1075 Australian Bushfires 2019 - "Fix the Climate" OR "Fix Bushfire Management"

The Eastern States Bushfires 2019 - "Fix the Climate" OR "Fix Bushfire
Management"

Newsletter published on November 12, 2019

(1) Changes in Forest Management with transfer from State Forests to
National Parks
(2) The Eastern States Bushfires 2019 - "Fix the Climate" OR "Fix
Bushfire Management"
(3) Portugal uses Goats to prevent Bushfires
(4) Canberra 2003 Bushfires caused by transfer of land management from
Fire experts to Greens
(5) Retired Forester: many small Hazard Reduction fires preferable to
one severe Wildfire

(1) Changes in Forest Management with transfer from State Forests to
National Parks
- by Peter Myers, November 13, 2019

Grazing Leases in State Forests provided cattle & horses to eat the
undergrowth. The animals were removed once the forests became National Park.

There are fewer Hazard Reduction burns than Foresters used to conduct.

Under Green management, access roads in remote bushland were gated (with
a padlock) to stop four-wheel-drivers. This impeded access during bushfires.

Tim Flannery showed that native Americans & Australians killed off the
megafauna (such as Diprotodons). He explained that the extinction of the
megafauna in Australia would have led to more bushfires - a larger fuel
load would have built up once the  giant browsers were gone.

Cattle are the biggest browsers we have today. We need to  use them in
fire-prone National Parks to prevent bushfires, at  certain times. The
Greens have yet to come to terms with  Flannery's findings.

It’s better to harvest part of a forest, by logging, than have the lot
burn down. Better for a few of the fauna to lose a home when trees are
fallen, than be wiped out most cruelly by fire.

Green Tape has hindered burnoffs and made them expensive. But the  best
solution, in drought years, is to contract farmers to put  cattle in
fire-prone National Parks. Hay could not be fed as a  supplement, but
pellets could.

That is a win-win solution. The farmers get food for their cattle;
pasture is freed up for other stock, the undergrowth is eaten, and
people eat the cattle. There is no waste in this solution.

Green leaders think of farmers as Kulaks, the enemy. But  farmers and
foresters understand forest management better than Green city-slickers do.

The tranfer of fire-prone forests from State Forests to NPWS, from
foresters to ecologists, should be reversed.

The best website on Bushfires in Australia is
https://www.bushfirefront.org.au (see item 2 below).

(2) The Eastern States Bushfires 2019 - "Fix the Climate" OR "Fix
Bushfire Management"
https://www.bushfirefront.org.au/the-eastern-states-bushfires-2019/

The Eastern States Bushfires 2019

by Roger Underwood

A recent article in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph paints a despondent
picture: horrible bushfires are "the new normal" because of climate
change. The fire season, we learn, now extends to nearly 10 months of
the year, and bushfires have become so intense that they cannot be
stopped before immense damage is done. According to former NSW fire
commissioner Greg Mullins (now a member of the Climate Council): "The
price of inaction [on climate change] will increasingly be paid in lives
lost and communities shattered".

This echoes comments made in the wake of the bushfire that destroyed the
town of Yarloop in Western Australia in 2016. The conditions were
described by authorities as "unprecedented". And following the 2018
Queensland bushfires, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters "If
you want to know what caused those conditions, I’ll give you an answer –
it’s called climate change". Greens leader Richard de Natali and Greens
MP Adam Brandt are both blaming the current fires in NSW on climate change.

Let’s assume for the moment that this is all correct. Put aside the
views of most bushfire experts that the basic problem is a combination
of drought and the failure to control forest fuels in the expectation of
a bushfire. Droughts are an inevitable component of Australian climate.
If you add high fuel levels the result is always uncontrollable
bushfires. On the other hand, even under hot, dry conditions, fires in
areas with low fuel levels are mostly easily controlled.

But just for the sake of argument, let’s accept that, thanks to climate
change, the bushfire threat in Australia is now completely out of hand
and deteriorating by the day. So what is to be done?

Simplifying things a little, there are broadly two options for
responding to this "unprecedented" bushfire scourge.

The first is: "Fix the Climate".

This approach comes primarily from environmentalists and The Greens and
their supporters. Their plan is to fix the bushfire threat by fixing the
climate. This will be accomplished by reducing/eliminating emissions of
CO2 into the atmosphere, which in turn will be accomplished by shutting
down the coal industry, generating power by wind and solar instead of
fossil fuels, switching to electric vehicles, and so on. The outcome of
these measures is presumed to be a significant reduction in atmospheric
CO2, and a return to cooler, wetter and less windy weather across
Australia. As a result the bushfire threat will be ameliorated.

Not surprisingly, the ‘Fix the Climate’ option seems attractive to most
people. Everybody wants milder summer days, more winter rain, lighter
winds and no cyclones, and if at the same time the bushfire threat
diminishes, that will be a welcome bonus.

However, there are two critical drawbacks to this approach. The first is
that it is not supported by climate science; no link has ever been
established between global warming and drought. On the contrary,
increased temperatures lead to increased rainfall, not the other way
around. More importantly the promised outcome cannot be achieved
overnight. Indeed, it is likely to be 20-30 years before today’s
reductions in CO2 emissions will fix the climate. Over those years we
will continue to be faced with lives lost and communities shattered by
unstoppable bushfires.

However, those who promote Fixing the Climate as the solution to our
bushfire woes are well aware of the latter drawback. They also know what
must be done to keep bushfire damage at bay while we wait for the
falling atmospheric CO2 factor to cut in. This is to massively ramp up
the nation’s firefighting capability, especially to invest in a greatly
enlarged fleet of water bombers.

Fixing the climate so as to fix the bushfire crisis is particularly
popular with the authorities. Being able to blame the climate for
unstoppable bushfires is a politically-beautiful strategy: it absolves
Ministers and agency bureaucrats of any accountability.

The second option is to "Fix Bushfire Management".

This requires governments to move away from the current approach (based
on putting bushfires out after they start) and adopt an alternative
approach. This will focus on reducing bushfire intensity, thus making
fires easier, safer and cheaper to control.

The key strategy is to shift investment from fire suppression and fire
recovery into preparedness and damage mitigation (including fuel
reduction burning). The outcome of this revised policy will not be fewer
fires, but fires that are smaller, less intense and thus easier to suppress.

Those who support the second approach and promote the adoption of a
bushfire policy that focuses on preparedness and damage mitigation,
recognise that this also has advantages and disadvantages. The biggest
advantage is that the benefit is immediate. Instead of waiting 30 years
for the climate to be fixed, land managers/owners can get out there,
reduce bushfire fuels in the potential firegrounds and improve bushfire
resilience in threatened communities. Things will start to get better
straight away. There is also a substantial economic benefit: preventing
bushfire damage is much cheaper than trying to put them out and then
rebuilding in their wake.

There is also the advantage that this approach has been tried and tested
and was found unequivocally to work. The ‘Fix the Climate’ approach, by
comparison, is speculative.

But there are disadvantages, Firstly, fire prevention is not sexy.
Nobody gets any credit for a disaster pre-empted. Journalists and
inner-city people love a good bushfire. It is the ultimate theatre, with
swooping water bombers, firefighters putting their lives at risk, forest
infernos, houses bursting into flames, farmers shooting burnt sheep in
blackened paddocks, funerals with bagpipes, and so on.

The other disadvantage of the pre-emptive approach is that
environmentalists hate fuel reduction burning, saying that it destroys
the biodiversity and generates smoke (which contains CO2). Green fear of
prescribed fire and climate change dominates bushfire policies in all
Australian states at the moment (with the exception of WA) with the
result that Australian bushfire management (when seen in terms of
outcomes rather than inputs) has fallen to Third World standards.

For this reason the "Fix the Climate" approach seems to have the numbers
amongst Australian governments … and little wonder. Firstly, it enables
them to side-slip responsibility for inaction in the fields of effective
land management and mitigation. If world-wide changes in climate are the
cause of bushfire calamity, a State government in Australia cannot be
blamed. Secondly, they escape the wrath and ballot-box revenge of the
environmentalists.

Finally, and most tragically, Australian governments are increasingly
being suckered in by the media and the aviation industry to put their
faith in water bombers. Everybody else knows that even the world’s
mightiest fleet of water bombers cannot slow the progress of a crown
fire in heavy forest. Nobody blaming climate change for unstoppable
bushfires seems to appreciate this irony: on the one hand they claim
that climate change has made fires unstoppable, but on the other hand
they assert that if we have enough water bombers the unstoppable fires
will be stopped.

There is a way through all this nonsense. We could stop arguing about
whether nasty climate change caused by emissions of nasty CO2 is the
cause of nasty bushfires … instead we could adopt a set of strategies
that prevents a bushfire from becoming nasty – and does so almost
immediately, not in 30 years time. We know how to reduce fuels in
bushland, and how to harden up communities in bushfire-prone areas, and
we know that these strategies work and can be implemented on the smell
of an oily rag compared to the water bomber approach. We should adopt
them, not simply because they will be effective in reducing bushfire
disasters, but because they will work irrespective of projected climate
change.

(3) Portugal uses Goats to prevent Bushfires

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-14/portugal-using-goats-to-contain-threat-of-bushfires/9867198

Firefighting goats: Portugal enlists help of surprising ally to prevent
deadly bushfires

Unaware that time is short, more than 200 brown-and-white goats slowly
munch their way through the thick undergrowth that covers the hills of
southern Portugal.

Yet this is not just a pretty pastoral scene.

These hungry goats are on the front lines of Portugal's fight against
deadly summer bushfires.

The government is hiring this herd, and dozens of others nationwide, as
part of its race against the clock to guard rugged parts of the Iberian
nation against a repeat of last year's catastrophic bushfires.

That includes trying to clean up as much woodland as possible before
temperatures rise and the land becomes a tinderbox.

Blazes routinely blacken large areas of forest every year in Portugal.

But last year they killed 106 people in what was by far the deadliest
summer fire season on record.

It was also a wake-up call for authorities, who were slow to react to
social trends and a changing climate.

"Last year was when it became patently clear to us that something
different had to be done," says Miguel Joao de Freitas, the Government's
junior minister for forests and rural development.

"Prevention is the most urgent requirement, and it has to be done as
soon as possible."

It's a mammoth task, and one that has at times been slowed by red tape.

But one of the tactics being adopted is a proven winner.

Deploying goats as an environmentally-friendly way to prevent bushfires
has been done for decades in the United States, especially California
and the Pacific Northwest.

With Portugal's peak July 1 to September 30 bushfire period just around
the corner, the Government is enacting a raft of preventive measures.

They include using goats and bulldozers to clear woodland 10 metres
either side of country roads.

Property owners must clear a 50-metre radius around an isolated house,
and 100 metres around a hamlet.

Emergency shelters and evacuation routes are being established in
villages, and their church bells will now toll when a bushfire approaches.

The Government is also upgrading firefighters' response capabilities,
hiring 12 water-dumping planes and 41 helicopters.

In the peak bushfire period, it promises that more than 10,700
firefighters will be on standby — 1,000 more than last year.

But even as Portugal rushes to get ready, experts warn it will likely
take years to correct the trends that make the country especially
vulnerable.

In recent decades, people have deserted the countryside in droves to
pursue a better life in bigger towns and cities.

That has left care of the forests in the hands of mostly elderly people
who often lack financial resources.

Portuguese farmers often plant long, unbroken stretches of eucalyptus, a
fast-growing tree that offers a quick financial return from the
country's important paper pulp industry.

But eucalyptus also burns like a fire torch.

The Government is introducing legislation to encourage the planting of
more slow-growing native species, such as cork trees, holm oaks or
chestnut trees, which are more resilient to flames and can slow the
advance of bushfires.

Climate change isn't helping.

In the 1980s, Portugal saw its annual average of charred forest come in
at less than 75,000 hectares.

Since 2000, that number has grown to more than 150,000 hectares a year,
with experts attributing the rise to hotter, drier summers.

The hamlet of Moita da Guerra, in the heart of the Serra do Caldeirao
hill range, 250 kilometres south of the capital Lisbon, illustrates some
of the challenges.

It lies in a thinly populated area only a few kilometres from the famous
beaches that make this Algarve region one of Europe's top vacation
destinations.

"There used to be lots of herds around here," Mr Fernandes, the
goatherd, says, leaning on his thick walking stick.

"Some people have died, some gave up, and young people aren't interested
in this."

Fanned by the summer "Nortada" — north wind — the abundant, waist-high
brush here fuels bushfires that race across the hills.

Mr Fernandes and his wife Anita — the only two residents left in Moita
da Guerra — vividly recall a major blaze in 2004 that almost engulfed them.

In the end, the flames leapt over them between the treetops and kept going.

Their goats were crucial to the family's survival, because they had
eaten and trampled down the undergrowth that surrounded their home,
starving the flames.

What to do if bushfire threatens

ABC Emergency has sourced advice from official agencies on how to plan
for a bushfire, including preparing a survival kit. His latest herd is
busy on a government-financed mission this year to carve out firebreaks
in the Algarve before the hot days of summer arrive.

Still, a lot remains to be done to fend off the threat of bushfires in
Portugal — a project that experts say will take years.

"Unfortunately, there is no single, game-changing fix to the dilemma
Portugal now finds itself in regarding the threat of catastrophic fire,"
a report published by fire experts in April commented.

"Rather, the solution will demand dozens of strategic improvements made
in the next several years and possibly over the next decade."

AP

(4) Canberra 2003 Bushfires caused by transfer of land management from
Fire experts to Greens

Forest control failed: expert

By Megan Doherty

Canberra Times, Friday, 27 August 2004

http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=news&subclass=local&story_id=331684&category=General+News&m=8&y=2004

A failure to manage fuel loads in primarily the native but also the pine
forests of the ACT hindered efforts to put bushfires out in January 2003
and allowed them to burn into the suburbs under extreme weather, a
coronial inquiry heard yesterday.

CSIRO fire expert Phil Cheney told the inquiry into the bushfires that
the disaster occurred despite his belief the ACT had the safest urban
interface of any equivalent city in Australia.

"The fact that bushfire burnt into the urban area under extreme
conditions did not reflect a failure of fuel management on the urban
interface but rather a failure of fuel management in the forest areas,"
his report to the inquiry read. ...

Meanwhile, Mr Cheney said yesterday hazard-reduction activities such as
prescribed burns would not stop bushfires but they did slow them down
and make them easier to fight, over a wider range of weather conditions.

Back in January 2003, even in the early days of the bushfires when
weather was milder, heavy fuel loads in the forests meant the "intensity
and speed of the fires defeated the firefighters' best efforts to bring
them under control".

Fuel loads in the native forests of the ACT were put at between 15 and
30 tonnes per hectare.

Mr Cheney's report said the responsibility for fire suppression was
vested in the chief fire control officer while responsibility for fuel
management was vested in the land management agencies and it was that
division of responsibility that was the "fundamental reason why
effective fuel management was not undertaken in the forest and park
reserves of the ACT".

He told the inquiry effective fuel management would only occur when land
management agencies had the legal responsibility for putting out fires.
Until then, it seemed the "enthusiasm and will" to manage fuel loads
"just isn't there".

Land management agencies in the ACT include Environment ACT and ACT
Forests, under the umbrella of the Department of Urban Services.

Mr Cheney said sufficient money also had to be allocated for proper fuel
management and the community had to embrace it, rather than complain
about issues such as smoke from prescribed burns.

(5) Retired Forester: many small Hazard Reduction fires preferable to
one severe Wildfire

Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 00:19:27 +0200 Email withheld

 > Canberra Bushfires caused by transfer of land
 > management from Fire experts to Greens

Thanks for this item - I find it very palatable. Cheney is quite right
to emphasise control of forest fuel levels since they are the only
forest fire risk factor that can be manipulated.

About grazing leases in State Forests - these used to be granted, and I
presume still are, to enable grazable areas of state forest to be grazed
by livestock (often owned by forest neighbours). The grazing leases gave
these livestock owners an additional feed resource for their livestock
and also helped to reduce fuel loads in the forest.

Sometimes such leases could also be helpful in controlling weeds in
forest areas - eg blackberries in pine plantations sometimes were grazed
by goats.

While I worked in NSW, under the bushfires act, the landowner had a
legal responsibility to prevent the escape of fire from his property.
The NSW Forestry Commission (now State Forests) used to engage in a lot
of hazard reduction burning, sometimes over large areas, using light
aircraft dropping incendiary capsules on a fairly dense pattern to start
many small fires with the objective of burning out the fuel over
sometimes thousands of hectares in a day. However it was normally
accepted that this practice did not succeed in burning all the fuel in
the thousands of hectares (due to the mild fire conditions) but was
considered successful if perhaps 40 percent (can't recall the exact
figure but my recollection is that if around 50 percent was burnt it was
a good result) was burnt. This burning was done under mild conditions
often in autumn to ensure that fire damage to trees was minimal, and was
meant to be done regularly - say on a five year cycle to limit fuel
build up. The practice came in for criticism on environmental grounds -
it was alleged that such frequent burning could tend to affect
vegetation by favouring fire tolerant species at the expense of fire
sensitive ones. On the other hand, I also heard the argument that a
severe wildfire once in twenty or thirty years was more natural than
frequent low intensity fires. This conceivably could be correct though
the damage to the forest by such an intense fire would be more severe
than many low intensity fires. The problem with this argument also was
that high intensity fires are not controllable and are liable to escape
from areas (eg national parks) where a "natural" fire regime is being
attempted.

In this message you also mentioned barrier belts against bushfires -
perhaps you meant firebreaks? These are bare earth tracks constructed to
make a break in the fuel, but are also useful in providing access for
fire suppression. Getting to a fire early while it is small is critical,
so good fire detection and initial attack systems are very important.

Often on the edge of plantations there is a wide strip left unplanted
and grassed up with the grass being managed either by rabbits or
kangaroos or cattle again to provide a fuel discontinuity. A terrible
hazard in eucalytp forest is so called candlebark - burning bark strips
that can be carried aloft by a convection column then carried kilometres
ahead of the main fire front by the wind that is driving a fire, then it
drops to earth to start supplementary fires sometimes kms ahead of the
main fire front.



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