Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

In October FOBIF wrote to the Minister for Bushfire Recovery, Peter Ryan, the Minister for Conservation, Ryan Smith, and the National Party member for Northern Victoria, Damian Drum, regarding the government’s planned burning program.

We asked how the Government was responding to the report of the Royal Commission Monitor, Neil Comrie. Mr Comrie had suggested that pursuit of the five percent target was compromising public safety by causing DSE to put a lot of effort into pointlessly burning remote areas while diminishing ‘the State’s ability to focus on risk reduction in high risk areas.’ [See our post]

We’ve had no reply as yet from Mr Ryan. Mr Drum’s brief  reply states that ‘the effectiveness of many bushfire prevention policies is…under constant monitoring and review’, and assures us that our views will be ‘considered’.

We have a long reply from Lee Miezis, DSE Executive Director, Fire, on behalf of Mr Smith. Both our letter and the reply are printed below. We’ll comment on the replies in a separate post:

Ryan Smith

Minister for Environment and Climate Change

Dear Mr Smith,

We write to ask if you have considered the opinion of the Royal Commission Monitor, Neil Comrie on the effectiveness of the fuel reduction burning program presently being implemented by DSE. His report

‘questions the rolling target as the most effective way to increase the level of planned burning across the State as working towards a predetermined target may diminish the State’s ability to focus on risk reduction in high risk areas. The [Implementation Monitor] advocates that the State reconsider the planned burning target of five percent as the primary outcome as part of the planned burning reform program. It is considered that the most important objective of the planned burning program must be to address public safety risks in line with [the Royal Commission’s] intentions.’ [p 8]

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On 1^st November a concerned group of people from Castlemaine, Bendigo and surrounding areas, meeting in the Chewton Town Hall, decided to form a network to lobby and campaign for major changes to the State Government’s current and forthcoming fuel reduction burning programs.

After assembling a wide range of ideas for action, and gaining a state-wide strategic overview from Philip Ingamells of VNPA, and some suggestions from a legal perspective from Brendan Sydes of the Environment Defenders Office, the meeting divided into smaller groups to address each sub-group of actions. These sub-groups included: Overall (organization, etc) Legal, Community Education, Media, Social Media, and Monitoring (pre and post burn site monitoring, and possibly monitoring of actual burning operations).

A further meeting to advance the implementation of action plans, and to include a workshop on legal issues is proposed to be held on Thursday 6^th December. For further information or for inclusion on the network email list, please contact Elaine Bayes elain@rakali.com.au

On Tuesday October 9 DSE officials met with about 30 individuals and representatives of conservation groups to discuss outcomes of the consultation process around the Fire Operations Plan.

The discussion was limited by the fact that the biggest factor in fire management and practice is the government’s directive to DSE to burn 5% of public land, and this is not negotiable. It seems that DSE has a ‘burn reform’ process under way, but details of how this might improve environmental management are completely vague. For the moment we have to confront the fact that, in the words of one DSE official: ‘The elephant in the room is that the burning program is going to have effects on the environment.’ Changes in this program have to come from changes in the political arena.

Although FOBIF believes that the 5% target is foolish, we think that improved practice can limit the damage which overburning causes. We are therefore keen to engage DSE in any way which can improve environmental practice without compromising public safety.

From the general to the specific

Discussion therefore centred on operational matters. The following comments by DSE officials are a representative sample:

‘We have a duty as public servants to ensure that good information underpins decision making.’

‘Our duty is to put in place protection measures based on information received.’

‘Through this process it is our duty to have all values identified in all burn units.’

We have no reason to doubt the sincerity of these statements—but  they have to be put up against the brute fact that DSE data bases have been unable to accommodate information accumulated over the years.

Zone 3 area near White Gum Track: biodiversity values are recorded before burn operations, but DSE data bases are incomplete. Further, pressure to meet targets means these values are overlooked. It is conceded that 'research' underpinning operations does not relate to specific burns, but only to general ideas about types of vegetation.

Burns are managed according to general principles, not detailed local information. This is a fundamental deficiency in the operations. There is a further practical problem. Burn areas are assessed by biodiversity staff for ‘every single value’ recorded for that area, and these are incorporated in the burn plans. But this is a desk based activity: on the ground topography or weather conditions might mean that the workers managing the fire may not be able to work around these values. The brutal reality is that they have to be practical. In the words of the biodiversity officer: ‘they take [biodiversity] advice on board knowing that they still have a target to reach.’ In other words, biodiversity–and therefore forest health–comes second to achieving the target.

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Some anguish was expressed in the meeting about the inflexibility of the zones. Members will recall that we are concerned at the large Zone 1 area on Mount Tarrengower, and the Zone 2 south of Guildford. The fact is that the consultation run by DSE over zoning was little noticed [see our 2011 reports here and here]: local conservationists managed to have some zones changed in this process, but some were unnoticed. It’s fair to say that the hugely expanded burn program is bringing home to people some of the deficiencies in theory and practice which had been relatively unnoticed until recent years. Although FOBIF participated in the 2011 process, there were sections of the Zone map which escaped our attention.

Mount Tarrengower, south side: it's proposed to burn this area every five years.

This is increasingly an important problem. For many years DSE has tacitly acknowledged that Zone I [which is burned every 5  years] is an ecological sacrifice area: it’s a permanent artificially created fire zone, probably infested with weeds. Recent changes to the prescriptions for Zone 2 mean that these areas are not much better. In other words, the requirement to prioritise concern for human life has been interpreted as the requirement to destroy large areas of bushland. The Tarrengower area is a good example: it is proposed to burn 90% of this 285 ha area at the top of the mountain every five years. This is disastrously inside the ‘tolerable fire interval’ established by fire ecology experts for this environment, and if it is pursued, the mountain will look very different inside fifteen years. DSE has acknowledged the impact this will have on natural values [not to mention tourism], and is apparently looking for ways to deal with it. In particular, it was suggested that the Zone 1 section of Kalimna Park may be fuel reduced by means other than fire. Zone 1 prescriptions allow for fuel reduction by means other than burning [for example, mowing or slashing]: it’s hard to see why these means are not used more widely.

Burn intensity

In some cases, a patchy low intensity burn is preferable to a high intensity burn. It is apparent that from both the fuel reduction and biodiversity points of view some high intensity burns increase fuel hazard following the burn and reduce biodiversity values. Asked ‘how do you control burn intensity’, DSE replied that this was done via prescriptions in the burn plans. These

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