Category Archives: Fire Management

Fire planning: safety, yes–AND healthy forests

FOBIF has made a submission to the Department of Environment’s fire planning process. In it, we’ve repeated a few of the concerns we expressed in our 2014 submission. We’ve received a number of assurances about these concerns–mainly to do with … Continue reading

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Putting some facts on the table

Field Naturalist Richard Piesse met with DELWP officers last week to table surveys conducted by local naturalist Ern Perkins over the last ten years. The intention of the meeting was to highlight the necessity for burn operations to be conducted … Continue reading

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Kalimna fire

The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Fire completed its management burn at Kalimna Park on April 23. The treatment area is shown on the map below.   Representatives of FOBIF and the Friends of Kalimna Park have examined the … Continue reading

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Fire review: it’s time to accept the obvious and the logical

As we reported last week, the State Government has asked the Inspector-General for Emergency Management (IGEM) to conduct a review of performance targets for the future bushfire fuel management program on public land. The review will ‘examine a risk-based approach to … Continue reading

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Fire stoushes: do we need them?

Readers of the Midland Express on Tuesday February 17 will have noticed a letter from the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Brad Battin, as follows: ******* ‘The 2009 Royal Commission into Black Saturday recommended the State Government adopt a five … Continue reading

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Fire review, but the old order remains for now

The Labor Government is persisting with Coalition policy on fire in the short term. This is confirmed in a statement released yesterday, announcing an independent review of the fuel reduction program. The statement, from the Environment Minister’s office, goes partly … Continue reading

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Hawkeye program wraps up

The Hawkeye fire research program, established as a response to recommendation 57 of the Bushfires Royal Commission, has now come to an end. It will now ‘transition’ into research programs run by DEPI. It’s not exactly clear what this transition … Continue reading

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We were wrong!

…And we’re quite relieved that we were. Our report last week about the burning of boronias in the Fryerstown Block 5 management burn has been corrected by Castlemaine Field Naturalists, who have pointed out that the burned area is a … Continue reading

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Burning boronias

Last week DEPI conducted a management burn in the area designated Fryerstown Block 5, a 44 hectare roughly triangular block between the Campbells Creek Irishtown Road and the Chewton-Vaughan road [see map below]. The fire was designated Asset Protection: the … Continue reading

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Risky business

Strategic bushfire management plan: West Central bushfire risk landscape. DEPI 2014 This document has been anticipated with some interest—as have its companions, the plans for the East Central and Barwon Otways districts. It was launched at last Friday’s Creswick conference … Continue reading

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