I take it the author thinks a golf course is an example of a well managed native forest. At least the implausible claim isn't being made that frequent burning reduces CO2 emissions. The problem with burnoffs is that they sometimes go wrong and many people have asthma or respiratory problems. I suggest keeping fire out of the equation by sending in large mulchers with bin trailers. The mulch can be composted or burned offsite, perhaps converted to charcoal. In Germany they make Sundiesel (biomass-to-liquids) from forest waste. I agree we have to do something, I just don't think more fire is the answer.

Good article up to a point.
But why the typically provocative right wing title.

"I take it the author thinks a golf course is an example of a well managed native forest."
Aborigines knew what it took to manage a native forest. Fire, lots of it, regularly, in a mosaic pattern. Keep the fuel load on the forest floor low so as not to get really hot fires, which is what we get. Not burning off was fine when people weren't living in or near the forests, but they do. Management of this fuel load would seem a more prudent course of action.

"At least the implausible claim isn't being made that frequent burning reduces CO2 emissions."
No but neither does it increase CO2 emissions, it is CO2 neutral.

"The problem with burnoffs is that they sometimes go wrong"
Not on quite the same scale as the hyper bush fires...1 house vs 100 houses.

"The mulch can be composted or burned offsite, perhaps converted to charcoal."
I actually like this idea. Using this precious resource to generate greenhouse neutral energy is certainly an attractive proposition. I suspect green groups would object strongly to the removal of large amounts of the forest litter however (insert you own mantra here...eg. skink habitat destruction!).

The provocative title may well be deserved. Green groups seem to make a habit of living by mantras which end up harming ecosystems more than helping them.

John, re:
"Whatever man does to alter his environment, if nature does not like it, the venture will fail."

Unfortunately, a simple approach will not solve a complex problem unless it is along the "you can't make an omolette without breaking eggs" line of attack.

There is also a question of how long it takes a human alteration to affect the environment, and for nature to "decide" it does not like it", and thus, for the project to fail.

What if Mother Nature decides, 20 years down the track, that she doesn't like the approach that +your+ actions have (hypothetically, successfully)promoted? After all, you are proposing an approach which can be no doubt argued reasonably against, rather than simply trodden over by some anonymous, all-powerful bureaucrat. You have, after all, given only one side of the argument.

I would be interested to see more links about indigenous burning practices, if you can provide them.

Assume that your argument, about policy failure resulting in more intense burns, is correct. Then there is still an open possibility of more than one cause for increased fire intensity and damage. Changing weather conditions cannot be excluded as a factor.

Human activities are widely accepted as a significant factor in global warming, and government policies, at all levels, are changing to address our contribution to this problem. Are you suggesting that we stop working on global warming and simply do more cool-weather fuel reduction burns, to solve the problem of hyper-fires?

John, a well thought out article that confirms what an expert Forest Fire Ecologist once told me that our drier eucalypt forests owe their current range entirely to past fires and are continuously growing more and more fuel for the next fire.
Such fires are vital for the renewal of all living things in these forests. We should be all made aware of this approaching fundamental natural inevitability.
The inevitable fire can be an uncontrolled bushfire or some form of controlled burn.
Long unburnt forests have low animal populations because of less food.
New green pick after fire increases feed for herbivores and other animals and birds return and multiply as the fire-regenerated forest develops. A fact that our aboriginals knew well and were able to exploit to enhance their hunting.
A former Victorian Chief Fire Officer Athol Hodgson also made a good point that forest politics has removed the work force from the bush and we no longer have an immediate reaction firefighting capability.
Mr Hodgson said about 3000 people worked in the forests in the early 1980s, in forestry, the electricity commission and saw-milling. It was a condition of the saw-milling licences that if a fire broke out, the workers had an obligation to fight it. (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20919273-2702,00.html )

There is a lot of ignorance about the issue of carbon emissions by fuel reduction burns. Cold burns only combust the litter that has fallen off the trees since the previous burn. And generally, if the forest is anywhere near healthy, the amount of carbon that has fallen to the forest floor in that interval is less than the amount of carbon that the trees have absorbed in new growth during that time.

And this means that a continuous cycle of cold burns will rarely be carbon negative.

But what is not widely understood is the role of cold burns in the long-term storage of carbon in the form of charcoal. The carbon in charcoal will remain stable in the soil for more than a thousand years. It also plays a key role in improving soil moisture retention capacity and enhances the building of soil fertility by soil microbes.

The production of charcoal is dependent on slow combustion with minimal addition of oxygen. In natural conditions it is formed when cool fires pass through, burning the outside of the wood but then being extinguished when the critical heat mass has passed by.

This is not the case in the hot, DNRM/EPA induced wildfires. These conflagrations produce the oxygen inflows of a belows to a blast furnace. They take place at times of the year when critical heat mass remains longer at any location. And this means much more wood is burned and that would is burned completely, producing nothing but residual ash.

The hot fires also burn the two primary capital stocks of in situ carbon, the living trees above ground and the accumulated charcoal from past cool burns both on and below ground. And all of that capital stock of carbon is emitted as CO2.

If carbon emissions really do pose a serious threat to planetary existence then it clearly follows that Green forest management poses a serious threat to planetary existence as well.