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".