Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Radio National’s Background Briefing program ‘Fighting Fire with Fire’ [broadcast on February 19 and available for podcast here] was a very fair effort to canvass all points of view on fuel management issues. The fact that it seems to have been treated with respect by people with markedly different views is an indicator of the efforts made by the programmers to give all relevant people a say.

Dense head high regrowth less than two years after a severe 'reduction burn', Castlemaine Diggings NHP, January 2012. Management burns are complex exercises: FOBIF believes DSE is often underequipped for the task, especially since there is little evidence that monitoring is being used to improve practice.

The following comment on fuel reduction burns, by Victoria’s Deputy Premier Peter Ryan, is worth quoting:

‘In the public eye there’s a notion of a match being dropped and everybody walks away. It could not be further from the fact. These are very very carefully planned and carefully conducted and they are modified to accord with whatever might be the topography, what is the biodiversity, do we need a cool burn which can be just lit and allowed to creep through, do we need something stronger? You have to adjust all these things…all these things are taken into account by the experts we have engaged to undertake this task.’

On potential damage to the environment by the present system of burning, he added:

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In December we criticised DSE’s management of the Quartz Hill management burn [see ‘The uses of fire‘] on the grounds that the exercise failed to do anything about the prolific weeds in the area. FOBIF has now written to local Parks Victoria rangers urging that fuel reduction exercises in our region concentrate on areas close to settlement, and that they be integrated with a weed eradication strategy.

In our opinion such programs are not only ecologically sounder than broad area burning of remoter forests but also have better safety outcomes: and this view seems to have been confirmed by documentation widely aired in January [see our posts here and here].

In particular, however, we believe that a detailed plan needs to be devised and carefully implemented for the management of the section of Kalimna Park west of the tourist road and running up to housing on the town edge.

African boneseed collected by Friends of Kalimna Park: FOBIF believes that fuel reduction programs should be concentrated close to settlement, and be combined with weed clearance.

A section of this area has been marked for burning by DSE for weed clearance, but we believe that a much more comprehensive approach needs to be devised for the whole of this important area. It is heavily infested with flammable [gorse, pines] or potentially flammable weeds, but sections of it are botanically very rich: it can’t be simply ‘swept clean’ in a simple operation, but needs detailed understanding and a careful implementation strategy involving a range of fuel reduction techniques.

Obviously such an approach would be more labour intensive than, for example, the proposed burning of Tarilta Gorge. In our opinion, however, it would be far more useful from the point of view of public safety.

Moreover, an effort by Parks Victoria to come to grips with the detailed management of Kalimna and other areas close to townships offers opportunities to engage Park neighbours and Friends groups in actively attacking the problem of weeds as well as getting a better understanding of fire safety issues.

Parks Victoria has been developing a weeds strategy for this region for some time. We’ve made enquiries as to what stage this is up to, and whether it considers the fire dimensions of environmental weeds. Watch this space

Calls for more ‘fuel reduction burns’ have been insistent for years, particularly since the Black Saturday fires which burned over 2,100 homes and killed 173 people. The pressure for more management burns culminated in the Royal Commission’s recommendation that at least 5% of the public land estate be burned every year.

Most conservation organisations, including FOBIF, questioned the value of this policy, accurately predicting that it would force land managers to mindlessly burn vast tracts of country causing significant environmental damage with no improvement to public safety.

Now new research by the Australian National University seems to back up most of this case. Researchers looked at the homes destroyed on Black Saturday and assessed what had been the main factors contributing to their destruction.

The research showed that prescribed burning was only half as effective at protecting houses as clearing vegetation around buildings.

On ABC radio on January 19 ANU’s Dr Philip Gibbons said: ‘Prescribed burning is not the silver bullet that some people suggest it is… When the weather gets up to the extremes that we experienced on Black Saturday then we know that…the effect of prescribed burning becomes diminished…Prescribed burning is typically done distant from houses…The average distance from a house of prescribed burning on Black Saturday was eight kilometres. But we found that at that distance from houses prescribed burning had virtually no effect in terms of protecting houses.’

The researchers also looked at the effects of logging in making forests less flammable.

In Dr Gibbons’ words:   ‘We found that indeed a house that is close to forest is at greater risk. But it didn’t matter if that forest was national park or state forest that was managed for logging. In other words logging had no effect in terms of protecting houses on Black Saturday. They take out all the really big logs. They take out the trunks of trees and they leave the leaves on the ground. They leave the fine fuels, okay. So they’re the ones that contribute to the intensity of the fire.

‘And also if you log an area heavily you end up with a young forest that’s very dense and that can also add to the fuel in a forest. It’s like having a big thick layer of shrubs in the forest and the crowns are all connected. ‘

The full ANU research report, ‘Land Management Practices Associated with House Loss in Wildfires’, can be found here.