July 14, 2008

Bushfires, Prescribed Burning and Global Warming

Two myths about climate change and bushfire management are often repeated in the media:

1. Because of global warming, Australia will be increasingly subject to uncontrollable holocaust-like “megafires”; and

2. Fuel reduction by prescribed burning must cease because it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus exacerbating global warming and the occurrence of megafires.

Both statements are incorrect. However they represent the sort of plausible-sounding assertions which, if repeated often enough, can take on a life of their own and lead eventually to damaging policy change.

I'm paraphrasing from an important new report entitled 'Bushfires, Prescribed Burning and Global Warming' by Roger Underwood, Chairman of the Bushfire Front, David Packham, Senior Research Fellow at the School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, and Phil Cheney, Honorary Research Fellow, CSIRO, Canberra.

The authors consider in detail at the carbon balance in relation to fire in the three most typical Australian ecosystems: tropical grasslands, tropical/subtropical savannahs and tall forests and conclude:

1. Although the situation is almost carbon-neutral, all fires in tropical grasslands actually sequester some carbon in the form of “black carbon” which is incorporated into the soil;

2. Over time, the carbon balance of fires in tropical and subtropical savannahs is also just about neutral. In some years more CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere from fires than is absorbed by post-fire regrowth, while in other years more carbon is taken up by regrowth than is lost to the atmosphere from fire (including prescribed burning and wildfires).

The management approach that will optimise storage of carbon in Australian savannahs is one of low-intensity, early dry-season burning under mild weather conditions. This protects the overstorey trees and woody shrubs which are consumed by hot late-season fires.

3. Tall forests store carbon in tree trunks, bark, branches and roots, in woody shrubs and mid-storey vegetation and in the litter and accumulated organic debris on the ground. Eventually all old trees begin to decay from within, and in the absence of fire, the accumulated litter on the forest floor begins to rot away. At this point, the rate of release of carbon through decay exceeds the rate of storage of carbon by new growth. Thus Australia’s “old growth” eucalypt forests eventually stop being a carbon sink and become a source of CO2.

Fuel reduction by prescribed burning employs low-intensity fires lit under mild weather conditions at a time when there is still some moisture in the fuel. This ensures that the flames are generally less than a metre high and the fire is confined to the surface layer of fine fuel and the green material in the low shrubs. A properly managed prescribed fire will be conducted at a time when organic matter (including charcoal) in the soil will not burn. The ideal prescribed burn consumes only the surface fuels, leaving behind a layer of ash protecting the soil and the heavy logs.

The amount of CO2 released by a low-intensity fire is small and the store of carbon on the forest floor is rapidly replaced as the fine fuels re-accumulate and the low shrubs regrow. By comparison, a hot summer bushfire burning under drought conditions will consume all of the surface fuels, including large logs and organic matter in the soil which may have accumulated carbon for thousands of years. An intense summer bushfire will even consume the canopies of the tallest trees. The amount of CO2 produced by a fire is directly proportional to the total amount of fuel consumed in the fire. Thus a hot summer bushfire [in Australia’s tall forests] will release massive amounts of carbon.

The authors conclude that from the point of view of carbon storage in grasslands, savannahs and tall forests, the best management approach is one in which large high-intensity wildfires are minimised by periodic prescribed burns carried out under mild weather conditions.

The authors also examine the alarmist concept that “global warming will lead to unstoppable megafires”. They observe that if the current climate change models are correct, there will only be an increase in average annual temperatures of between 2 and 4 degrees over the next 100 years. The effect of this on bushfire behaviour, by itself, will be trivial. Fire intensity is far more significantly affected by fuel quantity, fuel dryness and wind strength, than it is by temperature.

Some climate change computer models also suggest a significant reduction in rainfall, leading to increased fuel drying and increased fuel availability at lower temperatures. This is the same effect as that of drought, a phenomenon which is common in Australia. Drought does result in more intense fires…..but only if nothing is done to reduce fuels before the fire occurs.

The factor which “doomsday” commentators ignore is the opportunity for land managers to get in first, and reduce fuels before a potential megafire starts. In other words, the potential megafire can be forestalled, simply by the adoption of a program of fuel reduction prescribed burning under mild weather conditions.

Finally, the authors advocate that the Precautionary Principle must apply: this means playing safe while the research is being done. The safe approach is not to ban prescribed burning because of an unsupported assertion that it may increase atmospheric CO2 levels, but to promote prescribed burning because it reduces the size and intensity of wildfires.

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February 03, 2008

Blue Gums in Grose Valley Healthy After Back-Burning

Just over a year ago media reports indicated the Blue Gum Forest of the Grose Valley was “hanging in the balance” because of a wildfire made “more intense, unpredictable and extensive by massive backburning operations”.

I trekked into the forest today and was surprised and pleased to see a beautiful forest with little evidence of fire damage.

The Blue Gum Forest, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, February 3, 2008. Looking to the south-east.

The Blue Gum Forest, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, February 3, 2008. Looking to the north-west.

The Blue Gum Forest, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, February 3, 2008. At junction of Grose River and Govett Creek, looking to the north.

As I struggled up the steep escarpment on my way out of the valley, I passed a couple descending into the valley and I asked if they were planning to visit the Blue Gum Forest.

“Yes,” replied the women, “At least what is left of it”.

Like me, and so many Australians, she believed the media reports that the forest had been badly damaged. As we passed I suggested she would be pleasantly surprised by what she saw.

Why has reporting in the popular press been so negative? Was the state of this iconic forest misrepresented as part of a wider campaign against back-burning?

-----------------------------------
Additional Notes and Links

Link to picture of burnt forest in Sydney Morning Herald:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-ghosts-of-an-enchanted-forest-demand-answers/2006/12/10/1165685553891.html

Link to earlier blog post with a question from Bill in Melbourne about the state of the forest:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002620.html

The Blue Gums in the Grose Valley are Mountain Blue Gums Eucalyptus deanii, here are some links to the more common Tasmanian Blue Gum, Eucalptus globulus:
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1702968.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Eucalyptus+globulus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_globulus

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October 23, 2007

Southern California Burning, Again

Bush fires are threatening suburbs in Southern California. ...several homes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties were evacuated. Seven-hundred fire-fighters battled the blazes, the largest covered 2,800 hectares. The fires were whipped by high winds of up to 70 km/h. Some homes were destroyed and flames and smoke were visible for several kilometres.

Read more here: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2005/09/29/california_fires20050929.html

And that article is a couple of years old. Yesterday CBC was reporting:

Firefighters in Southern California are battling more than a dozen wildfires that have destroyed 16,000 hectares of land and forced the evacuation of more than 250,000 people from their homes in the area. ...Arnold Schwarzenegger, who declared a state of emergency late Sunday in seven counties where fires have killed one person and injured dozens, said Monday that "it's a tragic time for California."

Read more here: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/10/22/fire-california.html

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September 02, 2007

The Bushfire Disaster in Greece was Predictable: A Note from Roger Underwood

Reports in the media and from fire management colleagues indicate that the recent horrific bushfires in Greece have parallels in Australia and were predictable.

It is estimated that nearly 70 lives have been lost and close to 200,000 hectares of agricultural land, national parks and mountain forests have been incinerated. The loss of olive groves is economically disastrous. Similarly the mountain forests are mostly coniferous, and unlike eucalypt forests, are destroyed by high intensity fire. Serious soil erosion and flooding can be expected in the coming winters.

Like southern Australia, Greece has a Mediterranean climate with cool, rainy winters and hot dry summers – ideal conditions for bushfires. Traditionally, however, it has not had disastrous all-consuming wildfires even in previous periods of below average rainfall. What is going on? It appears that the answer lies not in “global warming” as the usual people are inevitably saying, but in land use changes, mismanagement and inappropriate policy. Three things stand out:

1. Loss of land to traditional rural people. Over the last 20 years of so there has been a splurge of buying-up of small rural properties by wealthy people from European countries. A luxury holiday villa is built, and the new owners retire there, or pop in now and again to enjoy the warmth and beauty of the Greek mountains. However, just as when wealthy people from Perth buy their little vineyard in the karri forest, or move to a property on the edge of the bush in the hills, the first thing they do is try to change traditional land use practices, especially burning, and to introduce a “new environmental awareness”.

Mild burning in spring and autumn has been a practice of villagers and small land owners for centuries in Greece for all the usual reasons – including producing fresh grass for grazing, keeping the woods healthy and maintaining a low fire hazard. Increasingly burning has declined as the former land owners move to larger towns, and the new owners fail to do the job.

2. Transfer of bushfire responsibilities from land managers to emergency services. A few years ago the Greek government decided to take fire management responsibilities away from their Forestry Service and give them to the fire brigades. Almost immediately, routine burning programs in forest areas ceased. The bushfire service was confident it could tackle any fire, but this view was based on their experience with fires which occurred in forests which had been prescribed burnt for generations.

Once burning stopped, fuels began to accumulate, and when this fuel became dry in the current drought period, the resulting fires were unstoppable. As is so often the case world-wide, fire services tend to have a “suppression mentality” and do not sufficiently involve themselves in the essential work of bushfire preparedness and damage mitigation. Greek foresters could see it all coming, but did not have the political support to get anyone to face up to the coming crisis.

3. Reliance on technology. Greek authorities have been seduced into investing huge sums of money into aerial fire fighting technology. This was sold to them as the answer to the maiden’s prayer. At the same time, traditional ground-based systems, including access for fire fighters and old-fashioned pre-suppression work, were allowed to run down. The result: when there were many simultaneous fires, the new system was simply overwhelmed. There were not enough water bombers to tackle a large number of small fires, and then when the small fires rapidly became large and intense, the water bombers were ineffective.

Australian bushfire specialists listen to all this with a rueful expression on their faces, or roll their eyes with despair.

Analysis of the massive bushfires in Victoria, ACT and NSW in recent years indicate exactly the same patterns have emerged in Australia, with almost exactly the same result.

We have been lucky that only a small number of lives have been lost. But this may not be the case in the next bad fire season. If Australian governments continue to go down the line of replacing land managers with emergency services, investing in massive aerial technology instead of permanent staff and preparedness programs on the ground, and allowing bushfire policies to be dictated by people from the inner suburbs of the big cities who have no practical experience, the bushfire situation will only get worse here, as it has in Greece.

Roger Underwood is a former General Manager of CALM in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger currently directs a consultancy practice with a focus on bushfire management. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Posted by jennifer at 06:09 AM | Comments (14)

May 04, 2007

Bushfire Management in Australian Forests: A Note from Roger Underwood

"There is an old saying that one of the greatest of human failings is the inability to learn from the mistakes of others. One example is that of my 2-year old grandson who, despite being warned, could not resist testing the heat of the stove, and got his fingers burned. I have noted an identical situation in the attempts at bushfire management by Australia’s new generation of forest managers.

Yet while the new managers have suffered a lot of burned fingers over the last ten years, strangely they do not seem to be learning from it. There are three simple lessons which could be learned: First, the current approach to bushfire management is not working. Second, the current approach has been tried before and it didn’t work then either. And third, there are still a lot of people around who know all this, from whose first-hand experience much could be learned.

Another well-known aphorism tells us that those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.

Sadly, when it comes to bushfire management in Australia, I see history repeating itself continuously, and even worse, because of recent changes in our forest management environment, the outlook is for more of the same. And its not just fingers getting burned. Every year over the last ten, the nation’s forests, farmlands and even suburbs have been ravaged by large, high intensity fires. The damage from these fires, the wastage, the loss of resources and the economic and ecological costs have been astronomical. There have also been great but immeasurable psychological impacts on the people in the bush who have suffered from the fires, or who have been forced to turn out, over and over again, to fight them.

The sorriest aspect is that it is all so needless. It is not as if we Australians are brand new settlers in this country, still feeling our way and guided by imported European philosophies, immature science, inexperience of the bush or impractical ideologies.

Or are we? Consider the response from officialdom to the 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 fires. Our State governments and agencies are in denial, as witnessed by that monumental whitewash known as the Esplin Report, and by the refusal of State Premiers to adopt the excellent motion put to them by Senator Abetz recently. Consider a recent public statement of the Chief Officer of the NSW Rural Fire Service: he claimed there was no new serious bushfire problem in Australia, it is all a beat-up by the media. Consider the way the ACT government blamed the 2003 fires on God, while the WA government blamed the disastrous fire at Mundaring Weir on an arsonist.

Meanwhile, the Emergency Services lobby is renewing its calls for ever more expensive and sophisticated equipment and suppression forces, the environmentalists are blaming Global Warming, while the intellectual leadership and credibility of our academics continues to decline. The darling of the greens, academic Robert Whelan, for example has publicly argued against fuel reduction burning, while influential Canberra ecologist Richard Norris claims that the answer to the bushfire problem is simply to take people away from areas where bushfires occur, or make them live in fireproof structures. How he believes that this policy could be achieved in regional Victoria, southwestern WA, the urban fringe of Sydney, or in Tasmania, he does not explain.

If all of these people were less driven by politics or ideology, or if they actually knew something about bushfires or were required to design and implement a bushfire management system and then be accountable for the results, or even if they were prepared to make a serious study of the history of bushfire management in this country, they might have a very different view.

The fact is that large high intensity bushfires result from failed land management. Like a disease epidemic, they are incubated over several years during which preventative medicine could have been applied, but was not.

We are not brand new settlers on this continent. Australian land managers, land owners, foresters and rural workers have been confronting the threat of bushfires for over 200 years, and wildland fire has been the subject of very high quality scientific research over the last 50.

This experience and science have revealed that there are three basic alternative approaches to bushfire management: you can let fires burn, you can try to suppress them, or you can try to replace “feral” fires with controlled fires. All of these approaches are applicable and appropriate singly or in combination in different parts of the country. The trick is to get the most effective mixture for a particular place at a particular time.

To look at each of these briefly:

• In the Let-burn approach nature is assumed to know best, and fires are left to burn to their heart’s content, to go out eventually if they run into last year’s fire, or to be extinguished at the onset of the rainy season or tackled at the edge of the bush if human assets are threatened. By force of circumstances, the let-burn approach is appropriate for bushfires in the remote lands of central Australia and most of the rangelands where access is poor and there are few people or threatened assets. The trouble is that this approach is now advocated by environmentalists for application to our high rainfall forest country. Those who advocate this, it should be noted, mostly live well inside surburbia, are not threatened by fires, do not have to fight them and cannot be held legally accountable for the outcome of such a policy. No government can afford to adopt the let-burn approach for the more populous forest and agricultural regions, at least not officially, although the Victorian government came very close to it a few months ago when it withdrew firefighters from the bush to protect towns.

The two biggest problems with the let-burn approach are (i) fires burning out of heavy forest country can be unstoppable when they reach the edge of the bush; and (ii) under Common Law a token effort must always be made by the land owner or manager to suppress wildfires, because not to do so lays them open to legal action.

• The second alternative approach is the All-out Suppression approach. This requires fires to be attacked immediately after detection, using the resources of an emergency service, or “fire brigade” set up for the purpose. This approach originated in the cities of Europe in the middle ages, and was exemplified by the drama of the ringing alarm bells, galloping horse-drawn fire engines and magnificently uniformed and helmeted firefighters. The current image is equally theatrical, with water bombers and helitaks sweeping the smoky skies, convoys of tankers filing along country roads, and brilliantly uniformed Fire Chiefs being interviewed on television by breathless reporters.

The all-out suppression approach is appropriate in cities, where there are permanent firefighters on standby 24 hours a day who are able to get to any fire within minutes. In earlier days in rural Australia the suppression approach was implemented by volunteer brigades of farmers and bushworkers, and was largely successful in developed farmland and country towns.

However, in rural Australia these days the networks of small self-funded local bushfire brigades have morphed into highly sophisticated paramilitary organisations such as the CFA and the NSW RFS, complete with their decision-making headquarters in the city and their armies and airforces. Increasingly they are being expected to fight full-scale forest fires. This is partly because of the loss of experienced full time agency firefighters and also the loss of firefighters from the former hardwood timber industry who were once the frontline troops in any forest fire.

But the main reason is that the all-out Suppression Approach is fast becoming the dominant philosophy in most of Australia, especially NSW and Victoria.

The amazing thing about this is that it flies in the face of practical experience and bushfire science. This approach does not and cannot work in Australian eucalypt forests unless it is supplemented by other measures (discussed below). Fires on hot windy summer days in long unburnt forests simply cannot be put out by humans, no matter how many, how courageous and how hard they work and how good their technology. Even under relatively mild conditions, the intensity of fires burning in fuels over about 10 tonnes per hectare is simply too great to allow them to be attacked successfully. The 2007 Victorian fires demonstrated that the entire firefighting resources of Australia, plus international assistance from NZ, Canada and the USA, were inadequate.

This is a situation which was once well understood by Australian forest managers. Which is why in the 1950s there was a general move to adopt a third approach – the substitution of controlled mild fire for uncontrolled high intensity wildfire.

• I call this the green burning approach. It recognises two simple facts: Firstly, that bushfires cannot be prevented – even if we eliminated all mankind from the forest, there would still be lightning. And second, periodic mild, patchy fires prevent the build-up of heavy fuels, so that when a fire does start it is easier and safer to suppress, does less damage, and costs less. A regime of green burning also produces a healthier and more vigorous forest and is better for biodiversity. This approach was applied rigorously in many Australian forests for nearly 30 years, with tremendous success. Unfortunately since about the 1980s green burning has been under constant attack from environmentalists and academics. As a result, in Victoria and New South Wales, especially in forests which are now national parks, almost no effective prescribed burning is done. Even in WA, where green burning was once championed and is still applied, the area burnt each year has now fallen well below that required to ensure an effective fire management system. Here the annual burning target is 8% of the forest – simple arithmetic allows you to calculate that this equates to a turn-around time of 12 years, which in the jarrah forest is nearly twice the recommended burning rotation length if summer wildfires are to be manageable. The anti-burners have achieved this irresponsible situation not through special expertise in fire prevention or suppression, not through being able to put in place an alternative and equally effective system, but simply by gaining control of government policy and by the capture of the new forest management agencies.

There are two other problems, which I will mention only briefly…..

Opposition to prescribed burning has been accompanied by two further problems in the forest: a decline in the standard of road and fire trail maintenance - in some cases due to lack of funds, in other cases as a result of deliberate policy - and fewer permanent agency staff in the bush. The first of these factors has meant it is harder for firefighters to get to fires; the second has meant an increasing reliance on volunteers and on part-time and less experienced firefighters. In WA, as in other States, the government has newly established a large Wilderness Area in the forest, and within this area they are busy closing down roads. This is done in the full knowledge that it will make firefighting more difficult and dangerous.

What Can be Done?

My experience is revealing. I am the Chairman of a small independent group in WA called the Bushfire Front, and for nearly 5 years we have tried to influence government policy by logic, science and the weight of our >400 years cumulative wisdom and practical experience in all aspects of bushfire management. We have had one meeting with the Premier and numerous meetings with many Ministers and senior agency staff and have made dozens of submissions and presentations. The result is that we have moved from getting the cold shoulder (where we were simply ignored) to getting the warm shoulder (where they agree with us, but do nothing). The government feels very comfortable about this response because we pack no political punch. Ministers and agency bosses know where the real political clout lies. This is with the green pressure groups who control voting preferences and thus are able to determine government forestry policy.

In fact the green influence extends beyond policy to management plans and to bureaucratic regulation, including the imposition of ludicrous constraints on the burning program. No forester can undertake a prescribed burn in WA these days without filling in a 73-page document, running a public consultation program and then obtaining the signatures and approval of nine separate senior departmental mandarins, most of whom know nothing about fire. Finally, completed burns are subjected to a costly environmental audit which focuses on bureaucratic trivia, not fire control effectiveness. All of this, it seems to us, is deliberately designed to discourage burning and to make it harder for field staff to accomplish an effective fuel reduction program.

One of the greatest ironies of them all is that the department’s own ecological research has shown conclusively that biodiversity and forest conservation are enhanced by frequent mild fires, while large fierce fires cause enormous forest and environmental damage. A single hot wildfire near Mundaring Weir two years ago was found to have killed ten million mature jarrah, marri and wandoo trees. Yet this produced no change in the department’s fire management approach, nor was there a peep of concern from the environmentalists.

The most the Bushfire Front can say we have achieved is that we are well positioned to produce evidence of our warnings and the way these have been ignored to the inevitable Royal Commission after the inevitable bushfire disaster. This will give us no satisfaction.

Similarly we have had almost no success in motivating the media over the issue. We have found that journalists are interested in bushfires only as sensational disasters and theatrical drama; they find issues like damage mitigation and bushfire preparedness boring and un-newsworthy.

I am well aware that our forest managers today must operate in a greatly changed environment to that in which I worked 15 years ago. Here I am not referring to the hysteria about global warming. The big change is that bushfire management has moved from the business of land management to the business of politics. In the business of politics, history, science, practical experience, wisdom and logic seem to count for nothing.

In my opinion, until the voice of the bush is heard more loudly than the voice of the urban greens and impractical academics this situation will not change. We will continue to be unable to expose the policy vacuum, the flawed ideology, the lack of leadership and incompetent governance which characterise the current approach to bushfire management in this country.

There is one bright light on the horizon: this is the possibility that the Federal Government will become more involved, and will institute a new system in which the States are financially penalised for failed bushfire policies and management, rather than being rewarded as at present. I welcome the leadership in this area being shown by Eric Abetz, Garry Nairn, Stewart McArthur and one or two others in the Federal parliament, and commend to them the simple template for Best Practice in Bushfire Management which we have developed.

In conclusion, Australia does not need more helitaks, more water bombers, more infra-red gizmos or more overseas firefighters. What is needed is a fundamental change in bushfire philosophy and governance. Forest managing agencies and fire services must shift their focus from suppressing running fires to the critical long-term work of pre-emptive and responsible land management. Their job is to make the task of the firefighter easier and safer, not harder and more dangerous. Arson, Acts of God and possible Global Warming can all be anticipated and steps can be taken to minimise their impact. We know what to do and how to do it.

Finally, I would like to return to my theme about the lessons from history. At a conference of forestry officers in Perth in 1923, the Conservator Stephen Kessell was laying down his philosophy to departmental staff. Preventing large high intensity forest fires, he said, is the most fundamental requirement for forest conservation in Australia. Kessell recognised that without effective bushfire management, no other management outcomes can be achieved.

It’s that simple. Sadly, 80 years later, many of the people who today are responsible for conserving Australia’s forests have not yet grasped this fact. They fiddle, while Australia burns."

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This is an edited version of 'Bushfire management in Australian forests – confronting a changing environment' a paper by Roger Underwood presented to the Timber Communities of Australia conference in Perth, Western Australia, April 2007.

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February 17, 2007

Who are the Beneficiaries of Large High Intensity Bushfires? by Roger Underwood

It is only February, but 2006/7 is already shaping as one of Australia’s worst bushfire seasons. The extraordinary fires in Victoria have captured the headlines, but there have also been big, intense and damaging bushfires in Tasmania, West Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. These succeed the shocking fires in eastern and south-western Australia every summer over the last 5 years.

There are many interesting issues relating to this new prevalence of big, nasty bushfires. Bushfire management in Australia reached its peak between about 1975-1990. But despite all the technical innovations since then, the huge expenditure on aerial water bombers and the vast armies of fire fighters with their wondrous equipment, bushfire management in Australia has regressed to the situation that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. In other words, whenever bad fire weather occurs, unstoppable fires ravage the bush.

It is also curious how the recent disasters have come to be accompanied by a spirit of defeatism amongst our leaders. Bushfires, it seems, are an Act of God, a natural phenomenon which cannot be prevented. Lie back and think of England!

This line of thinking is not just an example of gutless leadership, it is logically flawed and flies in the face of decades of research into bushfire science and centuries of human experience. What is going on?

I was once advised by a grizzled public servant of the old school “if you want to understand any puzzling social or political issue, look for the beneficiaries.” Who on earth might benefit from the regular occurrence of huge, hot bushfires?

While the correct answer is “no-one” it is not hard to find people who use the big hot fire to their political or financial advantage. For example I have heard environmentalists portraying the recent fires in Victoria and WA as a direct consequence of global warming. They quite unambiguously assert that unless we unquestioningly adopt their political agenda on climate change, there will be more horrible bushfires. This can easily be shown to be crooked thinking, but it is an effective line because of the current hysteria about global warming.

The media can be seen as a beneficiary of big nasty bushfires as these provide highly newsworthy, truly front page or top-of-the-bulletin stuff. Journalists are served up with wonderful hero stories, disaster stories and controversy stories on a plate. Bushfires are tremendous drama, complete with cataclysmic vision of houses and forests going up in flames, farmers shooting burnt sheep, sad people raking through the remnants of their houses picking up twisted trinkets, hillsides of blackened forest. To the media (and of course to their clients the viewers and readers), big hot fires arouse intense interest and excitement; few things outside war provide more opportunities to exploit the gamut of human emotions or to experience them vicariously.

Then there are the Fire Chiefs, resplendent in their American World War 2 General’s uniform. “Bushfire management” these days has largely morphed into “bushfire fighting”, a thrilling battle to be fought by Emergency Services staff who have been waiting in the wings for this very moment. I am not criticising our top Firemen. They are doing the job they are appointed to do and all would be equally dismayed by the human misery and environmental damage caused by intense bushfires. Nevertheless, when the Big Fire declares war, their 15 minutes of fame arrives. The regiments of firefighters are amassed and despatched; the squadrons of bombers and helicopters are unleashed; the support and technical units are rushed to the battle. Fire Chiefs are nightly seen on the news giving high profile briefings to politicians and the media, planning strategies and dictating the tactics at the front. This is war, and war is hell. But war is also The General’s Big Moment, his hour upon centre stage.

I also wonder about the money, and who gets it. Bushfire fighting in Australia has become horrendously expensive. In particular, unbelievable sums are spent hiring aerial equipment and firefighters from overseas. I am convinced that if the money spent hiring overseas equipment and importing (and paying) inexperienced overseas firefighters was channelled instead into re-creating the permanent force of firefighters who once occupied the nation’s forest districts, we would be financially better off and have a superior fire management system.

Bushfire research is another interesting and complex issue. There is a considerable band of academics in Australian universities who are associated with and at least partly funded by the Bushfire CRC. None of these people like to see people and houses being burnt, but they all know that every big, nasty fire helps to underpin the security of their research grants, guarantee future funding and ensure desirable academic side-effects such as overseas conferences, publishable papers, and graduate students.

Finally there are those politicians who have learned how to make a name for themselves from a bushfire. They do this by the generous authorisation of huge sums of money for suppression at the very height of the fire, turning up at the control point and shaking the hands of smoke-grimed firefighters, commiserating with people who have lost everything, and looking grave but intelligent in a media briefing. After the fire they disperse largess from the government coffers to compensate those of their constituents who have been burnt-out, and promise more money for fire fighting equipment and research.

I am by no means saying that these “beneficiaries” are the cause of the disastrous decline in the standard of bushfire management in Australia over the last 15 years. We are all to blame for the inept political leadership and government dysfunction which are at the root of the problem.

What really worries me is that while God and Global Warming are cast as the villains, nothing will change. It just means that sensible investment in programs of bushfire prevention and preparedness, damage mitigation and community education continue to be set aside in favour of a self-fulfilling prophecy of apocalypse. Those who support (for example) an effective level of prescribed burning in the national parks, can safely be ignored. God and Western Civilisation are ordaining killer bushfires and we can do nothing about it! The fire and brimstone prophets of the Old Testament are back on the job.

by Roger Underwood
Perth, Western Australia

Roger is a former General Manager of CALM in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger currently directs a consultancy practice with a focus on bushfire management. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.

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February 05, 2007

Nyoongars, Noolbengers and No Fires: A Note From David Ward

Hello Jen,

I attach a couple of pictures of an unplanned recent fire at Scott River, Western Australia.

I don't know the exact fuel ages before the fire, but obviously one area was much older (possibly 15 year old), and heavier littered, than the other (possibly 3 or 4 year old).

Scott River, 30th January 2007

Scott River, 30th January 2007

If you were a Noolbenger (Honey Possum, Tarsipes rostrata), which would you prefer?

Some claim that these animals would benefit from fire exclusion, from large areas, for twenty or thirty years.

I think Nyoongars (South West Aborigines) would have burnt many patches at about three years old, by lighting grasstrees.

Such fires would have trickled around, even in midsummer. They would have gone out in the late evening when the humidity rose, leaving many unburnt refuges.

Nyoongars would have had no trouble hopping, in bare feet, across burnt patches. They probably regarded Noolbengers as a tasty snack, flushed out by a mild fire - a perfect evening's entertainment.

In recent fires in Fitzgerald River National Park, Noolbengers were running up fire fighters' legs, and one was seen to swim fifty metres across an inlet.

Davey Gam Esq
aka Dave Ward
Western Australia

------------------

Dave,

Thanks so much for the note with pictures. What a contrast. And I wonder what a honey possum looks like?

By-the-way, On Line Opinion has published an article by Mark Poynter this morning on forestry and fires.

Cheers, Jen

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January 31, 2007

More Fuel Reduction Burning, More Fires: A Note from Bob McDonald

Bushfires have burnt more than 1.2 million hectares (4,600 square miles) of Australia this summer.

Some blame the ferocity of this year’s fires on global warming, others on inadequate control burning claiming that fuel loads in many forests are too high.

Bob McDonald has a very different perspective suggesting that both the frequency of bushfires and fuel reduction burning has increased over the last two decades in parts of eastern Australia and that in some situations the best strategy is to not undertake any controlled burning as potential fuel, including leaf litter and wood, will be quickly broken down by termites, bacteria and fungi:

“The frequency of both fuel reduction burning and fires have increased over the last twenty years in many locations. There may be no relationship between the two, but I suspect that in some situations more frequent burning is contributing to more 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.

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 I respect all those views contrary to mine on an issue for which many have strong and personal or professional views 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 on a site by site basis.

I have fought fires in several places and I am interested in questions relating to what does not burn, when vegetation burns, how hot does it burn and which fires can ignite what kinds of dead wood.

Wire grass, for example, explodes but you can run through it without getting burnt.

In the 1983 Ash Wednesday Fires at Mount Macedon (on a south westerly wind) frequently burnt as well as bush with that went up in a crown fire and also burnt. A fire from the north just 10 days before the Ash Wednesday Fires, a wet gully of ferns and old trees on the south side of the Mount Macedon ridgeline held up a grass fire for two hours enabling water bombinmg and eventually being put out.

In 2003 roughly 500,000 hectares of forest from East Gippsland to Canberra was burnt. When fires two weeks ago reached this area, burnt less than three years ago, they not only burnt but 'took off’. This would suggest that in some situations re-growth is more flammable than un-burnt areas and that in some cases a significant amount of fuel reduction burning could actually increase the frequency of bushfires.

In East Gippsland, while developing a Community Fire Protocol to manage fuel reduction burning, locals pointed out that rainforest gullies slowed fires and it was a good idea not to burn them in fuel reduction burns.

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 rapidly becomes soil.

Termites play a big role here, along with fungi and bacteria. If it was burnt this forests's capacity to rot timber would be significantly reduced.

It will take time for people to feel comfortable with letting the bush grow out in places where no-fire is, in my opinion, the best hazard reduction strategy. All vegetation burns, dead and alive, but some burns better than others. Fuel reductions fires in sandy country in the south that generate braken invariably increase braken denisty, height and the fire hazard - and often kill thin barked eucalypts like Manna Gums, for instance

Bob McDonald,
South Gippsland."

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January 22, 2007

Parachutes & Prescribed Burning: A Note from David Ward

"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

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December 10, 2006

Bushfires in Tasmania: A Note from Cinders

Hi Jennifer,

This year’s bushfire season in Tasmania has been accompanied by the shrill political voice of the Australian Green's Senator Christine Milne. On Thursday she attacked the state’s professional forest service in a game of one upmanship with Tasmania’s Eric Abetz, Minister for Forestry and Conservation.

“The truth is most bushfires in Tasmania are deliberately lit or escape from forestry operations or regeneration burns,” Milne claimed.

The claim drew this response from Forestry Tasmania the next day:

“Senator Milne knows from publicly published fire statistics that more than 80 per cent of forest-related fire-fighting is from arson, lightning and other causes, not escape planned burns.”

Managing Director of Forestry Tasmania had this to say on Milne’s self promotion:

“She is cruelly wrong to accuse forestry of being a major cause of wildfires and the release of greenhouse gases. This week, when hundreds of forestry workers, their fire tankers, dozers, low loaders, helicopters and aircraft are fighting forest fires all started by arson or in Victoria by lightning strikes, she is so wrong.”

In Tasmania, due to an innovative inter-agency agreement between the Tasmanian Fires Service, Parks and Wildlife Service and Forestry Tasmania we can apply maximum resources whether the bushfire is on private or public land, in State forest or a reserved area.

For the latest on Tasmanian Fires check out Tasmanian Fire Service at: http://www.fire.tas.gov.au/mysite/Show?pageId=colFireRestriction

And for a photo or two, the Mercury at: http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,20902092-3462,00.html.

Regards,

Cinders.

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December 09, 2006

Bushfires Across North East Victoria: A Note from Max Rheese

There are out-of-control fires burning across northern Victoria, Australia, with more than 170,000 hectares consumed so far. There is an update in today's The Age and also a photo gallery which can be accessed from the main page.

Yesterday I phoned Max Rheese a friend and colleague from Benalla. He said he was OK and that he would send me a note for the blog about the fires:

"Seven days ago, on Friday December 1, I relaxed in the family room of my home in Benalla in North East Victoria and watched the first of the summer thunderstorms pass overhead. I witnessed the lightning strike in the nearby ranges that started the first of fifty fires to be ignited by that thunderstorm. A week later I sit in the same room and cannot see more than 200 metres into the paddocks because of the thick smoke that has enveloped Benalla from the still burning fires.

A total of 150,000 hectares of mainly native forest has been burnt in the past week. Tomorrow the forecast temperature is 39 degrees with northerly winds and dire predictions of impending disaster by everyone from Premier Bracks to the local hairdresser. Speculation of 600,000 hectares being burnt by the end of next week are reported.

A distinct feeling of déjà vu pervades, as North East Victoria went through the same sort of event in the Alpine fires of 2003 where 1.1 million hectares of mainly public land was burnt in 59 days of inferno that was unequalled, in area burnt, since Black Friday in January 1939.

It is difficult to comprehend for many people that we should be facing a potential holocaust this summer after the very recent disastrous fires of 2003. Ample evidence was presented at a number of inquiries into the 2003 fires that a lack of prescribed burning over a twenty year period had increased the fuel load in many areas of the high country of Victoria.

Athol Hodgson, a former chief fire officer for the then Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands presented submissions to the inquiries that followed the 2003 fires detailing the lack of prescribed burning over the previous two decades. This was not disputed.

The following is an extract of a paper that Hodgson delivered to The Eureka Forum in Ballarat in 2004:

Another top priority is to restore prescribed burning programs in forests. Immediately after the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983 the Government injected $1 million extra into the programs effectively doubling the money available for field staff to do the work. Yet the programs crashed. In 1992 the Auditor General found that the Department of Conservation and Environment had failed to achieve its planned fuel-reduction targets in three consecutive seasons and that those areas the Department identified as warranting the highest level of protection to human life, property and public assets received the lowest level of protection. And in 2003 the Auditor General found that since 1994, fuel reduction burning has never met the Department's planning and operational fuel-reduction targets. In allowing that to happen, the Department ignored the truism heralded by Judge Stretton in 1939, repeated by Sir Esler Hamilton Barber in 1977 and further reinforced by the Miller Report on the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, that fire prevention must be the paramount consideration of the forest manager.

The Government and the Department must lift their game. They must do so, not only in places where the priority is to protect life and assets. Those places are a very small proportion of the forest estate and to concentrate on them to the exclusion of the rest of the forests will lead inevitably to more feral fires. Prescribed burning has been done successfully in the past on broad areas to create forest diversity and reduce the damaging effects of wildfires. The practice had little community and no political support from the mid-1980's until 2003 and was the reason why fuel management programs crashed in that era. That support must be won and the practice reinstated in our forests in a safe way.

…"that fire prevention must be the paramount consideration of the forest manager".

This is not rocket science, but we as a community have lost the plot. We are so busy embracing the notion of protecting our forests that we cannot see the forest for the trees.

For goodness sake! How many times do we have to go through this before we get it right?

Figures supplied by the Department of Sustainability and Environment [responsible for fire management on public land] to the Auditor General show that 127,000 hectares were burnt in 2004 - 2005 in prescribed burns. This very mediocre total was one year after the disastrous Alpine fires of 2003. This is well below the 10 year average for burns of 200,000 hectares and even further behind the high points of prescribed burning in the 1980's where totals of upto 450,000 were burnt one year and over 300,000 hectares were burnt in several other years.

We need to stop the blame game, encourage the Victorian government to adopt a proper scientific regime of sufficient prescribed burning that will deliver confidence in the management of native forests to lessen the impacts of fires in years of severe drought such as this year.

Governments and the community must accept that there is inherent risk in prescribed burning and that occassionally a burn will escape. To not accept this risk and to be overly prescriptive with protocols for burning operations will result in the situation that country Victorians will face this weekend; multiple uncontrolled wildfires in areas that have not had fuel reduction burns for many years.

Max Rheese
Executive Director, Australian Environment Foundation "

-------------------------------------------
My thoughts are with the communities in northern Victoria and also the communities of forest animals.

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December 01, 2006

Pilliga Forest Burns

Large areas of Pilliga scrub are burning right now in central western NSW with large koala populations threatened.

The forests were declared national park less than 18 months ago, with many timber workers losing their jobs*. At the time the timber workers warned that unless National Parks and Wildlife officers maintained fire breaks and control burnt the entire forest could convert back to grassland.

Today a new group, the NSW Private Native Forestry Group put out a media release about forests and fires with particular reference to the fires now burning in the Pilliga:

"With predictions that this summer will see the worst bushfires in the state’s recorded history, farmers and foresters are warning that further government restrictions on the management of forests on private land will dramatically increase the threat and severity of bushfires.

“It’s time the NSW Government knew what farmers and foresters have known for decades: sustainable management of forests reduces the risk of catastrophic bushfires,” said Andrew Hurford, forester and spokesperson of the NSW Private Native Forests Group.

“Farmers and foresters help to reduce the frequency and intensity of bushfires by managing dangerous fuel loads that accumulate on the forest floor before they become a problem. We also play a crucial role in maintaining fire trails so that firefighters can access remote areas quickly.

“Farmers and foresters are the best ‘frontline of defence’ against bushfires: we are the ‘eyes and ears’ of the forest, helping to put out fires as soon as they occur. It’s in our best interests to protect these forests from catastrophic wild fires,” said Mr Hurford.

Mr Hurford said that radical green groups would have politicians believe that the policy of ‘Fence and Forget’ is the best way to conserve native forests on private land: a theory that totally ignores the fact that Aboriginals actively managed Australia’s bushland for thousands of years.

“Just look at how this policy has been an absolute disaster for fire management in our National Parks. For example, in the last forty-eight hours, 100,000 hectares of the Pilliga Forest near Coonabarabran in Central West NSW has been incinerated,” said Mr Hurford.

“Today, over 8.5 million hectares of private land in NSW (an area larger than Tasmania) are able to be looked after and sustainably managed for timber production by farmers and foresters.

“Millions of hectares of native bushland and millions of dollars worth of rural infrastructure, such as fences and sheds, will be incinerated if radical green groups get their way on locking-up private forests,” Mr Hurford said.

In August this year, the NSW Government was forced by angry farmers, timber mill owners and workers to shelve its plan to introduce a ‘Code’ that would have seen 60 per cent of forests on private land ‘locked-up’ into de facto National Parks.

“Without private landholders, who will be left to safeguard bushland from fires?” said Mr Hurford.

The 2003 ‘State of the Environment Report’ for the Australian Capital Territory lists that nearly 6.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted into the atmosphere during the January 2003 Canberra wildfires: equivalent to 1.6 million new cars on the road for a year.

“The radical green policy of ‘Fence and Forget’ will lead to more catastrophic bushfires and more greenhouse gas emissions – the very thing governments are trying to prevent!” said Mr Hurford.

The NSW Private Native Forests Group is made up of timber mill owners, forest workers and farmers who harvest timber from private land. The Group is supported by the NSW Forest Products Association, Timber Communities Australia and Australian Forest Grower’s. Private native forestry is the long term and sustainable management of native forests on privately-owned land. The industry employs approximately 3,000 people and generates over $300 million for the NSW regional economy. Around a third of all native forests in NSW (or 8.5 million hectares) are on private land.

----------------------
* At the time I wrote several blog posts on the issue including:

Timber Communities and National Parks (Part 1), 21st April 2005
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000563.html

Pilliga-Goono Lockup Announced, 5th May 2005:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000590.html

And I wrote about enviromentalism and the forests for On Line Opinion in June 2005:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3535

Posted by jennifer at 11:14 AM | Comments (61)

March 03, 2006

On Putting Out Bushfires

"Part of bushfire fighting culture is that you control lightning strikes by 10 o'clock the next morning or you are in trouble. We have done that over the years and we have done it successfully. We had not lost them before. But nobody seemed to want to put these out. I do not know why. I keep asking myself why, in the middle of January, in the middle of a drought and with the highest fuel loads ever, nobody seemed to want to put those fires out. It is just sickening."

Val Jeffrey was referring to the January 2003 fires that went on to burn 3 million hectares of south eastern Australia including much of Kosciousko National Park.

According to two new blog posts at HenryThornton.com,

"This summers' fire season is not yet over but we hope not to see a major fire in the [Victorian] Otways.

The Victorian Government must urgently learn the lessons from 2003 that have not been learnt in the Grampians and Brisbane Ranges, and must apply improved practices to the management of the Otways and other parks in Victoria."

Read more,

http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=3893
and

http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=3892.

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February 21, 2006

How Many Cricket Pitches Burnt?

Jim Hoggett milks goats at his farm west of Gloucester in northern eastern NSW, he is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, and he had the feature letter in last week's The Land (16th February). It read:

Last weekend we had the routine "alleged illegal land clearing" scare in the Sydney Morning Herald, fostered by the Wilderness Society. It was alleged that the equivalent of 6 Sydney Cricket Ground pitches were being illegally cleared in NSW every hour of every day.

The greatest threat to nature in NSW is not scrub clearing in the central West. It is fire, especially fire in the National Parks.

In the few weeks prior to the SMH report an area perhaps 10 times the area of alleged illegal clearing went up in wildfires across the eastern States. And the season is not over yet. To use the much loved
Green cricket pitch analogy, that is the equivalent of 60 Sydney Cricket Grounds every hour of every day. The difference is that the fires consume the pristine, national heritage, wilderness rather than Central-Western scrub.

And this is as nothing to the 2003 fires (900 cricket grounds per hour for NSW and the ACT alone) where the jewels in the crown were burned to the ground - if that is not too mixed a metaphor.

I have not heard a peep out of the Wilderness Society about all this. Nor has anyone to my knowledge ever attempted to measure this truly massive, recurring ecological damage. Not to mention the annual risk
to the lives of firefighters. No doubt there is a lot of silent hand wringing but I hear no solutions.

And we will no doubt find that much of the alleged illegal clearing was of regrowth. The interval between the two photos in the SMH report was only 3 years. So much of the area may well have been previously cleared. Perhaps we could direct the satellite to take a survey of reafforestation in NSW. We might well find that the total area and density of NSW native vegetation has actually increased with regrowth and forest thickening. Let's look at the stock as well as the flow.

What is the net gain/loss?

Even better, instead of spending millions of dollars on satellites to spy on its own citizens, government could divert the money to programs which would prevent the mass destruction of our fauna and flora. Then we could possible simplify the absurdly restrictive Native Vegetation Act and work on a program of serious fire mitigation in our Parks.

Incidentally, the alleged illegal clearing amounted to less than one hundredth of one per cent of the area of NSW.

................

Republished with permission from Jim Hoggett.

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January 27, 2006

Don't Blame Arsonists: Roger Underwood

I wonder how many Koalas have been burnt in the bushfires raging across Victoria?

I received a letter from Roger Underwood today, he writes, "Arsonists do light fires, but they are not responsible for fires becoming large and damaging, especially forest fires. Blaming them is a convenient way for politicians and land managers to avoid taking responsibility themselves, which they should."

Roger Underwood has over 40 years experience of bushfire management in Australia and overseas. He was formerly General Manager of The Deparment of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist.

Dear Jennifer

I have been watching TV and reading newspaper reports on the recent (and ongoing) disastrous bushfires in Victoria and Western Australia. One common thread is the attempt to blame "arsonists, thought to be responsible for the fires".

There are two non-debatable things about arson: (i) it has always been with us and will always be with us, as it is an expression of anti-social, criminal or sick human behaviour; and (ii) since arson-lit fires cannot be prevented, we should expect them to occur and take the necessary measures to minimise their impact, not whinge about them.

The ultimate irony to me was to see our Acting Premier promising large sums of money as a reward for information about the supposed arsonist, when the government in which he is a Minister has overseen a massive decline in the capacity of the State's bushfire management resources.

Bushfires cannot be prevented.

On the other hand we can predict with great accuracy where and when they will occur and we can put in place very effective measures to minimise the damage they cause, and to increase the ease and safety of their control. In the publicly-owned forest, these measures are relatively simple.

In the first place we need a sound policy, and the strong support of government and agencies - this is a matter of simple, good governance and responsible public service.

In the second place we need a resource of permanent well trained and well equipped staff who can undertake fire management, supported by a well-funded volunteer firefighter force. Third, we need effective programs of green burning in our parks and forests, to reduce fuels and to ensure that fires do not become large, intense and unstoppable. Finally we need rural people, including those living at the interface, to take responsibility for making their own properties less hazardous or vulnerable, and if they won't do it voluntarilly, they must be forced to do it compulsorily.

None of this is new. But for some reason it does not happen. Worse, we seem to be going backwards. I agree with those who blame the environmentalists for antagonism or fear of green burning - they have very successfully created a generation of young people who do not understand the role of fire in Australian ecosystems - but they are not solely to blame.

The political leaders who show no leadership, or who try to slip out from under by blaming the arsonists are also contemptible, but politicians are politicians, and we cannot expect them to behave out of character. I am also very disappointed with some of the new breed of braided Fire Chiefs who tend to see bushfires as theatre, and whose media popularity would be threatened by a fire management system which resulted in fewer fire disasters. But these people are simply a product of the media-dominated world in which we live,and they won't go away any more than will the arsonists.

I conclude that the real villains in the piece are our professional land managers - the people who are today in charge of our national parks and State forests. They are well aware of the ecological research, they know about the decline in forest health in areas subjected to fire exclusion, they have staff in the field who are skilled in and enthusiastic about green burning, they have media and communications units, and they are in a position to influence government policy and priorities, to fight for a position which is right, even if it is politically unpopular. But they do not appear to be prepared to fight for good and effective fire management, and the result is an increasing number of large, high intensity fires which do no-one any good, and cause immense environmental damage.

The situation in WA is made more difficult by the fact that our land management agency (CALM) is not responsible for preparing the park and forest management plans which they are required to implement. The government has placed responsibilityfor management planning in the hands of a part-time committee of citizens and academics called The Conservation Commission, not one single member of which has any scientific expertise or professional experience in bushfire management or forest firefighting.

A thousand new arson detectives in every state will not catch every arsonist or potential arsonist, nor will they stop arson occurring in the future. What is needed is a new breed of tough, dedicated professional land managers who accept arson as inevitable, like lightning, and work to put in place a system which ensures that when fires start we can deal with them before people are killed, lovely forests incinerated and farms destroyed. What the government needs to do is to put these people in charge, chop off the influence of committees of well-meaning amateurs, and provide policy and political support.

Will this happen? The Bushfire Front developed a template for Best Practice in Bushfire Management in WA which, in early 2005, we sent to the Premier and the Minister for the Environment, together with an analysis of where WA needed to take steps to halt the decline in the standard of fire management, and to get the whole show back on the road. This submission was the outcome of several months work by experienced bushfire managers and former fire scientists. Neither the Premier nor the Minister replied.

Roger Underwood
The Bushfire Front WA Inc

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January 23, 2006

Athol Hodgson on Bushfires

According to ABC Online news:

Up to 20 properties are feared destroyed or damaged by fires across Victoria, with a number of communities in the state's west and east under threat.

At least three homes have burnt down near Anakie, west of Melbourne, after a lightning strike started a fire that destroyed more than 6,000 hectares of the Brisbane ranges.

Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) chief fire officer Andrew Greystone says the fire behaviour has prevented crews from assessing further damage.

"We believe that there have been houses and or property lost in the Brisbane ranges and in the Grampians," he said.

The Grampians fire at Mt Lubra in the west has covered more than 100,000 hectares and threatened the towns of Moyston, Pomonal, Halls Gap and Stawell.

In Gippsland in the east, a deliberately-lit blaze now at 10,000 hectares, has left Moondarra under ember attack and continues to threaten Erica, Rawson and Tyres.

In the north-east, the towns of Yea, Kinglake and Glenburn should maintain ember patrols.

Crews are racing to have the fires contained before Thursday's return to 40 degree Celsius temperatures.

I have just found and re-read my copy of a speech given by Athol Hodgson in December 2004 at the Eureka Forum in Ballarat. It includes some history and some advice:

The fire event in 1985 when lightning started 111 fires in a pattern similar to the fire event in 2003 is one valid benchmark for learning. The 1985 campaign lasted 14 days and confined the Alpine fires to 50000 ha without the help of rain. It involved 2,000 Departmental, 500 CFA, 449 Armed Services, 120 timber industry and 50 SEC personnel; 75 bulldozers, 400 fire tankers and 36 aircraft. In the aftermath, debriefs were held without rancor or political interference and there was no call for an Inquiry into the event.

In 1985 there was a large work-force of experienced firefighters working in the forests. It included people working on hydro-electricity projects; tree fellers, sniggers and log carters employed by the timber industry; graziers; forest workers building fire access tracks, maintaining roads and tracks, and picking seed for forest regeneration and forest officers supervising forest licensees, forest works and planning autumn prescribed burning for forest regeneration and fuel reduction. That work-force and the vehicles and equipment it used daily in the forests was immediately available on 14 January 1985. A work-force of similar size and experience in fighting fires in the Alpine forests was not immediately available for fire fighting in January 2003.

A top priority for Government to ensure good forest fire management is to put a bigger and permanent workforce into the parks and State forests do the things that must to be done to sustain healthy and diverse forest ecosystems. That workforce must have skills, transport, tools and machinery capable of managing multiple ignitions from lightning as was done in 1985. It is not absolutely necessary to reverse land use decisions to do this but it is necessary to change some current land management practices. The workforce must have a mission appropriate for the approved land use. In parks, the mission must include controlling feral animals, weeds, erosion, keeping access tracks in a condition where they are easily maintained, collecting seed and revegetating damaged sites, planning and conducting prescribed burns and controlling unplanned fires. In State forests where commercial use of vegetation is permitted the mission must include all the above and additional tasks appropriate to the commercial operation.

Another top priority is to restore prescribed burning programs in forests. Immediately after the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983 the Government injected $1 million extra into the programs effectively doubling the money available for field staff to do the work. Yet the programs crashed. In 1992 the Auditor General found that the Department of Conservation and Environment had failed to achieve its planned fuel-reduction targets in three consecutive seasons and that those areas the Department identified as warranting the highest level of protection to human life, property and public assets received the lowest level of protection. And in 2003 the Auditor General found that since 1994, fuel reduction burning has never met the Department's planning and operational fuel-reduction targets. In allowing that to happen, the Department ignored the truism heralded by Judge Stretton in 1939, repeated by Sir Esler Hamilton Barber in 1977 and further reinforced by the Miller Report on the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, that fire prevention must be the paramount consideration of the forest manager. The Government and the Department must lift their game. They must do so, not only in places where the priority is to protect life and assets. Those places are a very small proportion of the forest estate and to concentrate on them to the exclusion of the rest of the forests will lead inevitably to more feral fires. Prescribed burning has been done successfully in the past on broad areas to create forest diversity and reduce the damaging effects of wildfires. The practice had little community and no political support from the mid-1980's until 2003 and was the reason why fuel management programs crashed in that era. That support must be won and the practice reinstated in our forests in a safe way.

These two priorities will cost money in large amounts. Victorians must anticipate that contributions to forest fire management from forest industries by way of royalties or in kind will not in the future, be as great as in the mid-1980's. And visitor fees and similar charges are 'petty cash' compared to the many millions of dollars needed to sustain local and largely permanent workforces in rural communities close to where they are needed most. But Victoria's forests are an asset that requires to be valued by the community in the same way that any other asset is provided with a value that guides its management and protection. The intrinsic values of wilderness, water catchments, biodiversity, cultural sites and the like are valued by the community as much, and often more, as are tangibles like sawlogs and gravel. The community must insist that they be protected and be prepared to pay the cost. The challenge facing the community is to assemble information about forest fire that is based on science, tested by experience and then play it successfully in the political arena. Politicians of all political persuasions are sensitive to environmental issues involving water catchments, forests and fire. Governments will find money for causes supported by communities with political clout. The alternative is more feral fires.

You can read more about Athol Hodgson at Forest Fire Victoria Inc.

Posted by jennifer at 09:35 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

November 24, 2005

Kyoto Fuels Forest Fires

I thought it was cattle and cane that was driving the destruction of rainforests in the Brazilian Amazon, but according to an article in New Scientist titled Forests paying the price for biofuels by Fred Pearce, it is soybean grown for biofuels.

Pearce writes that rising demand for biofuels is being driven by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels be blended with subsidized biofuels. All pushed along by recent announcements from the British government mandating that 5 percent of transport fuels be from biofuels to help meet Kyoto protocol targets.

A major source of biofuel for Europe is apparently palm oil from south east Asia. The Malaysian Star newspaper in an article title All signs point to higher crude palm oil prices states that demand for palm oil is being driven by demand for biodiesel production in Europe, implementation of biofuel policies in Asia, GM issues in Europe and the US, and high oil and fat consumption in China.

The article by Hanim Adnan also comments that if Asian countries implement their biofuel policies as planned, an additional nine million tonnes of vegetable oil, equivalent to about 14 percent of current total Asian oilseed production, will be required.

So are we talking about more carbon dioxide emitting forest fires, so the transport sector can reduce its carbon dioxide emissions!

I wrote a few months ago about forest fires for palm oil production, click here.

..............
I now have my own website www.jennifermarohasy.com that lists many of my newspaper articles, a few of my publications, and I will also endeavour to get more speeches up there. The website also gives me a capacity to send out a monthly newsletter to everyone who subscribes, click here.

Posted by jennifer at 11:02 AM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

September 04, 2005

Noongars Knew Best (Part 2)

On 17th June I posted an essay from David Ward, WA, titled 'Noongars Knew Best' about aboriginal management of the dry forests of the SW of Western Australia.

In this new post, which is a powerpoint presentation from David, four scenarios for bushfire management are explored.

The powerpoint is 850kbs and may only work if you save it first ... Download file.

David emailed the powerpoint with a note welcoming feedback/comment/debate.

Interestingly ABC Online reported on Friday that the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service was planning a large scale hazard reduction burn at Berowra Valley Regional Park and in adjoining land west of Hornsby and Hornsby Heights. The four-day burn-off was aimed to "lessen the intensity of wild fires in summer".

Posted by jennifer at 06:02 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

August 31, 2005

To Burn or Graze

There has been a bit written at this site about the importance of burning landscapes including comment from David Ward in WA that:

"I have recently developed geometric evidence that frequent burning is the only (repeat only), way to maintain a reasonably fine grained fire mosaic, with small, mild, and controllable fires; a rich diversity of habitat for plants and animals; and protection of small fire refuges for that minority of plants and animals which are not adapted to frequent fire. Aborigines clearly knew, and still, in some parts, know this. Anyone who does not understand should go and talk to an Aboriginal Elder.

"It can be demonstrated, with geometric certainty, that any deliberate long fire exclusion over large areas, such as a National Park, will lead inevitably (repeat inevitably) to large fierce fires, and a coarser mosaic, with little diversity of food and shelter for animals. Small refuges, important for some rare plants and animals, will be destroyed by the ferocity of the fires."

I have just discovered Christine Jones' website at http://www.amazingcarbon.com/ courtesy of Graham Finlayson.

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."

The above is my summary of page 7 and 8 of http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/general_doc/46_sti1%20final%20report.pdf, titled 'Recognise, Relate, Innovate' by Jones - at the same website.

Are Jones and Ward talking about different landscapes?

Posted by jennifer at 11:12 AM | Comments (4)

August 14, 2005

Burning Sumatra

The hundreds of forest and plantation fires burning in Sumatra are choking out Malaysia. Greenpeace have commented that "the 1997 fires in Indonesia's rainforests added as much carbon to the atmosphere as all the coal, oil and gas burned in Western Europe that year." How much is this?

Interestingly The Australian newspaper has focused on the impact of the fires on the Indonesian-Malaysian relationship:

The Australian, 12th August
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16232761%255E30417,00.html

"The thick smog presents the country with its worst pollution crisis since 1997, when smoke mainly from Indonesian bushfires blocked out skies across Southeast Asia. Fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which is a short ferry ride from peninsular Malaysia's west coast, flare up around this time every year as farmers, plantation owners and miners burn forests to clear land during the dry season.
The opposition Democratic Action Party said Malaysians were "furious and worried" about the pollution and that it would mount a protest at the Indonesian embassy today as well as a public rally on Sunday." end.

A Malaysian newspaper is comparing the cause of these fires to the 1997 fires and considering the role of their own companies with plantations in Sumatra:

New Straits Times, 13th August
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Columns/20050813075949/Article/indexb_html

"According to Plantation Enterprises and Commodities Minister Datuk Peter Chin, who has just returned from Medan after meeting with Indonesian Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban, fires on plantation land made up 30 per cent of the hotspots while the rest of the fires were caused by slash-and-burn farmers.

This seems to be the reverse of the situation in 1997-98 when most of the fires were said to have been started deliberately to clear land for oil palm plantations. According to one estimate, up to 80 per cent of the burning in 1997 occurred in plantation company concessions, and 75 per cent of these were oil palm estates.

Oil palm plantations were certainly over-represented in the list of 176 companies charged in court for starting the fires of 1997-98." end.

The Indonesian Jakarta Post seems to look to government for answers and suggest the fires are about slash and burn agriculture:

Jakarta Post, 14th August
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20050813.E02&irec=1

"Too often the fires have been the result of land clearing by either farmers or speculators. While slash-and-burn agriculture is common among the indigenous populations, these fires can spread uncontrollably in dry conditions.

Since the major forests fires of 1997 and 1998, which created a region-wide crisis, various mechanisms and high profile meetings have been held to set up a joint mechanism to manage such catastrophes and provide early warning.

The repeated recurrence of fires proves that much of these efforts simply don't work, or more precisely, haven't been made to work." end.

I wonder about the impact of the fires on the local fauna and flora?

Posted by jennifer at 09:22 AM | Comments (2)

August 12, 2005

ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management

ABC Television program Catalyst ran a story last night featuring the work of botanist Rod Fensham. Fensham has done some great research work on Queensland's rangelands. But the program, by putting a popularist spin on it all, did our rangelands and Fensham no favours.

Catalyst started off by suggesting most of Queensland's old growth forest had been cleared by graziers and then went on to explain how vegetation thickening is real. An overriding theme was that the bans on broad scale tree clearing are good and that current thickening is natural and a consequence of higher rainfall over the second half of the last century. Furthermore drought, not land clearing or fire, should be left to maintain the balance of nature.

I was left wondering what they meant by old growth forest, and how the old growth forest had survived the terrible drought to be destroyed by graziers. And wasn't it generally acknowledged that these areas have been a fire mediated sub-climax ecosystem as in South Africa and the southern USA?

The following comment as part of the voice over was interesting:

But seeing the timbers dying in all districts of western Queensland it would seem not unreasonable to conclude that drought was the cause of thousands of miles of country in the never never to be denuded of scrub. ...So there it was, proof that the climate had caused tree death and thinning.

The full transcript can be read at
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1435595.htm .

I used to have a beer with Fensham and other Brisbane-based botanists and entomologists on a Friday afternoon at the St Lucia golf links in the early to mid 1990s.

The Catalyst program suggested that Fensham was against the use of fire, as well as broad scale tree clearing. It didn't ring true to me.

A link to a piece by him at the bottom of the Catalyst webpage also suggests otherwise.

In this piece titled 'Trial by fire' Fensham makes the following points:

1. The role of climate in shaping vegetation patterns should not be ignored in a land of notorious climatic extremes.

2. The structure and density of eucalypt woodlands in the Queensland pastoral zone is influenced by management (fire), land use (grazing) and climate (especially drought).

3. Appropriate burning regimes may offer Queensland pastoralists a management option that maintains productivity and is less devastating for biodiversity than tree clearing.

Read the complete article here
http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/publications_pdf/PN040707_trial_by_fire.pdf .

Earlier in the week I was sent this link
http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/environmental_research/2005_winner.htm .

It came with the note, "An interesting rewrite of history - a negative reality inversion."

The link is to an announcement titled 'Research that shaped new bush clearing laws' and is about how Fensham has won the Eureka prize for Environmental research and includes the following text:

The recent debate on land clearing in Queensland was fierce, with the arguments often unsupported by clear scientific evidence. Dr Rod Fensham and Russell Fairfax changed that. Over ten years, these two scientists from the Queensland Herbarium have methodically developed a scientific foundation to measure and understand the fate of Queensland's native rangelands. Their research, and their science advocacy, gave the Queensland Government the information it needed to create stronger laws on land clearing. Their work now earns them the $10,000 Sherman Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.

I observed at close range the politics that drove the bans on broad scale tree clearing in Queensland including as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Council - Vegetation Management (MAC-VM). Fensham's work didn't enter this policy debate which was driven almost exclusively by very dumb (but effective) campaigning by a coalition of environment groups spearheaded by the Wilderness Society and Queensland Conservation Council and supported by a Queensland University Professor.

Had Fensham's work been influential, the clearing laws may have turned out at least half reasonable.
...............

Update 2pm

Following discussions with Rod I have the following additional comment, and I hope Rod might do a guest post for me/us:

The Eureka Award was in recognition of Rod's contribution to our understanding of regional ecosystems and how they can be mapped. This mapping work occurred independently of the campaigning by the Wilderness Society and the mapping is critical to the current legislation and important if the current legislation is to ever deliver reasonable rangeland protection and management.

I have also updated the title for this post from 'ABC TV and Eureka Awards Got it Wrong on Fensham' to 'ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management'.

Posted by jennifer at 11:30 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

August 06, 2005

Supreme Court Decision on Coroner Maria Doogan

The IPA held a conference in March 2003 about the lessons to be learnt from the 2003 bushfires which destroyed over 3 million hectares including three quarters of Kosciuszko National Park.

This was just before I started with the IPA and so I didn't get to hear what Phil Cheney, one of three invited experts, had to say.

According to the summary as published in the IPA Review key messages included failure of land managers to follow established scientific principles as a result of green politics, see http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=198 .

The summary concludes that "there is little doubt that the management of Australia's parks, forests and other public lands will come under greater scrutiny as a result of the horrific fires of 2003."

This was the hope of many ordinary Australian who live in rural and regional Australia when Coroner Maria Doogan began hearing evidence on October 7th 2003. The inquiry had been established by Jon Stanhope, the Chief Minister and Attorney-General of the ACT.

Then the inquiry was closed down by the same government, on the basis of 'apprehended bias' on the part of Coroner Maria Doogan.

Michael Duffy summarized the situation in a piece titled 'The firing line' published in the SMH on 23rd May, see
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/The-firing-line/2005/05/22/1116700595179.html .

Yesterday Justice Crispin of the ACT Supreme Court handed down a long judgement dismissing the application from the ACT government.

The judgement is a fascinating read and includes much comment about the views of Phil Cheney, http://www.courts.act.gov.au/supreme/judgments/doogan1.htm .

And page 33 of 69 (paragraph 92) includes:

An apprehension of bias may easily arise when, as appears to have occurred in this case, a judicial officer has been led to believe that an expert witness has been independently appointed to assist the court when, in fact, he or she has been engaged by the ACT Government and that entity has also been granted leave to be represented as an interested party to the proceedings. It may be understandable that departmental officers accustomed to treating courts as a sub-branch of their department may have failed to appreciate the impression that could be created in this manner. However, s 59 of the Act was clearly intended to permit coroners to engage investigators who would be independent of any of the interested parties, and whose opinions could not therefore be called into question on the grounds that they may have been influenced by competing loyalties. A lay observer could well become apprehensive on learning that a coroner had treated a person as an independent investigator when, in fact, he or she had been engaged by one of the interested parties.

Despite Mr Burnside's able submissions to the contrary, this was clearly a matter of potential concern in the present case and, if the evidence given by Mr Cheney and Mr Roche had generally favoured the ACT Government, a finding of apprehended bias may well have been inescapable. However, that was not the case. On the contrary, Mr Tracey's submissions clearly reflected concern that aspects of their evidence was critical of Government employees and/or agencies. It is true, of course, that a party who has engaged experts may itself come to feel that it has suffered from subconscious bias due to them "bending over backwards" to be fair, but it will, of course, have been largely responsible for the situation that has led to any such psychological inclination. In any event, Mr Tracey did not raise any such contention. Nor did it lie comfortably with the ACT Government that, having created a situation of potential conflict, it then sought to complain of it.

The next really interesting read should be Coroner Maria Doogan's final report - given she can now hopefully get on with the job of writing it.

Posted by jennifer at 12:28 AM | Comments (1)

August 03, 2005

Litigation Over Canberra Fires, And

The Coronial Inquiry into the 2003 Canberra bushfires ended with an application for disqualification of Coroner Doogan. A decision from the Supreme Court of the ACT is expected some time soon.

Last month, perhaps in frustration with the ACT Government's perceived interference with the Coronial inquiry, sixty-two victims of the January 2003 bushfires brought a class action against the ACT, NSW and Commonwealth Goverments for damages, accusing the governments of negligence.

A summary of this action, written by the ACT government solicitor, can be found here, Download file .

Today I was sent information about a new website for volunteer fire fighters,
http://www.volunteerfirefighters.org.au/ .

There are several other websites, borne of frustration with government's approach to controlled burning and hazard reduction including,
http://www.bushfires.net/ .

I am keen to collect links to bushfire sites. I know there is a site maintained by retired WA foresters, but can't find a link to it through google or on my computer.

UPDATE 4TH AUGUST
This WA bushfire site just brought to my attention: http://www.bushfirefront.com.au/

Posted by jennifer at 07:55 PM

June 30, 2005

Fire, Folly & Dead Canaries

In National Parks, Reserves, and on private property in south-western Australia, grasstrees are under termite attack, rotting, breaking off, and toppling over, due to vast accumulation of thatch. The grasstree in this photograph, with heavy thatch removed by hand to show the decay underneath, is typical of thousands.

View image of grasstree rotting under long fire exclusion in Yalgorup National Park, Western Australia (38kbs).

Had grasstrees been covered by heavy thatch when Europeans first arrived, there would have been no reason to call them 'blackboys', since the black stems would have been largely hidden. Only rarely would they have produced a flower stalk, usually weak and twisted, quite unlike a spear. More likely popular names with British settlers would have been 'greybeards', or 'haystack trees'. Early sketches and paintings consistently show them, quite clearly, as recently burnt, with black stems, little thatch, and a prominent flower stalk, like a spear.

As a rule of thumb, a grasstree thatch fire lasts as long in minutes as it has been unburnt in years. A three year old thatch will flare for only a few minutes, doing little damage to the green crown. A thirty year old thatch will burn for half an hour or more, reaching an incandescent thousand degrees Celsius.

Such fierce thatch fires often kill the grasstree immediately, because the protective mantle of old leaf bases is