Prescribed burns have some costs in terms of respiratory distress, jumping roads, threatening homes and imposing an unnatural fire frequency. For example swamp gums/mountain ash are said to need 3 fires in 200 years, not every 10 years or whatever. Tourists must be dismayed to drive through acrid smoke when they had hoped to enjoy the countryside.

Despite recurring extreme conditions we now have aerial water bombers. Known arsonists could be fitted with ankle bracelets. If that cost is tolerable we could reduce prescribed burns and see how it compares.

Disagree. I believe this is a brain washed from birth belief.

If we need to use fire at all it is to back burn to control a fire. Other than that, fuel reduction is best down by herbivores and intense cell grazing.

Goats behind temporary electric fences the best option. Maybe camels given what they eat and their soft feet.

Intensive cell grazing does three things, the first is the fuel reduction that is not curbed by weather conditions, the season or wind force. In a year-round control practice.

The second is the very short-term hoofs break up compacted soil and allow more rainfall penetration. Moreover, unlike fire they allow non fire tolerant flora and fauna to survive.

The third, they add organic fertiliser to the to the area of fuel reduction practice. And the area under control, can be, very precise and more exact.

Many indigenous folks have come to the same conclusion and regard fire management as elder humbug. Mosaic burning was never about forest management but served solely as an adjunct to hunting.
Alan B.

Taswegian, the article "Exceedances of national air quality standards for particulate matter in Western Australia: sources and health ‐related impacts" by Nicolas Borchers Arriagada, Andrew J Palmer, David MJS Bowman and Fay H Johnston Med J Aust 2020; 213 (6): 280-281. Published online: 20 April 2020 shows that the death rate from smoke emitted by a bushfire is almost double the death rate from prescribed burns. Similarly, the hospitalisation rate is again almost double the rate of hospitalisations caused by prescribed burns. Further, the number of people attending emergency departments because of prescribed burns was 87% higher than attendances on wildfire days.
Thus, the impacts on human health from bushfires far exceeds the impacts from prescribed burns.

Dear Bernie Masters,

You write: "Published online: 20 April 2020 shows that the death rate from smoke emitted by a bushfire is almost double the death rate from prescribed burns. Similarly, the hospitalisation rate is again almost double the rate of hospitalisations caused by prescribed burns. Further, the number of people attending emergency departments because of prescribed burns was 87% higher than attendances on wildfire days.
Thus, the impacts on human health from bushfires far exceeds the impacts from prescribed burns."

This would appear to be both contradictory and not supported by the paper you have cited.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.5694/mja2.50547#:~:text=We%20estimated%20that%2041%20(95,2.5%20concentration%20(Box%201).

Would you like another crack at it?

Taswegian

Yes there are costs associated with living in a fire-adapted environment. You have outlined some, but as the article says the costs associated with unplanned and uncontrolled catastrophic mid-summer bushfires, including the ecological costs, are far greater than those incurred by controlled burns planned and conducted in cooler autumn/spring conditions that limit their intensity.

Also, contrary to your belief, wet mountain ash forests are not subject to controlled cool season burns because they are rarely dry enough to burn except during the occassional drought year in mid-summer. When they do dry out, they have such a fuel load that they burn at an extremely high intensity that is not controllable. Mountain ash forests occupy only a very small proportion of Australia's forests and woodlands.

Alan B

Yes, grazing can be a form of fuel reduction on a very small scale. But after the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, the Royal Commission recommended that 385,000 hectares of Victoria's public forests be fuel reduced each year. I imagine this would required thousands of goats and they would need to be carted up into very remote country right across the state. There are no fences, so how would they be controlled so that they can intensively graze an area, be rounded-up and transported to a new area? I suspect6 I am not the only one who sees how impractical an idea this is given the huge scale of fuel reduction that is required.

You are right that indigenous burning was mostly about hunting, but the greater source of fire would have been from lightning strikes. It is undeniable that together these agencies would have burnt large areas each year, and that this became the natural state to which the landscape and its vegetation became adapted. Fuel reduction burning is an attempt to mimic this natural state as far as possible, while at the same time cognisant of the need for control given that there is now permanent human assetts and infrastructure in the landscape that needs protection from fire.