It has happened again — another fuel-reduction burn has got out of control, this time in Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park in Western Australia. Homes have been lost, lives put at risk and there will be yet another government inquiry.
The deliberate lighting of fires in national parks began in the mid-1980s — they were called “ecological burns” — and have been strongly advocated for by botanists to promote plant biodiversity. The effects on mammals, insects, birds, reptiles and amphibians remain devastating, poorly studied and will likely lead to more extinctions.
After the 2009 Black Saturday fires in which so many people dies in Victoria, blame was levelled at greenies for preventing fuel-reduction burning. No evidence was required, with so many dead and such an emotionally charged atmosphere. Announced while fires were still being lit and back-burnt, a poor quality Royal Commission, in which all the agencies and bodies shared a single law firm, was established. The Brumby government did its best to limit the scope of commission and, predictably, responsibility for the fires was awkwardly slated to a few individuals.
In response to its recommendations, fuel-reduction burning was ramped up to cover 6% of the Victoria annually without distinguishing between woodlands, coastal heaths and wet forests, etc. NSW and Western Australia are under pressure to follow suit. Subsequently, a “fire prevention industry” through the use of fire grew even bigger.
Now the Western Australian government has announced an inquiry into the latest fires and already the press has named the people in charge as responsible. The responsibility for these fires and the thousands of deliberately lit fires over the past 200 years cannot be slated home to individuals. We all share it. This was confirmed in research on historic fire frequency over 70,000 years, published last year. It is also in the careful reading of the history of Australian settlement in which fire was the only tool available to open up vast areas of forest and woodland. Grazing kept these areas open as they were burnt and re-burnt for green pick for cattle and sheep long before the development of pasture.
By early 2009 in Victoria, the media was full of people saying that the state was going to burn after two of the hottest days on record. By the time the third day arrived, it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. The media-driven hysteria increased the risk of people lighting fires — and they did.
The damage from fire is routinely underestimated. Water catchments are compromised and polluted, national international publicity reduces tourism, burnt landscapes are vulnerable to landslips and erosion from rain, which can do millions of dollars worth of damage to roads and infrastructure. Historic buildings and homesteads are lost along with farm fences, power and phone lines.
Tens of thousands of people who did not lose homes, spent days, even weeks, in continual states of stress and at times terror, not knowing or understanding where fires were or whether or they were in danger. The impact on people beyond “fire victims” has never been acknowledged.
Families were split, people had breakdowns, and when they lost their homes were forced, by difficult insurance claims and changing building regulations, to live in caravans. The now national “Stay or Go” policy adds to the burden and the confusion, when all people want is for someone or a siren, now banned, to tell them when to go. The CO2 emissions from these fires nationally pales the likely impact of the carbon tax into insignificance.
There is now clear evidence that it is the Europeans that increased the rate of fire in the landscape many times over compared to Aboriginal people. There is also evidence that not all bush burns as hot, or as easily.
The small islands of old forests in Wilson’s Promontory National Park, Tarra Bulga Park and scattered throughout East Gippsland remain unburnt after bearing the brunt and showering embers of successive fires. As the smoke clears from the Western Australian fires it is time to closely examine what did not burn and why.
Is it possible, even now, to objectively look at the bush to see what we can do better to manage the bush and protect bush communities? The answers will upset people. Hard choices may include abandoning logging water supply catchments. Research published this year shows that such logging will increase the fire hazard that the bush presents to surrounding communities. Any compensation to the timber industry will be likely more than offset by maintaining stream flow and water quality.
Jobs would be changed from lighting fires to putting them out and re-vegetating with local fire-retardant species along road reserves and around towns. This would mean only using back-burns right at the fire front to save lives and property.
To those who truly understand forest ecology, fire often results in more fire. Fuel reduction burns favoured by governments, often promote a more flammable vegetation community. Burning vegetation results in the germination of the post fire specialists, acacia’s, tea trees, eucalypts, bush peas, etc. These species need regular fire to maintain their place in the community. If fire is infrequent, the EVC (Ecological Vegetation Class) can mature into another, with a different species composition which may be less flammable. An example is wet sclerophyll forests which can mature into rainforest if fire does not occur for an extended period. This was the case at Tarra Bulga NP on Black Saturday. Therefore regular burning encourages a fire prone and fire dependent community.
The objective of fuel reduction is only of benefit for few years at the most as the vigorous regeneration after this period would often match the pre fire fuel load (in the understorey at least). The effect of this frequency of fire is certainly detrimental to both the EVC as some species would not mature within this period to set viable seed and to the fauna that are killed or displaced.
Fuel reduction burns may be popular with governments anxious to be seen to be doing something and to placate the anti environment lobby that often see nature as the enemy, but in reality their effective influence in managing fuel loads in vegetation communities is minimal. In Marysville where dozens of people died, native vegetation was hundreds of metres from the town centre and it was the ember rain that ignited houses and exotic town vegetation.
People living close to the bush need to accept and plan for the risks associated with this decision.
Gosh Lionel Elmore is an unreliable maker up of nonsense. There are so many howlers through this story it’s hard to know where to begin.
>The deliberate lighting of fires in national parks began in the mid-1980s — they were called “ecological burns” — and have been strongly advocated for by botanists to promote plant biodiversity. The effects on mammals, insects, birds, reptiles and amphibians remain devastating, poorly studied and will likely lead to more extinctions.
Fuel reduction burns have happened for a lot longer than this, in the conservation reserve system too. you may have only woken up to them in the 80s because a lot of parks were made then.
Effects on fauna are quite well studied. No extinctions known. These cool burns are an alternative to hot burns in the middle of summer that affect far greater areas far more severely. which one is going to affect fauna more??
>After the 2009 Black Saturday fires in which so many people dies in Victoria, blame was levelled at greenies for preventing fuel-reduction burning. No evidence was required, with so many dead and such an emotionally charged atmosphere. Announced while fires were still being lit and back-burnt, a poor quality Royal Commission, in which all the agencies and bodies shared a single law firm, was established. The Brumby government did its best to limit the scope of commission and, predictably, responsibility for the fires was awkwardly slated to a few individuals.
No, very little blame was levelled at greenies, in fact more was levelled by greenies at the timber industry. And the RC was poor quality, oh really? In what way? Responsibility hasn’t been slated to any individuals, but to systems and procedures.
> In response to its recommendations, fuel-reduction burning was ramped up to cover 6% of the Victoria annually without distinguishing between woodlands, coastal heaths and wet forests, etc.
Factually wrong. A 5% target is aimed at for in a few years. This target came from a parliamentary inquiry from before the fires.
> Hard choices may include abandoning logging water supply catchments.
you do realise that for Melbourne, about 200 hectares a year is logged from over 170 000 hectares of catchments? Yes of course this would make a huuuge difference.
Regretably a study in the early 90ies by Norton and Kirkpatrick suggested even then that at least in NSW very little fire resistant wet old forest was left especially on the mainland – like 1% and certainly less than 10% of (10% forested land cover on the continent) . And now anecdotal evidence is that Tasmania is being thinned out and dried out with regrowth as megafire tinder.
Not many people even know what a wet old forest canopy feels like or looks like, with wet spongy forest floor thick with humous top soil and dynamic churning of “fuel” by high rates of natural breakdown in wholistic interplay of wildlife and plants. Certainly not the bush suburbs of Canberra where I lived for 8 years – as my old ecology professor used to say – “it’s all stuffed”.
A Nobel Prize may be waiting for the person who can work out how to reverse this downward spiral into a fire prone dry regrowth landscape future. It might involve some kind of ecological boosting or expedition of the moisture holding wet forest canopy which otherwise takes dry schlerophyll the odd 200-300 years to establish as a succession stage to a 1,000 year old rainforest dynamic.
Talk about landscape fire trap. That the systemic and institutional responsibility the loggers, and both major parties of government, won’t own up to at every royal commission for the last 50 years.
It’s a grim thing to say that fatalities from these megafires, that hover for hours in one place and sinter everything, were in the making 50 to 150 years ago by way of land use and water table change. I never was that convinced my home made concrete water tank bushfire bunker at Cattai in the Hawkesbury would work in that scenario. You just do what you can and hope it’s not this time, this one.
I’ve lived in and fought fires in forests for decades, in uniform and out. I’ve been a keen observer of people and actions before, during and after some pretty large burns since my first “big one” the late 1960’s near Dungog.
The first three comments make a lot of sense. If you have skimmed them, go back to the top. These fellows aren’t talking BS.