Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Peter Ridd; Climate obsessed greens are ignoring advice from indigenous people to burn the bush, to prevent a bushfire catastrophe.
But Professor Reece of James Cook University, Peter Ridd’s old institution, claims traditional wisdom “has limitations”, because of the changes white people have wrought on the land – climate change and settlement.
Australia fires: Aboriginal planners say the bush ‘needs to burn’
By Gary Nunn Sydney
12 January 2020
For thousands of years, the Indigenous people of Australia set fire to the land.
Long before Australia was invaded and colonised by Europeans, fire management techniques – known as “cultural burns” – were being practised.
The cool-burning, knee-high blazes were designed to happen continuously and across the landscape.
The fires burn up fuel like kindling and leaf detritus, meaning a natural bushfire has less to devour.
Since Australia’s fire crisis began last year, calls for better reintegration of this technique have grown louder. But it should have happened sooner, argues one Aboriginal knowledge expert.
“The bush needs to burn,” says Shannon Foster.
She’s a knowledge keeper for the D’harawal people – relaying information passed on by her elders – and an Aboriginal Knowledge lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
…
Experts agree that cultural burning has limitations, partly because colonisation led to development and human-created climate change, presenting us with a very different landscape now to hundreds of years ago.
Prof Preece has been in areas where, day after day, the conditions for cooler cultural burning weren’t right.
“It’d be too moist, too cool, too hot, too dry – you have a narrow window. And with many firefighters in Australia being volunteers, they’re working during the week, and you could go four Saturdays till the conditions are right.”
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51043828
Shannon is also critical of current controlled burning policy, suggesting it leads to fires which are too intense – because it isn’t done in accordance with traditional wisdom.
You know what? I’d be happier if the government listened more to indigenous knowledge keepers like Shannon. We have to try something; the current system of forestry management clearly is not working.
My experience in the Northern Territory of Australia was observing both aboriginals and cattle station owners driving throughout their areas throwing matches (with long heads) out the window.
This was at the late stage or just after the wet season, the spear grass had dried and fallen over with the wind.
There was still some soil moisture. A fire burnt about 5-10 acres and would go out by night with the dew.
After about 10 days the grass regenerated with the soil moisture.
This resulted in a series of patches a bit like a chess board with some burnt but green and other areas unburnt.
This gave good green pick to both cattle and native animals.
The unburnt areas gave some protection from predators.
When a fire came all the animals moved to the burnt ares to avoid the greater heat in the fires.
Even if the grass had died in the previous green areas later in the dry, the animals knew the fire would be much less dangerous.
The aboriginals set fire to high burnable grass not just for hunting but also they said “it looked untidy”
They preferred the height lower.
In. Victoria where Black Saturday bushfires came through the north of the city and out west along the coastal communities there have been no fires of any description. I think it’s not coincidental that areas which have recently ( 10 years ago) have suffered major bushfires had no bushfires this summer. Either the memories have influenced their councils to be more vigilant or the bushfires of 2009 have helped protect them this summer. If the major fires were started by lightning as claimed why did it only affect areas that have avoided fires in the last 40-50 years. Lightning must have been prevalent throughout Victoria but can only take hold where the fuel load enhances combustion . It’s just another inconvieient fact that points to greens inspired forest management failures increasing the fuel load.
From the BBC U.K. website https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51094919
This is another view of Kinglake a couple of months after the 2009 blaze, 20 km from our home.
It illustrates the vital part played by management and enforcement.
I cannot recall if any person was fined. Geoff S
http://www.geoffstuff.com/burning.jpg
All you need to know about current bushfires in Victoria is available in the following State government data.
Victoria’s recommended annual planned burn target agreed to from the Royal Commission into the 2009 bushfires is 390,000Ha.
Actual planned burn area:
2018-19- 130,000 Deficit- 260.000
2017-18- 74,728 Deficit- 315,272
2016-17- 125,052 Deficit- 264,948
2015-16- 197,940 Deficit- 192.060
2014-15- 234,614 Deficit- 36,674
Cumulative deficit over the last 5 years totals 1,068,954Ha. Planned burns only achieved 45% of the target over the last 5 years. An honourable premier would stand down over such a dismal performance on such a critical target.
You do not see these numbers in the popular press. They are readily available in government reports.
One way or another, the bush will burn. Without cool burns for fuel reduction, each accidental fire controlled early results in more fuel accumulation and that simply means the fuel is building for an uncontrollable catastrophic fire some time in the future.
Its not “indigenous wisdom” we need to listen to, but our own science-based common sense. And that has told us several times that forest fuel loads need to be reduced constantly and continually to prevent catastrophic burns. Its really not that hard to grasp.
The “narrow window” narrative is the RESULT of insufficient burning, not the cause.
When fuel levels are kept low, you have far more leeway. It is when they are permitted to increase that the weather becomes more critical.
….. and the use of volunteers as unpaid labour for Government agencies that are not meeting their responsibilities is an abuse of the community good-will that prompts volunteering.
We are hereto protect our communities. Not to cover bureaucrats’ arses.
I don’t know if anyone else sees a parallel between
1. lots of little fire to help prevent the big one – the hand of man
2. Lots of little tremors to help prevent the big one. frakking – the hand of man
both violently opposed by the greenies
Ok people, forget everything you have ever known, learned or studied. Loydo is here to state “truth”.
Heed the warning from NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service Central West area manager Fiona Buchanan, in April last year: ‘We are getting the message out there that removing firewood, including deadwood and fallen trees, is not permitted in national parks. We want people to know the rules around firewood collection…it’s important people are aware that on-the-spot fines apply but also very large fines can be handed out by the courts.’
She wasn’t bluffing. A man had earlier been fined $30,000 ($20,000 US) for illegally collecting firewood in the Murrumbidgee Valley National Park. Why? Because, as Buchanan explained: ‘Many ground-dwelling animals and threatened species use tree hollows for nesting, so when fallen trees and deadwood is taken illegally, it destroys their habitat. This fallen timber is part of these animals’ natural ecosystem.’
Those natural ecosystems are now, across thousands of hectares of national parks in New South Wales, nothing but cinders and ash. Enjoy your protected habitat, little ground-dwellers.
This discussion is all too familiar.
Three things are required for fire. Heat, Oxygen, and Fuel. You have all seen the fire triangle. Remove one leg of the triangle to control the fire. Which leg can be preemptively managed by man in the near term to reduce fire risk? It isn’t heat and it isn’t oxygen.
I live in the mountains of Colorado where we have significant wildfire risk due to overgrown forests. [high fuel loads in dense overgrown forests]. This excessive fuel load is the result of eliminating fire from the forests generations ago. Our forest management policies failed to retain fire as a risk management tool. As a result, in the last 20 years we have experienced wildfire conflagrations in Colorado instead of manageable wildfires.
We have had our problems with escaped controlled burns [prescriptive fire] and as a result, have resorted more to mechanical mitigation and thinning methods. Although we still burn when we can. The end goal is still the same … reduce [not eliminate] the fuel. This doesn’t involve “clearing” the land. The goal is to return the forests to their previous fire tolerant condition that will not sustain crown fire conflagrations but will allow manageable surface fires. In some WUI areas we are actually making progress. In many others we are not because mechanical fuels management isn’t cheap and convincing our politicians that they must support adequate mitigation has been extraordinarily difficult.
Our politicians don’t live in the forests and as a result cannot appreciate the scope or urgency of the problem. They haven’t stood behind their house and watched a miles long flame front approaching their property. For those that have, the answer seems “Homer Simpson obvious … duh”. Reduce the fuels any way you can. If you cannot burn it, get out the manpower necessary to mitigate mechanically. If the fuels are reduced, so is your fire risk.
For those who believe we should attempt to or can manage fire weather instead of fuels, good luck. It won’t work. Our worst local wildfire occurred during a cold front passage in the winter 8 years ago with snow on the ground.
Huh??😐. The land is empty, so still the same?
Experts agree that cultural burning has limitations, partly because colonisation led to development and human-created climate change, presenting us with a very different landscape now to hundreds of years ago.
I did some digging about the past fires in Australia to place them in the perspective. I also tried to submit this as a quest essay to WUWT, but have got no response of any kind.
But fron this text you can easily see that 2019-2020 bushfire season has absolutely nothing special on it.
https://faktantarkistus.blog/2020/01/12/australian-bushfire-season-2019-2020-severity-reasons-and-conclusions/
How Australian bush was managed pre-1788…
https://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2012/05/28/3512963.htm
https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/land/aboriginal-fire-management
Does anyone still remember when California burnt and Trump said that this is more of a Land Management issue? He was derided but it turns out that Trump might have been more in tune with old aboriginal wisdom than those green extremists that want to abrogate human existence on this planet.
The bureaucrats in DC as well as most elected politicians have no idea any more of what it is like to live in a rural area. They are 100% “citified” and the only fires they have any experience with are house and building fires that are, of course, bad and tragic. Trump at least has been in rural areas being developed for golf curses and such. He’s at least talked with real people in rural areas. I’m sure his common sense is far greater than any bureaucrat in DC that has lived in asphalt and concrete jungles their entire life.
When I was a boy I can remember the whole sparse but local community came together to burn off their
properties every couple of years and in the 10 years I lived in that Aus bushland area not one house was lost to bush fires.
All this without the help of Firefighters or their equipment, only the people on the ground using wet hessian
bags and freshly broken off tree branches or the odd pump or two. Without the build up of fuel it was no great drama.
I just wonder what has happened since, being one of those old white men without any knowledge I am at a loss.
Humans are de-evolving. aka getting stupider.
How many polymaths are there today compared to the past? Do you even know what polymath means?
The intelligence on earth is fixed. The population is growing. You do the math if you can.