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)
There is no doubt that the mindless expansion of national parks, without a thought (let alone a dollar) given to maintenance has been responsible for severe environmental problems. As well as raging bushfires, the parks are havens for weeds and feral animals (pigs, dogs, cats, foxes etc) which invade neighbouring properties.
Once again, ‘green’ is a synonym for (a) stupid beyond belief and (b) perverse outcomes.
I am a bit sceptical of the romantic view of Aboriginal burning as well. There weren’t that many of them – vast regions of this vast continent were uninhabited, so the effects were localised in fairly small areas. As others have pointed it, it made sense from the point of view of finding a cooked dinner in the ashes and clearing a bit of grazing land for kangaroos and such. But it is absurd to believe that these fires never got out of control, or that they were motivated by concern for Gaia.
Anyhow, ‘tree-changers’ are learning the hard way that nature is not cuddly, and that if you cuddle up too close you may well get savaged.
A few things I would like to mention as an active member of the Country Fire Authority in Victoria (out to a fire this week which was ony 2ks form home and burning fiercely)
– Greenies do join the CFA
– Treechange is a common term for people that move to the country from the city (it is often to the more treed areas on the urban/rural interface and it is lifestyle change rather than for primary production reasons like in Macedon Ranges in Victoria)
– Lastly I would like to get away from the noble savage concept of aboriginals, sure they used fire to manage the land mainly to reduce tree density and provide a green pick that occurs after a fire so they can hunt game. I am sure many of their fires also got away and caused enormous damage. They also changed the vegetation type to those that tolerate fire and made Australia the fire prone country it is today.
Its important to recognise the multifactorial nature of the problem, rather than jumping to a single solution.
Though, I note that somehow mining is listed as one of the causes. I honestly can’t think of a single fire that was traced back to a mine.
In WA all miners are required to have a bushfire management and response plan. This includes the training of a team for bushfire response and the presence of a dedicated fire response vehicle. Plus all the obvious things like properly observing fire bans and not undertaking hot works on high fire risk days.
It’s very easy to pick on miners, because they are “the enemy”, however my experience indicates that almost all fire impacts affecting residential areas arise for multiple factors that might include; poor fuel control, carelessness in the face of evident upcoming fire weather, inadequate fire protection by residents and authorities, arson, poor communication by agencies and residential sprawl.
In all of that, it must be realised that once one of these beasts take hold, even the best fire protection and contingency planning may not be enough. I’m thinking of a fire that occurred at a place called Pingelly in WA. The fire arose from a local tip, but once it took hold, the high winds meant that the fire was jumping ahead up to 300m, so no amount of fire breaks is gonna stop that and for the most part that fire crossed cropped land where there was only stubble. The only thing that could have been done with that was to stop it at source.
In summary, it’s very easy to jump to a single solution and land the blame on a single group, but in reality, they are multifactorial and require management from a range of sources.
My heart goes out to those who have lost property and lives in this fire season and I really don’t think that now is the time to be saying it’s all their fault.
Sure was hot in OZ
I think the Malethusians Greens really do want to kill us….
<<<<<<<<<
You don't have to.
You can know it.
Go to any website where they advertize the destruction of civilization: people being in the world are the main problem the world has, and less people is less problems. Period.
What I’m saying Gail is these people comprise a very large cross section of Enviro-wackos. Not every last one: they all just agree to take those people in with them and their message of destroying people carries over: like their much published ‘pay people to sterilize themselves or their neighbors through enacting laws to punish them for not doing it: carbon taxing each child, etc.
…I wasn’t clear, my bad there.
This is so depressing.
I am hopeful that one day before too long we might actually win the carbon madness battle.
However, I fear the know-it-all liberals that have populated governments and NGO’s around the world have an unlimited portfolio of other (equally silly) crusades they will immediately pursue.
Seriously, it’s worse than we thought 🙁
And I am very skeptical of the new climate catastrophe meme in the making, the role of anthropogenic black carbon in the apparent but most probable, entirely natural ongoing changes in the global climate.
Note I said “Anthropogenic” black carbon.
Already there has been a considerable amount of bone pointing at black carbon emitted from vehicles, diesel engines and human activities as playing a role in the way the global climate has been changing. There is no doubt that human activities have some role and some contribution to the black carbon levels but perhaps there is another quite natural reason why atmospheric black carbon levels have apparently risen over the last half a century.
And it is all to do with wild fires and the scale and intensity of those wild fires.
The centuries long order of burning where the fires in both forest and grasslands were long lasting, slow burning, low intensity fires through low density undergrowth which had all been burnt only a few years previously, produces copious amounts of smoke and carbon.
However this slow relatively low energy burning process does not provide enough heat for the smoke and carbon particles to rise with enough energy to punch through the low inversions of the local atmosphere. So most of that smoke just drifted along within a layer no more than a few thousand feet at the most above the ground and often only a few hundred feet high where it slowly settled out or was rained out within a couple of days in close proximity to the original burning source.
With the drastic restrictions on burning and the stupidity of the radical and ignorant greens and other assorted ill informed do-gooders, the wild fires are now massive in size and of incredible intensity with enormous columns of smoke and burning material and therefore immense amounts of black carbon being punched up and driven into the upper atmosphere and well into the lower levels of the stratosphere at altitudes up to 60,000 or more feet by the colossal amounts of heat energy being released by those wild fires.
From there as we know from tracking the volcanic eruption particulates, the fire produced black carbon particles could drift enormous distances, perhaps a couple of times around the world over a few days as they disperse through the global atmospheric circulation system.
With those massive and increasingly intense wild fires becoming even larger and possibly more common, the black carbon created in these fires might be a far more realistic [ manmade ? ] source of black carbon than transport, diesel engines, cities and other blameable human origin sources.
And yet again it might be the green “savers of the planet” with their crazy, stupid, utterly ignorant ideology / theology who are doing the most to destroy the very thing they are claiming to be saving.
Philip Bradley I live in Fremantle WA and cannot agree with your comments. Don’t you recall the Roleystone/Kelmscott fires about two years ago when upwards of 35 homes were lost? Forgetting the Brigadoon fires at the same time when hundreds were evacuated? To those who don’t know WA these places are on the outskirts of the Perth metropolitan area.
But to refer to your post which seems to lack any logical rationale at all
You start by referring to the comment by the author of this particular topic that “There is only one way to limit fire damage – reduce the fuel available.
You then say “No it isn’t. The other and best way is too keep people and property away from combustible material (and visa versa)”. But you then directly contradict that statement by saying “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”.
This is exactly, repeat exactly, in agreement with the statement you so vehemently disagreed with.There seems to be no rationality in what you write.
You then say “It may sound harsh, but the best solution is to prohibit anyone from getting bushfire insurance or government help after a fire.” But you also said the best way is to keep people away etc. As you can’t have two bests which one is the real best?
Philip Bradley says:
January 20, 2013 at 2:31 pm
A lot of people can’t afford to abandon their property and move away when the vegetation moves in, as vegetation is wont to do. How do you define close proximity? Here’s a case where it’s clear that even 100m is almost too close, I assume it’s the one you referenced:
Please explain the dichotomy of your statement – in one case you refer to miners who clear land, in the other case you refer to a farmer who did the same thing but you seem to suggest his family should have fled the advancing green wave. Do you propose people should do that and move back after the trees burn down? Can you afford that cycle or do you live in an underground house?
See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/11/weve-lost-two-people-in-my-family-because-you-dickheads-wont-cut-trees-down/
So, what should the Sheahans have done? Emigrated to the Olympic Rain Forest in Washingon state?
Does anyone know if any trace of sanity was restored after that fire season? Doesn’t sound like it.
Jeff Alberts says:
January 20, 2013 at 3:10 pm
In New Hampshire, the logging era that brought NH to the brink of an energy crisis also left huge areas of slash. In some areas where they burned, the heat was hot enough to sterilize the thin soil, which subsequently eroded away. Mounts Monadnock, Kearsarge, and Cardigan all have open peaks now despite being well under tree line. A minor peak next to Cardigan is named Firescrew, and the road our yurt is on is named Burnt Hill Rd. It’s possible that postdates the logging era.
In general, people now appreciate these mountains for their cleared tops and the views they offer. The damage isn’t permanent, at least not to a geologist. Lichen is breaking down granite and slowly scrub vegetation a bit of a foothold. However, I don’t expect trees to return before the end of the current interglacial. Maybe in 100,000 years when all these mountains will be newly scraped clean these burned mountains will again be peers with all the others trying to make a new forest.
This sort of erosion can occur naturally as well.
Time to BURN the lame-brained tree huggers, the “green” politicians AND that Kyoto agreement!
For a fascinating report on the condition of Australia when Europeans arrived see:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/fire-and-landscape.pdf
I suspect that one of the main reasons the aborigines burnt areas was that they had learned in order to survive they needed to provide themselves with a safe refuge as defence against naturally occurring bush fires.
As firefighters we are taught to “stay on the black”, but I think the aborigines had worked that out very early on.
A.D. Everard says: January 20, 2013 at 12:02 pm
“..We currently have the worst government Australia has ever seen and I can’t wait for November when we can vote the B**** out!…”
Unfortunately you will get no immediate relief there… a few thousand regulations and government departments will remain to enforce ridiculous laws and perpetuate ridiculous situations.
My brother is a cattleman and a timber cutter in Queensland. Areas that have been successfully and sustainability logged for more than 100 years and have received international awards for sustainable forestry management have now been locked up.
Forestry areas that he could lease and run cattle in for decades have been locked up. Even land which was completely clear 100 years ago has been locked up as “original growth forests” (Yes, I have seen the old photos – the whole thing is a testament to how quickly a forest can develop and mature).
Those who have managed forest country know the only way to control fire in such country is to create firebreaks (ie bulldozed tracks) and to burn back some distance from those tracks when the weather is still cool – as a 12 ft wide track through the forest will not stop anything when it is dry.
And those geniuses in here who disparage the aboriginal people (who were able to survive in a landscape where better equipped Europeans very quickly died if they ran out of supplies) for their burning practices of many small cooler fires need to ask themselves what did they think was eventually going to happen to all that built up fuel. Do you think it just sat there forever?
I dont have much time to comment because we just got 90% burnt out in the fires on the 8th Jan. This is the first afternoon I have stopped since from shooting burnt stock and caring for live ones to be taken away and putting out on-going fire up to last Friday.
So much for “chosing to live where there is a fire risk” – The national park land the fire escaped from is about 5 km or more as the crow flies. There has been NO fires in this valley, let alone this farm, since probably 1935 or earlier. There is 5 km of open grazing land between me and where we were burnt out from.
The fire started about a week before and was small but the local council and Rural fire service did not bother putting it out when it was small, arguing about who paid costs, despite catastrophic weather conditions being predicted. So it got away. Now those staff got overtime for fighting the fire. A complete beauracrats bunfight at our expense on every level.
Someone here on the night of the fire said the wind was so strong that it was blowing his truck about on the road 200 km+ winds and that it was impossible to see from the smoke and heat, BEFORE the fire hit. This was just the spot fire area ahead of the main fire – spot fires hit about 4pm, main fire a number of hours later.
So does that mean people should only live 10 km from trees? – yet the NSW native Vegetation Act 2003 that makes Australia meet its Kyoto protocol carbon quota makes mowing or slashing NATIVE GRASS pasture illegal (as well as trees, few realise this) – so should we only live on ploughed ground 10 km from trees and grass? Or do they just hate humans as the root of all evil? A fascists paradise.
Our fences are over 90% burnt also and 1/3 of livestock lost.
Government “help” is a joke and in practice inaccessible.
I am beyond exhaustion
Some before and after pics
http://s968.beta.photobucket.com/user/runninghorse-2008/library/Bushfire%202013
http://s968.beta.photobucket.com/user/runninghorse-2008/library/Bringing%20in%20the%20Sheep
Gail Combs says:
January 20, 2013 at 2:08 pm
“And that is the EXACT PLAN. SEE MAP”
The link doesn’t go to a map, nor is one available from there. I only point this out because your links have ALWAYS been good and on subject. I get very tired of links that have nothing to do with what is written or contradict what is written. I can always depend upon you to provide intelligent comment and links to good information. Too much so, in fact. I’ve spent many hours following your links, and learned much thereby.
Thanks.
I remember visiting a friend who lived in the forests surrounding Grafton. After driving through the forest it suddenly opened up to a clearing the size of of the Sydney cricket ground. In the middle was their house. That’s how everyone should live who wants to live in the Australian bush.
Climate Ace has not made one comment on this thread. Well, what have you to say, Ace?
Plain Jane, thank you for taking time to relate all this. Rest up, if and when you can, then let people know more, if you feel so disposed. We’ve been pretty safe from fire for some years in my part of NSW, but I well remember how bad it was in 1994 and at other times. Fire just has a will and way of its own once it gets the conditions it loves, and gathers the critical mass it needs. It can then make its own wind, jump over lakes, travel on next to nothing.
To think the authorities knew about it when it was small and in a National Park! I suppose it’s more important to learn than blame, and what you’ve just written and photographed will give some people a chance to learn. Those with green goo all over their brains will refuse to learn or care, but others will profit from your efforts.
The statement by Forbes that reducing fuel is the only way to reduce fire damage is gross stupidity. I do hope that individual home owners don’t listen to it, because it is bad advice that could cost them their homes. I assume that, legally, it is OK for WUWT to publish this sort of rubbish in the public interest.
In the past few weeks I have driven around 800 km mostly through Australian farmland. While I can’t be certain of the exact figures, my estimate it that more than 90% of that trip had farmland on both sides of the road, right up to the road.
I saw burnt areas from the both the recent Tarcutta and Bookham fires and drove through the smoke of the Booroowa fires.
As far as I know all of the Tarcutta, Bookham and Booroowa fires were on private property. I am not sure of the final figures but I imagine something in excess of 10,000 hectares of farmland was burnt. These three fires occurred in the most cleared landscape in Australia. If I recall correctly, Booroowa is in a shire in which 97% of the original woodlands were cleared.
Despite all the emotional bs we have been reading on WUWT, all of those farmers were legally entitled to plough or scrape a firebreak on the inside perimeter of any or all of their properties and paddocks because there is no native vegetation left.
Despite all the emotional bs we have been reading on WUWT, all of those farmers were also entitled to have in place active fire suppressant defencess to defend valuable equipment, shedding and houses.
Despite all the emotional, data-free bs we have been readindg on WUWT, all of the farmers (except, perhaps, for the three on whose properties the fires started) who were burnt out were burnt out by fires that came from their neighbouring farmers, not from national parks.
Despite the opportunity to do fuel reduction by grazing, cool burns and by slashing, not enough of this was done to protect the farmers in the three fires who were burnt out.
I can tell you that I saw almost no fire breaks on private farming property in 800km of driving.
The principles, designs, materials, active and passive measures for virtually fire-proofing houses would have saved most of the 150 plus houses that burned to the ground over the past fortnight. It is not rocket science.
But, as far as I can tell, the home owners couldn’t be bothered. When their houses did burn down, they blamed someone else. After all, it can’t be their negligence for houses that burned, can it?
Eucalypt forests are well known to constitute one of the most dangerous fire risks in the world. Yet people insist on moving into the forest and building homes in areas which are, quite literally, gas bombs waiting to go off.
As far as I can tell, these people, when burnt out, and hundreds of them have been burnt out in the last few years, vent their anger on someone else. After all, it can’t be their stupidity and/or negligence can it?
So, what is going on here? IMHO, a systematic attempt by individuals to blame someone else for their negligence and stupidity. Simple, really. It must be national parks, greenies and the government. Stands to reason, right?
Now, to national parks.
Forbes quite rightly drew attention to our alien landscape. It is an alien landscape as so much of it has been cleared. The changed hydrology is turning it into an even more alien landscape as we write. We have massive problems with salinzation and with fungal outbreaks in our forests. We have massive erosion problems with tens of thousands of erosion gullies on the inland slopes of the Great Dividing Range. We have let loose tens of millions of feral rabbits, goats, deer, donkeys, horses and camels. They are chewing their way through the landscape, turning it alien as they go. We have let loose hundreds of weeds that are carpeting some parts of our landscape, turning it alien as we go.
And we have altered the fire regime, whatever it was, that maintained the variety of original vegetation types extant in Cook’s time.
The overwhelming percentage of our native vegetation is either gone or damaged. The species that depended on them are drastically reduced in distrubtion or extinct.
Australians, in 200 years of alienating the landscape, have inadvertantly become gold medal extinction mongers.
National parks are, quite simply, about our values: do we value Australian plants and animal species enough to protect them? Or are we relaxed about more extinctions?
There are many, many things that can be done to protect both the animals and plants in national parks and the neighbours of national parks.
Rather than simply blame national parks and governments for what is often personal negligence we should take a much more systematic approach:
(1) we should ban people from building homes among eucalyptus gas bombs – for their safety and for our insurance premiums.
(2) we should encourage fuel reduction burns consisten with maintaining the suite of plants and animals in national parks – bearing in mind that many plants and animals have quite specific fire regime requirements.
(3) where farmers abut parks, the government should assist farmers with active and passive fire measures. This is in the interests of farmers and of national parks – I imagine that more fires start on private property than in national parks and it is the latter which need to be protected from farmers more often than the other way around
(4) the introduction of mandatory active and passive fire proofing of new houses.
These measures are fairly straight forward, IMHO.
We need to understand that there is a major values conflict between different elements of our society.
It will be a signal of our maturity as a nation whether we work together to sort out a way that integrates the values, or we simply let our current messes continue to simmer, stew and burn.
.
janama says:
January 20, 2013 at 9:06 pm
I remember visiting a friend who lived in the forests surrounding Grafton. After driving through the forest it suddenly opened up to a clearing the size of of the Sydney cricket ground. In the middle was their house. That’s how everyone should live who wants to live in the Australian bush.
Sure. You have to clear the bush to live in the bush.
GP says:
January 20, 2013 at 6:13 pm
Time to BURN the lame-brained tree huggers, the “green” politicians AND that Kyoto agreement!
That is on par with the WUWT poster who wanted to shoot all the Aborigines.
Public calls for murder are public calls for murder.
I trust that the moderater refers you to the appropriate authorities for investigation.
Robert A. Taylor says:
January 20, 2013 at 9:06 pm
Gail Combs says:
January 20, 2013 at 2:08 pm
The second link works – to a close-up of California and Nevada.
You can then backspace to the end of the home site, or this
http://stewardsofthesequoia.org/
But I didn’t find a map there either; and didn’t spend much time looking.