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Which ones?

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So that's the evidence? None of you critics seem to comprehend the accusation that is being made here and what kind of evidence would actually support the claim. Just because he is a scientist doesn't mean he understands the politics. If what he claims is true there would be an organised green movement that specifically targets this issue. To suggest that the government would piss off the majority to secure the votes of some non-existent minority that doesn't make it's political presence felt in any way is just ludicrous. This belongs on the fringe board.

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This sounds like it could be a reference to what I was told by an ecologist. His mudslide comment seems very strange, like he is making a strawman argument.

Thanks Mozz...  seems a few of us here at least acknowledge reality.

Manage bush better so climate won't matter
Roger Underwood | February 12, 2009
Article from:  The Australian

LAST year the Wilderness Society published a six-point action plan to "reduce bushfire risks and help to protect people, property, wildlife and their habitat". The society asserted that a "massive increase in hazard reduction burning and firebreaks is destroying nature, pushing wildlife closer to extinction and in many cases increasing the fire risk to people and properties by making areas more fire prone".

In fact there has been no massive increase in prescribed burning; statistics demonstrate that this practice has declined since the 1980s right across southern Australia. And no species of wildlife in Australia can be said to be on the brink of extinction because of prescribed burning.

As we saw last weekend in Victoria, the real threat to wildlife is killer
bushfires, which are a consequence of insufficient prescribed burning.

The trouble with the society's action plan to reduce the risk of bushfires
is that it won't work, and it is worth going through point by point because it reflects the views of too many government decision-makers.

Its key recommendations are:
* Improve aerial fire detection.
* Ramp-up hi-tech suppression forces, including more Helitak copters.
* Do more research into fire behaviour and the impacts of fire on wildlife.
* Around towns and urban areas, carry out fuel reduction burning and have fire breaks.
* Give priority to wildlife and its habitat in remote areas and national
parks.
* Make forests resistant to mega-fires by protecting them from woodchipping and logging.

Taking each of these proposals in turn:
* Aerial detection is a first-rate resource and a comprehensive system of
aerial detection has been in place in all southern Australian states since
the early 1970s, supported (under rising fire danger conditions) by lookout towers.   The greatest problem is that the system can fail completely when it is most needed: under hot, unstable atmospheric conditions and when there are very high winds.

* The dream of hi-tech aerial water bombers dominating forest fires is just that: a dream. It has never succeeded in Australia, and not even in the US,where the entire might of an enormous fleet of water bombers fails repeatedly to handle hot fires burning in heavy fuels. Elvis-type air
cranes cost a fortune, burn massive amounts of fossil fuel, use gigalitres
of precious water and are ineffective in stopping the run of a crown fire
that is throwing spot fires. Water bombers do good work protecting houses from small grass fires. But against a big, hot forest fire and duringnight-time they are next to useless.

* It goes without saying that we need more research into fire behaviour andfire impacts, especially the impacts of large, high-intensity fires on
human lives, fauna, water catchments and soils. But a great deal of
research has been done already, such as the magnificent CSIRO-led Project Vesta studies. The trouble is, the conclusions, while unambiguous, do not support the Wilderness Society's agenda.

* As the society recommends fuel reduction around urban areas, it obviouslyunderstands its value in minimising fire intensity, rather than making theburned areas "more fire prone", as claimed elsewhere in the action plan.

* I agree that insufficient priority is given to wildlife conservation in
national parks and remote areas, but not for the same reasons as the
Wilderness Society. The management of many forested national parks in
Australia has led to a situation in which fuels have accumulated in areas
from which fire has been excluded for many years, often decades. This hasbeen accompanied by the closure of roads and fire trails, and downgradingof trained firefighters in favour of water bombers.
The result is that sooner or later an uncontrollable landscape-level fire
occurs. In addition to all the horrible effects on lives and property,
these fires decimate the wildlife, bake and erode soils and kill stone-dead
the old growth forests over thousands of hectares.
The alternative is more frequent planned burning under mild conditions.
This leads to a mosaic of burned and unburned areas, leaves the overstorey and the soil intact, and ensures a diversity of habitat for wildlife and opportunities for rapid regeneration and recolonisation. In a holistic fire management system this approach is supported by an adequate system of roads and fire trails, maintained so as to allow safe access by firefighters, plus the maintenance of a corps of well-trained, professionally led firefighters.

* There is no evidence that old growth forest is less likely to burn than
the regrowth forests. Fire risk and fire intensity is determined by
climatic and weather conditions, fuel type, fuel weight and dryness, aspect and topography. These factors are independent of the age of the trees overhead.
The claim that mega-fires can be prevented by stopping woodchipping
suggests a policy based on a political agenda rather than knowledge of fire physics or bushfire experience.
pt1...

OR THIS MAN...

A cynical fire fighter of Tasmania 10:09am February 16, 2009

I support Rodgers assertions. Foresters and other forest managers
understand the science. We understand the ecological and adaptive processes which make our flora unique. We understand fire behaviour. What we do not understand is deliberate and misleading political rhetoric espoused by green groups like the Wilderness Society and their political wing run by Bob brown. To me, the heart of the issue is accountability and green groups have none, and accept none. The insidious infiltration of local government, community groups and departments is criminal when the aftermath of their policies result in catastrophic events as recently witnessed in Victoria. I am a forester who had over 15 years experience at senior levels in land
management, including as incident controller at fire events. Over my career, I have seen a steady erosion of active fire mitigation management policy.

Local governments have stopped back yard burning, initiated tree
preservation orders and enforced the replacement of exotic (less flammable) gardens in parks and backyards with native (and flammable) alternatives.

While doing this, these same councils have allowed inappropriate
subdivisions in high risk areas to progress. MORE PEOPLE and MORE FUEL is the result of these policies. Community groups have actively argued against fuel reduction programs because of smoke over neighbourhoods. This has lead to the imposition of restrictive climatic requirements having to be meet before fuel reduction burns are carried out. These restrictions are so prescriptive that the window of opportunity to carry out these burns is limited, or impossible. I remember once it took me over two years to find the right window to carry out a fuel reduction burn. MORE RESTRICTIONS =
LESS ACTIVITY = MORE FUEL.  

While the anti-smoke brigade has been active,the lets leave nature alone brigade has reduced active management in parks and reserves.

Fire trails are ripped up to stop people getting into the parks. Hazard reduction burning is reduced to perimeters (if at all) and risk assessment is discouraged. LESS MANAGEMENT = MORE FUEL. Departments responsible for managing risk have also become managers of political risk.

The risk to the environment or the community is secondary. Scientists are no longer employed as managers. Managers are employed who have no practical land management experience%u2026but are great budgetary or political managers. Scientific research is declining in favour of technological innovation and other flavour-of-the-month buzz. Solid science, backed by experience is what is required. POLITICAL IGNORANCE = MORE FUEL. I would be surprised if Mr Brown sleeps at night knowing his policies have contributed to the Victorian, the Canberran, the Sydney, etc, etc situation.

The most depressing outcome of the Victorian fires is that this level of destruction and tragic loss of life will result in zero changes being implemented.

History tells us that green groups will spend big to ensure they are not
held accountable. Bureaucratic managers will ensure their political masters are protected. Community groups will allow a few token burns, for a few years. At the end of the day, there will continue to be MORE FUEL.

OR...

CCMuz of Central Coast 8:33pm February 12, 2009

Being a forester I have some experience and knowledge of bushfires. It
appears to me that the greens/extreme environmentalists are now practicing an ecological version of Terra Nullius, they just seem to ignore the fact that this land has been managed by humans for over 40 000 years. Deliberate burning in the cooler months will greatly reduce the loss of life, property, wildlife, and protect water quality - no doubt about it. We have had problems with wildfire ever since we removed the aboriginal peoples.

Look at past Royal Commissions. We have achieved some extraordinary things in this country, I am sure we can manage effective deliberate burning programs if we decided to. I am critical of the ABC and many media outlets who over the past decade or two have blindly accepted what green groups have said, without question. It is difficult to believe that the more extreme environmentalists will listen to any other points of view. Death threats against professional foresters have been quite regular over the years. They have beliefs akin to religious fundamentalists.

A lot of these burnt forests have been 'saved' by mostly city-based greens supposedly to protect water, native animals, biodiversity etc. This has failed, catastrophically, again. However, the negative environmental impacts of those fires and into Kosciusko and Victoria were not highlighted by the media. After the Canberra fires the water in dams in the brindabellas was not suitable for drinking for 12 months or so. Where were the pictures of burnt wildlife, massive erosion, decimated threatened species populations (eg mountain pygmy possum, corroboree frog)?

I hope we can use this disaster to improve the management of the bush, and avoid such human tragedy and environmental damage. I fear this will not happen because the environmental damage will be grossly under-reported and the extreme environmentalists will get away with unchallenged propaganda, particularly on the ABC, but in the media generally. And the main political parties will still be looking to do preference deals ...

Thanks Grendel. Some of those hit the mark. Is the wilderness society policy available online?

Grendel wrote on Feb 19^th, 2009 at 11:34am:

I saw that show, yes he did come from inner city Melbourne, so what?
I live in the bush and you live in the city boofy, so by your reasoning my point of view must be more accurate than yours, ha ha ha

pt 2

In NSW, already, the Department of Environment and Conservation has listed "too frequent fire" as a "key threatening process to biodiversity".

But the real threatening process is the holocaust we have just seen in Victoria.

Last week angry fire survivors in Victoria pointed the finger at local authorities who prevented clearing of vegetation. At a public meeting in Arthurs Creek, Warwick Spooner, who lost his mother and brother in the Strathewen fire, stood up criticise the Nillumbik council.

"We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down." Then of course, there is Liam Sheahan, the Reedy Creek home owner whose house is the only one in a two-kilometre area which survived the fires. In 2004 he was fined $50,000 for removing 247 trees around his hilltop house to protect it from fire. His two-year court battle against the Mitchell Shire Council cost him $50,000 in legal fees.

It is a rich irony that Slidders Lawyers last week launched a class action on behalf of fire victims at Kinglake, against the Singapore-owned electricity company SP AusNet, alleging the fire was caused by a fallen power line.

After all, it was only in 2001 that Transgrid bulldozed a 60-metre wide firebreak under its high-voltage lines in the Snowy Mountains. For that it was prosecuted by four government agencies, blasted for "environmental vandalism" by the then NSW premier Bob Carr, and fined $500,000.

Two years later, during the disastrous firestorm that engulfed the mountains, the offending firebreak became the only safe haven for kangaroos and workers constructing a fire trail. The sad truth of such holocausts is that the environmental toll ends up worse than the most vigorous prescribed burning regime ever could be.

Victoria's bushfires have spewed millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - more than a third of Australia's entire output for a year, according to Sydney University's Professor Mark Adams.

No doubt the royal commission will recommend, like previous inquiries, that prescribed burning should be increased. After so many deaths will anyone listen this time?

Grendel wrote on Feb 19^th, 2009 at 12:06pm:


More  devine, where"s the  balance boofy, is she all you read?

BTW , I live in the bush I support the Greens and I regularly burn off,
the hoe got it wrong again.