Well said. Its about time we woke up to the Follie of irresponsible Green bureaucrats and activists, which live in the chardonnay-sipping, avocado-toast, double-decaff-soya milk latties inner city "spaces". Fires need fuel, green bureaucrats and activists have provided this fuel. I hope the forthcoming inquiries into this season puts the focus squarely on the impact of greenies, and not accept their erroneous claims that it is all down to climate change. They are clearly liable for this and need to be brought to account to prevent future uncontrollable fires and any future losses of life, particularly among the volunteer fire fighters.

Here here; I hope our politicians have learnt a very expensive lesson.
Not much else to say, just get on as soon as possible and clear up
those parks etc that have not already been burnt.

It's all been said before, with no effect. The people who could do something all have their heads up their own backsides.

Yeah
How good is this smoke?
FOREVER!

The blame game ay!

You'd be equally accurate to blame the fires on the "Bossa Nova".

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h5oia5QSukk

Was it the moon? No no. The Bossa Nova
Or the stars above? No no. The Bossa Nova

Nature will take care of things. As it does, as it will and as it must. Puny man is no match for Mother Nature. Where is the proof that Aboriginals burnt every bit of theAustralian bush? That's an absurdity.

Dan

Also a rural landowner. Agree entirely with the article.
Not expecting any sensible movement after the current fire period.
Too many would have to admit they were wrong.
"Greenies" get the blame but the state takeover of all land has come from state and federal legislation and the bureaucracies that exist to apply it.
Harder still for the current federal government considering the EPBC act and forest lockups for Kyoto were fruits of the howard gov'.

This article highlights that people jut don't learn. How many times has this very subject been raised here on OLO ?
It has been said over & over & still some people think this is some new discovery !
Start taking in the information & act on it ! My neighbours & I did a cool burn several months ago & we're now free of the fuel in the bushland surrounding us.
Tell the anti back burn activists to butt out & stop interfering , the Nation can't afford their idiocies any longer !

This is right to a point and all our firies are well versed in fighting fire with fire. However, it's also possible to reduce fuel load with grazing animals and whipper snippers.

But before all that what we need to do to manage national parks is to build myriad dams in the high country, then on down to the flood plains, that then force water into the landscape and create natural firebreak wetlands/rainforest.

And as the first consequence force the salt far lower in the water table.

In the dry times, this will vastly extend water flows for several years as well as act as local rainfall recharge systems.

Primitive cultures always relied on fire as an adjunct to hunting and for no other reason! To stat otherwise is BS writ large!

FACT!

The fossil record shows without a shadow of a doubt this land was once covered from coast to coat in forest and much of that was non-fire-tolerant species. And in some areas where fire management was discontinued because it became to wet to burn, some of these species returned or reestablished.

Very short term intensive cell grazing needs to be used to replace much of traditional burning much of which may well have contributed to the current nationwide conflagration, loss of life and destruction of valuable infrastructure!? National parks need to be grazed all year round by managed goat herds to ensure the fuel load is far better managed even when as now it is forever, too hot to burn!

And therefore more than an adequate reason for discontinuing inappropriate fire management in favour of far superior, more effective 24/7 modern methods of land management that allow the land to instead, retain scarce soil nutrient and become more friable and able to hold far more moisture for far longer!

There is not a white way or a black way just a right way that may have very little in common with (Great Grandpappy allus did it that way) idiotic ideologically, brainwashed belief or tradition!
Alan B.

I'd prefer mechanical thinning to fuel reduction burns. That way you avoid accidental loss of houses, asthma and respiratory distress and smoke taint of fruit like wine grapes. The PM likes to quote emissions figures that include land use with net CO2 uptake. That could reverse with fuel burns.

An issue related to tree density and flammability is wind speed. My recollection seems to be in the old days fires were often in calm conditions. Now we're getting pyronimbus clouds and firenadoes. Short of acres of concrete even thinned trees could still burn fiercely. I'd like to see a dry part of the world that has plenty of trees but few fires.

Taswegian,
The dilemma is that we now have so many "experts" interfering that common sense is literally out-lawed. You're right, fires should be started after wet periods & in still wind conditions.
I don't know what else can be said to a debate saturated topic such as this one !

My son wants to know where the army is. After the tsunami he was an engineer on the navy ship that took a full ship load of army earth moving equipment to Banda Aceh, Indonesia to aid in rescue & clean up work. Nothing was too much.

Now we have enough army bulldozers & other earth moving gear in Townsville & Darwin to push decent fire breaks back into most of these burning national parks, & they sit there uselessly, & the ships to carry them sit in Sydney.

The same after the last big cyclone in Queensland. The first relief workers into a coastal village near Tully were a bunch of SES volunteers from my village. They arrived in a bunch of rental Toyota Camry, despite a bunch of much more suitable army vehicles sitting in Townsville.

I have great respect for our defense force people, but the top brass seem to go missing in action, when ever there is an emergency where they could be really useful.

Hasbeen,
Same dilemma, the "experts" ! They occupy every seat in authority overriding common sense.
Morrison would be well advised to rid himself of these "advisors".

Well there you go. I never realised when the first invasion fleet landed the land all the way from what is now Sydney to Bathurst was just open fields with occasional trees in the landscape.

All those early explorer's tales of attempting to bushbash their way across the Blue Mountains and failing time and time again were just imagined.

Well I never.

Bathurst was just open fields with occasional trees in the landscape.
SteeleRedux,
Yeah, a bit like the fish farming down in Victoria !

Come on SR, you should know, the Blue mountains are a very rugged bit of country. It offered very little in the way of grazing for wildlife, so little game, & even less interest to the aborigines.

Hell in that country, even if you did find game, in the unlikely event of actually spearing it, the job of carrying it back to camp would be horrendous, hence they avoided the place.

Yes the rolling planes from Bathurst were well treated with the fire stick.

Incidentally, none other than the great Captain Cook mentioned in his log that from about Sydney north the sky was never free of the smoke of fires.

Either 1770 was a very bad year for bush fires, or those rascally aborigines were running amok with their fire sticks as usual.

It was the discovery of such good grazing land that opened up the Central west.

A priority should be to lessen the impact of future bushfires on lives and property.

How can this be achieved?

The simple answer is to remove all eucalypts from the vicinity of dwellings and roads, 500 metres clearance seems a fair distance, but if experience proves otherwise then make it a kilometre.

Gum trees and dwellings don't go together, except up in flames.

Tend to agree about eucalypts next to houses. People build non-flammable homes with steel shutters right next to gum trees. The house might survive but not the occupants with swirling smoke and 500C radiant heat.

Dear Hasbeen,

The bulk of the area burnt recently in NSW has been in the Blue Mountains which you now seem to acknowledge wasn't the subject of widespread indigenous burning.

Perhaps putting communities into these areas is not sensible planning and rather than wholesale clearing and burning we should be smarter about where developments are allowed to occur.

Perhaps putting communities into these areas is not sensible planning
SteeleRedux,
Finally !

But the communities are there and not likely to be removed, so they must be fire proofed or allowed to burn every few years.

Which is the best idea?

So far the number of dwellings burnt in the current NSW fires stands at 449, which is not the final figure.

Which is the best idea?
Is Mise,
One that doesn't involve 'experts' !