A recent report from friends who suffered terrible losses of buildings, fences, pasture and cattle in the Coonabarabran fire commenced with the ominous and oft-repeated message: “a raging fire came out of the National Park straight for us”.
There is only one way to limit fire damage – reduce the fuel available.
Fuel load can be reduced in three ways – by grazing animals, by planned small “cool” fires, or by mechanical reduction with slashers, mulchers or dozers.
Australia’s grassland landscape was created and managed by generations of Aborigines who were masters at using man’s most useful tool – fire. Every explorer from Abel Tasman (1642) and Captain Cook (1770) onwards noted the smoke in the sky and the burnt trees whenever they landed. This burning created the open grassland landscapes that dominated pre-European Australia. Aborigines lit fires continually, so their small patchwork fires caused no permanent damage to the environment and created and maintained the healthy grasslands on which many animals and Aborigines depended.
Misguided tree lovers and green politicians have locked the gates on ever-increasing areas of land for trees, parks, heritage, wilderness, habitat, weekend retreats, carbon sequestration etc. Never before on this ancient continent has anyone tried to ban land use or limit bush fires on certain land. The short-sighted policy of surrounding their massive land-banks with fences, locked gates and fire bans has created a new alien environment in Australia. They have created tinder boxes where the growth of woody weeds and the accumulation of dead vegetation in eucalypt re-growth create the perfect environment for fierce fires. Once ignited by lightning, carelessness or arson, the inevitable fire-storms incinerate the park trees and wildlife, and then invade the unfortunate neighbouring properties.
Many of today’s locked-up areas were created to sequester carbon to fulfil Kyoto obligations. Who pays the carbon tax on the carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by wild fires?
The green bureaucracies and politicians are clearly mis-managing their huge land-bank. Aborigines and graziers did a far better job. There should be a moratorium on locking up any more land and a return to sustainable management for existing land holdings.
Viv Forbes,
Rosewood Qld Australia
I am happy for my email address to be published.
Related articles
- Bushfires rage on in Australia ‘helped’ by climate change (updatednews.ca)
- Bushfires rage on in Australia (bbc.co.uk)
This is simple, intelligent, very workable and is in conformity with nature. Therefore it has virtually zero chance of being adopted by a government. There is no power or profit potential.
I feel sorry for Australia. A once vibrant nation is succumbing to the Carbon Madness.
Industry leaving, wild fires burning.
Pretty soon it will be only a hollow shell.
Unintended consequences. It is the bane of all good intentions. GK
Brilliant!
Well, it’s just like the alien environment of Kalifornia. Wet years grow the vegetation and dry years burn it off. Houses are not located in the clear lands, rather more likely where the vegetation is thickest. The entire USA is about like that.
Trees should be along to 100 ft off the highways to block the wind and act as a natural snow fence also. Not to mention sopping up pollutants. Then we’ll have less tragic traffic accidents and pileups. But everyone wants to see the scenery. No common sense.
As an Aussie who has lived in the bush for years – without a house, without electricity on tap, without piped water and without sewage – I know what “real” bush living means. As an Aussie who currently lives on the edge of a small country town, and is about to move back into the bush and off the grid (no electricity, gen-set needed) to be back “in amongst the gum trees”, I totally agree with what’s said here. Some years ago it was the law to put in fire breaks. If you couldn’t slash it, you burnt it in a controlled manner. Now it’s the opposite – you’re not allowed to touch anything.
We currently have the worst government Australia has ever seen and I can’t wait for November when we can vote the B**** out!
Another excellent article on Quadrant with a great film about these damn destructive environmentalists actions: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/01/the-fires-the-greens-make-us-have
Good sense as always, Viv.
When will they ever learn.
I think the urban chattering classes in Aus. are even worse than the UK ruling elite – maybe not.
Jo Nova: In Australia If You Try to Clear a Firebreak On Your Land You Could Go to Jail
And the same increasing CO2 levels which are boosting farm productivity across the world are also increasing the growth rates of burnable bushland and grassland.
Sorry, The Greens Know far better the Aborigines. The Greens are so Clever? Sarc off
As a retired fire fighter and fire officer who had to deal with wiildfires in South Africa which has similar vegetation, plus the euchalypts imported in the 19th Century to ‘stabilise’ dune fields, I can say that the above article hits the nail on the head squarely. I have visited Australia a number of times, twice during the bushfire seasons (last in 2000 when I spent Christmas and Boxing Day doing what I could to help the NSW Rural Service teams) and the real problem is the ‘Green’ bans on clearing scrub and reducing the fire load.
Unfortunately it will take a fire running out of control into a large town and destroying it and several hundred lives for the Greens and their allies to get kicked into touch and these stupid, bigoted and frankly dangerous policies to be reversed. In the meantime, you can expect to see the current scenes being repeated roughly every five years.
Worth noting that Australian Aboriginal people, in the main, detest Envrionmentalists and Greeens because of their urge to prohibit traditional activities such as hunting and fishing.
Also worth noting that the only reason there’s anything burning at all in some parts is that we’ve had a couple of wet seasons…it’s true, you just can’t please a Greenie!
The best laid plans of mice and men oft gang aglay.
They cant stop fires by legislating, nature won’t be signing up to protocols
It’s happening in North America too. Read this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Eco-Fascists-Radical-Conservationists-Destroying-Heritage/dp/0062080032/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358714542&sr=8-1&keywords=eco+fascists
There is only one way to limit fire damage – reduce the fuel available.
No it isn’t. The other and best way is too keep people and property away from combustible material (and visa versa).
Here in Western Australia, we have the largest bushfires in Australia and they generally don’t make the Perth newspapers, for the simple reason they burn through areas where no one lives, and there is no property to burn except for a few minesites, and the miners, not being there for the scenery, make sure all brush around buildings is cleared.
I recall from the Victorian fires a couple of years ago. In one town, only one house didn’t burn. The owner had cut back all the brush and trees around his house, and had been fined by the council for doing so.
It may sound harsh, but the best solution is to prohibit anyone from getting bushfire insurance or government help after a fire. If you want to live in a bushfire risk area, don’t expect tax-payers to subsidize your lifestyle.
Otherwise, I agree with you.
We are here to help you, we are from your government.
The voluntarily nonproductive, know better than the producers, how production shall proceed.
From the actions of the greenies and UN-IPCC inspired acts of economic suicide on the part of our bureaucracies, I suspect these groups cost us more than they are worth.
What value are the trappings of civilization, if they defy common sense and cost you your life and property?
On the bright side, one should remind the nature lovers of history, last time the weather turned cold, the witches got to be the scapegoats. Human nature seems to cycle too.
@Phillip Bradley–
I find it odd that while you argue sequestration is a viable method of preventing fatalities and structures burning, the two exampes you give FEATURE PEOPLE REDUCING THE FUEL LOAD IN THE VICINITY OF THEIR STRUCTURES.
Furthermore, you seem to ignore the fact that small fires are less destructive than large infernos- what trees there are survive a small, cool fire, and wildlife has a chance to escape from a localized, slow-moving fire that’s not being driven by the heat and convection-induced wind of a large conflagration.
Not to mention small fires are easier to tend and control so they don’t burn into towns.
Eucalyptus oil is highly flammable. Eucalyptus trees emit so much in hot weather that the vapour can clearly be seen in the atmosphere and creates the famous “blue hills” that once everyone in Australia knew about – the vapour causes diffraction in the air.
In the right conditions of heat and low humidity eucalypt tree forests literally explode into uncontrollable firestorms with the fire “topping” through the tree canopy and the undergrowth burning behind a raging fire front.
People who live in that environment might as well throw accelerant around their homes – the effect is the same.
The economic disaster of these fires is the result of living in inappropriate dangerous areas and nothing to do with “manmade climate change”.
We have had hot weather and raging fires long before there was any thought of “manmade climate change”.
“Aborigines lit fires continually, so their small patchwork fires caused no permanent damage to the environment and created and maintained the healthy grasslands on which many animals and Aborigines depended.”
That’s up for debate. Lighting a fire and collecting the escaping food at the other end is more likely what it’s all about. Doing this indiscriminately for 40,000 years or so helps vegetation evolve to survive this.
Notably, the VAST proportion of Australia is covered mostly by grassland and desert anyway. It’s only the wet areas where forests can survive.
Green policies are destroying this country. Firewood isn’t allowed to be collected anymore – we have to wait for a major bushfire to burn it all up for us instead.
Carbon madness is a good way to put it. The article is good; it was needed to throw some light on the faulty policies that spawn these catastrophic fires. We see how the government is in the business of sowing firestorms and then blaming CO2. What a racket.
Philip Bradley says:
January 20, 2013 at 12:43 pm
No it isn’t. The other and best way is too keep people and property away from combustible material (and visa versa).
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That is fine in Western Australia, which has less people than Chicago and more land area than Alaska and Texas added together. It is easy to have people not live where the untended National Parks are. In places like Tasmania and Victoria, there is no such luxury. There over twice as many people in Victoria in a fraction of the land area.
Intelligent management of fuel is the only safe way to manage the bush fire threat, and that includes firebreaks along roads and around dwellings.
I’m glad this has been mentioned. I read a very informative article on the subject after the deadly Australian fires a few years ago. It made perfect sense. So this time around, I was wondering why they haven’t managed the ‘fuel’ problem in the intervening years.
Philip Bradley says:
January 20, 2013 at 12:43 pm
“There is only one way to limit fire damage – reduce the fuel available.
No it isn’t. The other and best way is too keep people and property away from combustible material (and visa versa).
[…]
and the miners, not being there for the scenery, make sure all brush around buildings is cleared.”
You noticed that it only took you a few sentences to contradict yourself, right?
@A.D.Everard: We currently have the worst government Australia has ever seen and I can’t wait for November when we can vote the B**** out!
Please don’t make the mistake we did in the USA. The idiocies perpetuated by our government are too numerous to remember. So they get lost in the political debate. The government’s own mistakes become a smoke screen hiding the size and number of problems.
Where did we get the idea that candidates cannot use notes in debates, speeches or interviews and must rely on memory? Romney should have carried around a scuffed, worn corner, dog-eared red 1″ 3-ring binder over-filled with pages cataloging of US government idiocies, corruptive influences, and failed promises. He wouldn’t even have to open it in public, it’s presence would be intimidating. It might be unconventional, but that red note-book could have become iconic of the state of the nation.
In any event, A.D., don’t rely upon memory. Take inventory. Take names. Don’t let most of it be lost in the fog of political war.