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Bush fires: who will burn this year? : Comments
By Peter Moore, published 28/7/2005Peter Moore argues bush fires are not unprecedented and can be foreseen, so what is happening to prevent them?
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Now in his eighties, Glenn Shailer continues his well proven fire management regime of small strategically located, low intensity fires, on as many winter nights as possible, to produce a variegated understorey mosaic that has almost zero probability of forest damage and zero threat to surrounding suburbia. Until recently.
One Council moron suggested that mowing (220ha) was more ecologically responsible. They now want him to prepare a fire management plan, bring in the urban fire units and remaining volunteer rural fire unit and do the lot in a single burn. At one stage they would only come in daylight so they could knock off at dusk. Instead of his own mid-winter burns, they can only fit him in around late November. And they want a significant payment for this "service" of undisclosed cost.
So even when the recognised wisdom of controlled fire management is actually taken up by government agencies, and is to be implemented by trained staff, it will still be converted into unsustainable, excessively costly and high risk outcomes by the inherently asynergistic nature of public sector ecology. The whole is significantly less than the sum of it's parts.