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The Forum > Article Comments > New plan for Victoria needed in wake of the bushfires > Comments

New plan for Victoria needed in wake of the bushfires : Comments

By Gavan McFadzean, published 27/3/2009

Since Black Saturday one thing is certain, the rules about fire management have changed and a new approach is necessary.

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Banjo, I have only one thing to say regarding your post.

HEAR HEAR!

I can only hope that enough people think thusly!
Posted by Maximillion, Sunday, 29 March 2009 11:20:33 PM
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Apart from the practises of forestry management (and arsonists), the tragic loss of 210 human lives cannot be entirely attributed to the intensity of Victoria’s bushfires.

Residential encroachment on to Australia’s forested areas has resulted in placing more lives at risk.

Property development has increased the need for extensive land clearing, resulting in the destruction of animal habitats, beneficial native plants, contamination of soil and waterways, freshwater fish and the ongoing demise of beneficial insects and tiny organisms which once contributed to a healthy ecosystem.

Astonishingly, Australia’s fragile biodiversity continues to be seriously threatened by the forest and logging industry's poisoning by pesticides, insecticides and fungicides - some banned in other countries.

The use of the 1080 chemical ceased in the US in 1974.

Despite bans and restrictions in other nations on these chemicals (including a ban by the International Forestry Stewardship Council on triazine herbicides) Australia's forestry industry exempts itself and continues the aerial spraying and ground use of chemicals which are suspected or known carcinogens, developmental or reproductive toxins, endocrine disruptors and water contaminants.

Herbicides linked with cancer are being used at four times recommended levels and those responsible should be jailed, a Senate committee has been told in May 2008.

The triazine family of chemicals, was considered to be carcinogenic and their use should be more tightly regulated, NSW Liberal senator Bill Heffernan said.

Senator Heffernan grilled officials from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, who said they did not directly supervise herbicide use and did not keep data on how much was used.

"I will not accept that you can't find out or you don't know, it's bloody simple," he told the bureaucrats.

The whole issue of our toxic forestry management is trading on a lie, perpetrated by the double agents in industry and government who forget that Australia's forests belong to 21 million people who will not be gagged by industry's false prophets.

The shonky and patronising bureau-speke of these double agents, their gratuitous chemical carnage and raping of Australia's forests is entirely buoyed by their neanderthal mindsets and vested interests.
Posted by Protagoras, Monday, 30 March 2009 1:31:16 PM
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I can expand on any of the following statements if requested but the facts as I see them are:
* the Wilderness Society exists to try and achieve political change. It unashamedly uses the environment as an emotional tool to achieve that change
* the lessons learned from bushfire reviews and Royal Commissions have rarely been put into full effect except in Western Australia where the lessons learned from the 1961 Dwellingup fires have been acted upon
* The Society's call to improve aerial surveillance to detect bushfires as soon as they start is not new and, even if fully implemented, would not have made much difference in Victoria on Black Saturday
* if money is no object, then the use of hi-tech, quick response capability, including more “Elvis” helicopters to fight bushfires as soon as they ignite might be worthwhile, but this recommendation does nothing to help protect life, property or environmental values if the high-tech response fails (as it will) in extreme weather conditions
* the Society's call for more research into fire behaviour and the impact of fire on wildlife and their habitat is a diversion: high quality research has been done for decades around Australia - we know how fires behave and what the consequences of wildfires are
Continued on the next post......
Posted by Bernie Masters, Monday, 30 March 2009 1:52:18 PM
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* their call to prioritise the protection of life and property with fuel reduction and firebreak management plans around towns and urban areas has some merit, but leaves unanswered the potential to have huge unmanageable fires burn out all other parts of the forest estate, with devastating consequences for the environment
* their call to "prioritise the protection of wildlife and their habitat through scientifically based fire management plans in remote areas and National Parks" is strange as this is what is happening in WA right now, assuming the state government adequately funds their state agencies
* saving the silliest comment till last, the Society's statement that we should aim to make "native forests resistant to mega-fires by protecting old growth forests, rainforests and water catchments from woodchipping and moving logging into existing plantations" shows their absolute ignorance of what happens in some forest ecosystems. In the WA karri forest and in the eastern state's mountain ash forests, it is the one in 100 or 200 year fires that kill the existing trees and create the conditions for new forests to start growing from seed. There is no such thing as a genuinely old "old growth karri forest" in WA as fire always kills them every couple of hundred years, stimulating the growth of a new forest.

Please, don't believe what these snake oil salespersons from the Wilderness Society are saying. As players in Australia's political system and, with Peter Garrett (a former president of the ACF) now the federal environment minister, they are trying to maximise their influence and political outcomes. The Victorian bushfires have created a serious credibility problem for their anti-development attitudes towards forests so they are trying to re-build credibility by making statements that superficially seem balanced and science-based but in fact are biased and mostly based on emotion.
Posted by Bernie Masters, Monday, 30 March 2009 1:54:56 PM
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It is pretty simple really. Respect that private landowners should be allowed to safeguard their homes and lives by clearing trees and bushes that they consider are a danger on their freehold property.
Environmentalism has become a means of controlling landowners and is straight out of the Marx book on communism. Australia has fallen into the trap of listening to these so called knowledgable people but they have been duped.
Environmentalism is a socialist tool as far as I am concerned.
Without our freedom to control what we do with our land we won't have any freedom.
Posted by 4freedom, Monday, 30 March 2009 3:39:27 PM
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Bernie, If you want to find a snake oil salesman, look no further than yourself:

”the lessons learned from bushfire reviews and Royal Commissions have rarely been put into full effect except in Western Australia where the lessons learned from the 1961 Dwellingup fires have been acted upon”

WA’s Bushfire Front's committee of eight comprises of self-professed experts – all have had over 40 years experience in bushfire research and management, prevention and control, hands-on fire-fighting and land use planning and land management. One member is Roger Underwood, former General Manager of CALM in WA, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist.

The following excerpts, which the committee published last month, are in complete contradiction to the nonsense you peddle:

“We have one over-riding concern:

“A catastrophic bushfire crisis is imminent in Western Australia unless decisive action is taken to avert it. By this we mean a Canberra-style disaster on the fringes of Perth or extensive damage to a major southwest town such as Bridgetown, Denmark or Margaret River.

“Alternatively, the disaster could be a major forest fire with large-scale loss of old growth karri forest, disastrous impacts on associated birds and animals, and pollution of water supplies.

“Such a disaster is not just possible but highly probable.'

Interestingly, in 2007, Underwood wrote of the wholesale destruction of WA’s remaining jarrah forests by Alcoa’s bauxite mining. Unbelievably he went on to cluck about Alcoa as "an efficient and clever organisation and it is a pleasure to see the professional way in which they have approached their operational and research obligations."

Unable to refrain from expressing his hatred of environmentalism, he then insisted that environmentalists are to blame for Alcoa's vandalising of the jarrah forests because they failed to campaign against Alcoa. He speculated that their passivity may be because “they have been bought off”, presumably by the company whose professionalism he so admires.

These are the hypocritical delusions of those plundering our forests, whose farcical, forest management contains a treacherous incubator of errors - conveniently attributed to the faceless greenies. Who would believe such nonsense?

http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=3185&language=e
Posted by Protagoras, Monday, 30 March 2009 6:23:18 PM
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