“It has come to my notice, through a regular contributor to this blog (Rog), that Professor Smith, of Cambridge University, has submitted a systematic review of parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge. He found that there was no experimental, evidence based support for their use (Smith & Pell, British Medical Journal 2003;327:1459-1461).
A letter by Professor Brendan Mackey of ANU (23 Dec 2006) to the Canberra Times, suggested that there is no experimental, evidence based support for the use of widespread prescribed burning to prevent large, dangerous bushfires. A similar opposition to widespread prescribed burning, citing support from ‘most authorities’, has been expressed by Professor Rob Whelan, of Woollongong University, in a letter to a well known journal (Nature416, 15: 2002). Both these letters were, of course, before the recent, and ongoing bushfires in south-eastern Australia.
Professor Smith, the author of the parachute review, proposed that those who demand rigorous evidence from randomised, controlled parachute experiments should themselves volunteer as a control group, without parachute treatment.
May I suggest that Professors Mackey and Whelan, and other academics opposed to widespread prescribed burning, should volunteer, as a control group, to sit in long unburnt bush, on a hot day, as a fire approaches. They should publish their observations (posthumously) in a refereed journal.
I, and others with real bushfire experience, will volunteer to sit in an adjacent large patch of bush recently treated by prescribed burning. I guarantee we will see more native plants and animals, both before and after the fire, than the professorial control group, and, unlike them, will be available for further experiments.
Dave Ward
aka Davey Gam Esq
————————-
Previous posts by Davey include:
Fire, Folly and Dead Canaries, 20th June 2005
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000703.html
Species Vulnerable to Extinction, 12th March 2006
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001253.html
Noogars Knew Best, 17th June 2005
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000672.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Evidence please.
Fuel reduction is important, but when fire weather reaches a certain point its effectiveness is drastically reduced.
I could post some references up, but considering rhetoric is enough to discredit scientists and their research (evidence!) on this blog, I won’t bother…
Dear Dave,
an increasing percentage of Victorian Bushfires are as a result of various types of prescribed burning. The fires on Snake Island reserve in South Gippsland near Wilson’s Promontory burnt for more than a week after the heavy handed use of backburns on a lightening strike initially controlled at less than 5 hectares.
Next an ‘ecological burn’ designed to increase ‘biodiversity’ took off and burnt some thousands of hectares at the north side of Wilson’s Prom around Mount Margret, also fought over a week.
There have been a number of burns on the west coast of Wilson’s Promontory as Melbourne University academics approach to park management prevailed with Kunzea targeted as being ‘too dense’.
In 2003 a contract labour hire firms took applications from people wanting to fight fires who had to pass a basic physical test and either had training or received training.
Their pay rate was $16.50 per hour and the only way of getting that pay up was to work overtime and the only way to work overtime, to increase the pay rate by 50-100% was to have fires not in control at knock off time.
In 2005 a paperbark swamp adjacent to Tidal River camping ground in Wilson’s Promontory National Park was lit by Parks Victoria just prior to the Easter School Holidays. It was left burning and there were several half hearted attempts to put it out.
There were less than a dozen staff on the Friday before the School Holidays when the fire took off pushed by the long predicted strong north westerly winds. The local CFA saved everyone in the camping grounds. Parks Victoria staff and local fire fighters who worked with both all headed to the park.
Rather than attempt to limit the fire with this well qualified group on site they were stood down to ‘asset protection’, watching the fire burn up Mount Oberon taking out the communications centre and running all the way to the lighthouse.
By 6 am the next morning a substantial staff had moved into the now abandoned camping ground, taken over the park office and taken up residence which they maintained while ‘fighting’ and an aggressive PR campaign (look at the bush regrowing!!)the fire over the next two months.
A huge fire break was constructed, uselessly, cut from east to west across the park – a scare that will remain for my life time and a fire break on a dead end which is likely mostly too dangerous to fight from anyway. Even wet gully vegetation was cut and the likely total cost of the break was hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A lightening strike occurred in the Grampians and the local CFA crews were prevented from attending enabling this fire to spread to a major bushfire thgat again burnt for more than a week.
Due to insurance (no State Insurance available)considerations the very nature of fire fighting has now changed. Both the CFA and government staff are not allowed to be placed in danger at the fire front. For each section of the fire they build containment lines well back and light back burns between the containment lines and the bare earth scapes from bulldozers.
It is proposed to establish and maintain a bare earth firebreak around the entire Thomson water supply catchment.
Asset protection also is reliant on risk assessment. Residents are given the choice of staying to protect their homes or leaving. A few residents were left to their own devices without support – all survived and most saved more than their own homes which begs the question as to why fire trucks were withdrawn.
Backburns and even fuel reduction burns were lit during these fires, despite very limited capacity to contain them. These backburns are likely to have made a significant contribution to the East Gippsland fires.
Community meetings, printing of fire maps for distribution and continuous media liaison has created further substantial employment.
Finally Dave, if you had taken your own advice and sat comfortably in the 2003 regrowth burnt little more than two years before you would have been killed – mercifully very quickly. The fire, according to reports from government officers on radio at the time, actually sped up in the 2003 burn area and that fire is now not far from Thredbo, having jumped the border.
In Australia there is an unfortunate confluence of graziers who burn frequently for stock feed, forest managers that have adopted US Fire Use management regimes and botanists who find, at times, increased biodiversity from what seed is forced to strike and germinates from the ashes. This has created the opportunity for south-eastern Australia to develop, however inadvertently, a multi million dollar fire industry.
The last twenty years of increased fuel reduction burning and increasing fire frequency needs a systematic objective analysis on a case by case basis covering the many forest ecotypes.
It is nonsensical to generalise across all forest ecotypes and fires when there are forests of greater than one hundred years of age without fire that still persists – a statistical impossibility if all vegetation types more prone to fires the longer they went between burns.
Bob McDonald
Bob, you seem to be unable to distinguish between a fuel reduction burn, conducted in cooler months of the year to reduce fuel loads, and an emergency back burn to counter a mid-summer hot fire. Your post moves almost seemlessly between the two when they are chalk and cheese.
Of course emergency backburns go wrong, $hit happens in big bushfires. But to imply, as you have, that Sparks and Wildfires practice is anywhere near “normal”, let alone consistent with best practice hazzard reduction is a cruel joke.
You will find the best applications of hazzard reduction on private land. The best is when the need to contain a cold forest fire is also served by closely grazed adjoining paddocks, crops under irrigation, access roads and boundary fire breaks. The key to its success, and the key to private forests superior habitat values and habitat security, is the very mosaics of land use that many less informed people criticise as fragmentation.
The public sector forest management regime is one based on the assumption that any fragmentation of canopy or understorey is bad. This is despite the fact that on any local species list, the only species unable to cross a gap of even 1000 metres are those that move along or in the creeks.
To public sector forest managers a 100 metre gap is to be avoided at all cost on the assumption that it is a threat to the movement of species. But in fact, such a gap, if well placed, can actually protect those species by restricting the movement of their worst enemy, uncontrolled fire.
Only a very small proportion of the “fragmented” private forest estate is subject to serious fire in any year while the contiguous forests of the public estate are routinely subject to broadscale clearfiring and mass destruction of wildlife.
Bob,
You call for evidence. Please volunteer for the experiment.
P.S. Do you, by any chance, live in the city?
JD,
Ditto.
Bob,
Third and last post for today. Of course fires speed up when fuel is lighter. Ever seen a stubble fire? Think about the resultant of the updraught and the horizontal wind. Yet fires in light fuel, even if fast moving, are definitely less intense than those in heavy fuel.
On what basis do you say that fuel reduction burning has increased over the past twenty years? Fuel reduction burning has been steadily declining in frequency, and increasing in intensity, since the Aborigines gave up. That’s why we are in a pickle.
Nice try Dave. How about some evidence?
(Surely you have some prior evidence to back up your Note? Or is it all hanging on this oh so ‘scientific’ experiment you’re planning ((but not really planning, ’cause it was just more rhetoric))
Fuel reduction burning carried out in the cooler months of the year does indeed work. The evidence from CALM in WA, FNSW, and other land management agencies is real.
The 1997 Putty fires were able to stopped when the fire in the adjacent Wollomi National Park reached the Putty State Forest. The reason that they could be stopped is due to the 7500ha fuel reduction burn carried out by FNSW staff over the late autumn or early winter of that year.
How do I know this? I planned and conducted the fuel reduction burn. It was perfect fuel reduction weather, flame height was low, there was no or limited canopy scorch and the purpose of the burn was achieved. It assisted in the supresion of an out of control wildfire coming out of national park.
The situation in NSW where land managers are stymied in their ability to properly manages their estate due to the bureaucracy of the bushfire committee’s has all but made such fuel reduction burns a thing of the past. More’s the pity as there is real life evidence, amply supported by research (through the CSIRO)that fuel reduction does work.
Remember the fire triangel Fuel, Oxygen and Ignition. We can only manage the fuel, the other two are beyond our influence. Ecologically it is imperative that we manage fuel loads. Regardless of the research of people such as Mackay and others whose models are not reality.
FUEL REDUCTION IS NECESSARY
I agree.
But anyone who claims that managing bushfires is as simple as Fuel, Oxygen and Ignition is seriously uninformed or deliberately misleading.
Ignition, Oxygen, Fuel, Wind, Temperature, Humidity…
Fuel reduction can help, but on bad days its effectiveness is limited, if not totally negated.
JD,
Since you have ventured four opinions today, I will try likewise. By ‘bad day’ I assume you mean extreme weather. The trouble is, as recent events have shown once more, fires in heavy fuel create their own weather, such as strong winds, twisters, and thunderstorms with lightning strikes. Fuel reduction does not stop fires altogether, but it sure makes them easier to control, and reduces damage to the natural environment. Peter and I know that from close personal experience. How many fires have you fought?
JD,
Fuel, Oxygen, Ignition….. are all that fires need. Temperature and Humidity may influence ignition potential and certainly influence fire behaviour once started but are not essential to start a fire, the other three are essential.
So no, I am not uniformed nor am I misleading this debate. Fuel reduced forest becomes more manageble on bad days, especially when a fire has just started. Once a fire is well established and is crowning then the efficacy of fuel reduction is lessened but it is not completely negated and it allows firefighters to conduct supression activities with a relatively greater degree of safety.
Thanks for your response, Peter.
To lay my position on this out on the table… I believe that fuel reduction is important both for hazard reduction and ecological purposes. The limitations imposed on it by extreme weather conditions (a fact I maintain from the many papers I’ve read and fire scientists I’ve spoken to) and the costs and logistics of burning on a broad scale, suggest to me that we should prescribe fire strategically, in areas where asset protection is a priority.
Experts in combustion & control: Jens blog comes up again and again. Why do I bother to google? Try WIKI and get motor bikes, cylinders and cars but it can’t lead us to pressure, water vapour, vortexes and drying of fuels and so on.
Believe me or not; our combustion rates at atmospheric pressure depend very much on wind speed, fuel dry or green etc.
JD: we living out on the margins each need to use a fire stick every time we go out in thongs but that’s just my idealism.
At the risk of sounding foolish, I would like to ask some questions in the hope that some of you can provide me with some informed answers. I have not fought a fire, and I have not read up on hazard reduction, controlled burning and so on. I could read back on some of the past posts, but this seemed an ideal opportunity to ask whilst this thread was here.I would like to know how often hazard reduction should be carried out, and the effects of this and natural fires on the flora and especially fauna (I know a lot of our native flora is designed for fire). I will use some examples. Just say Department of Conservation officers want to do hazard reduction burning in a large area of park which contains species such as quolls, skinks, snakes, gliders and so on. What happens to these animals? A year or two later there is a natural fire that comes through. What happens to any animals that are left? In other words, what are the effects (long and short-term) of these fires, intentional or not, on the animals that live there and can not easily escape? Is there the risk of losing pockets of threatened species? I realise this is a naive question, but I would appreciate some enlightenment on this. Please, no abusive, obnoxious answers.
Dear Winston,
See my Nyoongar essay above, as a start. Read Sylvia Hallam’s ‘Fire & Hearth’. There is much more I can send you. In general, bush should be burnt as often as it will carry a fire. That way, fires are very mild and patchy, leaving many unburnt refuges for animals. Leave it longer, and you lose both refuges and animals. Aborigines knew that, and still do in the north. Weeds are a problem, whether you burn, or not. We have to solve that one. Hope this helps. It is, of course, much simplified.
JD,
The costs and logistics of fuel reduction burning need to be taken in the context of the costs and logistics imposed when wildfire is present. There is no comparison wildfire costs to the community are horrendous.
Fuel reduction burning also provides training for fire crews and new volunteers. Wildfires are not the place to do these things. So think of fuel reduction burning as investing in fire fighting capacity as well as reducing the fuel load and the costs start to change. The ability to fight a fire effectively and quickly due to adequate fuel reduction burning reduces the costs associated with fighting a wildfire. Both in terms of expenditure and costs boorn by the community that are not take into account by most academics.
What I find most amusing is these young fellows straight out of forestry school who insist you have to completely log the bush to save it. All eucalypts have to start by fire don’t they?
That’s when I know they have never seen an ancient patch in a decent eucalypt forest and wondered how those giants just keep on growing up or out depending on the type of country. Eucalypts grow up through gravel and sand with out fire, even new roads can be thick with mountain ash seedlings.
Ahhh, but tall trees shade out little ones? So you think. My final clue came quickly as we lived in tents hidden on our steep bush block amongst old stumps, blackberries, ferns and Tasmanian bull ants. The European wasps only came after I cleaned it up a bit.
One day I fell into a hole under a blackberry pile and could not reach the outside again even with my fern hook held high. There were many more such holes to be discovered but their origin remained a mystery for months. However the was just one old hollow stump big enough to hide the Kingswood with a series of deep toe holds cut with an axe in rings with separation about four or five feet up.
Down on a little flat below was another even bigger ancient buttress however this one was torn out. Along my ridge dozens of giants had fallen long before the wood cutters arrived. Each had rolled over lifting a block of soil and rocks the size of a large house. Judging by our stumps the naturally fallen tree lasted a least a century mostly in tact but they must have knocked over a lot of other forest at the time.
There was one day our 80 year old forest was nearly flattened by the wind, but this lot did not fall. Subtle young wood hey. That was the day I quickly parked our tractor on the tents. Never under estimate the wind and its impact on old forests and fires.
Gavin,
Clearly, you have either never been to forestry school or the curriculum has changed since you did, otherwise you wouldn’t make some of the comments that you do.
Many Eucalypts will regenerate in the absence of fire, just not those found in wet forests. Take a trip to Tassie and go deep into the “wilderness” and see if you can find eucalypt regeneration in the absence of disturbance. I doubt very much that you can.
Fire is just one disturbance vector, but probably the most important for those wet forests.
Winston, Peter, Davey,
Christine Jones has an alternative perspective she has written:
Jones suggests that regular burning is extremely detrimental to soft forms of native ground cover and encourages a dominance of relatively unpalatable grasses, removes surface litter leaving the soil unprotected, reduces potential for nutrient cycling, reduce water-holding capacity and degrade soil structure. … concluding that “fire is a tool which should be used cautiously and infrequently”.
Jones suggests that the recruitment of productive native legumes and grasses is favoured by mulching which is destroyed by regular burning.
Jones promotes grazing on the basis that “The open, park-like appearance of many areas at the time of European settlement has often been attributed to indigenous burning regimes. More recent evidence suggests that the healthy grasslands and friable soils described by the first settlers were more likely to have reflected the high abundance of small native mammals, such as bettongs and potoroos most of which are now locally extinct … with the loss of the regenerative effects of small native mammals in Australia since European settlement, managed grazing is now arguably the only natural means by which grasslands can be ‘improved’ in a holitistic way.”
More information here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000828.html
I have trouble with the idea of one type of fire regime being best for all vegetation types.
I also know that a good hot fire can knock out some difficult Queensland weeds including rubbervine and lantana.
Thank you Davey, Gavin and Jenn. I recall on one of the recent threads on fire someone saying that an area that had been controlled burned earlier and then had a bushfire go through it actually burnt fierce and hot, which was totally unexpected. I guess I get distressed like many others seeing little animals suffer and wonder what is best for them and the environment they live in. I can’t help but think that there is no single best way to manage bushfires, and we still have much to learn.
Christine Jone’s theory looks good right up to the point when you start accounting for the large areas of die back across a variety different mostly dry forest types around Australia. The one common causal link in all these health affected forests is the removal/absence of fire.
Peter, you are dead right, I have never been to forestry school. In fact I don’t think any of my folks over six generations did either. BTW my comments were not directed at you or your knowledge. I contact others virtually on a day to day basis.
Now let’s agree the object here is about bushfire and its impacts. “Wilderness” is only what we make it. If man is in there then he has changed it for better or worse. I got lost for half a day once in a steep patch of horizontal scrub deep down the Hellyer Gorge. After falling off greasy rocks and logs back into that treacherous river I was wild. Nobody it seemed had left me any tracks. Neither had there been a fire.
Winston: I keep several big tufts of soft native grass recommended for special care in my back garden. Every time they look like becoming a fire hazard again I mow them down with a Victa and that’s because if I did light them up we would loose a neighbourhood.
Back on the hobby farm some years ago now I lost a scrub gully fire and it killed some good big stringy barks but the wild life never looked back. I took some photos last year and the visitors thought that same gully was a steep playground with a lot of tall tee trees and well groomed soft native grass where the worst blackberries had been. However my eucalypt forest is another matter. Where it joins the paddock it is over my head again in masses of bracken. That’s where our bettong now lives. Nobody I know now wants to use my fern hook.
Jennifer: It’s after midnight and it too hot. While trying to recall how we got the Zeta from some dairy farm near Cobram to the hobby farm across the strait after a diesel refit without me driving it I remembered something perhaps even Peter can smile at. It’s about long term trends in Australian forestry, marketing and R&D on forest products that all of us have a hand in. However it’s not in any books I found. It can lead to thinking about demand, recycling, asset protection and so on.
Bluntly; “DAWN” 1940’s = “Do Away With Newspaper”. “Sorbent” came later but it too was about to replace “Hygenic” paper, that stuff with a hard shiny side cooked on the MG cylinder, the other side like sand paper. Suddenly governments everywhere had a new market for their old “experimental” pine plantations. We could ‘sell the rubbish’ in high places. Our hardwood chips went to Japan after they discovered the “Hygenic” thing was to wrap our transistors and toys. Accessible native forests hardly saw the light of day again.
Anyone watching the current ABC bushfire series on their TV must see how crop fires of all types with abundant fine fuels speed up more than they did in old growth native forests. Wind speed adds pressure in the combustion and gaseous flares continuously leave the main fire. However I don’t discount the impact of embers being blown out of the furnace with great force, as I spent 18 months working beside a blacksmith before I went on to furnace control.
There is a great thing called “the school of hard knocks” and it always goes before science.
Dave: I will support the practice over academic theory anytime. At this moment though I’m trying to undo something a few of us started back in the 1970’s, removing cattlemen from the fragile high country. Input on my part at least was purely about water retention in the off snow season and thinking we could avoid building something like the Dartmouth Dam up stream from the Hume.
We won that battle for a time based on limited research but the irrigators still wanted more and the dam was eventually built as planned.
One bushfire scientist is still opposed to cattle because of impact of their hooves however I’m not so sure about Kevin Tolhurst who has been advising the Vic Gov over their most recent crisis. “Fire fighting is an admission of failure, the ambulance-at-the-bottom-of-the-cliff approach.” The age com.
I reckon its only driasabone troops on horseback we need.
Now it’s raining hey. My root blocked storm water drains are causing a minor flood, wonderful!
A lot of grass/plant seeds will only germinate after fire or smoke, new potash makes a good seed bed.
For burning off you have to classify areas of risk, around buildings and along ridge tops would be high risk (annual) whereas lillipilli is low risk. Fire roars up hillls and creeps down rhem. Under hot windy conditions paperbarks make for an intense fire. Under very dry conditions a few leaves on the ground even dry grazed grass can allow a fire to spread along to ‘heavier’ country such as windbreaks.
Jones is wrong in claiming that frequent fire reduces water retention capacity. Many soils develop hydrophobic layers at or near the surface that need disturbance to break.
And as the economics and ecology of disc ploughing of forests is somewhat suspect, to say the least, then fire is the only alternative.
The main concern from the no-fire-brigade appears to be about the cumulative effects of fire. But this seems to be on the assumption that hazzard reduction burns are of the same scale and intensity as wildfires. They are not.
The best fire management regime I have seen is by Glenn Shailer, on Brisbane’s south side. His 220ha is between Daisy Hill SF and the Venman Reserve.
Since 1937 he has done it all by himself, starting on the ridge tops, at dusk, when ground conditions are just dry enough to get a fire started. When the tops are done, and this may take a month of intermitent evenings, he then starts on the gentle south facing slopes, working back with whatever wind is present, towards the ridgetops.
By the time this has been done his more dangerous north facing slopes are surrounded by a mosaic of newly burned patches, fresh green pick and lush moist growth. This not only eliminates most of the potential danger from the north facing slopes but also ensures that most of the wildlife have already moved into the lush moist growth where they are not only safe but thriving.
He does not do the whole property in one year because the fuel loads do not accumulate sufficiently to allow it.
But recently he has been subject to various levels of departmental buffoonery where this months dropkick thinks he has a better handle on the situation. In most cases it is the same stupidity that is reinvented by a continuous stream of know-it-alls.
They all have reservations about an octagenarian with one off-sider wandering about his bush lighting fires wherever he thinks he should. They all think he should have a documented fire management plan (as if the one in his head isn’t good enough). And they all think the best way to do it would be to schedule eight fire units for six months in advance and burn the bloody lot in one go, regardless of the conditions. At Glenn’s expense, of course.
He is too much of an old style gentleman to use the kind of language the situation calls for but they all get the message eventually and “discover” more pressing issues to spend their valuable time on.
Ian – perhaps Glenn Shailer doesn’t want any publicity or bother at his age. However why don’t you at least make an attempt to facilitate a Minister’s visit on the issue of fire ecology. Any prospect of attempting a positive approach? How about an attempt to get some intelligent engagement on these issues.
Ian,
Mr Shailer’s approach seems to make very good sense, and it would be dreadful if they did come in and burn it all in one lot. Is there anything practical and polite that can be done?
Ian,
What you describe reminds me of interactions in the 1920s between our second WA Conservator of Forests (Stephen Kessell) and his old timer staff. They told him that regular light burning was essential, and could only be done by people with local intimate of the bush, and the ability to act quickly when opportunities for burning arose. Kessell was, initially, in keeping with then forestry dogma, opposed to any sort of burning. His annual reports show how his mind changed, due to hard experience of increasing difficulty in fighting fires, as fuel piled up. Those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it.
JD: You seem to agree with Professors Mackey and Whelan on ‘strategic’ burning. Sorry chaps, its been tried in WA (1916 to 1950) and completely failed. Trying to burn small parts of the landscape which are surrounded by long unburnt, is a sure road to disaster. If you don’t believe me, try it. Broadscale prescribed burning, with islands of longer unburnt, is the only possibility, apart from clearing native bush. I think some academics need to get out there and learn a bit about the realities of fire.
“local intimate knowledge” that is…
For current Bushfire research you can go to the Bushfire CRC site and for montane fuel management go to the HighFire project run by the CRC.
One of their research sites is on Snowy Plains, between Eucumbene Dam and Mt Jugungal in KNP.
This site is privately held high country and provides a direct comparison between land that has been grazed for profit since white settlers arrived and land that has become public reserve.
It will be interesting to read what their research concludes.
Prescribe Burning was limited in the mid 1990’s by the SEP 46 reg’s that required brigades to have an EIS done by a competent person, among a large number of other restrictions.
Agricultural burn’s were very much in vogue to circumvent this inconvenient requirment.
It has taken almost a decade to wind that back but the current system still requires much time, planning and effort by any brigade wishing to do any prescribed burning.
Personally, I now just prepare the land around my assets by slashing and wait for Mum Nature decide where she wants to hazard reduce.
The fuel now in most long unburnt areas is now so high that even the best planned burn has a high risk of getting away.
The current drought (one of many through history) obviously doesn’t help.
Last year’s parachute jump won’t affect next years. While fuel load & fire intensity might be simple like the isolated event parachute example, those other controversial ecological and biodiversity factors are more complex (interesting comments above but so much disagreement among experienced people – does anyone have the whole picture, are we awaiting trials and research, bureaucrat changeover, or what?). Did the aborigines really burn everywhere as frequently as it could carry a fire? (Perhaps we should give the land back seeing we can’t manage it properly, dig dig ignore that).
Can we apply the parachute commonsense observation and experience test to climate change and limits to growth as well, or is it reserved for pet arguments only? If so, we’d take Gavin’s local observations as heavy warning signs, and listen to Lamna from the other thread: “Blatently obvious, commonsense suggests that pumping out hundreds of millions of tons of assorted effluents annually and massive consumption of resources will have an impact on the environment… it’s not rocket science.”
Posted by: Lamna nasus at January 24, 2007 09:45 AM
Timely news: Do you think the legal defence of the women in Belgium who tampered with her lover’s partner’s parachute will use this study to argue a lack of evidence that such tampering would increase or decrease the likelihood of death? Innocent until/unless proven guilty: the prosecution will have to prove that she caused the death.
‘Can we apply the parachute commonsense observation and experience test to climate change and limits to growth as well, or is it reserved for pet arguments only?’
Well said.
Panthera,
Not being an expert on Belgian (or any) law, I can’t advise you. It would make an interesting academic paper in – er – the Journal of Belgian Parachute Research. Perhaps some of our bushfire professors could take a sabbatical to Brussels Uni, and help in experiments. A Professor Van Der Rumpole would be a good supervisor, or perhaps Monsieur Poireau.
JD: You sound huffy. Facts can be hard to accept. Join your local Volunteer Fire Brigade. Sweat is cathartic. Radiant heat is a good learning experience.
Panthera,
With regard to Aboriginal burning, they would have had a lot of help from lightning. Remember that there were no fire brigades, helicopters, roads, agricultural land, and other fire breaks. Lightning alone would have caused fires trickling along all summer, and travelling hundreds of kilometres, if they didn’t run into an area already recently burned. If the Aborigines had to endure fires like those recently, they would have died out. If not killed directly by the fires, they would have had nothing to eat. ‘Fire modelers’ who recommend fire be excluded for decades from large areas such as National Parks, seem to overlook this, or dismiss it as anecdotal. Perhaps, at heart, they still believe in ‘terra nullius’, or ‘wilderness’, before whitefella came along. Ask the Aborigines what they think of that idea.
Dave: authorities today fail to recognize the point; Aborigines had few resources deployed at any time. Their fire regime had to be achieved with a minimum of labor and fuss.
IMHO they weren’t stressed as individuals on the job either.
No idea what a belgian woman has to do with parachute jumping and commonsense but I’m sure pinksy pants can draw a thread.
How do you codify commonsense? the inference is that it is an product of collective thought.
Sorry Luke and Libby, you have not read the script. Intelligent engagement with a queensland government minister is an oxymoron. It is also pissing in the wind because some ignorant moron will be in the same minister’s ear the next day with a load full of mindless ideology to the contrary.
The entire SES and ministry operate at such a pace that they function like goldfish in a bowl. Each time they are told something they take it completely on board but do not retain it long enough to counter the direct opposite that they then completely accept the next day. And even if the message does eventually sink in it will be just before they switch portfolios and we’ll have to start all over again on a new boofhead.
The green movement and their captured government, like all extremists, has a destiny to destroy the very thing they value the most. And I am certainly not inclined to bust a gut to delay their date with that destiny.
It is just a case of letting nature take its course.
Ian, I find your response really sad. The gist of it is that the ‘greenies’ are to blame, the forests and ‘greenies’ can all burn in hell, and the sooner the better. I’m sure the gliders would appreciate your apparent complacency and vengeful ideals (not).
I’m not exactly asking you to do anything, but perhaps some of us others can try, with information from you on the situation. Of course nothing may make a difference, but you never know until you try. I am willing to explore some avenues, provided people here, who seem to have knowledge and experience of fire management, think that Glenn Shailer is using good management techniques.
I have a huge fear of fire, which probably comes from getting badly burnt feet as a child, and I hate seeing wildlife, livestock and people suffer due to other’s incompetence or addiction to arson. If one man seems to be managing his property sensibly and avoiding large loss of wildlife now and in the future, then I would like to see him made a positive example.
Dave,
You’re yet to prove that you’ve got anything more than rhetoric to offer. Not sure what radiant heat has to do with the scientific evidence (or lack thereof) of your argument.
I was just calling for some hard science, which is what this blog is allegedly about.
La Pantera just made a very good point about the double standards when it comes to pet issues, like fuel reduction…
Ian
OK enough.
You reckon the green movement has captured the government. They have? Government is far from green – see vehicle fleet, use of energy etc.
If they want to build something, put in a road/pipeline or cut it down — no problemo.
So I’d suggest we have “spotted” greenieness.
Anyway – you guys have been banging on about inappropriate fire ecology for some time. Not wanting to give anyone a job (don’t you hate dobbers) but surely this is an area where you need to “expose” the debate to the Australian public – so I would have thought IPA with TCA and your new mates in channel 9 (see Murray Darling episode) could have organised a documentary on this. Very topical after recent bushfires. You have your Pilliga scrub story. CRCs – Bushfire and Tropical Savannas.
Woodland thickening. Eucalypt regrowth after fire contributing to the drought. Perhaps too much fire in northern Australia and too little in southern Australia.
Surely some extractus digitalis is called for !
You can show intelligent octgenarians doing ministers like dinners. What’s Turnbull’s position here.
Letting “nature take its course” sounds like how fuel builds up. How about a regenerative video burn? If you’re going to take over the world you need to confront us. Perhaps you can get a failed ex-PM aspirant (~ Al Gore) to do the voice over?
Carpe diem ! – not carping on !
JD: Radiant heat has a great deal to do with fire spread and intensity. It dries and warms the fuel ahead of the flames. It also can evaporate water, so making fire fighting difficult, or impossible in some cases. It probably also relates to Phil Cheney’s finding that broad fire fronts tend to produce more extreme fire behaviour than narrow ones. Draw a diagram with radiant heat arrows and you will see what I mean.
You ask for hard scientific facts. That was the point of the parachute metaphor. Some things are bloody obvious, especially to those who actually have experience of parachute jumping, or fire fighting.
However, if you have some mathematical background, I would value your comments on a paper I am preparing, which shows (I believe) that putting more ignitions into an area will produce a finer grained mosaic (smaller fires). Trying to keep fire out of an area will result, eventually and inevitably, in a coarser grained mosaic (bigger fires). I think that is what we are seeing in Victoria, isn’t it? Would you agree that, in general, a finer grained fire mosaic is better both for human safety, and for nature conservation? Not just size, but shape of fire is important. Some Aboriginal burning involved fast moving, narrow strips, started from a spot, or short line of ignition, in strong wind. They sometimes used the sea breeze to turn such fires back on themselves. Park rangers could relearn that skill. Such a narrow burnt area would be easily recolonised by plants and animals, unlike the broad black deserts which come from hare-brained attempts at broad acre, long term fire exclusion.
If you want to co-operate, my email address is mumpnpop@iinet.net.au
Please keep comments civil, personal attacks will be deleted.
The problem with controlled preventative burning is that is must pass through a bureaucracy, which is by nature frustratingly ineffecient. A good day for a burn just happens and you do it, you light the fire in the mid afternoon of a sunny day so that it fizzles out as the evening cold hits it. This will provide a break for the nexxt burn that races up the hill. Working to a control plan that has been drawn up back at HQ is madness, backburning to map coordinates seems absurd.
The message is that landholders are not trusted by ‘society’ (managers of ‘commonsense’) to manage their own land.
Agreed Rog,
There must be local ownership of fire. Conservator Stephen Kessell in WA realised that in the 1920s. Even Bruce Esplin and his off-siders recommended listening more to local knowledge. Trouble is they didn’t.
With enough small scale local burning, there will be no need for a vast fire bureaucracy.
Any assistance to a corrupt regime that has stolen private land and obtained the benefits of other people’s land by deception will only help maintain that regime and prolong its persecution of its victims.
Luke has claimed that the Qld Government has not been captured but just google upthe Qld DPIF site, type “forestry” into the search engine and you will get a page of supposed links on the topic of forestry.
But what do we find at the very top of the list? None other than the Australian Rainforest Protection Society, the most anti-forestry organisation in the country, and responsible for the broadscale degradation of 800,000ha of State Forest in SEQ alone. And headed by the same Aila Keto to whom all ministerial briefings with any reference to forestry are forwarded for vetting prior to presentation to the minister.
I went to the DPI web site for Forestry and noted a lot of production forestry information:
http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/cps/rde/xchg/dpi/hs.xsl/29_ENA_HTML.htm
I typed “forestry” into the search box and was presented with many annual reports and informed there were two search services.
Using the old service mentioned by Ian at
http://www2.dpi.qld.gov.au/home/416.asp
I typed “forestry” into the search box and was presented with a plethora of information on fire, forestry in the community and some production news.
I didn’t see the “Australian Rainforest Protection Society”.
Looks like a massive orientation to traditional forestry type stuff to me.
I don’t know Aila Keto and have never met her. I have heard plenty though.
I wonder how Ian knows that Aila vets Ministerial briefings. How does he actually know that?
And how exactly has 800,000 ha of State Forest in SEQ been destroyed. Where exactly is the destroyed forest? Brisbane Forest Park seemed to be there last time I looked. And I think I smelt smoke again last night. Lamington and the Jimna Range still there. And the Bunya Mountains too. I wonder how these systems survived before European settlement. I did notice a lot of eucalypt woodland felled for housing at Springfield Lakes and Collingwood Park.
Perhaps Aila is effective because she is persistent, makes a logical argument and is polite but firm. Might some lessons be learned here?
Perhaps rural leadership have failed their constituency on vegetation management by ineffective representation.
Ian – I was not after your advice. I was suggesting you might be proactive in advocating a better fire regime for forestry, forests and woodlands if you’re so very keen on the issue. One may need some publicity and persistence in achieving that outcome. I would have thought that you would have the good will of pretty well the entire blog here in improving matters.
Well done Davey for putting up the post and for putting up with the fuel reduction skeptics.
I have spent the last few days checking out the result of our green masters environmental management regime.
To some it up in one word. Sad.
Davey if you want some photos of the devastation I can supply them to you, including before and after shots.
Christ it is unbeleivable that people deny that fuel reduction decreases intensity.
To some up what I have seen.
All ground cover, including riparian and southern slopes, in many areas is completely wiped out over many, many kilometers. Considerable areas of crowning or trees that have had their canopies cured.
No animals and no footprints, snake tracks in the areas I visited.
That’s it really. Wipe out.
If this is an act of God, he’s a sick man. Just like the fuel reduction skeptics.
And to those skeptics. How about risking prosecution and driving out to the areas that were hit bad by these fires. Do it for the animals you seem so concerned about. What you will see is self explanatory.
Thanks Stewie.
Where are you JD? I was looking forward, with your help, to a smooth transition from mere rhetoric to crisp mathematics. Lackaday, you have abandoned me. Ah well, if you are still around, try drawing a fine grained, diverse landscape mosaic, giving each patch a different fuel age. Then advance those fuel ages a year at a time, with occasional lightning strikes, or vandal attacks, but no deliberate, regular prescribed burning. You will find that, inevitably, the mosaic gets coarser (i.e. bigger, fiercer fires, less diversity, just like Victoria in 2003 and 2006).
Now start with the same initial mosaic, and burn, every year, any patch that will carry a fire. You will find that the mosaic is stable (small, benign fires, greater diversity).
If you want a more formal mathematical statement, email me, as invited before.
I look forward to our advance from rhetoric to logic, through the grammar of mathematics. Remember the old medieval university tripos of logic (to think clearly), grammar (to communicate clearly), and rhetoric (to contend against confusion)? Not a bad way to go. Our universities might consider that.
Try this, Luke, the directions were not quite correct but these are.
Type in QLD DPIF in the windows live search engine
This will get you a list, the third being “useful links” in relation to forestry at the State Development web site. Click on that and you get the rainforest wonkers up top followed by DNRM, DPI Forestry, some assorted promo bumf and Timber Qld, as usual, up the rear.
As for Keto vetting ministerial briefings, I have a copy of an email from a person who was required to do it as part of his departmental duties. But as he may still be employed there, and it would take some time to find, you will just have to take my word for it.
“Perhaps rural leadership have failed their constituency” is really rich. It is a bit like excusing Pol Pot for the excesses of “year zero” by claiming urban leadership failed their constituency. Or claiming that 30 million Kulaks died at uncle Jo Jo’s hand because Russian rural leadership failed their constituency.
It is an interesting topic on this Australia Day. Perhaps it is more the case that the urban majority failed to protect the rural minority from the excesses of zealots? Perhaps the fundamentals of justice and equity have been trashed by spivs while the voters watched net porn and sleaze TV?
Either way, if you want to save the forests then just give them back to the communities that always looked after them. You will get no help from me on how to protect stolen goods.
Oh so it’s not Google – maybe blame Microsoft?
FAir nuff – but on the official sites you get a wad of production stuff indicating foresters must still be doing a few things out there.
Ian I have heard so many Aila stories from high priestess of virtue to bride of satan – it’s enough to make your head spin. And she also seems to be in 3 places at the same time. Supernatural?
And I reckon your leadership has failed you – did we see extensive TV interviews, newspaper adverts, trucks and tractors jamming George St – no you all just rolled over on veg. Wot a crap response. You all just had a beer and a sook. And now you’re just whinging and abusing the few people in town like me who still listen to you.
But that’s a typical result from assisting industry advocates – they usually knife the scientists in the back at some point. Et tu lobbyists !
So if we give the forests back to the communities that looked after them – mmost pertinent for Australia Day – on invasion day that would be the Aboriginals would it not? And how did all these forests survive without European foresters until we all turned up on the boat anyway?
Jeez Ian you do seem to know a lot about the seedy side of the Internet too? (best to be quiet or you’ll have Pinki Pants dressing u down again).
🙂
OK so I went here
http://www.sd.qld.gov.au/dsdweb/v3/guis/templates/content/gui_cue_cntnhtml.cfm?id=5444
And yes you are right – but SD are a bunch of spivs and you must be the first person to ever use that site looking for anything serious on forestry.
Hi all. What fuel? I have tried looking for fuel in some old coastal strips down here but it rots so quickly. There is no solid timber. Can’t even get a fire to boil the billy from what is on the ground. Termites play a big role here, along with fungi and bacteria. If it was burnt this strip’s capacity to rot timber would be significantly reduced.
In coastal rainforests strips in northern NSW there is no fuel the litter life is so intense that even leaves remain in a light single layer and fallen timber becomes soil.
If all forests build up ‘hazardous’ fuel without fire, become and increasing hazard ,then why are there any patches of old forest left?
In East Gippsland, while developing a Community Fire Protocol to manage fuel reduction burning locals pointed out that rainforest gullies slowed fires – once – and it was a good idea not to burn them in fuel reduction burns.
I fought fires in several places and I am also interested in what does not burn – and when vegetation burns – how hot does it burn? Can it ignite dead wood or not? Wire grass, for instance, explodes – but you can run through it without getting burnt – an experiment forced on me by an overzealous mate during a back burn.
The frequency of both fuel reduction burning and fires has increased over the last twenty years in many site specific locations. There may be no relationship – but there might be. We need to have a look as individuals and not wait for ‘others’. In the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires at Mount Macedon bush that was frequently burnt burnt as well as the rest with a crown fire.
10 Days before a wet gully of ferns and old trees on the south side of the Mount Macedon ridgeline held up what started as a grass fire for two hours enabling the town to be saved. The grass fires took only minutes to race up the north face – I watched it and then drove through it to get to my place on the south side – saved on that day to be burnt 10 days later from the south where there were not wet gullies between the town and the fires.
My grandmother was saved by her father cutting and bleeding her hand when she was bitten by a snake. He didn’t actually do the right thing but she believed he did – was calm and survived.
It will take time for people to feel comfortable with letting the bush grow out in places where this works – and to see solid unrotted timber left from logging as the a major hazard compared rotting timber where the bush is older and rotten braches fall – but the change has to be non adversarial – a no fault change based on peoples personal observations at the pace of their change in belief.
I recommend every individual with an interest in fires taking a stove lighter (and some water) into the bush and light vegetation samples, just a few leaves, for 5 seconds and withdrawing the flame and see what goes out and what still burns as a good starting point.
If anyone had argued with the my great grandfather on the day he cut his daughters hand I likely would not be here to write this – so respect all those contrary to mine and I am prepared to be wrong – but first we need to have an objective look at what has happened with fuel reduction burns in the last twenty years and be site specific (which is almost impossible on a blog sadly).
Cheers Bob McDonald
Hi Bob,
I’ve just done an edit of the above comment and sent it to you by email with the suggestion I post it as a new thread. Please let me know what you think ASAP. Thanks,
Good one Jen!
I note your comments Bob, and will join the debate if Jen starts a new thread. I think this one has run its course, so I thank all those who contributed. It’s a pity JD called for evidence, then pulled the ripcord when things got mildly mathematical. Ian Motte and Stewie gave me the impression of people who have actually fought fires, and know the reality. The sort of people Bruce Esplin’s 2003 report recommended should be consulted, but apparently failed to consult. I think it’s fair to say, in view of this summer’s fires in Victoria, that the Esplin Report was ineffectual in reducing the size and ferocity of bushfires in that state. How much did it cost?
I am all for patchy, diverse burns, and moist and shady areas can create such a mosaic, provided surrounding fires are not too fierce, due to long fire exclusion. We should work with such natural self-organisation. It is cheaper, more effective, and more benign to native plants and animals. ‘Strategic prescribed burning’ is, I suspect, academic-political weasel words for broadscale, long term fire exclusion, with token burning. That has been tried on a large scale in Western Australia. It doesn’t work.
By the way, Bob, I don’t want to be pedantic, but doesn’t fairly recent research show that snake venom travels through the lymph, not the blood? I believe cutting is no longer recommended as a first aid treatment. Anybody medical like to comment?
Hi Davey,
I think that is part of what Bob was saying:
“He didn’t actually do the right thing but she believed he did – was calm and survived.”
The pressure bandage first aid works because, as you point out, our snake venom travels under the skin through the lymphatic system. The bandage slows its movement towards the heart. We were originally taught to cut and suck or wash the wound. Apart from causing more distress to the patient by weilding a knife and cutting, the wound should remain as is save for the bandage.
At the hospital the doctors will swab the area to try and collect any venom around the site, place it in a venom detection kit, and ID what group of snakes the bitter belongs to. They can then administer the appropriate antivenom.
Many snakes give dry bites, where no venom is injected, and I suspect that is what happened to Bob’s grandmother.
Thanks Libby,
In case anyone finds themself in Africa, the reommended cure for venom in the eye (spitting cobra) was milk. I’ve never had to try it, but as apprentice bwanas (1950s) we were assured, by an African instructor, that every African village has at least one nursing mother, who would be happy to oblige. I don’t know what the current implications might be with HIV.
What a great pick up line. Hey babe, a snake just spat in my eye, can I just avail myself of your… (slap).
Ian,
In those days (don’t know about now) bare boobs were African national dress, so aroused little interest in the male population. This despite the claim that absence makes the darks grow blonder. Concealment is the source of fascination. Our current young Aussie chicks might consider that in their fashion choices. Not that it has much to do with bushfires, except as protection from radiant heat (JD to note).
African culture is the new black.