Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission

The Royal Commission recommended burns to over 5% of our natural landscape annually have finally been shown to be a waste of time, money and horrifically damaging to our biodiversity.
The recent review (link is external) of the burn targets used 12 criteria to measure how effective the blunt hectare-based target is compared to the proposed risk-reduction target. The hectare burns scored 13/48 (a serious flunk!) while a risk-based target scored 40/48. This is what EEG and thousands of others have been saying since day one. This excellent and informative summary originally published by Environment East Gippsland (EEG) here: http://www.eastgippsland.net.au/news/planned-burns-review-and-recommendations-%E2%80%93-admits-failure-%E2%80%93-plans-for-more-effective-risk See also AWPC fire and wildlife conference for more background.

In Feb 2015 Environment Minister, Lisa Neville asked for a review of the 5% burn target and their effectiveness. Tony Pearce, the Inspector General of Emergency Management released this report and recommendations in April/May - a surprisingly quick turnaround time.

It was welcome relief to see the review recommend a shift from just burning, to look at more effective measures to keep people safe and the environment protected. Let’s hope our wildlife and ecosystems can recover after five years of horrendous arson attacks across millions of hectares.
One worrying aspect was the suggestion that it could take another year of the old burning regime before they can implement the new direction of reducing risk rather than reducing our environment. They still need to develop their capability on risk-based planning they say. With a score of 13/48, and maximum environmental damage to boot, maybe they’d be better off to not burn at all until they develop their new program.

What the report said

The Review acknowledges that Rec 56 of the Bushfire Royal Commission just had a broad 5% target policy to burn areas that “are not of equal value”, and that it refers to public land “but remains silent on whether that land is treatable or untreatable”. p2.

In 2013, Neil Comrie the Bushfire Royal Commission Implementation Monitor stated clearly in his report that the 5% target was not achievable, affordable or sustainable. This was repeated in subsequent reports.

The Code of Fire Management has 2 primary objectives – one being to minimise the risk of bushfire and protect human life. The other which has been totally neglected in the last 5 years is:

To maintain or improve the resilience of natural ecosystems and their ability to deliver services such as biodiversity, water, carbon storage and forest products. P 30

How they measure ecosystem resilience is still a question. DELWP don’t have the capacity despite it being a requirement of them to ensure such resilience. It’s still ‘in development’.

The review stated that a risk based approach was:

• More efficient at achieving fuel management
• Provides better incentives (not relying on a numbers game)
• More adaptive, transparent, efficient and equitable.

After years of convincing the public that leaf litter is a killer, the Department fire managers now have to re-set their messaging to convince a fearful public that they were a bit wrong, and there are now better ways to make communities safer. They mention shared responsibility - with other agencies and by encouraging people to be responsible for their own assets we assume. There is also a welcome acknowledgment of the serious health and economic impacts from burn-off smoke.
They talk of community preparedness, shared responsibility, improved rapid first-strike attack, fire shelters and evacuation. We would also like to see them consider other options such as remote heat sensing cameras installed at key points, enhancing the natural fire resistance of our forests and less financial incentives to keep fires going.

Another welcome sentence was:

...bushfire risk can be reduced through activities other than fuel management, such as land use planning controls, community education, suppression strategies, availability of fire refuges, or evacuations…”

and that:

…recommendation 56 (5% burn target)… is only one of many relating to bushfire management.

There was a telling chart which showed the level of planned burns in relation to major bushfire events. There was no correlation that could be drawn between more burns and less bushfires.
Modelling by DELWP estimates that the 5% burn target reduces bushfire risk to people by about 18%, whereas the risk based approach could achieve a 30% risk reduction for the same cost.

The environment gets a look in

The review received 127 written submissions from groups or individuals. Most were very concerned at the devastating impacts the burns policy has had on their local and the wider environment. The policy evaluation which the review carried out showed that under the criteria ‘ensure the resilience of natural ecosystems and their services’, the 5% burn target score ZERO out of four. Under the proposed new approach, it scores three out of four. Not only that, but it is also more effective at keeping people safe and the best return on money spent. A fire safety plan where ecosystem protection scores four out of four would be even better though.

The report also mentions the need to monitor water and air quality in relation to burns. There is a need for more information, reporting, performance measurements and reviews, and in a way that is accessible to the public it says. All this would be conditional on funding and resources of course.
The RMIT was engaged to carry out an independent analysis of the impact on the environment. Under the 5% target it said:

The primacy of the hectares burned target dis-incentivises incorporation of ecosystem resilience considerations… Ecosystem resilience can be actively harmed by large scale burns when they destroy micro-ecosystems and fauna lack alternative habitats within reach. Appendix 4, p11.

But…

Regarding ‘fuel reduction’ it also states that:

Given planned burning is the most effective approach to reducing the fuel hazard over large areas, the practice is likely to remain a significant component of the Bushfire Management Program. p46.

So while it states that there are many tools in the tool box and burning was a costly, relatively ineffective and environmentally destructive tool, it will still be a significant part of annual fire safety measures. This was the worrying sentence within an otherwise refreshing document. The only other criticism is that the review was five years too late. But we thank Lisa Neville for realising that such a rethink was finally needed.

See also: 1 in 10 wild bees faces extinction in Europe, study warns (25/3/15)

Inappropriate fuel-reduction could see more losses of threatened species.

In late January, 2014, after wildfires tore through two conservation parks in South Australia, researchers scoured the charred terrain for signs of life.  Tragically, they found nothing; only the charred silence of an empty, burnt landscape!  The 60 remaining breeding pairs of Mallee emu-wren (Stipiturus mallee) in South Australia had been lost and the species was now extinct in the state.

The fires ignited in two conservation parks in South Australia’s Mallee region that were home to the only remaining South Australian populations of the endangered Mallee Emu-wren, and another fire in the Victorian mallee, 12 kilometres southwest of Ouyen, burnt the entire 13,000-hectare reserve that was one of two small populations in Victoria of the endangered Black-eared Miner. (Article republished from the Australian Wildlife Protection Website at "End of the line for the tiny Mallee Emu-Wren?"

The only remaining population in the world of Mallee Emu Wren occurs at a single area in north-western Victoria. They became extinct in South Australia last summer after wildfires burnt them out.

“The fact that we lost several significant bird populations in fires linked to a single heat wave event highlights just how vulnerable many of these species are,” says ecologist Dr Rohan Clarke from Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences.

(image: Mallee Emu-wren)

“There is nothing left of an emu-wren after a fire, not even a pile of ash,” says Professor Michael Clarke, head of Life Sciences at La Trobe University. These tiny birds are unable to flee an approaching fire, and any that survive the flames have nowhere to live after the fire has passed. He says that “the Mallee region, which is home to less than 3 per cent of the state’s at-risk population, has been repeatedly targeted for planned burns in recent years, with up to 17 per cent of the program being held in that area“. Ironically, the Mallee does not have high human populations! Government agencies will choose the least risky areas and the more convenient areas to burn, to complete their target, rather than protect human lives and property.

According to Birdlife Australia, the Victorian Government (Lib) stands accused of all but guaranteeing the extinction of threatened Mallee birds as a consequence of its bushfire prevention policy. The Mallee emu-wren, in particular, was just one fire away from being wiped from the planet. At the end of last year, 2014, there were at total of 314 in Australia – and five of them, including the Victorian Murray Mallee, are in danger of losing the species for which The Mallee was one of the most important sites for birds in the world!

In 2006, it was estimated that less than 3000 Mallee Emu-wrens remained and are mainly restricted to conservation zones. With a highly fragmented habitat, each of the five or six isolated populations is particularly vulnerable to being wiped out by fire.

After the devastation of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission set a yearly target to burn five per cent of public land to reduce bushfire risk across the state.

Birdlife Australia’s head of conservation, and Guy Dutson, a world authority on birds of the south-west Pacific region, says “cannot be reburnt for at least 15 to 20 years”.

The Mallee Emu-wren is about 10 to 15 cm in length and has a mass of 4 to 6.5 g. The adult male has a black bill and the adult female has a dark brown bill, but both sexes have dark-brown irides and pinkish-brown legs and feet. The Mallee Emu-wren occurs in mallee regions south of the Murray River, in south-eastern South Australia and north-western Victoria. The decline of the Mallee Emu-wren has mainly been due to the extensive loss, degradation and fragmentation of its habitat caused by broad-scale clearing and fire.

Despite the listing of the Mallee emu wren under the Flora and Fauna Act, the Victorian Coalition failed to develop an action plan for its protection despite a massive expansion of native forest burning under the banner of “hazard reduction” burning! In fact most of the Mallee burning in remote areas contributes little to improving the safety of lives and property, but is about fulfilling government targets!

BirdLife Australia welcomed the announcement in February this year that the Federal Government will fund a program to protect the birds. The announcement builds on the outcomes of an Emergency Summit which BirdLife Australia hosted last year. The program will create an insurance population could be a lifesaver. Mallee Emu-wren and Black-eared Miner (VIC) got $110,000! However, a captive “insurance” population can’t replace species living where they naturally live, to further be extinguished on release by fires! It’s a band-aid, politically-motivated token, rather that the holistic approach of actually protecting the birds in their natural habitats!

Australian wildlife, along with insects, and fungi,once played a key role in ensuring ‘cool’ burns rather than the all-devastating wildfires. The loss of leaf eating moths, dung beetles and a variety of leaf and coarse woody debris recycling insects is contributing to a potentially high frequency fire cycle. The torching of wildlife, assumed to be collateral damage to keep “us” safe, is barbaric, anthropocentric, and will fuel more fires by working against Nature, rather than with it.

Habitat clearance and degradation has been the major threat to Black-eared Miners. Old growth mallee is the preferred habitat of Black-eared Miners, and they prefer habitat that has not been burnt for 40 years or more.

David Packham, former bushfire CSIRO scientist, is urging more 'fuel reduction' burns to our precious bushland. But more and more people are noticing that wildlife are not 'bouncing back' after the constant burning in Victoria. The yearly target of burning five per cent of public land, purportedly to reduce bushfire risk in Victoria (after the 2009 bushfires), means that within 20 years or even less, there will be no viable bushland left in this state on public land if people allow this to happen. Forests and their inhabitants just do not recover from this kind of assault, despite common propaganda that this is 'normal' for Australia. Kooris have since denied that this was their practice. People need to ask themselves, 'Who benefits?" when they hear calls for even more burning. The forestry industry benefits by replanting rows of straight pines which provide little habitat for animals and are in fact very flammable. The property development industry also benefits when bushland is razed by fire.

After the devastation of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission set a yearly target to burn five per cent of public land to reduce bushfire risk across the state.

According to former CSIRO bushfire scientist, David Packham, forest fuel levels have worsened over the past 30 years because of “misguided green ideology”, vested interests, political failure and mismanagement, creating a massive bushfire threat.

He is arguing that unless the annual fuel reduction burning target, currently at a minimum of 5 per cent of public land, “is doubled or preferably tripled, a massive bushfire disaster will occur”!

Rather than Victoria’s “failed forest management” being a threat, our State’s excessive and draconian response of 5% to be burnt each year is itself a threat to forest environments. We must live with Nature, not destroy it with draconian “management”.

This expert is failing to see the forests for the trees, and seems to think that the wholesale destruction of forests, with more burning, will “save” them – in a maligned effort to protect human lives and assets?

Many academics are promoting fire for forestry and mining. The Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre shares a chairman with the cooperative Research Centre Mining and the forestry Co-operative research Centre based at Tasmania University.

State agencies will choose the easiest route of randomly burning sensitive environments, to fill quotas, and in the process kill off flora, fauna and habitat features as mere collateral damage!

Reports published by the CSIRO and BirdLife Australia cite “inappropriate fire regimes” as threatening more than 50 Australian mammal and 50 Australian bird species.

They concede that to some extent the old adage ‘fight fire with fire’ applies. Used well, fire is an effective, economical tool for land managers.

Reintroduction of occasional fire into some landscapes, and return to a finer mosaic of burning, will not prevent wildfires; it may, however, reduce their impact, by maintaining fire-dependent habitat and

protecting fire-sensitive birds. Kakadu National Park, subjected to decades of management burning, has all but lost its fauna from too frequent fire, which is likely the cause of the loss of the hollow dependent Gouldian Finch from vast areas of its frequently burned former range.

(image:”GouldianFinches” by Nigel Jacques (Kris) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons)

The original forests of Gippsland were not flammable, settlers of Fish Creek were not able to burn the forest to clear land until the railway line was cut through, bringing in a ‘draft’. This is a common story Australia wide in formerly wet forested areas.

Climate change is also said to be playing a role, with the biennial Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO State of the Climate Report 2014 finding that rising greenhouse gas emissions are causing fire seasons to lengthen and are contributing to an increase in the number of fire risk days, particularly in the south-east of Australia.

Bill Gammage is an Adjunct Professor at the Humanities Research Centre, studying Aboriginal land management at the time of contact. He has convinced quite a few environmentally concerned people through his book ‘The Biggest Estate on Earth’ that regular burning is needed. It contains many fundamental flaws and represents ‘blind advocacy’ for repeated burning’ because ‘Aboriginal people did it’. Mooney et. al. examined over 200 sediment cores of 70,000 years or more of age to determine fire frequency. They found that fire frequency increased 50 fold with the arrival of Europeans.

However, more fires to fight fire is like using a sledge hammer to drive in a tack, or killing fleas on a dog with a shotgun!

Joel Wright, a Gunditjmara Linguist, has found no evidence of landscape burning in the Victorian western district but outlined the use of fire for smoke signals, and as an effective weapon against settlers. Research shows that fires have increased 50 fold since European settlement, so “fuel reduction” to make the bush less flammable seems to be having the opposite effect.

Natural ecological functions have always existed to limit fires, such as fungi, bacteria, insects, native species, high forest densities and tree canopies.

The Andrews government will review the minimum 5 per cent burning target in response to a Inspector-General’s report. Five years ago, both major parties backed the “minimum of 5 per cent” target, a key recommendation of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission held after Black Saturday.

Fire management needs to be multidisciplinary, and not simply about human welfare, stock and property assets. The timing of the burns should also take heed of breeding times and seasons for the species present, particularly those that are already rare or threatened due to the loss of habitat, food or human encroachment. We need to work out how we carry out our works without disturbing the nesting, roosting and breeding times for those animals in that immediate areas near human settlements.

Fire management needs to be optimised and based on where the greatest risks are, not on the metrics of hectares or percentages of Victoria’s landscape.

This very widely and deeply researched article talks about the role of Australian native animals in protecting forests from fire and reviews the evidence for prescribed burns, criticising Bill Gammage's research on a number of grounds and noting misconceptions about Aboriginal fire management. "Research by the CSIRO published since 1994 has shown that there is a group of around 1000 species of moths called oecophorids whose caterpillars occur at densities of up to 400 per square metre and eat dead leaf litter. These insects are killed by fire and take some years to come back - leaving the bush accumulating leaf litter. With frequent fires they can be lost. Termites consume vast amounts of dead timber Australia wide and in long unburned forests they are particularly dense with huge mounds in southern Australia too but their role in fuel reduction remains unstudied! Cockroaches and a wide range of beetle species and their larvae do the same. Recent research has identified Lyrebirds and Mallee Fowl as playing key roles in fuel reduction, composting litter and twigs in vast amounts reducing fuel loads by tonnes by per year per bird. All these insects, birds and animals that reduce fuel loads are diminished or lost to fire. Fungi are known to be major consumers of dead timber - but their role in fuel reduction is yet to be researched and the role of wallabies, wombats and especially potoroos in distributing fungi, though it is obviously significant, remains unstudied.

Bill Gammage’s popular book ‘The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia’ contains many fundamental flaws and represents ‘blind advocacy’ for repeated burning’ because ‘Aboriginal people did it’.

Like Keith Windshuttle’s ‘Fabrication of Aboriginal History’, Bill Gammage only pursued references - and interpretation of references - that supported his ‘hypothesis’. For Gammage that hypothesis is that all Aboriginal people farmed all of Australia using fire. This proposition was first published by Rhys Jones in an article in Australian Natural History in 1969 ‘Firestick Farming’ - and the references Jones used have as little merit as Gammage’s.

Jones used a painting of Lesueur from 1802 to show landscape burning by Tasmanian Aboriginal people when the painting is clearly of smoke signals. He quoted Peron observing the Derwent River ‘ablaze’ while Peron stated that ‘Tasmanians’ lit the fire to see them off. Bill Gammage now travels the country advocating frequent burning. He is not in any way qualified to do so and often does not look at the bush in these places before he advocates burning. He quotes no Aboriginal people or stories and ignores scientific evidence that cast doubt on his theories.

Mooney et. al. examined over 200 sediment cores of 70,000 years or more of age to determine fire frequency. They found that fire frequency increased 50 fold with the arrival of Europeans. https://palaeoworks-dev.anu.edu.au/?publication=mooney-s-d-et-al-2011-late-quaternary-fire-regimes-of-australasia .

Part of that increase was the use of fire as a weapon by Aboriginal people over more than a century - the firestick verses the musket as Joel Wright, a Gunditjmara Linguist stated in a recent talk. See /node/4240. He (Joel) could find no evidence of landscape burning in the Victorian western district but outlined the use of fire for smoke signals (see TROVE digitised newspapers for many references) and as an effective weapon. Gammage does not deal with these issues yet unlike Rhys Jones and Tim Flannery he had access to all of this information electronically and is a historian - inexcusable in my opinion. He also too often plays on locals’ fear and opinion of fires when he speaks, referring to those who do not want to burn as people or ‘greens’ from the city - see a part transcript of a recent talk by Gammage below.

Australia cannot in any way be seen as an ‘Estate’ nor Aboriginal people as ‘workers’ on an Estate - as if it was destined to be owned by ‘England’. It is a very complex continent geologically which is reflected in its complex plant, bird and animal communities. This in turn is reflected in over 500 tribes and thousands of clans that each manage ‘country’ differently. All are minimalist and complex in their management which is reflected in their more than 500 languages. To apply generalised models of fire management to such a complex landscape is disastrous. To apply American models for fire management is surely wrong and even harder to understand - especially given the radically different landscapes and flora https://www.georgewright.org/243kilgore.pdf. We seem to have adopted our version of ‘Wildland Fire Use’, using fires to achieve ‘other’ management objectives, prolonging bushfires for weeks, especially in National Parks, on the assumption they will make the landscape less likely to burn or burn ‘cooler’.

Eucalypts and other groups of Australian plants have been subjected to volcanic fires for more than 60 million years. We are in a ‘quiet time volcanically’ for the east coast, though volcanoes were active ‘recently’ in Queensland and Victoria 12,000 and 6500 years ago respectively. Humans are able to heal cuts and broken bones but we do not ‘thrive on’ or ‘need’ either. It is likely that vegetation, especially forests, has adapted to recovering from fire but, contrary to popular belief, does not ‘thrive’ on being burned or need it. Even the woodiest seed pods open without fire and many species regenerate from rootstock disturbed by digging mammals like wombats. Burning bush for grazing ‘green pick’ was common in the British Isles in the eighteenth century, though in Australia it often germinated a seemingly ‘inexhaustible’ seed and rootstock of trees and shrubs. Unless burned annually or replaced with introduced pasture species a cessation of burning led to the growth of dense scrub which takes 20 years or more to form a closing canopy and open understorey. This development of dense shrub is what is too often happening in burned bushland today, especially in National Parks and reserves. Just the fact that they can be burned is too often accepted in ‘blind faith’ as ‘reducing fuel’ and making the bush more open and flammable when the opposite is too often the fact. In addition to scrubby regrowth trees and shrubs are almost invariably killed by fire adding to fuel loads, as are the animals and fungi that normally reduce fuels.

The original forests had closed canopies and an open understorey

Judge Stretton stated in the 1939 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission that the original forests had closed canopies and an open understorey which was easily traversed. In regard to fire he said they were relatively safe and it was repeated burning for grazing that opened the canopy, saw the vegetation thicken and made them unsafe. Even heathlands and grasslands are very different with a full compliment of mammals and birds when old - turning them over and maintaining open areas for orchids etc. and reducing their flammability.

There desperately needs to be multi-disciplinary research that incorporates local history. No single scientific discipline or even science alone confers the qualifications required to undertake the comprehensive research needed to inform fire management. For each area there needs to be a collation of all the geological, indigenous and historic data on fire - what was burned when by whom and why as far as possible. Indigenous people need to be resourced to investigate their own tribal and clan history of the use of fire, as Joel Wright did, and not have it ‘done for them’ by botanists and others. This in addition to identifying the fauna that reduces fuels and the impact of burning on increasing wind speed, drying the bush and streams that flow from it as bush regrows etc. for each area proposed to be burned.

Given the massive increase in burning and the threat it poses to wildlife and local economies etc. pausing the lighting of fires and diverting part of that budget to rapidly detecting and extinguishing any that start would appear the wisest thing to do while reviewing their impact.

An example of a very bad and counterproductive burn is the Melaleuca swamp burn in Cape Liptrap Coastal Park in Victoria in 2014 which saw Napalm (Flash 21), a chemical combination not registered for occupational health and safety for its use in Australia, used when torch lighting failed. The impact was dramatic and the fuel load appeared to increase dramatically when it killed all the melaleucas and burned into the peat. The carbon monoxide from this modified napalm killed dozens of burrow dwelling mammals that may well have survived a fire. This is in a remnant damp ferny vegetation strip coastal park that has never had a wildfire and not been burned since 1939 when the messmate forest stopped the grass fire - no wind and wet bark. Despite its common ‘visual’ classification messmate is not closely related to stringybarks and hybridises with ash type species. This and other proposed fires for this bush with 50 or more lyrebirds isolated against the coast by farmland are as a result of ‘desktop research’ by unqualified or barely qualified people. There has been no formal botanical survey work though more than a dozen threatened species of plants are known. Individuals cannot be condemned for doing their ‘job’ - but what they are charged with doing and how it is done has to be evaluated. Fire will clearly make this southeast facing coastline more flammable and diminish or wipe out its abundant ‘fuel reducing’ fauna. (See https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au )

Kakadu has all but lost its fauna ...

Kakadu National Park, subjected to decades of management burning, has all but lost its fauna from too frequent fire, https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s4120215.htm which is likely the cause of the loss of the hollow dependent Gouldian Finch from vast areas of its frequently burned former range.

Northern Australia was the last ‘frontier’ and fire almost invariably used against ‘explorers’ by Aboriginal tribes and clans is too easily interpreted as ‘ecological burning’ by botanists. The northern grazing industry has long been dependent on burning for green pick in a landscape that can barely be farmed.

These species losses are occurring in many parks and reserves across Australia where they have been subjected to so called ‘Ecological Burning’ and they too are losing mammals and especially hollow dependent species. This approach to burning, to increase the biodiversity of plants, may actually be in breach of the amended International Biodiversity Agreement of 1994 which states that tetrapods, animals with backbones, are a reliable indicator of biodiversity - not plants. This change to a Treaty signed in 1982 originally was as if in response to burning in Australian National Parks.

Burning or logging a forest, grassland or heathland may increases plant diversity - but it diminishes structural diversity and fauna and may well make the bush more flammable.

The original forests of Gippsland were not flammable, settlers of Fish Creek were not able to burn the forest to clear land until the railway line was cut through, bringing in a ‘draft’. This is a common story Australia wide in formerly wet forested areas.

Research by the CSIRO published since 1994 ( https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/11-Common%201994%20Introduction%20vol%201.pdf ) has shown that there is a group of around 1000 species of moths called oecophorids whose caterpillars occur at densities of up to 400 per square metre and eat dead leaf litter. These insects are killed by fire and take some years to come back - leaving the bush accumulating leaf litter. https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/13-Problems%20with%20control%20Burning%20NPA%20Bulletin.pdf With frequent fires they can be lost.

Termites consume vast amounts of dead timber Australia wide and in long unburned forests they are particularly dense with huge mounds in southern Australia too but their role in fuel reduction remains unstudied! Cockroaches and a wide range of beetle species and their larvae do the same. Recent research has identified Lyrebirds https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/14-Nugent%20et%20al.%202014%20Wildlife%20Research-%20lyrebirds%20and%20fire.pdf and Mallee Fowl (Leonard unpub.) as playing key roles in fuel reduction, composting litter and twigs in vast amounts reducing fuel loads by tonnes by per year per bird. All these insects, birds and animals that reduce fuel loads are diminished or lost to fire.

Fungi are known to be major consumers of dead timber - but their role in fuel reduction is yet to be researched and the role of wallabies, wombats and especially potoroos in distributing fungi, though it is obviously significant, remains unstudied.

Almost all parrot species, possums, owls and many species of bats are at real risk of extinction from the loss of hollows which has occurred and is occurring right across the landscape - by burning as a ‘forest industry’ and for ‘ecological purposes’.

It’s time to stop lighting fires ...

It’s time to stop lighting fires and to use fixed rotating thermal imaging cameras to detect them and the world’s best and biggest firefighting aircraft, when needed, to rapidly extinguish them while we determine the effects and all the costs of this increased ‘fuel reduction’ and ‘ecological’ burning. We also need to evaluate objectively whether or not burning all bush is a major costly ecological mistake - and academically stop playing ‘my PHD is bigger than yours’.

Farms are repeatedly damaged by escaped ‘prescribed burns; and ‘prolonged’ fires, losing stock and fences, damaging rural community mental and bronchial health and breaking up families when burns go on for weeks.

Domestic and agricultural water supplies are compromised, fisheries and aquatic life are lost as dead vegetation washes into streams with rain following fires, robbing them of oxygen.

We have neglected even more deadly grassfires (per head of effected population).

We have neglected arson, often a mental health issue and an increasing problem we seem to be in collective denial about. Yet arson was was the cause of 50% of the 2009 Black Saturday fires https://www.wilderness.org.au/articles/summary-and-implications-report-victorian-2009-february-fires, most of the Hobart fires of 1967 and was the entire cause of the deadly Dandenongs fires of 1962 and 1968 which killed more than 30 people. Surveillance by fixed rotating thermal imaging cameras will greatly help in catching ‘fire lighters’.

There is virtually no research into lightning in Australia while in Canada ‘hot’ and ‘cold lightning’ has been identified. ‘Cold lightning’ is 95% of all strikes and negatively charged. While it will blow a tree apart and is very dangerous it passes through so quickly it rarely starts fire - but it can likely ‘cook sap’ in a tree and make it appear as if it has been burned in the past. ‘Hot Lightning’ is positively charged lightning that makes up as little as 5% of all strikes and though it starts fires it is almost always followed by rain.

The Australian history of bushfires includes a vast numbers of grass fires - like many of the most deadly on Ash Wednesday and as part the ‘Hobart Bushfires’ of 1967. Introduced species of pasture grasses die off in the summer, especially along roadsides and the increasingly in fire breaks which can act as fuses, ( https://www.myenvironment.net.au/index.php/me/Work/Fire/Fire-Resources/Fire-Break-submission-Chris-Taylor ) representing a high tonnage of highly flammable fuels in the fire season. These flammable grasses in semi rural areas, open to swirling winds unlike closed vegetation, their fires are particularly deadly and are often called bushfires. A good example of this issue is being addressed by the Kirkstall CFA with its replacement of pasture grasses with native species on road reserves. (https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/02-Kirkstall%20euro%20grass%20conversion.pdf) This reduces fuel loads by 50-90% and native grasses are most often ‘green’ in the fire season.

The reintroduction of dead leaf and timber eating insects, the restoration of populations of Lyrebirds, leaf eating Koalas that even have an oecophorid that eats their droppings, where they have been lost should be key to future bushfire management. This approach to fire management is beyond the ‘skill sets’ and qualifications of judges, lawyers, foresters and botanists we have charged with fire management. Current fuel reduction burning becomes a ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ even when it leads to more fires as appears to have happened, especially in Western Australia. To stop burning where it makes bush more flammable may challenge a practice since colonial times, but will cost far less and provide significant economic returns from improved water production, fisheries, tourism and public health.

There is strong support by CSIRO and other scientists for research before we burn what is left of our older bush area in Cape Liptrap Coastal Park which is one of the increasingly rare examples of older bush remaining with its fuel reducing fauna - see letters https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au

In anything to do with fire management there has to be a ‘No Fault Claims Bonus’. Science is rarely ‘wrong’ but biological sciences should be continually evolving on this most recently occupied continent. We are faced with the corrosion of the Indigenous cultural records from loss of scar, ceremonial, birthing and marked trees along with the potential extinction of many species of birds and animals, also of indigenous stories, from unnecessary or ill-informed burning. Both science and the management it informs must be able to change in response to new information. We need the experience of thousands of foresters and botanists to integrate with the breadth of research in other biological sciences which need a significant portion of fire research funding. There is significant rural employment potential Australia wide to control the animals that spread flammable weeds, protect the forests and bushland from fire and realise natural bushland’s potential economic value for water, fisheries production, tourism and carbon sequestration.

Naturalist Bob McDonald January 2015

Bill Gammage Promoting Fire in East Gippsland

Bill Gammage applied his ideas on burning in response to questions from the audience at a meeting he addressed at Bairnsdale on the 5th of November 2014;

Bill Hodge - 3rd Generation Mountain Cattleman

Would you be in favour of giving a certain area of bush for mountain cattlemen to manage as they see fit for say 5 or 6 years?

Gammage: Yes I’ve already suggested to Graeme Stoney (Mountain Cattleman) and others that after that fire which is inevitably going to come, there is already in place a plan that basically divides an area into three - leaves one area alone - doesn’t do anything; puts only fire in another area and then puts fire and grazing and the way cattlemen burn in the third and see what happens in those three different areas.

LR: Why didn’t you interview any Aboriginal people?

Gammage: If I had Aboriginal friends, I did talk to them. Places like around Narrandera and Alice Springs and the Coorong, North east Tasmania. I did speak to Aboriginal people. But if I didn’t know Aboriginal people I felt it was far too rude to roll up from Canberra, especially of all places (crowd snickers) and say well here I am, you got 20 minutes, give me some basic information and I’ll be out of here. It’s just too rude. These are really important matters - not only the land management, but totems and so on and um yeah… you really need to be really trusted before you can even brave such a question and since my book is about the whole of Australia, it would have been more than a lifetime’s work to have done that.

Danny O’Brien, Member for Eastern Victoria: We in the Government have increased the burning targets; we’ve exceeded them once and dismally failed them last year. Is the solution in your opinion more burning of more area or better burning or different burning?

Gammage: All of the above, (applause) and after you’ve done that more of the above (applause).

I have commended the Government for increasing the hectares. I think we should accept that politicians have a very different problem and there are a great many electors opposing any sort of burning and they are translating that into practice. So when they expand their areas of controlled burning they are really softening up public opinion in favour of ALL burning and that is extremely valuable because, let’s face it country people and like-minded people are a minority in a democracy and we’re never going to get anywhere unless you can change the votes of people in the city -and so doing softening up in this way. I congratulate them but I do think that it shouldn’t be seen as a failure if you don’t reach your target. What you do is say, ‘well we’re experimenting with weather and conditions and times of the year and that therefore makes any fixed target problematic and uncertain.’ Local people will give you a bit of leeway to burn locally, to seize the day; and those local people might be DEPI on the ground, CFA, farmers, loggers, whoever it may be. And what we want you to do when you burn is record the results basically and build up information about that area, which can then be translated into more efficient practice

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

It’s time to stop lighting fires
Bob McDonald, Naturalist* Pub: Jan 14
15.01.15 4:30 am

Originally published in Tasmanian Times
12 comments

#F3F781;line-height:120%;"> Video and transcript inside This film, made for the conference exposes the lived experience of corrupt, stupid and lethal Victorian forest and fire management, despite and because of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. The name of the film, "Firebug Economy," comes from Jill Redwood's description of a desperate way of making money out of fires by people in the declining logging business. In the film Jill also talks about the low flammability of old growth forests and the horrible synergy of forest removal, wildlife loss, and global warming, greatly accelerated under Victoria's 'planned burns policy'. Government policy has been stealthily converting old growth forests into plantations. Is the final aim is to sell them for farmland and urban development as Victoria burns? Please come to the Pause and Review conference in Melbourne 9th Nov 2014 at Kindness House, 288 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy Melbourne. Starts 10am. Contact: Maryland Wilson 0417 148 501. Jill Redwood of Environment East Gippsland is famous for leading the first ever successful case by an environmental organisation against a government logging firm. In this film we find that the trees granted protection in the famous EEG court case against VicForests have since been vengefully felled.

Speakers include:
Philip Ingamells Victorian National Parks Association
Speaker Bob Mc Donald Naturalist
Joel Wright - Indigenous speaker on traditional Aboriginal fire management.
Michelle Thomas - well-known wildlife rescuer and carer from Animalia shelter
Maryland Wilson (President of AWPC) will lead a discussion and Action Plan from 3-4pm

How does forest-logging increase fire-risk and climate change?

Jill Redwood: Well, we've always thought this, but a study that's just come out from the ANU and Melbourne Uni [Lindenmayer, McCarthy, Taylor, "Non-linear effects of stand age on fire severity," see also "Code of destruction Lindenmayer deplores Victoria's future forest policy][1] shows that where the logging regrowth grows back after total clearfell (which is the only method used around here, even though they might give it a different name of 'seed tree', is pretty well clearfell back to bare-earth burn. And then what comes up is like ... It's converted to a pulpwood farm, basically. You don't get your forest back. What you get back is a tree-crop, and it's perfectly suited for the woodchip industry because they like the nice young white straight uniform predictable trees.

So, where we used to have age-diversity, species diversity, ferns - you know, the different stratas in the forest - you just get the one species coming back, thick as hairs on a cat's back.

As well as very thick regrowth, that's very thick and very flammable, they compete with each other for light, nutrient and water, so you also get a lot of them die off, which are then - it's just like creating a tinderbox. One, of the dead wood to carry the fire and to burn really well, and then, all this young, oil-filled eucalypt foliage. And it's just like a funeral pyre - especially when it's around towns and communities. It really goes up like a bomb. Whereas you get your natural forest and you get your different strata in the forest. You get your canopy from the old growth - really high - very hard for that to carry a crown fire, as in the young forests that carry crown fires. You get the mid-story, you get the tree-fern understory that creates this microclimate, where there's always dampness, there's moss on logs - and it's just very fire-proof. Natural forest is fire-proof and there are a lot of lightening strikes actually hitting those areas and they never go anywhere. But you get a lightening strike on a ridge-top, or a regrowth forest, and it just goes like a bomb! The whole landscape, the hillside, wherever they log, it's drying it out and creating a different forest that's far more flammable.

The government's 'planned burns' policy

[Following the 2009 Victorian bushfires, an inquiry came up with a policy for mandatory burning of 5% of Victoria's forests per annum - that's 100% in 20 years. See under "Land and fuel management", http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Assets/VBRC-Final-Report-Recommendations.pdf Recommendation 56: "The State fund and commit to implementing a long-term program of prescribed burning based on an annual rolling target of 5 per cent minimum of public land"]

The way I see what's happening with the government planned burns is it gives the community a false sense of security. They have to do something to look after people from big bad fires. It's actually climate change that's creating it, and the logging. Both of those together are a deadly combination.

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: According to some theories the logging is creating the climate change, certainly in the hinterlands. [Text insert reference in film after the interview to Gorshkov and Makarieva's Biotic Pump theory].

Jill RedwoodIt's a feedback loop that's just not going to end unless the government does something to say, 'Right, this is enough. Let's try to get it back to what it was. '

But what they're doing, as a 'solution', is saying, 'we need to burn to stop the burning'. What they're doing is taking out the natural fire-proofing of a forest. And that is all the little hoppers and scratchers and diggers, like the potoroos, the bandicoots, that turn over leaf litter. Lyrebirds. They can cover - turn over - about two and a half tons a year. Each lyrebird. So they're constantly making this compost out of the leaf-litter and twigs on the forest floor. The mosses, the funghi, the termites - all the insects! The moth-larvae that are actually evolved to eat dry gum leaves - not much else is. These are the things that, when they put a fire through, and say, 'Alright, we're safe now, it's all burnt!' They are destroying the very thing that can fire-proof a forest that's been working for millions of years.

[Leaf litter shown in film. It holds a lot of water, as well as nutrients and funghi, so is not flammable, but, as Jill quips, 'It's not flammable, but it's what the public are taught to fear'. If we leave the little animals in there, they will get rid of it; they'll turn it over and digest it and the funghi will eat through it. ]

So they're killing of the little animals, they're exposing them to predation by foxes. They're taking that layer out that shades the forest floor, that keeps the damp ness going. And, if anybody's ever made compost, they know you've got to keep moisture in it and you've got to have your little creepies and bacteria and everything working together to break down that leaf-litter and the twigs. And that's why the old growth forests won't burn. And up here, during the 2014 fires, we saw it roar through a lot of fairly dry open forest that's been logged. Soon as it hit Brown Mountain, it went out. They tried to burn it with - DEPI would try to burn [dog interrupts, barking] ... DEPI being the Department of Enviroment and Primary Industry. And, what they were doing is, not just - they weren't fighting the fire - they were just lighting more fire - and that's a whole other story. The way they managed these fires in [summer].

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: And their intention was to light a fire they could manage, which would mean that, by the time the wildfire got to it, it would run out of fuel? That's their theory?

Overtime and bonuses created through burning off

Jill Redwood: It also created a lot of reall good overtime and bonuses. But... anyway...

Sheila Newman, Interviewer:Well, that's a valid thing to comment on.

Jill Redwood: Oh God, it is!

Sheila Newman, Interviewer:Because it's not like ....

Jill Redwood: And we dare not because, oh my God, you're questioning these brave fire-fighters? Well, I didn't see any fire-fighters actually front a fire with some water. They were just lighting fires, all the time, so the boundary was getting bigger and bigger. And that... You know, the bushfire, probably would have been 'this big' but the way DEPI were managing it, the government fire-fighters, they just kept lighting fires to try and burn back into it, and then they'd escape and jump [indicates fire jumping over boundary] and they'd have to bulldoze and light another fire. And I'm sure about half the size of this fire was due to government initiated bushfires, in the hottest period, in the dry summer.

We had the big one up in Deddick. They didn't jump on that. That was one they could have jumped on immediately. That's the one that got out of control. And they were sort of waiting for it to come out, which, in the mean time it got bigger and bigger, until February the 9th, when it was so big they couldn't do anything about it and it just sort of took out half of Tubbit, Bonang, Goongarah... We were surrounded by fires and that February the 9th, it just burned out the top end of Goongarah and took out so much forest. It just - it was so intense, there wasn't a green thing, a living thing left after it went through. And this is just for miles and miles. To that extent. Somebody said, that they could have got in there, the rappelle crews could have got in, there was actually a way to get in there with four wheel drives. They could have done something about that, but they didn't!

Cienwen Hickey (local wildlife activist): They don't use a strike team anymore, do they, as they used to.

Jill Redwood: No. It's all too dangerous, but - so they just wait for it to come out and make the fires bigger and bigger and bigger. And we, our volunteer fire-brigade here, had to go out at night and put out fires that DEPI had lit the night before, and went back home. You know, they've got bank hours, like nine to five.

Cienwen Hickey (local wildlife activist): Well, they knock off at five o'clock.

Jill Redwood: They're not patrolling at night. They're not doing work on fires at night when they could, when it's cooler, when it's damp and the air's got moisture in it...

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: Is this in the middle of a bushfire they go home at night?

Jill Redwood: They go home at night, and they leave it up to us volunteers - our CFA (Country Fire Authority) to go and patrol at night, at two in the morning, putting their fires out that got away. And then they come back in the morning at nine o'clock and light them all up again for the heat of the day.

(Jill wanted it on record that SOME staff did good and that SOME very strategic and small-scale burning might have been useful to reduce the fire impact on private land before the main blow-up day, but the rest is rightful criticism.)

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: So you're saying that old growth forest ultimately went up? What about the argument though, that old growth forest doesn't usually burn easily and, as we remove it, we're increasing climate change? It seems to me that it would be better to have more old growth forest, less logging, to reduce the speed of climate change, even - and the risk of any forest fires.

Jill Redwood: That's logical! And that's what all the science is saying. But the government would prefer to keep the logging industry making that money, a few jobs - I think there's forty jobs involved in East Gippsland - but we're still destroying what has the ability to moderate our climate and that is forest. They're carbon capture and storage units - you know - the best in the world that we've got is our forests. They're knockign them down and creating these - you know - smoke, just ... ash landscapes with nothing there.

So the more that they log, the more that the climate is actually heating up, the less carbon there is stored in the forest, the less temperature moderation [2] there is over the landscape - and of course our bushfires are going to get much worse.

In the past, there has been - you know, lightening strikes - yes, South East Australia does get a lot of lightening strikes. Historically that's always been the case. Pre-European, pre-Aboriginal.

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: Yet there were very big forests.

Jill Redwood: They were very big forests and they had that structure where, you know, there are all these fire-breaks in the landscape. All the wet gullies, the south-facing slopes. The forest that had a lot of thick undergrowth. Where it wasn't thick undergrowth that stopped that stopped that heat and wind driving fires through, in some areas, just naturally it would open out and become dry sort of grassy understory forest. And that's what a lot of the early settlers described. But it wasn't due to burning. It was due to lack of burning. And that's what a lot of the science is now picking up. And we're [Sarcastically] just saying, 'Oh, no, the Aborigines used to burn so we've got to do the same to be safe!'

DEPI's 'Dangerous trees' policy

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: Coming up this way we've observed in the areas that have been really badly burned piles of fallen logs and tree-litter piled up - obviously by bulldozers and things.

Jill Redwood: What they are - and I've actually questioned this, and I've formally tried to get an answer - What they're doing now they have this 'dangerous trees' policy because all of these trees that are left standing along tracks are 'dangerous'. They might just fall on cars at any moment. So they have to go right along the tracks and cut down every tree that might possibly fall. And I've got photos of ones that are solid as a rock, not any rot in them, not leaning, and they've cut them down. And when they cut them down, of course, where you would have had a tree with a green leafy head and a trunk, you now have this pile of ... It's a tinder-box, waiting to burn, you know. And along the side of the roads. Like, hang on, weren't you trying to make the roads safer? And all they've done is bulldoze all of these trees and tree-heads up along the side of the road. So now, if there's another fire that comes through, they're just going to be this massive big bonfires.

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: How long has that been going on for, this business of cutting them down because they're 'dangerous'?

Jill Redwood: We just had that down here the year before ... yeah, 2013 they started doing that - down along Martin's Creek. In that area. So all of these habitat trees - the ones that are really important for habitat - feed trees for gliders, you know, the nectar producing trees, they're the best - the oldest ones are the best - cut them all down because they're 'dangerous'.

What are governments aiming for here?

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: Is there any idea - does anyone have any idea of what the governments - the successive governments - think they're doing with this area? Are they going to turn it into some plantation forest or, are they going to turn it into farmland? Or are they going to build appartments?

Jill Redwood: They're trying to turn it into plantations. That's what's been happening for the last forty years, it's conversion to plantations. But now the woodchip industry is starting to say, "Naw, we don't want those chips from South East Australia. Too far away. We'll get our woodchips from - you know - Vietnam - or somewhere else that's got the eucalypt plantations growing.

Fire[bug] Economy

So now, DEPI, who's had this agenda to create this wonderful woodchip farm for the Asian woodchip market for forty years, it's starting to fall in a heap. So: 'God, we've got to keep ourselves relevant, somehow - I know! Fire economy! Yes!'

And they call it 'Red gold' now, and the people at Glenaladale ...

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: Fire economy?

Jill Redwood: Fire economy! You know, keep DEPI relevant?

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: So, how are they doing this? What does 'fire economy' mean?

Jill Redwood: Well, it keeps the people employed burning, cutting down trees, bulldozing tracks ...

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: Oh, to 'prevent' bushfires and trees falling on people?

Jill Redwood: And if there is a bushfire - 'You beauty! We've got a lot of, you know, extra income for this, and we could employ our mates on bulldozers at $3000 a day to push tracks and push trees over and - oh, I don't know - you know, it might not be any good, but we've got to keep 'em employed and -

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: You'd think they could employ a few of them as forest rangers, wouldn't you?

Jill Redwood: Oh! Putting in picnic tables and walking tracks maybe might be a better thing but, you know, a lot of these boys do love their matches. And, you know, you look at the profile of a pyromaniac and, my God, I reckon that a lot of them would be perfect for those boys in green overalls and driving around in [?] vehicles.

Rare huge trees protected in EEG court case since felled for revenge

Jill Redwood: (Filmed standing by a huge fallen tree among several lining a fire track) All the way along here to our Brown Mountain forests - which was the test case in this court case - they have cut down every big tree along the way! There is no reason for it, other than -.

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: So these were the trees your court case [which was successful] was defending largely?

Jill Redwood: Yes!

Sheila Newman, Interviewer: They've all been cut down?

Jill Redwood: Yes! It's retribution. That's all it is. It's just absolute senseless destruction of giant big old trees.

Scale of destruction

Jill Redwood: (Back in home). I actually did a comparison between what's happening in the Amazon and what's happening in East Gippsland. And, relative to the area that we've got, and how much is being taken out each year, as clear-fell logs - clear-fell areas - it's pretty much on a par with the Amazon. It's just like ... East Gippsland is no better and here we are saying, 'World's best practice! It all grows back. All renewable!' It's not. It's bullshit! They are destroying what is irreplacable. Irreplacable! We have six hundred year old trees. We radiocarbon dated the wood from near the center of the tree. Six hundred year old trees! And it's just turned into this smokey, ashen landscape, and it goes of to - you know - Asian woodchip factories. If it was anywhere else in the world, they would be valuing these forests as something so rare. It would be the antiques of the natural world. And people would have to be paying big money to come and experience and stand amongst these giants and just be awestruck. But no - paper cups - throwaway paper!

[End transcript from short version of Firebug Economy film ("Pause and review wildlife and fire conf").]

NOTES

[1]

"Code of Destruction - A look at Victoria's future forest policy":
This film Recommends the creation of a "Great Forest National Park", where there would be no logging.
Prof. David Lindenmayer is one of Australia's foremost environmental experts. Over 30 years David has undertaken one of the most comprehensive scientific studies of a forest landscape anywhere in the world. With over 35 scientists and 2,500 volunteers they have painstakingly measured and tracked the Victorian central highlands. Now the state government who manages that forest refuses to reference their study as it presents a conclusion they are unwilling to hear. Without intention - all Victorians putting at risk their water security, biodiversity and the extinction of their fauna emblem - the endangered Leadbeaters Possum.

[2] Regarding the expression 'temperature moderation', this is a reference to more discussion in the longer version of this interview, covering the heat island effect and the cooling effect of forests, (particularly mature ones with big trees) which is noticable to anyone entering them. So, it is not just carbon storage, but the transpirational effects of forests (getting rid of heat and water, but also storing water - keeping the balance) and their shade that is important.

Many Victorians who lost friends and family, and know people who lost houses in the 2009 furnace in Victoria are appalled at some of the recommendations issuing from the Royal Commision Final Report. They are trying to find solutions that match the enormity of the increase in bushfire threats of the future. Inform yourself with this analysis of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission Report and Recommendations!

Analysts in the field are calling for new ideas and asking Victorians to be wary of obsessing about yesterday’s solutions, which haven’t worked or are still scientifically unproven).

Safety lies in scientific, not simplistic solutions

Thoughtful people say that before land management is altered we need evidence and scientific knowledge before repeating unproven solutions. Fire management must be different for each landscape, taking into account that there are 300 different vegetation types across Vic.

Burning off a ritual to ward-off evil but not a real solution

Calls for burning-off as a solution lack science and evidence. They are like warding off evil by burning incense, but they do a hell of a lot more damage, whilst doing little if any good. Burning gives a false sense of security by cultivating a mistaken belief that it will make people safer. Fire experts appointed by panel all agreed that prescribed burns wouldn’t reduce fire severity on extreme fire danger days.

New extreme weather conditions need useful, not political or superstitious responses

CSIRO and BOM study of 2007 says Victoria faces up to 65% more days of extreme fire risk in the next decade. Extreme weather conditions are unfortunately Victoria's new future. Politicians need to accept this reality and allow the delivery of new solutions to match, instead of simply legitimating inadequate traditional responses from their politically positioned beneficiaries.

Declaring war on forests and the environment and trying to alter nature is ineffective and could add to problem.

Fact: Arson and electricity problems, not trees, cause loss of lives

Contrary to the folklore of forests as a danger in themselves circulated by the logging, real-estate and agribusiness industries, it turns out that arson and power line failures are far and away the greatest cause of total areas burnt and loss of lives.

We need to control the sources of the fires - the arsonists and the power-line incidents - not the forests which keep our country cool and watered and stop carbon emissions.

Australians need to beware of politically and commercially motivated scapegoating of groups, such as 'environmentalists' and 'greens' because these tactics are used to avoid and postpone real solutions, whilst protecting bad habits in the commercial world.

We cannot afford to have commercial beneficiaries of forest-destruction, such as land-developers, loggers and agribusiness take our future hostage. We have to take democratic and political control to ensure that rational solutions are used to tackle a new future of extreme weather conditions.

Extreme weather conditions in January/Feb 2009

Fires tragically claimed 173 lives, damaged or destroyed more than 2000 properties and 61 businesses, burned through entire towns and affected 430,000 hectares of land throughout Victoria. Disasters on this scale do not occur in isolation, but are the result of preceding events and conditions.

The 7th & 8th of February 2009 were the hottest days on Victorian records. These terrible conditions which many of us recall were exacerbated by high winds and very low humidity. Most meteorologists think that these conditions were less a drought than a permanent trend of drying. Many believe that they were signs that climate change is here.

The general conclusion by responsible scientists and other environmentalists is that we all need to work together to find best way to deal with this frightening but unavoidable reality.

Shocking facts about the Royal Commission into Victoria's 2009 Bushfires

Royal Commission recommendations into the Victorian Bushfires seem politically driven not scientific

The Royal Commission’s team of experts admitted that on days of such extreme conditions, control burns were useless. So why did the Commission recommend threefold increase in so-called controlled burns?

Was this Royal Commission politically driven even in these shocking circumstances that demanded rigorous honour, compassion and honesty?

Observers say that the Royal Commission ignored the fact that the major danger around towns and settlements was not old growth forests, but - to the contrary - plantations and the flammable re-growth from logging!

The fires that came out of these plantations killed 11 people.

Yet the fire-risk they caused and continue increasingly to cause was not examined by the Commission!

Shocked observers feel that this strange omission can only be explained by the wish by the authorities to protect commercial interests vested in plantation assets.

Bizarre and irrelevant focus on native forests on public land ignored major causes and areas of bushfires

The one dimensional nature of the Royal Commission's focus on just native forests on public land for prescribed burning will do nothing to lessen the fire risks that the other land tenure types pose.

Priority attention needs to focus on deadly powerlines

SEVENTY PER CENT OF BLACK SATURDAY'S DEATHS WERE DUE TO POWERLINES!
Much can be done to reduce the risk of power line sparks in hot windy weather. Attention to this would provide the most effective protection against fires in the future!

Media, including public media, has a responsibility for ongoing fatalities by bushfire

The commercial and public media (the ABC) should provide objective information. At the moment all mainstream media and the government favour sources from the pro-logging and commercial forestry lobby. This lobby unconscionably pushes an over-simplified message about fuel reduction burns that is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT to saving lives, or preventing firestorms on days like Black Saturday.

Critique of Recommendations from the Commission

Although there have been some good recommendations, some are very bad. Others seem to be largely padding.

Bushfire Safety Policy.

Recs 1-4 and 6-7: Mostly sensible and relatively obvious, on education, safety policy revision, evacuation and shelters, looking after the vulnerable and elderly, standards for community refuges.

Rec 5 is a bit ambiguous on the subject of evacuations.

Emergency and incident management.

Recs 8-19: These discuss internal processes to be improved, such as the Department of Sustainability and Environment and or the Country Fire Authority (DSE/CFA) needing better coordination.

Fireground response

Rec 20-26: Fast response by aircraft – put on standby, look at engaging Defence Department to help, more inter-agency communication, radio black-spot problem looked at etc.

Rec 24 & 25: Dangerous incidents including back-burns (obviously a problem in the past) be fully investigated, and no back-burns lit until IC gives approval (implies past mistakes with cowboys lighting up and creating bigger fire front. Hearsay has it that 50% of fire area in 2003 and ‘06 caused by back burns).

Electricity caused fires.

Recs 27-34: Underground or bundled power lines – priority in high danger zone – to be replaced within 10 years. Power utilities to improve relevant performance with inspections every 3 years. Advice to cut down even more trees along power lines that are outside of clearance zone ‘just in case’. Councils also advised to cut down ‘hazard trees’ around lines, as well as to install spreaders and vibration dampers as soon as possible on power lines.

Deliberately lit fires.

Recs 35-36: These recommendations make noises that sound like huffing and puffing about better arson prevention and detection and police training but don't give details.

The Report gives more practical suggestions, such as police patrols.

Planning and Building.

Recs 37-55: Planning, mapping, bushfire risk, council controls, CFA input ... etc. Recommendation 39 talks about “substantially reducing development in areas of highest risk – giving due consideration to biodiversity conservation...”

It may seem picky, but it is hard to see how these two things are logically or logistically connected.

Rec 39-40: Discusses minimal lot size to allow for ‘defendable space’. Does this mean permanent moonscaping? (A good way to heat up the earth.)

Rec 41: Amend planning regulations to let more tree clearing permits through where fire threat is a priority. Looks for a maximum level of permissable clearing.

Rec 42: Mention of “collective offset solution” (?) when native veg cleared.

Rec 43 – This is one for the cynics!

DSE to “conduct biodiversity mapping to identify ...threatened species throughout Vic...”
State and local government have demonstrated lack of will or allocated resources to do this even in small areas where it’s critically important. The Department of Sustainability and the Environment have been shown by Auditor General reports in 2009 and the Minister for the Environment's responses to be unwilling or unable to carry out such an immense survey and mapping exercise.

Thus this recommendation seems naively founded on ignorant overestimations of DSE's competence, power and resources. Or worse, it simply continues to use DSE as a convenient front to cover inaction with a pretense of good intentions.

Man or Mouse - no contest

Will Brumby reject or set up such a Mickey Mouse type biodiversity mapping exercise?.

Rec 44: Fire resistant plants list to be produced by the CFA. Don't the bushfires already produce fire-resistant vegetation and isn't this part of the problem of our drying environment? Old-growth forests (by definition) do resist fire, but this is not what is meant by the commission, unfortunately.

Rec 46: Buy-back land and settle people elsewhere in high risk zone – non compulsory.

No mention of funding fire-bunkers.

Rec 47- 55: Building codes, overlays, etc

Land and fuel management - a pyromaniac's guide

Recs 56 – 62: Currently about 1.5% of land is burned annually. This is a huge amount. The Commission has recommended that the area to be crudely devastated in this way by human agency may be increased up to 5%, or 3 x increase!

Why was more burning advocated despite the Royal Commission’s expert panel earlier admitting there was little evidence that control burns achieved anything on the extreme days Victorians will face in the future?

Cynics will say that it's no surprise that the Royal Commission is politically driven, but Victorians should march on Parliament in outrage.

Rec 57: Annual report on targets and “impacts on biodiversity”! We cannot say what the impact of a burn was for years afterwards. As the report says, there is a need baseline data, seasonal monitoring, and surveys on many diff veg types, aspects, areas etc.

At least they admit they don’t have the necessary information, but this doesn't stop them making dangerous recommendations about burning off.

The current monitoring looks only at plants. It does not look at micro-fauna, fungi, insects, frogs, reptiles, birds and the ground mammals that are most heavily impacted when huge areas of forest are ‘control burnt’.

Rec 58: DSE to improve its long-term data collection to monitor the effects of its burns and of bushfires. As mentioned above, DSE' current data collection is almost non-existent and next to useless.

DSE does not monitor the impact of fire on loss of ground cover and on the soil life that depends on healthy leaf litter. It doesn't look at how the vegetation that grows back after a fire is thicker, more flammable i.e. "fire-adapted."

Risk analysis model lacking holistic context could promote commerically motivated abuse

Rec 59: Contains a risk analysis model which gives humans priority over the [read 'natural'] environment where there’s a dispute.

The dangers of this model are obvious. Without a healthy natural environment we will all perish and the risk of commercially vested interests using this model to devastate natural forests and make them loggable or clear them for housing and agriculture is a well-known one which the commission, in good faith, should have avoided.

Recommendation 60 promotes annual destruction of roadside vegetation

Rec 60: Revised Planning regulations allow major vegetation clearing along roads under the guise of fire safety. This is often where the last remnant strips of original vegetation survive in farmland. Such actions will raise the water table and promote more drying.

Rec 61: Discusses getting the Federal government to solve conflict over destruction of valuable roadside vegetation and to modify the already tattered Federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) to allow protected vegetation to be destroyed annually!

Rec 62: That VicRoads, which is an organisation that has no core ecological or environmental expertise, do risk assessments along roadsides.

Organisational structure.

Recs 63 – 64: Monitoring and implementation.
Rec 66: Auditor General or other ‘independent’ body report back on the progress of these recommendations by July 2012.

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