All-year-round commitment the key to managing forest fire

This contrasts sharply with the strong culture of active management and heightened summer readiness that was traditionally associated with state forests. This was typified by relatively high levels of fuel reduction burning, maintained road and track access, larger and more experienced government workforces located closer to forests, an economic imperative to protect timber resources, and far greater availability of skilled timber industry men and machines for fire-fighting.

While there is no direct link between timber production and fire per se, it is widely acknowledged that as the industry has declined this culture has been substantially weakened.

This should be a grave concern in view of recent comments by international fire expert, Dr Stephen Pyne, who implored Australia to retain its culture of controlled burning or risk the ecological damage that has befallen other developed countries such as the USA, where governments largely abandoned controlled fire in response to environmental activism.

Unfortunately, the forest policies of the past decade or more have already put us part way down this path and with factors such as heightened bureaucratic risk aversion requirements, more people living at bush interfaces, and expectations of a hotter climate making controlled fuel reduction burning more difficult and expensive, it’s use may further decline.

Countering this requires State governments to treat forests as more than just repositories of “green” votes by permanently committing substantially more to active, all-year-round bushland management. However, instead of permanently increased expenditure on the extra personnel required to deliver this, forest fire management is currently typified by a short term, reactive focus on summer fire suppression.

This involves hiring casual fire-fighters, extra water-bombing aircraft, and importing deployments of interstate and overseas fire-fighters. In addition, there is an increased reliance on the good-will of unpaid volunteer fire-fighters working far from the homes and communities they enlisted to protect.

This “as-needs” seasonal focus has potential for substantial savings during benign summers. However, the preference of state governments for such an approach over the ostensibly greater, year-round expenditure on fire prevention and protection is proving to be false economy - both financially and ecologically.