In his book Out of the West: A Historical Perspective of the Western Division of NSW, former Western Lands Commissioner, Dick Condon, says there were 34 severe dust storms at Wagga Wagga during the period 1944-45, many so bad that it would have been necessary to turn the lights on in order to see inside the average sized house.  

Mr Condon suggests the dust storms during the 1982-83 drought were not as bad as those during the period 1885 to 1945 because of the much improved conditions of the landscape in the semi-arid and arid grazing country in western New South Wales.

In contrast, it is generally agreed that bushfires are getting worse.  

In Inferno, The Day Victoria Burned, journalist, Roger Franklin, explains that the bushfires of February 2009, while not without precedent, were worst than earlier fires.   For example, Black Friday, 1939, according to Mr Franklin, consumed twice as much countryside, but less than half as many lives.   He goes on to suggest that for all the theorizing and inquiring, we are losing ground when it comes to managing fire and that unless the “winds change in the corridors of power” next time will be worse.  Much worse. 

It seems that we are getting better at managing drought and worst at managing fire. 

Landholders certainly learnt the lessons of over-clearing and overgrazing, which left a lot of country bare in the early days of settlement, contributing to intense dust storms. 

A lot has changed since 1945: adoption of minimum tillage, wind breaks and, of course, the success of government-sponsored programs to control rabbits.  
But when it comes to implementing management practices to reduce the impact of wildfires, well, the efforts of landholders are generally not supported by government policy.  

Indeed, while Landcare and other government-sponsored environmental initiatives encourage planting of windbreaks, they prohibit bulldozing of firebreaks. 
It seems governments have a myopia of sorts when it comes to land management; an inability to see the bigger picture.  

While trees are an important part of many landscapes, there are times and places when many should be sacrificed for the protection of lives and property from fire.    

Indeed, if we are to reduce the intensity of wildfires there are lessons to be learnt by government from success in reducing the intensity of dust storms and it is simple: empower landholders.  

In particular, give farmers and foresters incentives to improve land management, including not only the right to plant trees, but also to cut them down.

****************

‘Inferno: The Day Victoria Burned’ was available from bookstores nationally on October 1, and is $39.95 hardback.

This note was first published as a column in The Land newspaper on Thursday October 1.

This issue has since been highlighted by the Royal Commission in its Interim Report, and is being taken to heart by fire authorities all over Australia. In Western Australia, for example, the Fire and Emergency Service (FESA) has rolled out a new warning arrangement based on mobile phones, and has carried out a substantial and well-publicised test in a Perth Hills suburb. It was said (by FESA) to have been a great success.

This is a delicate subject, because I don’t want to sound disrespectful to people who lost their lives or suffered in the Victorian fires. I realise that many people are perplexed by the way they were engulfed by fire and caught by surprise. I understand the desire of authorities to get warning systems in place. Officials realise that a failure to deal with this issue in future fires will come back to haunt them if complaints are made to Royal Commissions, Coronial inquiries and the media.

However, the downsides, weaknesses and dangers in bushfire warning systems must be properly understood. 

The first problem is that while the behaviour of bushfires burning at low intensity in light fuels is well understood, high intensity fires in heavy fuels can behave erratically. Intense fires generate their own wind and throw spot fires kilometres ahead. This is the main reason people are caught unawares. One minute the fire may well be “miles away”. But the next minute a high wind brings a rain of burning embers. If these fall into heavy dry fuels, people rapidly find themselves enveloped by fire. High intensity fires will leapfrog across one ridge to another, and then swirl back, sucked into the intervening valleys and seemingly coming from the “wrong direction”. A bushfire can move from a mild ground fire with 1-2 metre flames, to an intense crown fire (throwing spotfires) within a matter of minutes…. it is simply a matter of a wind change turning a long flank into a headfire, or of a fire moving from an area of light to an area of heavy fuels.

Very rapid changes in fire behaviour, and mass spotfire generation present a nightmare for people with the job of activating a warning system. Decisions can only be made with very accurate and up-to-date information from the fire. Since the situation at the fire is  often confused, and firefighters generally do not have any idea of the big picture, it makes decision-making about whether or when to activate a warning (and to whom) doubly difficult.

A further problem is that rarely do you get one fire at the one time, especially on a bad day. When there is a dry lightning storm, of where an arsonist is at his dirty work, it is not uncommon for several fires to start at about the same time and run parallel with each other. This can confuse efforts at fire detection, mapping, and spread prediction. When many separate fires start to coalesce and interact, fire prediction moves into the realms of the unknown, making it virtually impossible to know who to warn and when, other than in the broadest geographic sense.

Finally, any warning system based on communications technology is likely to break down in a serious bushfire situation. This is especially true of technologies that require mains electricity, which is generally the first to go when there is a fire, or static relay stations like phone towers that can be destroyed by fire or cyclonic winds. To this must be added the well-known problem of communications overload in a crisis situation.

There are two serious dangers with the whole concept of targeted warning systems. The first is that a mass warning will quite possibly lead to a mass evacution. People leaving the area will choke the roads, and these may well be the same roads on which there are incoming fire appliances. It is not clear to me that the authorities have sufficiently thought this issue through.

The second danger is that the authorities are raising expectations that they may not be able to fulfil. If people are expecting to get, and are waiting for a warning, and the warning does not arrive (for one reason or another), they are going to be set-up for calamity. I hate the idea of community and individual self-reliance being undermined.

To be effective and reliable, a bushfire warning system must meet a number of criteria. It must have access to accurate data on fire location, fuels and weather, together with the fire behaviour algorithms that can predict fire frontal development. It must be able to anticipate wind changes and instantly take on board new information from a fire where long-distance spotting is occurring. It must be flexible in responding to rapidly changing human as well as bushfire situations. There must be back-up in the event of a technological failure. Above all it must have a large and well-trained human resource to make everything work under extreme pressure, including very experienced and accountable decision-makers. A system meeting these requirements will be expensive to set up and maintain. It will also suffer steady degrade if a few years go by with no major fires.

It is will be the height of over-confidence to create an expectation in fire-prone communities that they will always receive timely warnings of imminent bushfires. The system will probably work under relatively mild weather and low fuel conditions. But the opposite will always be more likely when a killer bushfire is running. Then people will receive no warning, or warnings will be too late to enable appropriate actions.

There is another very real problem. This is when warnings are issued but are not followed by a fire. In the coming fire season or two we can expect that there will be a (wholly understandable) temptation to overdo the warnings. Fire officers with trigger fingers will not want to face a Coronial Court for failing to push the button. But if fires do not follow warnings, the result will be the “crying wolf syndrome” where people become blase, and then do not react when there really is a fire.

In my view the first priority for fire authorities should be to optimise the bushfire resilience of towns and communities – in particular reducing areas of heavy fuel within and adjoining residential areas, making houses and road verges safer, setting up local community refuge areas and maintaining a program of regular mild burning in hinterland forests. Secondly, they should be telling people that it is quite likely they will NOT be warned and that they must themselves take responsibility for finding out what is going on and having a sensible plan of action, including evacuation to a safe place well before a situation becomes remotely dangerous.  In my view both of these actions will have greater value than spending millions of dollars on “technological-fix” bushfire warning systems.

The fundamental message that our governments should be putting out is this: if you live in, or close to the Australian bush, you should expect to get a bushfire on a hot windy day in summer….. and be prepared for it. To rely on a government warning system is to rely on something that is inherently unreliable.

There is a final factor. As that wise anthropologist George Silberbauer has pointed out, we already have a system in which the Bureau of Meteorology puts out twice-daily fire danger forecasts and these are published on the net and broadcast on the news. Most country roads have Fire Danger warning signs. The problem is, few people understand fire danger, and the system is unduly complicated with six, and soon to be seven, categories. It is possible that if we had a more simple way of expressing the fire danger index, which is a warning in itself, and we ensured it was more effectively transmitted and better understood by the whole community, the new technological gizmos would not be needed.

Roger Underwood
http://bushfirefront.com.au/ 
August, 2009

Other articles by Roger Underwood: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/roger-underwood/

If burning is interrupted, then woody shrubs thrive, and the savanna turns into thickets. Due to lightning, fires will still occur, but they will be at longer intervals, and much fiercer, potentially lethal to both humans and wildlife, as in Kruger National Park (http://ag.arizona.edu/oals/ALN/aln54/govender.html ).

I have never been to the Tiwis, but I suspect that they are very similar in this respect to Africa, or Madagascar, where Dr Kristian Kull (Isle of Fire 2006) has eloquently described the political ecology of regular burning by humans.

My attention was caught recently by a television news item about the ‘Tiwi Carbon Project’, in which CSIRO is working with the Tiwi islanders to reduce the carbon released by their fires, and so win them large amounts of cash as ‘carbon credits’. I pursued this back in time, and found a few events which may relate. In 2006, the ABC’s Catalyst program carried a story about a similar scheme in the Northern Territory. The then Northern Territory Environment Minister, Marion Scrymgour (a Tiwi woman), seemed to be working with several Aboriginal Elders, and Dr Jeremy Russell-Smith, a scientist at the CRC Tropical Savannas Management, to promote mild traditional burning, early in the season, to avoid fierce fires later on – wonderful. 

According to Dr Russell-Smith, the Australian Greenhouse Office considers such burning technically feasible for carbon credits. The narrator said that ‘A hectare burnt in May releases half the greenhouse emissions of a hectare burnt in a hot November wildfire’ (www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1769056.htm).

Further searching found that Marion Scrymgour, in June of this year, left the Labor Party, removing the Henderson government majority. I don’t know the details, but the rift seems to have been over Aboriginal policy.  In August of this year, Marion Scrymgour suddenly rejoined the Labor Party, and, as far as I can determine, the Tiwi Carbon Project was announced soon after.

A few questions occur to me:

• Does the Rudd Government now recognize the merits of traditional mosaic burning, as opposed to uncontrollable megafires?

• If so, can state government departments and local government Bushfire Volunteers, now claim carbon credits for any prescribed burning they do?

• As Federal Environment Minister, was Mr. Peter Garrett involved in the Tiwi matter?

• If so, how about a press release from his office, setting out the environmental benefits of regular, early burning, as done by Aborigines in southern Australia for thousands of years?

• Was there any connection between Marion Scrymgour rejoining the Labor Party, and the approval of the Tiwi project?

• Is there a connection between funding for the Tiwi project, and the recent axing of funds to the Bushfire CRC, established after the 2002 NSW bushfires?

Green Davey lives in Perth, Western Australia

**********

The 2009 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission has today handed down its Interim Report: http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/getdoc/9d5fb826-b507-4fed-a7f7-86bab961992f/Interactive-Version .   I have not yet read the report, but flicking through I can’t see a heading that relates to prescribed burning.

“IN 1966 the Victorian government published a booklet entitled Summer Peril. On the cover was a terrifying photo of the 1964 Lorne bushfire. The foreword was by the Premier, Sir Henry Bolte, who began: “Over the years our state of Victoria has been plagued by bushfires leading to tragic loss of life and devastation of natural resources, public and private property.”

The booklet offers practical advice to farmers and rural landholders about the precautions they should take to minimise the risk to their property and what to do if bushfires should engulf them. One noteworthy sentence declares: “Anyone who ignores warnings about the fire risk during acute danger periods must be a fool, and a selfish, ignorant and stubborn one at that.”

The report by the Environment and Natural Resources Committee of the Victorian Parliament Inquiry into the Impact of Public Land Management Practices on Bushfires in Victoria, July 2008, lists twenty-three bushfires from 1965 until 2008, resulting in the deaths of 102 people. On February 7, 2009, Black Saturday, 173 people died. Those words from 1966 now have a prophetic ring to them.

On February 9 the Victorian Premier, John Brumby, announced the establishment of a Royal Commission with wide-ranging terms of reference to inquire into the causes of the firestorm and to recommend policies which would mitigate against future disasters. The Premier would have been aware that the appointment of such a body would forestall criticism of his government for failure to act on the recommendations of the parliamentary committee that had reported in July 2008. This committee made very specific recommendations, particularly about the need for fuel reduction activity, which had either been rejected by the government or accepted in principle only. The committee, chaired by former Labor minister John Pandazopoulos, comprised members from both houses and both parties with an independent, Craig Ingram, as deputy chair. Its report is an example of the great benefits that federalism provides. Canberra could not match this document. It is comprehensive in its scope, witnesses of all shades of opinion are quoted at length, there is much historical material woven into the narrative, and much detailed local knowledge is laid out for the reader; but its recommendations, made without dissent, were ignored by the Brumby government.

The Royal Commission has now been established. My deep interest in the proceedings and outcome of this Royal Commission is a consequence of the decision my wife and I made in 1994 to buy a cottage at Marysville. We renovated and extended the cottage, which we rented out to tourists; we constructed two outbuildings, and developed a magnificent garden on three-quarters of an acre. The house and the garden were destroyed on the night of Saturday February 7. The workshop survived.

Paragraph 2 of the Royal Commission’s terms of reference refers inter alia to the “prevention … of bushfire threats and risks”. As far as I am aware no submission or comment following the tragedy of Black Saturday has raised arguments concerning the prevention of bushfires in the future. All the attention so far has focused on what went wrong. The Royal Commission would be doing a much greater service if it inquired into ways in which bushfires in Victoria were to be eradicated.          

The Brumby government ignored the 2008 report for reasons which were wholly political and which go to the heart of the problems we face not only on the bushfire front, but also on water supply issues and on any major development in Victoria which offends the sensitivities of the Greens. The Brumby government, to its credit, stared down the Greens on the Port Phillip channel deepening issue, but that is the only attempt it has made to win a serious confrontation with the political-cum-religious forces which seek to stop economic development in Victoria or, as in the case of the Latrobe Valley brown coal power stations, simply shut them down and thus leave Victoria without electricity.

The takeover by the socialist Left of the environmentalist movement in Australia can be dated from the early seventies, culminating in the 1973 AGM of the Australian Conservation Foundation, an organisation founded by Sir Garfield Barwick and Sir Maurice Mawby, funded in part by the McMahon government, and which had as its aim increasing the public awareness of the importance of environmental matters.

By the late 1960s the communist Left was suffering from defections over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, but more significantly from the brutal repression of the Dubcek regime in Prague in 1968. The Communist Party of Australia and its fellow-travelling socialists in the ALP were having doctrinal and morale problems. In a brilliant strategic move, it was decided that the environmentalist movement was a new and promising vehicle for obtaining political influence and power.

The American sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote in a review article in the American Spectator in 1983:

“As an historian, I am obliged by the record of the Western past to see Environmentalism—of the kind espoused by the [Barry] Commoners and the [Paul] Ehrlichs—as the third great wave of redemptive struggle in Western history; the first being Christianity, the second modern socialism.

“The appeal of Environmentalism, in its more extreme manifestations at least, becomes irresistible to that permanent cadre of political and social radicals Western society has nurtured ever since the French Revolution. This cadre has never been primarily interested in the protection of nature,but if such a movement carries with it even the possibility of political and social revolution, it is well that the cadre join it; which, starting with the late 1960s, it did.”

So Greenpeace was taken over in Canada, its founder, Patrick Moore, was ousted, and in Australia, the Left, having enrolled into the ACF in considerable numbers, ousted the old guard in October 1973, and installed Geoff Mosley, hitherto a recent employee of the ACF, as its new Director. John Blanche, the former head of the organisation, resigned immediately, as did many members of the board.

An example of the attitude of the new regime to the role it envisaged for the ACF is found in 1983-84 Annual Report, written by Geoff Mosley:

“Undoubtedly the main issue to attract the Foundation’s attention was peace and disarmament and the related topic of opposition to uranium mining and export.

“The worsening arms situation not only threatens annihilation, but by absorbing resources and creating a feeling of doom is rapidly eroding the possibility of dealing with drastic social problems such as land degradation and deforestation.

“It is, indeed, difficult to see the arms race and deterioration of the physical and social environment as being in any way separate matters. Any solution will require a global anti-nuclear movement.”

The ACF has adhered to a hard Left position on every environmental issue ever since.

In 1982 the Cain Labor government won office in Victoria. Although Rod McKenzie was appointed Minister for Forests in 1982, Joan Kirner was in charge of the political agenda. Kirner was the leader of the Socialist Left faction in the ALP, in effect a medieval baron not beholden to the Premier for her office. In June 1983 Cain announced the creation of a new mega-department of Conservation, Forests and Lands, which subsumed existing departments of Forestry, Crown Lands and Surveying, the Department of Planning and the Department of Conservation. The Victorian Forests Commission was dissolved and the new department came into being in December 1983.

Joan Kirner was the first minister and early in 1985 she fired Ron Grose, a forester with an internationally distinguished reputation, who had been chief of the Forests Commission. She also fired or retrenched the people who had served in the top three layers of the Forests Commission. She appointed as head of the new department Tony Edison, an unknown figure from the UK, who was outspoken in his hostility to foresters and forestry, and he in turn appointed hardline greens as senior officials in the department. From that day to this the department, now officially the Department of Sustainability and Environment but known throughout rural Victoria as the Department of Scorched Earth, has been completely dysfunctional.

The Victorian Forests Commission had a history going back to its establishment in 1918, and had built up a culture of expertise in forest management which made it respected throughout the international forestry community. Its expertise and knowledge of local terrain and silviculture extended deep into the domain of Victoria’s forests. Some of that expertise and knowledge is still to be found in the people, mostly now retired, who once worked for the Forests Commission. Its dissolution at the hands of Joan Kirner was akin to the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, but where Henry handed over the vast treasures of the monasteries to his favoured courtiers, Kirner handed over the treasure trove of Victoria’s forests to the Greens.

The cause of the dysfunctionality of the DSE is doctrinal. At the core of Green doctrine is the belief that trees are sacred and that mankind is a pest or a virus on the planet. So the logging and timber industry has been targeted by the Greens for extinction, just as whaling was targeted for extinction in the 1970s. In fact the ban on logging in parts of Western Australia, and the closure of timber communities in those regions, for example, was specifically likened by West Australian Greens to the end of Albany as a whaling town. Trees and whales are either very tall or very large, and both are sacred.

Two characteristic examples of the articulation of Green doctrine, one from 1990 and one from 2007, illustrate this point. Ted Traynor, lecturer in the Department of Education at the University of New South Wales, gave a talk on Robyn Williams’s ABC radio program Ockham’s Razor in May 1990:

“For a long time to come, our top national priority in countries like Australia should be to reduce the GNP as fast as possible, because we are grossly over-developed and over-producing and over-consuming and there’s no possibility of all people ever rising to the per capita levels we now have, let alone those we’re determined to grow to.

“Often it is obvious that developments that would do wonders for the GNP should be prohibited, such as devoting local land and water to export crops.

“There would be far less trade and transporting of goods than there is now. There would have to be many co-operative arrangements; the sharing of tools, many community workshops, orchards, forests, ponds, gardens, and regular community meetings and working bees.

“Applying the concept of appropriate development in the over-developed countries would make it possible for most people to live well on only one day’s work for cash per week, because many of the relatively few things they need would come from their own gardens, from barter, from gifts of surpluses and from the many free sources within the neighbourhood.”

Paul Watson, the anti-whaling activist who has been charged with piracy on the open seas, said in an editorial on May 4, 2007:

“We are killing our host the planet Earth.

“I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the “AIDS of the Earth”. I make no apologies for that statement.

“No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas.

“We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference. We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.

“Sea transportation should be by sail. The big clippers were the finest ships ever built and sufficient to our needs. Air transportation should   be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary.”

Statements of this kind could be multiplied hundreds of times. They are representative of the core Green movement. Although most people who vote for the Green Party in Australia would be horrified if governments enacted legislation to bring about the reduction in population and living standards thought essential by Traynor and Watson, these are the doctrines which illuminate and influence Green decision-making, wherever the Greens have political or administrative power.

Now a department of state which has management responsibilities for forests on Crown land (an area in Victoria comprising one third of the state), but which is staffed at senior levels by officials who believe that trees are sacred, and are there to be worshipped rather than exploited for the use of mankind, cannot manage the forests. Because an explicit avowal of such beliefs would, at this stage of the Green Revolution, be premature, the sacred nature of forests is euphemised by words and phrases such as “old-growth forests”, the incommensurability of “wilderness”, and by appeals to the over-arching importance of biodiversity and the necessity, therefore, of leaving forests untouched and dead trees on the roadside undisturbed. Biodiversity is a magic word which is used to legitimise the expropriation of private property (amongst many other uses).

Green doctrine on trees and forests is pre-Christian and incompatible with Western civilisation. An important example of the clash between the pagan worship of trees, and Christian utilitarianism concerning the use of timber for structures and implements of all kinds, took place in Germany in the early eighth century.

An English boy called Winfrid was born in Devon about 675 AD. He showed great intellectual promise and wished to devote his life to the church. His parents objected but he eventually obtained their permission and was ordained as a priest in about 705. He became a Benedictine monk and eventually received the Pope’s permission to evangelise the German-speaking peoples to the east of the Rhine.

He was later appointed bishop, taking the name of Boniface. In one famous encounter with the environmentalists of his time, and to show the heathens how utterly powerless were the gods in whom they placed their confidence, Boniface felled the oak tree sacred to the thunder-god Thor, at Geismar, near Fritzlar. He had a chapel built out of the wood and dedicated it to the Prince of the Apostles. The local tribesmen were astonished that no thunderbolt from the hand of Thor destroyed the offender, and many were converted. The fall of this oak tree marked the decline of pagan influence in that part of Germany.

Today St Boniface would be prosecuted for cutting down a tree without a permit, although since it was an oak tree he may have escaped the watchful eye of our own Green high-priests who, in a nice blend of paganism and xenophobia, are concerned with worshipping eucalypts and anathematising exotic deciduous trees. This may seem a trivial thing, but it is indicative of the power which the Green movement has seized. It is arguable that environmentalism has become the established religion of the Commonwealth of Australia, in contradiction of Section 116 of the Constitution which prohibits such establishment.

The firestorms of Black Saturday are a stark reminder of the incompatibility of pagan beliefs about trees and the demands of twenty-first-century life. As the Victorian parliament’s report of July 2008 demonstrated, any program of bushfire control in Victoria’s eucalypt forests which has any chance of success must rely upon continual and sustained fuel reduction as the basis of policy. In the absence of more radical changes to property rights in Victorian forests, this requires the end of Green hegemony within a restructured public service charged with responsibility for managing Crown forests.

The most illuminating recent defence of Green doctrines concerning forest management is found in an essay entitled “Thoughts on the Victorian Bushfires”, in February 2009, by Andrew Campbell, who claims to have been a Victorian forester; a bushfire researcher; the founder of the Potter Foundation’s whole-farm planning in early 1980s; one of the initiators of Landcare; CEO of Land & Water Australia until about three years ago; and is now a consultant living in Queanbeyan, close to the corridors of power in Canberra. This essay has not been published but is available on his website and has been widely circulated.

The essential points he makes are as follows:

“Claims that more broadscale fuel reduction burning in Victoria’s forests would have prevented these fires … are nonsense … [Extreme weather conditions following] lots of late spring-early summer growth, after a decade of drought, made for an explosive tinderbox …

“The crucial point that must be underlined is that under very extreme conditions (Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) above 50—see below), fuel loads are no longer the key driver of fire behaviour, compared with weather (some of which is fire-induced) and topography (especially slope) …

“Prof Ross Bradstock … from the University of Wollongong and the Bushfires CRC, has pointed out that the Fire Danger Index (FDI) was over 150 in Melbourne on February 7. The FDI incorporates temperature, wind speed, humidity and a measure of fuel dryness. It was developed in the 1960s and calibrated on a scale from zero (no fire danger) to 100 (“Black Friday” 1939) for both forests and grasslands. Fuel reduction research has mostly involved small-scale experiments at FDIs between 10 and 20. A forest FDI (FFDI) above 50 indicates that, due to fire crowning and spotting behaviour, weather becomes the dominant indicator of fire behaviour, and it becomes impossible to fight a running forest fire front. When eucalypt forests are crowning, fuel reduction at ground level is academic. Recent research suggests that with a drying warming climate we are now seeing unprecedented FDIs, and need to introduce a new fire danger rating above “extreme” called “catastrophic” to more realistically present the   dangers associated with days like 7 February …

“The whole planning system should be overhauled, way beyond just building codes and vegetation management. Premier Brumby and his cabinet—and I suspect now Kevin Rudd—appear to understand that business as usual will not do. They also seem to understand the link to climate change in making events such as these (and worse) more likely in future. But they have yet to make the logical jump to the urgency of mitigating climate change, which means setting ambitious targets, and retooling the economy from top to bottom to achieve them.”

I have quoted from this essay at length to illustrate the current state of the Green justification of their stewardship of the forests, and also to illustrate the revolutionary ambitions of the Greens in combining the bushfire tragedies with their faith in anthropogenic global warming, in order to justify “retooling the economy from top to bottom.”

Nevertheless Campbell has made an important point about fires in the crowns of eucalypts. The reason why we have had so many bushfires in south-eastern Australia is because eucalypts, after long periods of hot, dry conditions, become equivalent to large fire bombs, containing highly flammable hydro-carbons which are released into the air above the trees as vapours, where they form a fireball when ignited. When our forests are composed entirely of eucalypts, the outbreak of bushfires cannot be prevented, although their severity can be greatly reduced by ensuring the fuel content of the floor of the forest is as close to zero as possible. We know that the eucalypts were not always dominant in Australia; some time in the past eucalypts were restricted to the outskirts of rainforests and various native beech trees (which can still be found in sheltered gullies) were the dominant species.

It is impossible, therefore, to escape the conclusion that if we are to make Victoria free of bushfires, we need to reduce substantially the density of eucalypts in our forests and replace them with other species. On Black Saturday exotic deciduous trees, poplars, elms, oaks and plane trees were in large measure untouched by the fires, particularly if they were at some distance from eucalyptus trees. The Gould Memorial Drive on the Buxton Road approaching Marysville, two glorious rows of Lombardy poplars, provides such testimony; as does the Fernshaw Park Reserve, a haven of elms, plane trees and oaks, halfway up the Black Spur Road from Healesville.

The argument that Victoria has to replace a major portion of its eucalypt forests with exotic trees such as English oaks, poplars, plane trees, and other non-flammable exotic species will be seen as sacrilege of the most egregious kind by the Greens who have ruled the DSE and other departments since the 1980s. But since it is they who must now give an account of how their stewardship of Victoria’s forests resulted in the deaths of more that 170 people on Black Saturday, and the loss of billions of dollars worth of property, they first have to acknowledge that what has been done since the 1980s has been a terrible mistake. If that does not happen then there has to be a reversal of the Kirner revolution of 1983 and new people, untainted by Green pagan doctrine concerning the sacred nature of indigenous trees, have to be appointed to senior positions. More of the same will not survive a serious political backlash.

The greater part by far of Victoria’s forests are never seen by the public except from the air. Whether they comprise eucalypts or other species is a matter only of symbolic value. From a social point of view, the squeeze that has been placed on the logging and timber industries by the Green bureaucracy—a squeeze designed to kill the industry within a politically acceptable framework and timetable—has significantly reduced the number of people living and working in the bush (people with a knowledge of bushfires and firefighting); has reduced road access into the forests; and has exacerbated greatly the damage done in the recent disaster.

The deliberate and systematic throttling of the timber industry has been manifest in the establishment of the Great Otway National Park and the shutting down of the timber industry in the Otway Ranges; the reduction of timber harvesting in the box-ironbark forests to a minimum level; the ending of timber harvesting in the Wombat Forest; and the establishment of new or expanded national and state parks totalling over 100,000 hectares.

These vast areas of forests become wilderness, symbols of Green religious power, in which man is a hostile and unwelcome intruder. They also become sanctuaries where feral animals and noxious plants of all kinds flourish and can spread into neighbouring farms and properties. Above all they become huge reservoirs of stored energy, awaiting the next dry spell and hot weather before turning into raging infernos.

From an economic point of view the closing down of that substantial portion of the timber industry based on Crown forests has resulted in timber shortages, increasing dependence on imported timber, and above all, the substitution of steel for timber in the domestic building industry. If steel were to replace timber as the consequence of competition between alternative materials on a level playing field, which culminated in a cheaper product of equal or superior quality, that would be one thing. But when an industry is deliberately choked to death by government fiat, that is another.

In order to protect Victoria from a repeat of the tragedy of Black Saturday, the logging industry must be given a new charter which will provide confidence for revival, growth, new investment and the development of new technologies and processes which will restore timber’s competitiveness with steel. Such a charter requires the transformation of the Crown forests, however they are designated, into ninety-nine-year leaseholds which can be auctioned in appropriate sizes together with covenants requiring the replacement of eucalypts with exotic non-flammable trees (excluding pine trees, which burn readily), up to a certain proportion, within a reasonable period.

Once secure property rights were established for the forests, investors and entrepreneurs would not only see opportunities in developing the logging and timber industry but also in investing in eco-tourism and recreation. Above all, these proprietors would have an overwhelming interest in securing their assets from the destruction of bushfires, and in ensuring they were not liable for damages to neighbouring property caused by their own negligence. The government could then withdraw from the business of forest management, confident that the interests of proprietors and the public alike were in alignment.

We know from the Soviet tragedy that communal farming and the absence of property rights in the farming industry produced chronic famine and shortages. The absence of property rights in the Victorian forests sector has produced the same sort of result. It is no coincidence that the radical students of today proclaim themselves as activists in the green-red coalition.

Many of the deaths on Black Saturday were caused by the transformation of roads under firestorm conditions into “channels of death”. Roger Underwood, an experienced forester from Western Australia, came to Victoria after Black Saturday and was taken through many of the regions devastated by fire. He subsequently wrote:

“I was shocked to observe kilometres of long-unburnt road reserves running through semi-cleared and agricultural landscapes. These are more like tunnels than roads, with a narrow strip of bitumen winding between overhanging trees and bush right at the road edge which had clearly not been burned for over 20 years and carried a fuel load of about 35 tonnes to the hectare. These roads are potential death traps, not escape routes.”

Currently the clearing of fallen logs and other debris from roadsides is prohibited. This prohibition is another example of Green Power in action. People should not only be allowed, but should be encouraged, to obtain firewood from the roadside and to keep the road verges clear of debris.
The capture by the Greens of a number of shire councils and the regulations such councils imposed on new housing certainly aggravated the damage and arguably caused increased loss of life on Black Saturday. This issue has received considerable attention in the media but there has been no comment on how a small group of people, admittedly passionate in the religion which gives meaning and purpose to their lives, can capture a council and impose regulations which are not only dreadful in their consequences but are also regarded as lunatic by most people living in the shire.

Following the changes made to local government by the Kennett government, in which a large number of small shires were amalgamated into fewer, much larger entities, local government became too big to be responsive to local opinion and knowledge, and too small to be taken seriously by most people. This enabled small groups of zealots, through commitment and political skill, to capture these bodies. They had the advantage that a high proportion of Greens are childless (most Greens are against children) and many are well off in secure jobs. They therefore had the time, energy and resources to devote to political activity. The Nillumbik Shire Council on the north-eastern edge of Melbourne is perhaps the best-known example of this phenomenon, but other rural shires on the outskirts of the metropolis have the same problem in varying degrees.

The answer to this serious problem is a return to local government. In other words, shire councils should represent real communities, not conglomerations of towns and hamlets extending over hundreds of square kilometres. If, for example, Marysville had its own shire council, then local government would be representative of Marysville and its immediate surrounding district, and local knowledge of the district would be brought to bear in every discussion on council. The argument that there are economies of scale in local government, and that amalgamations would lead to reduced costs, is belied by the substantial increases in rates that have occurred since the Kennett “reforms”.

The same arguments apply with equal force to Kinglake and Flowerdale, two other towns destroyed on Black Saturday.

It may be said that the Greens are too entrenched both politically and in the bureaucracy for any arguments made here to gain any support. However, the next Victorian government will find, as in 1992, that Victoria is deep in debt and radical measures are necessary to restore the financial viability of the state. Turning the Crown forests into private leaseholds would bring in a very large sum of money, and it would demonstrate to everyone that the new government is prepared to take desperate measures in desperate times and, in particular, is resolved to ensure that bushfires of the kind we have experienced so often in recent years become a thing of the past.

**********

This article is based on Ray Evans’s submission to the current Victorian Royal Commission.  It was first published by Quadrant under the title ‘The Lessons of Black Saturday’ and is republished here with permission from the author. http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/7-8/the-lessons-of-black-saturday

The picture, via Noeline Franklin, shows the bushfire that devastated Canberra in January 2003 as it emerged from Brindabella National Park.

This post is part 16 of a series ‘Defining the Greens’.   Earlier parts of this series can be found through the search box at this blog using the words ‘defining the greens’ and also here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/index.php?s=defining+the+greens

Below is the details and terms of reference for a Senate inquiry into Bushfires in Australia. This should compliment the gaps that will likely be left in the Royal Commission for the chronic state of the environment due to political nest feathering for green preferances. This green lunicy of using the environment as a political football has now killed people and destroyed large tracts of our environment.

I would urge people to put in a submission, as so far the Federal bushfire enquiry after 2003 was the best.

Regards Ralph Barraclough

http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/agric_ctte/bushfires/index.htm

Inquiry into Bushfires in Australia

Terms of Reference

On 12 May 2009, the Senate referred the following matter to the Select Committee on Agricultural and Related Industries for inquiry and report on 26 November 2009:
The incidence and severity of bushfires across Australia, including:

a.   the impact of bushfires on human and animal life, agricultural land, the environment, public and private assets and local communities;

b.   factors contributing to the causes and risks of bushfires across Australia, including natural resource management policies, hazard reduction and agricultural land maintenance;

c.   the extent and effectiveness of bushfire mitigation strategies and practices, including application of resources for agricultural land, national parks, state forests, other Crown land, open space areas adjacent to development and private property and the impact of hazard reduction strategies;

d.   the identification of measures that can be undertaken by government, industry and the community and the effectiveness of these measures in protecting agricultural industries, service industries, small business, tourism and water catchments;

e.   any alternative or developmental bushfire prevention and mitigation approaches which can be implemented;

f.   the appropriateness of planning and building codes with respect to land use in the bushfire prone regions;

g.    the adequacy and funding of fire-fighting resources both paid and voluntary and the usefulness of and impact on on-farm labour;

h.   the role of volunteers;

i.   the impact of climate change;

j.   fire – its causes (accidental, natural and deliberate) and remedies;

k.    the impact of bushfires on biodiversity and measures to protect biodiversity;

l.    and insurance against bushfires.

The committee invites written submissions, which should be lodged by 31 July 2009.
Electronic submissions can be lodged at agriculture.sen@aph.gov.au or sent by mail to:
The Secretary

Senate Select Committee on Agricultural and Related Industries PO Box 6100 Parliament House CANBERRA ACT 2600

Please not that submissions become committee documents and are only made public after a decision by the committee. Persons making submissions must not release them without the committee’s prior approval. Submissions are covered by parliamentary privilege but the unauthorised release of them is not.

Following consideration of submissions, the committee is proposing to hold public hearings. The committee will consider all submissions and may invite individuals and organisations to give evidence at the public hearings.

Inquiries from hearing and speech impaired people should be directed to the Parliament House TTY number  (02) 6277 7799 . Adobe also provides tools for the blind and visually impaired to access PDF documents. These tools are available at: http://access.adobe.com/. If you require any special arrangements in order to enable you to participate in a committee inquiry, please contact the committee secretary.

For further information, contact:

Committee Secretary
Senate Select Committee on Agricultural and Related Industries PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600 Australia
Phone:  +61 2 6277 3511  
Fax: +61 2 6277 5811 
Email: agriculture.sen@aph.gov.au

One of these was Paul Erdös who was the twentieth century’s most prolific mathematician, with 1475 papers to his credit. He rivals Leonhard Euler, the Swiss genius of the eighteenth century. There is a worthwhile biography of Erdös called ‘The Man Who Loved Only Numbers’, by Paul Hoffman (1998).

On a recent thread at this blog (Wise Men Excluded from Bushfire Royal Commission), I raised the issue of fuel connectivity, and suggested that it helped to explain the uncontrollable spread of bushfires over large areas of Victoria a few months ago.

The tonnage of available fuel determines the intensity, and convection column strength, and the number of flying embers, but connectivity determines ground spread. Wind is important, but large fires, of course, create their own wind. It seems to me that the application of Occam’s Razor makes climate superfluous to the argument, beyond there being weather dry enough for a fire to burn. Given dry fuel, fierce fires can occur even at mild temperatures. Surely we have all lit a pot-belly stove on a winter’s day.

Although I doubt if he had ever seen a bushfire, or a gumtree, Erdös had useful ideas on connectivity in networks. With a Hungarian colleague, he published papers about ‘giant patches’. These form when random connections are made between a set of random points (Erdös and Renyi 1959, 1960).

The idea of networks (connected graphs) originated, in Europe at any rate, with Euler, when he solved the puzzle of the seven Bridges of Königsberg. Recent applications have been in neural networks in the brain, disease epidemics, and the growth of the world wide web. ‘Six degrees of separation’ may ring a bell for some.

With regard to bushfire, as fire is excluded from a large area, formerly disconnected fuel patches join up, and this process suddenly accelerates as ‘cliques’ of patches start connecting. Some have called this phenomenon a ‘connectivity avalanche’. Once a certain threshold is passed, bushfire can spread uncontrollably. Ember showers, due to heavy fuel burning, can obviously accelerate the process by causing another level of connectivity.

I give this information for those constructive contributors who are interested in ideas about bushfire management. Probably I should publish it quickly before someone from academia claims it. Those involved in research will know the sequence: a) Rubbish, b) Well, perhaps in some cases, c) Of course, and I thought of it first.

Fuel reduction burning reduces both fuel quantity, and, importantly, connectivity. The restoration of something like Aboriginal patch burning, by both reducing fuel, and disrupting connectivity, would make large bushfires a thing of the past, no matter what the weather. The bush would be healthier, and safer for native animals, not to mention humans. Should I mention erosion and water supplies? Or the fact that mild fires sequester enormous amounts of carbon as charcoal, but very hot fires create mainly ash, and volatilize much of the nutrients?

*******************

David Ward lives in Western Australia and comments at this blog under the alias ’Green Davey’.

The picture is of grass trees at Scott River, Western Australia, taken in January 2007, following a “mild, patchy burn”.

Previous contributions from Mr Ward include:

Nyoongars, Noolbengers and No Fires
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2007/02/nyoongars-noolbengers-and-no-fires-a-note-from-david-ward/ 

Parachutes & Prescribed Burning
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2007/01/parachutes-prescribed-burning-a-note-from-david-ward/

Noongars Knew Best (Part 2)
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2005/09/noongars-knew-best-part-2/

Noongars Knew Best
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2005/06/noongars-knew-best/

At the time some media outlets blamed the ferocity of the fires on global warming and this assessment was supported by some authorities at reputable institutions including Melbourne University, the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology. Others disagreed and claimed inadequate controlled burning as a key issue.

The Premier of Victoria promised a Royal Commission into the fires and preliminary hearings started this week.

In response to the news that experts in bushfire mitigation and management, in particular Forest Fire Victoria Inc and the Bushfire Front Inc, will not be given leave to appear before the commission, David Ward commented, with some sarcasm at this blog earlier this week, that given we already know that the Victoria fires were caused by global warming and arsonists and that the purpose of the Royal Commission is to confirm this, of course the Royal commission won’t want to hear from practical bushfire experts.

There has been much sympathy for this assessment.

Since this comment, a list of those organizations that have been given leave to appear before the Royal Commission has been released and interestingly it also excludes those likely to push the global warming agenda.

Indeed it appears, at this early stage, that the commissioners may be seeking to sidestep all issues relating to causes of bushfires and what affects their speed and intensity including temperatures, fuel loads, wind speeds etcetera.

While this will be extremely disappointing for many, it is perhaps a practical strategy.  Indeed it would be impossible for the Royal Commission to find against the prevailing consensus on climate change and at the same time difficult to find evidence in support of this so-called consensus.

Given the commission has given leave to appear to organisations with expertise in communications and building codes this may be where they intend to focus their efforts.

This would accord with government instructions that the commission make recommendations on planning schemes, including the need for bushfire shelters, and communication systems, including the effectiveness of current public warning systems.

These are important issues and I wish the commissioners well at the hearings and in their deliberations.

Update/Clarification

The video of the koala was taken following a back-burning operation that preceded the worst of the wildfires including Black Saturday.

*****************

Notes and Links

Applicants granted unconditional and conditional leave to appear can be found here
http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/getdoc/ecf8e7cb-0e42-4577-a01c-023c04dadc86/media_release_20_Apr09

Wise Men Excluded from Bushfire Royal Commission
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/04/wise-men-excluded-from-bushfire-royal-commission/

Victorian Bushfires: The Result of Human Folly
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/victorian-bushfires-the-result-of-human-folly/

A Royal Commission was established with the Victorian Government promising an inclusive process with the broadest possible terms of reference.  Preliminary hearings by that commission begin today in Melbourne, but already many experts with local knowledge and experience have been advised their tesimonies won’t be heard; that they will not be given leave to appear before the commission.

After Black Saturday, there was a memorial service, broadcast nationally and attended by many dignitaries’ including Princess Ann.  It was opened by a representative from the local aboriginal tribe.  She commented that the land was once burnt every seven years by her people.     But not like these fires, she said, they tortured the land, our fires cleaned it.  

Foresters have also advocated controlled burning recognising that debris quickly accumulated on the forest floor and that the best way to manage this is through regular burning, or risk uncontrollable and much more destructive wild fires. 

But this advice has not been heeded either. 

Because of the conversion of large areas of land to national park, a reduction in resourcing along with policies underpinned by the assumption that active land management is not always compatible with wilderness values, fuel loads have generally increased.

In 2004, so concerned about the situation, a group of men whose professional careers had been dedicated to understanding forest ecology and/or bushfire behaviour formed an association called Forest Fire Victoria Inc.  In short the members of this new association all had proven records in the area of bushfire management; that is they had held important positions and/or published in the best journals.   Furthermore, they were mostly Victorians – with a deep knowledge of the local forest environments.    

The stated purpose of the association is to:

• Provide and promote independent and expert opinion on forest fire management;

• Ensure that Victoria’s forest fire management policies and practices are based on science, experience and accountability; and address social, economic and environmental values of natural ecosystems;

• Ensure that the long-term well-being and safety of forest ecosystems and their surrounding rural communities are protected.

Today, the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission begins its preliminary hearings, but so many important persons have been excluded; they have already been notified that the requests they lodged to appear before the commission have been rejected, including Forest Fire Victoria Inc.  

That’s correct, I have been informed that Forest Fire Victoria Inc. has been refused leave to appear before the Royal Commission.

The government had assured the people of Victoria that:

• The Commissioners will have extensive powers to call for any papers or persons relevant to their inquiry.

• This commission will have the capacity to examine every aspect of the bushfires – no stone will be left unturned.

• The Commission has been asked to make recommendations on a wide range of aspects including fire preparation, planning schemes, response measures, communication systems and strategies, and training and resourcing.

• The Government has approved $40 million for the establishment and operation of the Royal Commission.

Much has been said about government’s paying lip service to consultation particularly as it relates to land management – not only in Australia, but across the English-speaking world.  But to actually exclude testimony from the recognised local experts within a community … we indeed appear to be entering a new error of rule by political bureaucracy.

****************

Links and Notes

Bushfire Royal Commission website
http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Leave-to-Appear

FIRES ROYAL COMMISSION TO HAVE WIDE TERMS OF REFERENCE
http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/premier/fires-royal-commission-to-have-wide-terms-of-reference.html

Forest Fires Victoria Inc website,
 http://home.vicnet.net.au/~frstfire/aboutus.htm

Members of Forest Fires Victoria Inc,

Peter Attiwill, PhD, BScFor, AssocDipFor, is Principal Fellow in Botany, and Honorary Fellow, The Australian Centre,The University of Melbourne. He has researched in eucalypt ecology over 40 years, with a concentration on soils and nutrient cycles, and on bushfires and ecosystem recovery. He is a member of editorial boards of a number of Australian and overseas journals. He has published extensively in the international journals, and his latest book is Ecology: An Australian Perspective (co-editor BA Wilson, Oxford University Press 2003).

Phil Cheney, FIFA, BScFor, DipFor, is Senior Principal Research Scientist, Division of Forestry, CSIRO. He was head of CSIRO’s Bushfire Research from 1975 to 2001. He has forty years of experience in research into bushfires including bushfire behaviour, prescribed burning, mass fires, fire ecology, aerial and ground suppression, fire-fighter physiology, fire-fighter safety, heat transfer, home protection and water catchment hydrology. He was awarded the CSIRO Medal for outstanding research achievement in the application of fire science for safer fire-fighting and safer communities.

Brian Gibson, AM, BScFor, BA, began his career with the Forestry Commission, Victoria. He then moved to the private forestry sector, and was Managing Director of Australian Newsprint Mills Ltd from 1980-1989, and President of the National Association of Forest Industries from 1987-1991. He was a Liberal Senator for Tasmania from 1993 to 2001. Mr Gibson is a director of several companies.

RC (Bob) Graham, AFSM, DipForCres, has more than 40 years experience of fire prevention, suppression, and prescribed burning. He was a principal (Level 3) Controller and Operations Officer at major fires in Victoria including Ash Wednesday fire, 1983, the North-East fire, 1985 and the disastrous north-east fires, 2003. He has led task forces to South Australia and to the Blue Mountains fire, 1994. He is currently a Managing Director and consultant on wild-fire behaviour and suppression in both native forests and plantations, and in planning and conducting prescribed burns.

Athol Hodgson, BScFor, DipFor, has more than 50 years experience in fire management and forest fire research in Australia, USA, Canada, France and Spain. He was formerly Chief Fire Officer and then Commissioner for Forests, Forests Commission of Victoria. He was a Member of the Board of the Country Fire Authority and a Member of the State Disaster Committee. He was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to study fire management in North America, and is a graduate from the National Advanced Fire Behaviour School, Marana, Arizona.

Rod Incoll AFSM, BASocSci, GradDipBus, DipFor, developed fire management skills as a forester from 1960. Rod set up the Commission’s fire training 1971-1972. He was District Forester, Toolangi 1976-1984. From 1984 he was an SEC divisional manager, a role that included fire protection of electricity production assets. From 1990-1996 he was Chief Fire Officer for public land in Victoria, a director of the CFA Board, the State Emergency Services Council, and the Australasian Fire Authorities Council.

AD (Tony) Manderson MEnvSci, DipFor(Cres) has 43 years experience in natural resource management including native forests, plantations and agricultural land. His fire experience covers all roles from front line fire-fighting to control and logistics at major forest fires over many years. He managed fire control training for the Forests Commission, was Resources Manager for the Victorian Plantations Corporation, and developed the Regulations that formed Industry Brigades within the CFA. He is currently a farmer and consultant on rural environmental issues.

WGD (Bill) Middleton, OAM, DipFor, has some 50 years experience in management of forests, of nurseries and of vegetation habitat in rural areas. He is a broadcaster, public speaker, lecturer and adviser on gardening, natural history, forestry and conservation. He has served on many scientific and community-based boards and committees concerned with wildlife research and landscape conservation, and is an Honorary Life Member of Birds Australia. He is a Board Member and Supervisor of the innovative Potter Farmland Plan for ecologically-sustainable agriculture, and a Board Associate and consultant for the Trust for Nature.

David Packham, OAM, MAppSci, worked for 40 years in bushfire research with CSIRO, Monash University and the Australian Emergency Management Institute. He was responsible for fire-weather services in the Bureau of Meteorology. His extensive research concentrated on the physics of bushfires, and he applied this research to practical issues including the development of aerial prescribed burning, non-evacuation of properties, modelling of fire behaviour, and forensics. He consults extensively on survival of people during bushfires, on fire risk and on coronial inquiries into deaths during fire-fighting.

Kevin Wareing, BScFor, DipForCres, is a forestry consultant and co-author of the narrative of the 2003 Alpine fires in Victoria. He was employed for some 40 years in the Forests Commission, Victoria and its successors in native forest management, plantation expansion, forest education, timber harvesting and industry development policies. He was manager from 1988-1995 of commercial forestry in Victoria’s native forests and plantations. He was awarded a national medal for forest fire fighting service.

I have now received a reply to my letter.  It was written by Ms Kerry Smith, an Assistant Secretary with the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts. Mr Rudd had forwarded my letter to the Minister for the Environment, who in turn forwarded it to his Department, where it eventually filtered down through the Department’s Approvals and Wildlife Division to its Wildlife Branch and thence to the Species Listing Section. 

I now realise that the situation is complex and has many ramifications, as demonstrated by the following advice from the Department:

 
1.     In 2007 the Environment Department received a nomination (they cannot identify from whom) requesting that the Minister list as a threatening process under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act: Contemporary fire regimes resulting in loss of vegetation heterogeneity and biodiversity in Northern Australia. The basis of the nomination was concern about widespread late-season fires in the seasonally dry tropics. The nomination did not raise prescribed burning as a threatening process. In fact, according to the Department, it took the position that prescribed burning at the right time of the year was appropriate as a measure to minimise the problem of wide-spread late-season fires.
 
2.    The nomination was referred to the Minister’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC), whose job is to review these proposals and make recommendations to the Minister. However, the Committee decided off its own bat that this nomination was relevant to the whole of Australia. So they then broadened the nomination, thus setting themselves the task of reviewing the impacts of contemporary fire regimes (obviously including prescribed burning) on vegetation heterogeneity and biodiversity for all ecosystems across the whole of Australia.

 
3.     The TSS Committee  has advised the Department that they propose to undertake a “transparent, rigorous, science-based assessment with full consultation with stakeholders and the public”. There will be a consultation period and public input will be sought. The Committee will identify independent scientists and consult with them. The final nomination will be released for public review and comments on the draft paper will be sought. The whole process is expected to take about a year. No start time and no budget were mentioned in the Department’s letter.
 
4.    The TSSC has been given a deadline to provide its recommendation to the Minister by 30 September 2010. Minister Garrett will make the final decision, perhaps in early 2011

The Department’s letter concluded by referring me to Mr Peacock, Director of the Species Listing Section who would answer any further questions. 

In the light of this letter, I have looked up the TSSC. It’s members are listed on the Department’s website. The Chairman is a Professor at the University of Qld and the other members are well-qualified academics and scientists. There is a marine biologist, a freshwater biologist, a river ecologist, a fisheries expert, a plant ecologist, a botanist, and an authority on fauna.

As far as I could see, there is no mention of bushfire management, fire science or fire ecology research in the resume of any of the members of the Committee. I assume that they will hire consultants to assist them as special advisers, as is normal practice with Committees like this.

I have also looked up a couple of the TSSC’s previous recommendations and it seems clear from this sample that they are wedded to the Precautionary Principle. This suggests a bias against action in favour of research, perhaps reflecting the weight of academics and scientists on the panel, as opposed to land managers with responsibility for fire outcomes.

The Department also advised in the same letter that even if this process results in contemporary fire regimes (which include prescribed burning in forests) being listed as a threatening process under the Act, “it would not result in the Australian government enforcing additional regulations on prescribed burning practices.”  If something is listed as a threat the Minister “might decide to have a threat abatement plan” prepared, that “might consist of guidelines”  regarding fire management practices.

I agree fully with the initial nomination. There is a serious problem with wide-scale late-season bushfires in northern tropical savannahs and woodlands. However, this has been known for at least 30 years or more, as has the solution, which is early-season prescribed burning to create a mosaic of fuel-reduced areas; these prevent late-season fires from burning too intensely (as the Aborigines knew maybe 30,000 yrs ago). We do not need a federal agency to research this any further. What is needed is for the governments of WA, NT and Qld to develop the appropriate land management plans for these areas, and to allocate the resources to get the plans implemented. Both the WA and NT governments, to my certain knowledge, are already active in this work, and there are a number of Aboriginal communities which are privately funded to carry out early-season burning.

It is interesting to note, and maybe the Committee will note it, that probably the most progressive and intelligent fire management practices in northern Australia at the moment are actually being carried out by corporate conservationists. I have reviewed the fire management policies and practices of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy for their large conservation estates in the Kimberley and north Qld, and I find that they are implementing exactly the sort of bushfire management that will optimise biodiversity and minimise carbon emissions, while also ensuring sensible fuels management. This is an instance of private land management setting first class standards, based on indigenous knowledge and excellent research from scientists, including Jeremy Russell-Smith and David Bowman.

The task which the TSSC has set itself cannot be accomplished in anything but a superficial way. How many contemporary fire regimes are there? Two hundred? A thousand? How many ecosystems across the whole of the country are being impacted by fire regimes? How is vegetation heterogeneity and biodiversity determined for each different ecotype?

It will be possible for the Committee to spell out some principles, but these are already well known to practicing fire ecologists. 

I assume that the TSS Committee is competent and is honourably driven by a desire to protect Australian ecosystems from threats. But I question whether they can tackle this project in isolation from other considerations. For example for most settled areas, it is not possible to separate the threat of fire to flora, fauna and ecological communities from the threat to human lives, communities and social and economic assets. Humans are also a threatened species in some bushfire situations. I also question whether the TSS Committee has the expertise in bushfire science to enable them to make an informed assessment of all the many elements that will need to be taken into account in each different situation.

The inevitable appointment of consultants to assist the Committee presents serious dangers. The Committee will be tempted to select academics, who are always available for this sort of work, are inexpensive compared to professional consultants (the academics are already being paid by their institution) and are keen to influence decision-making about the environment. Unfortunately bushfire scientists are very thin on the ground in Australian academic circles, and their ranks include several who are already saluting the anti-prescribed burning and pro-wildfire flag. It is a sad commentary on the state of intellectual leadership in bushfire science at the moment that I can think of only one Australian academic who would not be considered (by people involved in bushfire management) as a complete disaster if selected by the TSSC as their scientific adviser.

The Federal government does not need to get involved in this issue. There are already existing agencies in each State who have this role. For example in WA we have the EPA, the Conservation Commission, the Department of Environment and Conservation, and a Threatened Species and Communities Unit. The specific job of the Unit is to identify, review and deal with threats to species and ecological communities. In a former life I chaired this body, and I know that they work professionally, taking into account the latest information from competent and experienced scientists and land managers.

The Environment Department’s assurance that no new regulation will arise, even if a listing is made ….. but the Minister “might decide to abate” a threat….. strikes me as threatening in itself. If the Committee was persuaded by, say, the views of the Wilderness Society that prescribed burning in the jarrah forest must be listed as a threatening process, and if Minister Garratt then decided that this threat must be abated …. how would he succeed without imposing some form of Federal regulation on fire management operations by the responsible WA agency? A State-Federal stand-off on the issue would be inevitable, and would provide environmentalists with a heaven- sent opportunity to ridicule the State’s land managers, and to take legal action against them.

The TSSC’s review and report will overlap the Royal Commission into the Bushfires in Victoria, who will be covering many of the same issues. This makes for some interesting possibilities. For example, the Royal Commission could decide that in order to mitigate future bushfire disasters in Victoria, there needs to be a larger annual program of fuel reduction burning under mild conditions. Simultaneously the Threatened Species Scientific Committee, having conducted its own independent assessment, could decide that prescribed burning is a threat to Victoria’s forest ecosystems. Where will this take us?

I consider this project and its lengthy and costly processes to be a waste of time and money. The project is too large and complex. No Committee, and especially one proposing to involve the public in its deliberations can possibly achieve an outcome within the proposed time frame that will have any scientific credibility. Moreover, I oppose the Federal government entering an arena in which there are already existing State and Territory agencies set up to do the job. I would prefer to see Federal money going to independent audits of State agency performance – have they set, and are they meeting appropriate standards, targets and objectives – and then publicly reporting the results. This would overcome the problem that most Australian park and forest management agencies are not subjected to any independent and professional performance audits against performance standards.
 
My concerns, of course, count for nothing. People in the fire management community already know that they will have to take this new review seriously. It has taken on a life of its own, expanding from a small and appropriate study of fire impacts on northern savannahs to a continent-wide review of everything to do with fire, ranging from fire exclusion to high intensity wildfires and every combination and permutation in between. This means that we will need to prepare submissions, attend hearings, comment on draft papers, meet with consultants, defend our positions against 19th century northern hemisphere ecological concepts, and computer models put up as a substitute for field research. In other words, hours, days, probably weeks of work, and because most of us are volunteers, it is work for nothing. We have to do this because we know that if we don’t, and our voice is not heard, the TSSC will be swamped by fire mythology, by un-researched ‘science’ and by laughable but plausible-sounding assertions from the anti-prescribed burning brigade.
 
I know in saying all this I will be pounced upon by the usual voices of green outrage, and be accused of trying to undermine the most important scientific review since European settlement.  And perhaps I am being too pessimistic. I have participated in dozens of bushfire reviews over the years, and invariably they come out in favour of prescribed burning (with the usual qualifications and provisos, with which I invariably agree).  Maybe there is a chance that this committee, coming to bushfire management and fire science with fresh eyes, might see through the nonsense which will come at them from retrogressive institutions like the Fenner School of Environmental Studies at ANU. Perhaps they will visit the fire areas in Victoria and see for themselves the vegetation homogenizing and destruction of biodiversity associated with large high intensity bushfires. They might even compare this with the diverse and heterogeneous outcomes from patchy frequent mild fire. We might even be able to demonstrate to the Committee that there is another way of looking at the Precautionary Principle, one which applies specifically to bushfires and their impacts on lives, ecosystems and the environment.

If not, we just have to keep on doing what we are doing already, and never give up: trying to teach politicians and senior bureaucrats the two fundamental truths about fire management in Australia: (i) bushfires are inevitable; but (ii) we can chose between controlled fires burning under mild conditions, or massive wildfires that take all before them.

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Roger Underwood is Chairman of The Bushfire Front Inc, an organisation devoted to improving the standards of bushfire management in Australia.

Ongoing research at Sydney University by a group lead by Rick Shine suggests Australia’s most endangered snake would benefit from more controlled burns.

Researcher David Pike, at his Sydney University home page, goes as far as to suggest that:

“Following European settlement of Australia, the amount of vegetation (i.e., canopy shading) in many habitats has increased. The most likely causes for this change are the prevention of natural disturbance events, such as wildfires, and the cessation of aboriginal fire-stick farming, which aboriginal peoples used to effectively managed habitat for wildlife and food plants. In more recent times vegetation has encroached upon crucial habitat for the broad-headed snake, which is already restricted in distribution. This has caused a decrease in the amount of suitable overwintering habitat, and potentially has contributed to a range-wide decline.”

There is also evidence to suggest a decline in populations of grassland birds in Australia’s extensive rangelands due to the encroachment of native woody weeds onto these grasslands.

The Australian Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett, recently gave the Victorian government an exemption under the relevant federal legislation so it could undertake control burns to prevent further loss of life during the recent horrific Victorian bush fires.

Professor Shine and his group acknowledge that controlled burns can be expensive and dangerous to implement, and propose that in such situations “foresters might clear overhanging vegetation in areas known to be important to the snakes.”

There are alternatives, grazing with the right species of livestock avoids the risks associated with burnings and can keep vegetation in check.   Now what are the chances of permission to control graze to increase biodiversity?

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Notes

The photograph of the snake is republished, with permission, from http://www.bio.usyd.edu.au/Shinelab/students/davidpike/david.html

Endangered snake needs burning to survive: scientists.  ABC News Online,  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090324091207.htm

Permission for the Victorian Government to Burn Bushland, http://www.environment.gov.au/epbc/notices/pubs/statement-of-reasons-vic-bushfires.pdf