I've recently communicated with a school friend who is a card carrying greenie, used to work for greenpeace, still funds them, is a university lecturer in Japan and thinks that "forestry management" or fuel reduction is a myth made up by the Murdoch media.
Unfortunately there's a number of people who seem of the opinion that forestry management and climate change are mutually exclusive when in fact they should be mutually Inclusive. If you believe in climate change, you should support better forestry management. If you don't believe in climate change, then you should still believe in better forestry management.
Lets start with some basics.
https://www.dfes.wa.gov.au/safetyinform ... erface.pdf
Brief 2 pager from the Dept of Emergency Services in WA. Short and succinct. (I'll come back to why WA shortly)
A Key point from here is basic physics. The intensity of a fire is directly attributable to the amount of fuel. Reduce the fuel, you won't stop fires but they'll be less intense and better able to be managed.
Now, the report from the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires.
http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/final ... ary_PF.pdf
On page 15 it states:
Now note that the Black Saturday fires didn't really touch where the fires are currently burning, places where fuel reduction activities have been woeful so there was a high volume of fuel waiting to burn. Remember that basic physics?Land and fuel management
Prescribed burning is one of the main tools for fire management on public land. It cannot prevent bushfire, but it
decreases fuel loads and so reduces the spread and intensity of bushfires. By reducing the spread and intensity
of bushfires, it also helps protect flora and fauna. Ironically, maintaining pristine forests untouched by fuel reduction
can predispose those forests to greater destruction in the event of a bushfire.
About 7.7 million hectares of public land in Victoria is managed by DSE. This area includes national parks, state
forests and reserves, of which a large portion is forested and prone to bushfire. DSE burns only 1.7 per cent
(or 130,000 hectares) of this public land each year. This is well below the amount experts and previous inquiries
have suggested is needed to reduce bushfire and environmental risks in the long term
Now, a federal parliamentary report to the house of reps back in 2003
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Bu ... report.htm
Now, why reference WA? Because they have it right.
In Western Australia, the Department of Conservation and
Land Management has been conducting prescribed burning
to meet fire protection, forestry and ecological objectives in a
scientific way since the mid-1960s. The planning process
starts seven years in advance of each prescribed burn.
Individual burning guides have been developed through
empirical research for all their major fuel types including dry
Jarrah, to tall wet Karri forest, conifer plantations and Mallee
shrublands.
In the eastern states prescribed burning is largely carried out
using rules of thumb based on a MacArthur’s original
burning guide for dry eucalypt forests produced in the 1960s. Only one specific new burning guide has been developed and
that was for burning under young regeneration of silver top
ash in New South Wales State Forests. Clearly, if prescribed
burning is to be conducted in a more professional way in
New South Wales there is an urgent need for new and better
burning guides that can be applied to a whole range of
different fuel types.95
3.108 This state of affairs was echoed by the IFA:
the states are more or less advanced in the development of
basic fire behaviour information. In some states, principally
WA, there are excellent fire behaviour models that allow
precision burning to be controlled.96
What about the eastern states?
So what was the recommendation, that hasn't been implemented?The Committee received a considerable body of evidence claiming
that prescribed burning programs across all jurisdictions had
declined. Of particular concern was the decline of the programs in
Victoria.
The Committee received evidence that, in some jurisdictions, the
reporting of the success of a prescribed burn in terms of area burnt
was inflated beyond the areas actually burnt. The Captain of the Mitta
CFA alluded to the problem of over-reporting in Victoria:
When a fire has been started as part of a reduction burn but it
does not ‘take’, the area cannot be set aside as ‘burnt’. It can
be classified as burnt only if, in fact, the fuel has been burnt
effectively.97
3.111 The situation appeared to be no better in New South Wales where Mr
David Glasson reported: ‘In a recent situation National Parks claimed
an 80 percent burn and a local volunteer claimed that 20 percent was
burnt.’98
So for those in the TLDR camp, here's my summary of all the information.Recommendation 12
3.137 The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth through the
National Heritage Trust, offer assistance to the states and the Australian
Capital Territory to develop specific prescribed burning guides, at least
to the quality of Western Australia, for national parks and state forests
through out the mainland of south eastern Australia.
1. Fires need fuel to burn. The more fuel, the greater the intensity of the fire.
2. Reducing the amount of fuel doesn't stop fires, it reduces their intensity and makes them more able to be contained
3. Climate change makes it hotter and drier. This doesn't create fuel or increase it's volume, it makes what's already there drier and more succeptible to burn
4. You don't need to pick a side between climate change and fuel reduction FFS. Both need to be managed or this shit is going to be an annual event.
| 1902 | 1903 | 1910 | 1917 | 1919 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1935 | 1936 | 1953 | 1958 | 1990 | 2010 | 2023 | 
