The article glosses over the high chance of 'controlled' fires getting out of hand. Increasing numbers in the population are now at risk of respiratory distress, for example asthmatic kids requiring medical attention. I think there are less risky methods of fuel reduction. For example goats or cattle could be confined within a two strand electric fence running along fire trails. They could be purged of weed seeds in their guts before occupying a new area. Docile animals that escape should not be a problem. Another method would be to chip undergrowth with brush hog type machines. The chips could left in place as a form of biosequestration, they could be taken away for mulching or they could be torrefied (scorched) to make dry fuel used elsewhere.

I believe that burnoffs may also break clean air rules. If I recall particulate under five microns should be no more than a milligram per cubic metre of air. The more FRBs the greater the chance of casualties either from an escaped burn or an asthma attack. When that happens expect lawsuits while the media talks about grown up boys playing with matches. Fuel reduction must be done by not by onsite burning.

Mark Poynter has contradicted himself in this article.

“However, even under extreme circumstances, extensive areas of well-conducted FRB would somewhat reduce the development of crown fires and spotting thereby reducing environmental impacts and improving the capability to defend well prepared properties or provide residents with more time to safely evacuate.”

FRB is done at ground level and is no help at all when the fire is crowning.
There is also some research in the US that show that an area that has had a FRB, the moisture level has been reduced in the soil and fires that occur after are hotter.

To sarnian
I have not contradicted myself. It has been well documented for decades that Australian crown fires are not generally sustained when they encounter consolidated sections of forest with light ground fuels.

As I said in the article, when part of the 2009 fire met the area of light fuels arising from the 2006 Kinglake North bushfire, the fire dropped from the crowns to the forest floor. There is an aerial photo of this occurence on the ABC Unleashed website where this article was first posted several weeks ago. Similar occurences were noted elsewhere as well.

However, if fuel reduced areas are very small and lack sufficient depth, a crown fire burning under the extreme conditions of a Black Saturday may pass through without dropping to ground and perhaps this is what you are referring to. This highlights the advantage of large consolidated areas of fuel reduction over the small, pocket-sized burns that many environmentalists seem to have a preference for.

As a former CFA volunteer, I know full well that one of the safest places to be in a fire is ground that is already blacked out.

Likewise, I also know from experience just how difficult fuel reduction burns can be.

I thought this article struck a fairly sensible balance.

Mark

Excellent article.

We need to learn from the past or be doomed to repeat history.

FRB = Safety.

Simple.

Our Australian Bush is our National Heritage. The bush contains 90% of our native species, and I am amazed how excuses of expediancy and financial consideration seem to sway the public to tolerate such gross vandalism on our natural heritage.
FRB = vandalism of the worst kind, that is, legitamised by the governemnt on a grand scale, in an effort to be seen as doing something.
Surely there must be a better, more environmentally friendly solution to the problem. Let's find it!

Rationality and the religion of environmentalism do not go hand. Human life is usually very low on the scale of Greens as seen last summer. You would think they would of been shamed in keeping their mouths shut but unfortunately the opposite takes place. Just look at the gw stories they make up and you will get the idea.

"gross vandalism on our natural heritage."
Hmm I wonder Alfred what is your view of our "original settlers'" practice of regular burning of grasslands and forests? Was that gross vandalism also?
".. Rhys Jones (1969),..recognised the problem almost a quarter of a century ago, when he said:
"What do we want to conserve, the environment as it was in 1788, or do we yearn for an environment without man, as it might have been 30,000 or more years ago? If the former, then we must do what the Aborigines did and burn at regular intervals under controlled conditions". Kohen (1993) http://asgap.org.au/APOL3/sep96-1.html.

MWPOYNTER,

Canberra had a strip 5-10 km wide of flogged-out, drought-stricken paddocks with not a blade of grass on them as a “fire break” to its west, but this did not prevent fires from reaching the pine plantations on its western edge. Once that happened, then of course high fuel loads so close to houses (noting that the plantations were there before the suburbs) led to houses in Duffy, Chapman and Holder being lost.
And
Professor Professor David Lindenmayer of the ANU points out that: “I worked out of Marysville for 25 years and every year for the past 5 years the outskirts of the town were fuel reduced.”

This shows how helpful FRB really is.
I think that the fuss about them is a way of attacking the green and environmental groups and blaming them for the fires.

Sarnian,

If more fuel reduction was done, then maybe even those houses would not have been lost. There no doubt that the FRB was curtailed due the influence of the greens.

Alfred would prefer to see corpses of citizens rather than a tiny fraction of the bush fuel reduced.

Shadow Minister.

The greens policy is for reasonable FRB. As with all info circulating about them, it is distorted and lied about by the GW deniers, forest companies with a huge vested interests and their paid (quite well) lackeys.
To take FRB to their ridiculous extreme would mean burning all forest every year. A disaster for the environment and also impossible to do.
The ideal would be more aggressive fuel management immediately around houses and fire survival bunkers for houses/communities in fire prone areas.
The suggestion that having had more fuel reduction burning over larger areas
More frequently during the drought of the last decade in Victoria would have prevented
These fires — and by extension that doing even more of it is essential in the hotter, drier
Climate we are moving into — is not backed up by the best available science. Fuel
Reduction burning doesn’t bring rain.
Whoever Alfred is? It is a deliberate effort to stir up hates to say that ANY one would prefer to see bodies.

A balanced contribution to the discussion on how to improve public land management in Victoria, well done. The government dominated parliamentary inquiry on bushfires reported to the Victorian parliament in June 2008 that the major contribution to fire prevention would be a trebling of prescribed burning to 385,000 hectares per year, which is only 5 per cent of the public land in Victoria i.e. a 20 year rotation. This is supported by over 50 years of bushfire research and the Victorian Fire Ecology Group [a partnership between DSE and Parks Victoria] who say on page 84 of the same inquiry report that biodiversity in Victoria is threatened by the current inadequate fire regime. Anyone who supports a better environmental outcome than what has been delivered by the four mega fires we have experienced in the last 6 years would endorse the volumes of research that support a minimum of 5 per cent burning per year. It is clear there are many areas of Victoria that have suffered intense damaging fire in the last 6 years that may have suffered less if we had a mosiac of cool burning generated by proper fire management regimes. BTW, the target of 5 per cent was derived from the evidence of DSE officers at the inquiry who wanted to the see the level of prescribed burning increased. Quite apart from the horrific environmental outcomes of the intense conflagrations we have endured in the last 6 years, apart from the appalling personal cost is the $1.8 billion dollars expended in suppression and recovery from large uncontrollable fires for which we have nothing to show. The ratio of spending in the last decade favours suppression 10 to 1 over prevention. The Americans have tried this 'big suppression effort' and failed. Every $1 spent on prevention has a $22 payoff in saved suppression and recovery costs. What we need is a new paradigm in public land management that recognises fire management is the cornerstone of public land management in a fire prone state like Victoria. See www.landsalliance.org for community concern on fire management.

Bourbon shots all round for the first poster to blame it all on "deniers"!

Mark,

I read your article with great interest. It is quite obvious that you have created a story that all environmental organizations and their supporters are opposed to Fuel Reduction Burning. Who are these organizations? You do not name them or quote them voicing their opposition. As far as I know in following the debate, peak environmental organizations, such as ACF and VNPA, are calling for Fuel Reduction Burns to be based on good science, and integrated into an overall well planned fire prevention strategy. Immediately after the terrible fires of February 7, environment groups were made the targets of an intense 'blame' campaign, waged by the sections of the media (where they had vigilante violence encouraged against them - refer to Miranda Devine's appalling SMH 'hate mongering' opinion piece dated 12 Feb), logging lobbyists, some politicians, and a particular member of the Stretton Group. I have not seen a shred of evidence to suggest that environment groups have campaigned or have been successful in preventing Fuel Reductions Burns.

Mark, are you sure you have your facts right? It would be great to see some evidence to back up your accusations against environmental groups. If not, maybe your next article should be titled:

Environment Groups - misunderstood and intentionally maligned

Mark J, the following is a response from Senator Bob Brown to calls for more appropriate levels of prescribed burning to help protect the environment after the Canberra fires:

Sent: Tuesday, 5 August 2003 9:20
Subject: Brown says back burning not the answer
ABC Online
[This is the print version of story
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s917833.htm] [Link no longer functional]
AEST
Brown says back burning not the answer Greens leader Bob Brown is rejecting calls for more controlled burning of bushland in the wake of the Canberra bushfires.
Four people died and hundreds of homes were destroyed when the firestorm swept through parts of the ACT last summer.
Among 61 recommendations in the McLeod report into the fires is a call for more controlled burns to reduce risk of intense fires.
Senator Brown believes that is not appropriate.
"There are those who want to burn the tripe out of national parks, send more species to extinction, destroy great and ancient forests and woodlands," he said.
"We've got to remember that there are trees in this country that are many centuries and even thousands of years-old which survived great periods of Aboriginal burning, but they will not survive some of the excesses of burn-off that's being promoted."

Thanks Max

But it doesn't fully answer my question. Firstly, Bob Brown is the leader of the Green Political Party, and the Greens Political Party is not an environmental group. In recent media, mainstream environment groups have stated: "Conservation groups support the use of science-based prescribed burns to help protect people, properties and the environment. We need to be strategic about fire management and ensure planned burns are done at the right time and in the right place".

Secondly, Brown is not opposing FRB's in the ABC press release. It appears to me that he is questioning the appropriateness of an 'increase' in fuel reduction burning - that's not opposing. He expresses concern on the environmental impacts of increased FRB's in national parks, which leads me to another problem - why is there so much focus on national parks for FRB's. The Black Saturday fires also burned through farms, state forests and plantations. In a recent Royal Commission hearing, the DSE Beechworth district supervisor was cross examined about the high fuel loads in pine plantations, which burned aggressively on Black Saturday. He said that these plantations are managed as an economic asset as opposed to the characteristics they exhibit when they burn. Does this mean that FRB's in plantations are not considered? If that is so, then plantations pose a significant risk to communities in and around them as fuel loads are being allowed to accumulate. If the FRB debate is to possess any balance or meaningfulness, then it will cover all land types, not just areas for conservation

To Mark J
Excuse my cynicism, but your point that environmental groups and their supporters are in fact supportive of fuel reduction burning is a tad disingenous given that they have put so much time and effort into telling the community that it does nothing to help. By any reasonable measure the implication from that is that they don't support it.

To name a few who have strongly pushed this line - Jill Redwood (Environment East Gippsland), Simon Birrell (Melbourne Catchment Action Network, Otway Ranges Environment Network), and more recently the ACF, TWS, and VNPA in the press release accompanying their just released report.

Your other point that environmental groups support "FRB based on good science and integrated into an overall well planned fire strategy" encapsulates why I wrote the article because it is indicative of the misunderstanding that surrounds the practice. By that I mean, what makes them think that FRB isn't already based on science and isn't carefully planned? Of course it already is, and any increase in the practice to restore it back to previous levels would fit within this framework.

As I said in the article, too many people (particularly environmental activists) don't understand FRB and seem to think it is uncontrolled and will have the same result as Black Saturday. VNPA boss Phil Ingamells in a recent article referred to FRB as "taking revenge on the bush". Enough said.

Mark,

From my readings of the media, envrio groups are claiming that FRB's did not slow the fire on 7 February, as the Fire Danger Rating was castastrophic. It is on mostly on those days that fires kill people - and it only takes one 'rare' day of catastrophic fire to impact on so many lives. As for the comments of Ingamells, my reading his article, which contains the phrase 'revenge on the bush', is not in opposition to practice FRB's, but to situations in where they could be inappropriate applied. The debate is not black and white, instead a variety of shades of grey. The same is with the logging debate - not all environmental groups oppose logging in native forests, yet many logging lobbyists constantly claim that all environmental groups are opposed.

To Mark J
I think that the whole FRB "debate" has been difficult for the environmental movement. I agree that they have never campaigned directly against FRB in the manner with which they have opposed logging.

Instead, they have simply ignored fire, which is in itself rather an indictment given that they have been told for decades that fire, rather than logging, is the infinitely greater threat to Australia's forests. But of course, the foresters who have tried to tell them that are seen as part of the 'logging lobby' so are not to be trusted!

The criticism levelled against the "greens" in the aftermath of Black Saturday really reflects the forest management consequences that have arisen from their political success in expanding parks and reserves as a tool for closing timber industries. These consequences may not have been intended so understandably the environmental movement is feeling that it is being unfairly maligned.

However much most 'greens' dislike deliberate human disturbance in nature, I agree that many have felt as though they can't totally oppose FRB, and so they say they support it with the rider about being done scientifically etc. If pressed this translates into supporting occassional, tiny burns for ecological purposes which is nowhere near enough to offer any significant value for mitigating the effects of bushfire. On that basis, I think it is playing with words to say they support FRB.

FRB opposition by green groups is total rubbish! The fact is the greenies want unfettered power over us all. You cannot do anything unless it is "approved" by some green nazi or other.
More of Victoria was lost to fires in the last few years than was ever lost to logging but there is no reasoning with the greens. If they are wrong they say they did not say that or they said something else.
They are the most accomplished political group just like their predecessors The National Socialist Party (NAZI).

Thanks for those comments Mark,

I think that you have hit the nail on the head - that there is a lack of trust between environmental groups and foresters when discussing the issue of FRB's. The forestry profession has a very proud emergence into Australia as the 'first conservationists', where they successfully prevented large areas of forest being cleared under the authorization of the then powerful lands department, and regulated relentless tree cutting by the settlers, graziers and miners of the time. Ironically, it was the foresters (forestry commission) who were subject to media scorn following the 1939 fires, very similar to how the some of the media portrayed environmental groups following Black Saturday. In 1939, Justice Stretton was very critical of the campaign to demonise the forestry commission and its foresters. We need to move past the culture of blaming sectors of the community who are clearly not at fault for the severity of these fires. People expressing environmental concerns following the fires have been subject to intimidation, threats, vilification, abuse, being referred to as 'Nazis', and slander. This only deepens the trench in the community, causing stressful division where there need to be unity. Environment groups, along with foresters and other people involved in the community on fire management, need to establish trust.

To Mark J
Whilst I mostly agree with you, the notion of engendering trust between foresters and the environmental movement is sadly probably impossible. For example, I posted this article initially on the "ABC Unleashed" site and have also previously posted an earlier article on that site. If you care to look you will see amongst the hundreds of comments the raw emotion and hatred reserved for someone like me whose thoughts are generally simply ignored - its all about who I represent, not what I may have to say. Even acknowledged government facts and statistics are just dismissed as lies if they challenge the beliefs of many of these people.

Undoubtedly there are more thoughtful people amongst the ranks of the environmental movement, but I suspect their influence is marginalised by those more militant voices and the over-riding need for the movement to remain relevant - which of course needs ongoing crisis to attract attention and support, including financial.

Forests are one of those issues where it is easiest to create controversy and support, but only in relation to logging which is something tangible that can be opposed and directly attacked. Forest and fire management is (in a protest-sense) an intangible that offers fewer opportunities. Indeed, as we have seen, fire creates more opportunities for disaffected rural people wishing to fight-back against the "greens" who they have come to hate for their influence over their lifestyles and livelihoods.

So there is realistically little hope for trust to develop between these groups and hoping that this will change is a mistake that has already been repeated in the past, and will probably be again.

Sarnian,

Everyone considers that their view points are "reasonable". The policy of touching nothing except that around human habitation and relying on survival bunkers is the other ridiculous extreme from burning all the forests. People will not just be in their houses.

Perhaps I am from a bygone era where human safety was the highest priority.

Letting fuel build up does nothing for GW as it will go up in flames sooner or later. Carbon capture requires that it stored in perpetuity.

The greens theme should be "burn baby burn."