I hear what ya say Mark but really....looks like we'll be left holding the baby in Iraq and bit worried about Pacific situation, price of petrol can shoot up anytime, my job's looking a bit dodgy (manufacturing's heading to northern asia), the kids are accumulating big mobile phone accounts (but at least they're not on drugs..I think), the house urgently needs a coat of paint...the kitchen needs..let's not go there; super is hardly enough to support me and mum (fido and puss are hanging on by a mere thread); my car was designed to use leaded petrol and I have to add this other (expensive) stuff; I did put a spa in afew years ago but my conscience gets to me everytime I even think about filling it up! The drought is taking its toll on us all eh. And ...oh yeh...the Thompson....I've been up there and watched and checked the maps and that river flows down Sale way, so it's a real furphy that the Thompson and Melbourne water are connected. At least you're spot on with those fires...I've seen em on tele and they look real bad and it's still spring! If you come across a tree with a possum family I'm sure you will let it stand and, you're right, the young trees come up again and the hardware stores need timber and we all need toilet paper, not to mention cardboard. So at least I got a ticket to the boxing day test and let's hope we don't get interupted by wet weather.......then again.....maybe it would be good for the catchments!? Oh I don't know what I want now!

Taz, i think you're trying to meld quite different objectives - protecting humans & their capital from fire, and maintaining 'viable' forests (do you mean economicly? not a bad thing). I think its a huge leap to say thinning can serve both causes, looks more of a politically & economicly convenient marriage to me. I'm not against reassessing value of standing forests in light of climate change and fire vulnerability, but something tells me another Howard appointed hack (ala ABC, Reserve Bank, Refugee Review Tribunal, High Court, ...) will wave thru who makes the biggest donations to the Coal-ition.

You are right that there is no let up in demand for resources, no surprise when you have resource pricing that willfully ignores all the services natural capital provides to us. City slickers must pay much more for Australian timber, and imported timber should likewise be slugged for transport-kms & demonstrated replanting in country of origin.

Instead we have political and economic elites dedicated to maintaining the economic fraud of keeping so many 'externalities' (extinctions, climate change, lower rainfall, erosion...) uncosted in timber pricing, so they can keep robbing the ecological commons and cra**ing on the future.

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Perseus, thanks for again demonstrating the standard fare of RightThink - insult, smear, and irrelevance. You should apply to Mr Murdoch, his Dolt on the Hun isn't toeing the bosses new line ("A-bo---ut-FACE!") on climate change and could be vulnerable.

Again I have enjoyed reading your article Mark and agree with much of what you say but please check your facts about what is happening in Perth water supply catchments. The Wungong catchment is only 3.8% (THREE POINT EIGHT PERCENT) of the area of Perth catchments. So you are incorrect to say, "Western Australia has been quick to take advantage.."
This thinning is only a tiny TRIAL, just a PR effort so the WA Govt water orgs can trumpet that they are doing something and most of what they say has to have spin "fine tooth combed" out before truth emerges.
The reality of what is happening in Perth water supply catchments can be seen in my graphic at http://au.geocities.com/perth_water/ scroll down to, "Graphic of Catchment Efficiency 1980-2005 showing disastrous falloff 1996-2005 after ceasing catchment management." Click on thumbnail for a larger graphic.
It is perfectly clear from my graphic that the WA Govt is de facto decommissioning Perth catchments. If catchments had been managed post 1996 as they were before that date so as to keep yields steady, Perth would have enjoyed about 90 GL extra water per year on average. Equal to production from two Kwinana sized seawater desalination plants, which require an investment of ~$500 million each now. That puts on scale the cost of catchment neglect.

Liam, a mind like yours might consider a query as to "how much of your life have you spent in a forest", as a right wing conspiracy but few others would. Come on, just for the record, have you ever lived in a forest?

Or are you just a day tripping planeteer, flogging gratuitous salvation for virtual ecosystems?

Perseus, since you're not obscene on this thread (tho as irrelevant as usual), i'll answer. My favourite living in a forest experience was near Northcliffe in south west WA for several months 10+ years ago. The dairy farming family that put up us greeny ratbags found the fashion sense of some curious but were very glad of our 4am roadblocks - meant they could go do the milking and know the local karri was safe from roading and woodchipping. They had their turn when we went strawberry picking, gotta earn a living eh?