I believe the eucalytus forests the length of the Great Dividing Range, not only Victoria, need to be thinned. My people have lived in country Australi since early days of settlement and have seen the grass country change to eucalyptus forest. One of the un-mentioned reasons was the introduction of the European honey bee which was much better at polinating the eucalyptus. Now these trees are dominating National Parks originally set up to preserve Australian wildflowers specifically polinated by native bees. The introduced feral bee also competes for hive space in mature trees, robbing native bees, birds and possums of home sites in hollow limbs. Meanwhile the result, a thicket type forest of spindly eucalyptus trees is creating the potential for worse bush fires every year.

cg, i believe you can pickup the phone and get a japanese woodchipping mill on a plane within 24 hours. there's probably a finders fee in it for you as well. since the alternative is putting the nation on bicycles and motor scooters which won't happen soon, you may as well have the money.

Demos says (in a round about way):
"We must not violate the tree spirits or disturb the fairies or Gaia will rain down fire, drought, flood, pestilence, ...etc etc...see the full list here http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.ht

I think that the California fires prove the point yet once again.

Forget global warming. If you land up with forests which have
huge fuel loads on the ground, accumulated over many years,
one hot windy day, the whole lot is likely to go up in smoke.

As they say, people need pain to learn.

All Cribbes arguments re bushfire frequency and intensity can be applied to any rural or urban crops as drought extends. Fine dry fuel and wind are an explosive mix on ignition anywhere on a bad day.

The Victorian forests are no exception either managed or unmanaged. Young tree crops will go up in smoke in a flash given enough draft. Dwellings on near bare property when directly in the path of a furious fire storm can be likewise consumed.

The fire front of a swiftly moving bushfire must be seen as a continuous gaseous combustion cloud. Grasslands and rangeland scrub not forests provide the highest conversion rates and ground speed in strong winds.

Without extensive hazard reduction entire urban edge communities are at risk with global warming. No governments are yet up to the task of risk management in drought stricken bush.

Hey John,

Show me the science mate because assumptions may just as easily go the other way. Less rainfall - less fuel - less severity of fires? Or changed weather patterns means less likelyhood of Ash Wednesday blow throughs. Certainly the 2-3 day summer westerly howlers are almost non existant in these parts now.

Comparing Victoria with California is problimatic as well. For the same amount of acerage in comparison to Victoria last year California had lost 1200 homes as opposed to one house lost in Victoria last year.

California doesn't conduct fuel reduction or ecological burns anywhere near the extent as those done in Victoria.

Also there is a different attitude here as people who build adjacent to state and national forests often realise that to gain the ambience of nestling within treed blocks means they should not insist firefighters risk their lives in protecting their dwelling if it was threatened.

I think the agencies in Australia require our support and funding. Their skills and attitudes are evolving even with the added complexity of climate change. The less political interference involved the better.

There is no such thing as global warming, attested to by the fact that its proponents felt the need midstream to change the term to "climate change", thus having a bet both ways, and surreptitiously affecting the perception of the unlearned, for the weather is always changing from year to year and day to day. In employing the term "climate change", the unlearned and fearful are sucked in to overly focussing on every oddity of weather and thus to falsely concluding that man is changing the earth's weather.

It will be eventually enshrined in history as the biggest scam ever perpetrated.

The motive for the lie is ultimately universal control: it is difficult to rule the world under one banner when countries are at extreme ends of the poverty/wealth pole. The target therefore is to establish the 'level playing field', and the way to do this is to emburden the rich countries with additional costs, red tape, and constraints such as emmission controls: they need to be slowed down while the others catch up.

The prime evidence against global warming/climate change is right before our very eyes. That is, if no-one had ever mentioned the term, no-one would ever think the world's weather was changing: the campaign simply utilises the age-old tried and proven "power of suggestion".
The weather is the same as it always has been, and no puny contribution to the atmosphere from mankind will change this any more than one can pull himself off the ground by his own bootstraps.

The global warming idea is puerile: the sillyness of beings who are becoming increasingly darkened in their minds by virtue of their atheistic 'we're-standing-alone-in-the-universe' philosophy.

>do we reinstate the fuel reduction measures that worked so successfully from 1944 to 1983 or do we try a new approach?<
Why not try the oldest approach? Prior to Aboriginal occupation 40 000 or so years ago, Gwondanaland was 40% rainforest. When burning began, this type of forestation couldn't cope and the understory, that of the eaucalyptus, wattle and other species, became dominant, thus creating a problem - they needed constant burning to keep some semblance of control in the near environment. Reaforestation with trees that have leaves not filled with flammable oils might help. CSIRO did some research into this some years ago, but it appears to have been buried, probably for political reasons. Perhaps if more funding for research was given, perhaps the early research could be tested for veracity. If found to be correct, then surely major redevelopment of our forests that create such holocausts each year could be addressed.

Artic dog - you left out the role of the 2 tonne "lawnmowers" that existed prior to human arrival. The megafauna helped keep fuel levels in check. Also as the climate gradually changed, eucalypts started to dominate as rainforests retracted under the influence of increasing fires. The aborigines, after killing off these large natural "lawnmowers", saw the power of wildfires that exploded onto the scene as fuel levels increased unchecked. They harnessed that power by taking control and using fire to manipulate the environment to suit their needs.

Tragedy - I don't know of any 2 tonne 'lawnmowers' however I do know that three types of huge wombats began their path to extinction 40 000years ago. The largest may have been 2 tonnes. One of these, a particularly well-engineered but grumpy bloke may have been killed off because of his savageness. It is thought that our grumpy little common wombat is his descendant. I don't know whether they were here in large numbers but it is certain that they, amongst many other creatures, are no longer in existence. No doubt the bigger blokes played a good part in clearing undergrowth, and hence fuel, from the forest floors. But I don't think extinction is an event that exists only in Australia. Perhaps there were other reasons for their demise. Who can tell? What I do know is that if some of the larger animals were allowed back in to national parks, forests, etc, the fuel load could be kept down. Not terribly politically correct though, is it?