are 400 to 1,000 years old have to be preserved as best
01:12as we can.
01:13A spokesperson for the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attraction said while one
01:18large tree was felled, 300 others and the region's biodiversity were protected.
01:24Not everyone agrees.
01:25There is no argument for burning the tingle.
01:29The large scale burns in that area are greatly intensifying the bushfire risk for the area
01:34and the reason for that is that they promote a regrowth of dense understory plants and
01:42they remove the taller mid-story.
01:44Experts say firefighting resources should be deployed elsewhere.
01:48In our current situation with global warming we've got a greater bushfire risk and so we
01:53really need to invest in rapid detection and suppression of fires.
01:58Calls for a change of strategy on a burning issue.
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