On 17th June I posted an essay from David Ward, WA, titled ‘Noongars Knew Best‘ about aboriginal management of the dry forests of the SW of Western Australia.
In this new post, which is a powerpoint presentation from David, four scenarios for bushfire management are explored.
The powerpoint is 850kbs and may only work if you save it first … Download file.
David emailed the powerpoint with a note welcoming feedback/comment/debate.
Interestingly ABC Online reported on Friday that the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service was planning a large scale hazard reduction burn at Berowra Valley Regional Park and in adjoining land west of Hornsby and Hornsby Heights. The four-day burn-off was aimed to “lessen the intensity of wild fires in summer”.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Reminds me, a few years ago there were some big backburns (fuel reduction) done up and down the coast which drifted into the Sydney basin and stayed for some weeks.
After some hoo haa in the press the state govt bought in smoke pollution regulation, admin’ed by the EPA.
So if you wanted to burn off you had to do it on a windy day.
Problem is it takes a few weeks to get a fire permit and once you get it you are committed to a short period of time before the permit expires.
If its too windy you would be mad to light up and if its too still the EPA will be onto you so you need a day when its just right, a bit like Goldilocks & the 3 bears.
Its hard to predict the right day for a burn, you dont know until that morning or even lunchtime, and if you go ahead without a permit you are liable for prosecution.
In the spring the old timers of the hawkesbury would go into the bush (now national park) and pick wildflowers to go to market and then throw a match behind them to ensure plenty of flowers for the next year. They tell me that they never had the real bad fires that we have now.
I’ve been back to Katoomba twice since the last wildfires.
The first time it looked like a mess, but surely it will recover okay? Seemed to be good for the building industry, repairing all the property damage.
The most recent visit was a couple of months ago. Well, it’s still a mess. Dead bluegums over extensive areas – very attractive if you catch it it in the late afternoon light. The blackbutt (E. pilularis I think it is, the rough-barked fire resistant tree) are struggling to put on a canopy. The forest has been changed from a mixed species overstorey to a single species overstorey.
The extent of the fire and extraordinary ferocity must have taken out most of the wildlife.
If this weird attempt at fire exclusion is the best way to manage a national park estate, then I suggest it be cleared to facilitate the expansion of suburbia.
Interesting to hear that the hurricane/flood disaster in Louisiana had been predicted for years by disaster management experts in the USA. In fact it became one of the most popular test exercises for disaster management students in graduate schools all over the US.
The situation in southern Australia is similar. Here the inevitable disaster is the big summer bushfire which, if allowed to get going in long-unburnt fuels becomes unstoppable. A strategy based on suppression after a fire starts is about as effective as would be the strategy to save New Orleans from flood damage by rushing in teams of men armed with squeegee mops in the wake of the hurricane. Bushfire disaster planning in Australia must involve an effective program of prescribed burning to reduce fuels years before a fire starts. Aborigines, early settlers, bushmen and foresters knew this, but it is a lesson lost on modern national park managers and urban greens in denial about the environmental damage of large intense wildfires. So sit back and wait for our next bushfire disaster! I can promise you it will happen, and if I had a map showing long unburnt forests in front of me, I can even show you where. And unless there is a change in bushfire management policy by State governments and their agencies, I can tell you the result – loss of lives, loss of properties, infrastructure burnt down, ecological and environmental destruction, millions of dollars up in smoke.
Yorkie
rick ,every year in the northern territory we looked forward to the “after wet” patch burns . so keen were the owners of ban ban springs to get the country right to fatten and concentrate cattle ,we even took to throwing chemical incendiarys out of our cessna .
We didn’t have to muster in barefeet[unlike the Old People] ,but it did make it a lot better to get around by vehicle or horseback .
My parents operate a cattle proeprty in Central Queensland. As part of our freehold properties we also lease State forest country which we stock lightly (due to all the wattle, apple mahogany and lantana) to take pressure off our developed country.
Part of the management strategy, to keep the fire fuel down and regrowth timber in check, we instigated a controlled burn program. Up until 2001 this worked and we were happy with the stocking rates and managment requirments (despite the frustration of a potentially viable property being over grown by woody and noxious weeds).
Post 2001 the EPA removed the control of timber reserves from the Forestry department and the land was rezoned as ‘conservation’. A bush fire went through the pine plantation which borders our property and due to EPA mismanagement, the whole lot could have went up. This coincided with extreme drought conditions, limited water and high temperatures.
After narrowly averting a catastrophe we were hopeful that the EPA would be more willing to listen to local knowledge and those on the ground who feel the most impact from the potential bush fire.
To my parents and my disbelief, when applying to the local EPA for a fire permit in June this year for the up coming burn off period we received the following:
‘The property under which the fire permit XYZ relates to is mapped as endangered remnant vegetation. As such a fire permit will not be issued.’
It must be EPA policy to look on a map, see what colour it is and then decide whether to issue a permit. The problem with fires is that it is not ‘if’ they happen but ‘when’. The only unknown is how severe they will be.
Tom & Kartiya,
Have you any specific examples of Aboriginal fire frequency, season, size, lighting pattern etc? I am studying such matters, and any info you have would be worth recording. Some people dismiss it as ‘anecdotal’, but I see it as extremely important, and often richer than snapshot ‘scientific’ studies.