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The Forum > Article Comments > Victoria’s forests: to burn or not to burn? > Comments

Victoria’s forests: to burn or not to burn? : Comments

By Mark Poynter, published 11/12/2013

The Victorian Government’s mixed messages about prescribed burning raise questions about the influence of conservation ideology within the state’s bureaucracy.

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I just don't get it! All anyone needs to do, is put up a few portable electric fences, a few equally portable watering points, tankers would do; and cell graze fire breaks, with herds of goats.
Intensive cell grazing prevents valuable nutrient being lost skyward and forever, in millions of annual tons.
Small hooves, and intensive grazing also breaks open topsoil, allowing much more of the rains to soak in, which in turn, produces a more moist greener herbage, that doesn't burn as easy.
The addition of dung beetles, ensures that any organic matter is added where it does the most good, rather than attracting and breading millions of flies.
If there is no timely hazard reduction, then even more disastrous forest fires, will be the order of the day!
Have those in charge down there learned nothing?
The problem with burning as a strategy, you need to know ahead of time, that the wind won't get up and turn a manageable reduction burn into a raging unstoppable bush fire.
And those super calm days seem to be getting less and less or a thing of the past?
Whereas, you can cell graze at any time, all you need is water and portable electric fences, and even fewer personal, than hazard reduction, by so called traditional means!
Burn or graze!
It's not a hard choice!
One is always an option, the other isn't.
The only option not on the table, is simply doing nothing!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 11 December 2013 10:25:08 AM
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As an experienced fire fighter (I have lost count of how many fires I have been to), I can attest to the importance of fuel at a fire event.

When it comes to planning the attack methodology at any given fire, the areas burn history and fuel loading is a critical component of a fire managers decision making process.

Temperature has very little impact, given that when it is hot, a few degrees either way is insignificant, and even humidity can be a misleading indicator into a fires intensity.

The key factors are fuel, its dryness and wind speed. Under really bad conditions, either way you don’t want to be anywhere near the front of the fire, or the dead man zone as it has been coined.

I have been shocked by the level of Crown development of fires under moderate conditions (between 13 and 20 on the FFDI system) with an easterly wind peaking at 35-40 km/hr and humidity around 40%. The key factor was the fine fuel loading, it hadn’t been burnt in decades and it was fairly dry. The only reason we could control it in the short term was because it hit an area that was burnt out 2 years prior and the flame height dropped from up to 15m to less than 3, which allowed a direct attack.

If you have any regard for fire fighters and their safety, you will adopt a fuel reduction program. No if’s and no but’s – otherwise you can fight your own fires.
Posted by jmsc, Wednesday, 11 December 2013 10:58:24 AM
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Dear Rhrosty,

The best line you have ever offered on OLO, “I just don't get it!” I agree and offer my congratulations, reality strikes.

jmsc, welcome to OLO and I sympathize with you. Rhrosty has already provided you with a long list of reasons why it is so hard to fight ignorance and stupidity. Rhrosty’s opinions are of course not his/hers, they are borrowed from some equally uninformed sources and “adopted”.

Rhrosty, like so many others on OLO, strings together a seemingly endless stream of rhetoric, they can never explain themselves and are only capable of tipping in more rhetoric when the previous rhetoric falls short. In fact this is evidenced by the constant “shifting” of their defense when challenged. Something that was a crucial element of the tactical case yesterday can be changed, dismissed, lied about or ignored in an instant. Rhetoric is entirely disposable if it has lost its value.

Sit back and enjoy as Rhrosty tries to “boost” the clichés in order to distract us from his/her absence of critical thinking.
Posted by spindoc, Wednesday, 11 December 2013 4:44:22 PM
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As a watermelon (Green/Red) hater, I think it is just wonderful that the Greenies are still insisting that bush burn offs be banned. That way, every time that yet another catastrophic bushfire consumes hundreds of houses and dozens of people, the Greenies will get the blame.

There is nothing like a TV anchor person interviewing an exhausted volunteer fire fighter who is telling the TV audience that the bush fire that he and his mates are fighting was all because the greenies in the local council opposed a burn off. So please Rhosty, keep pisssing off the locals in bush fire prone rural areas by advocating your city bred environmental views.

Even city bred working class people can identify with the volunteer fire fighter as one of their own, and if he puts the boot into the greenies, you can bet that the city working class will nod their heads in agreement.
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 12 December 2013 5:49:51 AM
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Rhosty,

You have obviously never watched a billy goat test an electric fence with his whiskers then crash through/over when he feels a tingle.

Very soon there are a mob of breading goats lose in the forest.

The obvious answer is to put only does in the hazard reduction groups but then wild billies will be attracted and no amount of shocks will keep them out and away goes the fences.
Posted by Is Mise, Thursday, 12 December 2013 8:16:09 AM
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Rhosty it is generally acknowledged that goats turned the North African Savannah into the Sahara desert! Goats are lovely little creatures, delicious in fact but very destructive. Those little hooves will compact the soil and they will eat everything that is not toxic. They will soon eat out valuable vegetation and I would like to see you move fences through the forest, it is nonsense.
Lets sheet home blame where it belongs onto the greens who stop everything with their toxic politics.
As a child bought up in the sixties "Burn baby burn!" lol.
Posted by JBowyer, Thursday, 12 December 2013 3:49:13 PM
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