Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The bushfire season is well and truly on for Australia,  as witness the destructive fires raging in NSW. The fires will no doubt be followed by discussion about prevention of such disasters. Readers interested in the subject could do worse than look at two articles from the website The Conversation this weekend.

The first, ‘Sydney fires caused by people and nature’, by Ross Bradstock, canvasses the bushfire problem generally—the nature of our landscapes, vegetation patterns, climate change, interaction of people and nature. It contains a good general overview of the problem. A sample passage:

‘The fires yesterday didn’t start in remote areas and move into developed areas; rather they’re actually fires that started in developed areas. For example the fire at Springwood seems to have started close to property, and similarly the fire at Lithgow.

‘These fires are a combination of natural and human factors. Without pre-empting the authorities, its likely that some of them are human-caused (directly or indirectly) rather than originating from lightning.

‘We know from spatial mapping of ignition patterns over the past few decades that most fires start close to human development or human transport corridors in the Sydney region. The way people live in the landscape now is influencing the fire regime, and that pattern is overlaid on additional natural ignitions from lightning.’

The second, ‘We know what starts fires, are we brave enough to prevent them?’ by Janet Stanley, deals more specifically with questions of prevention, in particular of arson. Here’s a representative passage:

‘Of the up to 60,000 bushfires which occur in Australia annually, it is thought that close to half of these are deliberately lit.

‘Arson is used here in a broad sense – about 30% are known or suspected to be deliberately lit; about 20% are accidental fires, often arising from reckless behaviour; and a large 42% have an unknown cause.

‘Indeed,  recorded incidents of arson have grown 2000% since 1974, doubling every eight years since 1964.’

About 40 % of arson events are caused by adolescents, Stanley claims: and a concerted effort at understanding the reasons for this would be one constructive approach to bushfire prevention. ‘Our knowledge about arson attacks and about how to prevent them is extremely poor.’

We have received a detailed response from the Department of the Environment to our submission on the 2012 Fire Operations Plan. The response can be seen here.

DEPI’s letter clarifies a number of questions we posed in our submission, but is puzzling on others. In particular, we asked how sundry burns planned for the catchments of Tarilta and Middleton Creeks would ‘complement’ recent burns in that area, which we had seen as environmentally damaging. The DEPI response makes it clear that any ‘complementing’ would be in the matter of fuel reduction only. The burns in question are all ‘Landscape Management’ [formerly ‘Ecological Management’] zones: according to the Code of Practice they are supposed to have the  triple aim of bushfire protection, ecological resilience and forest regeneration/catchment protection. Unfortunately it is only on the first of these objectives that DEPI seems able to be specific.

Secondly, the lack of useful detailed information on how burns are conducted continues to be frustrating. We are assured that ‘DEPI conducts an environmental assessment for every planned burn’: we would dearly love to see these assessments, especially for large scale burns, but none of them are public documents, in spite of the Code of Practice requirement that such information will be ‘publicly accessible’. It’s to be hoped that continued public pressure, together with more detailed enquiry by the Royal Commission Implementation Monitor, will see these documents come to light.

Participants in the July Bendigo fire briefing were told of a new approach to fire management, called the Bushfire risk landscapes approach. As we reported at the time, big claims were made for the new approach to fuel reduction, and it was even suggested that this approach might replace the present ‘five per cent’ policy currently laying waste to large areas of the state. Unfortunately no actual specific information on the new approach was delivered at that meeting, and we were told not to ‘hold our breath’ waiting for a significant change in fire policy.

FOBIF has now received the first two information sheets of the Barwon Otways Bushfire Risk Landscape: outcomes of the Otways Pilot of risk based strategic bushfire management planning. You can read them here: BOBRL Info Sheet 1 – Pilot Project Outomes and here: BOBRL Info Sheet 2 – Intro + HYS.

FOBIF is unwilling to be negative about such projects, and the idea of applying fuel reduction programs in areas where it matters, rather than mindlessly torching the public land estate, seems a good one.

Unfortunately the information sheets don’t actually provide much specific information about  practicalities. We suspect that it was to projects like this that the Royal Commission Implementation Monitor was referring when he said that the material he was reviewing ‘did not contain actual data.’

We invite members to have a look, and give us their opinion.

Two things are of interest in the first information sheet, however.

The first is that the risk landscape approach ‘informed the review’ of the Code of Practice in 2012. Given that this updated Code significantly weakened the ecological care requirements for zones 2 and 3, this isn’t necessarily a good recommendation.

Secondly, the risk approach has resulted in the development of a draft  fire management plan for the Otway region. Since this draft plan is not a public document, we’ll have to wait and see how the approach might work in practice.