Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

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 by Lee Miezis, DEPI’s Executive Director, fire and emergency management– with some suggestion that it promised a new improved approach to fire management.

The promise is still there: there’s no doubt that careful risk assessments and computer modelling of bushfire behaviour could enormously improve our capacity to deal with bushfires. This document disappoints in the delivery, however.

Fuel management map: the mid grey areas are ‘priority fuel management areas’. In our area they’re north and west of Castlemaine, Maldon and the Midland Highway. 40% of planned burning on public land will be in these areas…which are mostly private land.

Its first problem is that it largely confines its consideration of risk to the matter of fuel and fuel management. On page 31 of a 33 page document we’re told that fuel management is ‘only one of a range of approaches to reduce bushfire risk on public land.’ The others include prevention, preparation, response and recovery.

You’d think the first of these [‘prevention, to minimise the occurrence of bushfires, particularly those started by people’] would be a high priority, given that most fires are started by people [in the Mount Alexander shire there are an average of 53 fires a year, and only 6 of these are naturally occurring. 42% of fires dealt with by DEPI since 1972 have been accidents, 35% were deliberate, and 17% ‘unknown or other causes’]. It will be dealt with ‘over the next few years’. In the mean time we have a range of advertising and punitive measures with a limited success record. Priority is given to fuel, and the community is given to understand that its management is the main way to reduce risk.

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FOBIF has received a response to its submission on the Fire Operations Plan from Andrew Koren, DEPI program manager for planned burning in this region.

In brief, DEPI has responded to our concerns with the following points:

1. The Government is committed to increasing its planned burning; at the same time it is developing a strategic risk management approach for ‘prioritising fuel management’. It doesn’t seem to see the contradiction between these two approaches.

2. The statewide 5% target is being pursued. However, ‘Murray Goldfields is capped at approximately 4% or 14,000 hectares, this in recognition of the unique vegetation that occurs in the Murray Goldfields district.’

3. We can’t see burn plans because they’re subject to change based on weather conditions and other factors.

4. The pine plantations are Hancock business, but DEPI ‘is aware’ that Hancocks ‘undertake fire management works’.

5. DEPI is keen to cooperate on the matter of weed infestations.

6. On specific burns: the very large Gower Cemetery Rd fire, in the Muckleford Forest, has been taken out of the current plan, presumably to be done later; the Dunn’s Reef fire, also in the Muckleford forest, ‘is not all planned for treatment’; and DEPI is willing to discuss the Gough’s Range fire.

FOBIF will be following up all these points.

We’ve received a prompt reply to the questions we put to the Environment and the Bushfire Response Ministers yesterday.

Readers will remember that our question was simple:

–the government is trumpeting its achievement in setting out to burn 5% of public land every year.
–at the same time it’s developing a risk management policy, which essentially implies that you only burn where it’s really needed.
–so, how do these contradictory approaches mesh with each other?

The reply from the Minister’s office doesn’t answer the question, but it does clarify one thing:

‘The Strategic Bushfire Management Plans are currently being finalised and will highlight the Coalition Government’s commitment to delivering a fuel reduction program that is focused on reducing the risk of bushfires to lives, property and assets, in addition to implementing a hectare based target recommended by the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.’

In other words, the Government is going to implement both a risk based and a target policy–at the same time. This is in spite of the fact that the Royal Commission Implementation Monitor recommends the second be reconsidered in favour of the first. Bafflingly, the ministerial reply ends by approvingly quoting the Monitor, as if he is in favour of such an incoherent approach.

Here’s the Government’s letter in full. Readers can make up their own minds about its argument:

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