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Victoria’s forests: to burn or not to burn?

By Mark Poynter - posted Wednesday, 11 December 2013


Arguably worse than this, the SoE Report places greater store on the unsubstantiated opinion of a recently-retired policeman who now acts as the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission’s Implementation Monitor. Despite lacking any background knowledge about fire management, in his July progress report he argued strongly for the 5% prescribed burning target to be scrapped based on supposed consultations with unnamed persons.

Furthermore, the State of the Environment Report refers to the Royal Commission’s 5% prescribed burning target as having been devised with input from the ‘forestry industry’. The use of such an arguably disparaging term to presumably describe the input of foresters who’ve pioneered prescribed burning and are its leading proponents, raises the significant question of just who has informed the SoE Report’s coverage of prescribed fire?

It doesn’t say – but its contemptuous reference to forestry adds weight to the claims of insiders within the state’s environmental bureaucracy, that prescribed burning is now equated with native forest logging (of which foresters are also leading proponents) as the cause de jour – an activity to be demonised and opposed at every turn. 

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To be fair to the State of the Environment Report, it doesn’t specifically advocate doing less prescribed burning. Instead, it supports replacing the fixed statewide burning target with a more sophisticated fire management planning approach currently being developed within the Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI). Under this approach, annual prescribed burning would be variable and determined on a regional basis using a landscape risk modelling system.

While it is difficult to argue against such a potential improvement, it remains very much a work in progress. Indeed, the Government’s Fuel Management Report 2012-13, cautions that DEPI’s ongoing development of more sophisticated burn planning is based on fire behaviour models and risk management approaches that contain uncertainties, and notes that ‘Over time, as technology and the quality of data collection improves, the certainty of modelling will also improve…’ 

Arguably, when this approach develops into a usable state it would be unsurprising if it resulted in significantly less prescribed burning. Compared to a fixed and accountable statewide burning target, a more complex burn planning approach will inevitably create more justification for not burning, particularly in areas far from human habitation where it seems that ‘sound evidence’ of ecological need will take precedence over broader bushfire mitigation strategy. Given the requirement for long-term research to assess the subtle impacts of cool burning, this ‘evidence’ is likely to take many decades to acquire.

The paradox of such an approach is that the known devastating ecological impacts of summer bushfires that burn hot in heavy fuel accumulations will be overriden by the as yet, largely unknown, potential ecological impacts of cool autumn burns - impacts which are of lesser significance by several orders of magnitude.

This skewing of the priorities of bushfire mitigation would effectively result in broadscale prescribed burning being minimised, and consign Victoria to heavy fuel accummulations in the vast bulk of forested land, that is not close to human habitation, for decades to come. The hot summer bushfires which will inevitably burn in these heavy fuels will be far more ecologically disastrous than any potential impacts that may derive from cool burning some minor vegetation communities more frequently than may be desirable.   

Victoria has made a considerable stride by substantially upping the rate of prescribed burning since the 2009 ‘Black Saturday’ disaster. Despite this, bureaucratic efforts to undermine the statewide burning target suggest that conservation ideology which opposes prescribed burning, except on a minor scale, is exerting undue influence on the state’s fire management.

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While this is based on a misguided belief that less prescribed burning will lessen impacts on biodiversity, it will unfortunately do the opposite by increasing fuel loads in the bulk of the forest, thereby consigning greater areas to severe damage by unnaturally hot bushfires.

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About the Author

Mark Poynter is a professional forester with 40 years experience. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and his book Going Green: Forests, fire, and a flawed conservation culture, was published by Connor Court in July 2018.

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