Recent disastrous bushfires result mainly from ignoring lessons from the past

For decades, our forest industries have been much maligned, with Labor governments (in particular) instrumental in shutting down much of the industry. Decades ago consumers could readily purchase a range of excellent native hardwoods. These days such wood is hard to find. Rather than use the resource, state administrations prefer to lock it up until it eventually goes up in smoke.

Foresters were aware that "protecting" forests by excluding cool burning was a recipe for later catastrophic fires. They had developed a regime of regularly using low intensity fires to reduce understorey fuel, a practice started in the 1920s in the jarrah forests of southwest Western Australia. State forest authorities historically gave higher priority to a burning programme than those managing national parks because of the importance of protecting timber assets. It is hot burns that regularly cause large losses of koalas.

Victoria locked up its forests, especially in East Gippsland and its central highlands supposedly to protect its flora and fauna. The recent bushfires, as well as the previous Black Saturday fires did far more damage to forest and wildlife than logging ever could. The same applies to forests in NSW. Cattle grazing in Alpine areas has also been greatly cut back, again contributing to higher fuel loads.

Green groups are said to be ready to battle demands that national parks be opened up to logging to reduce fuel loads. Politically, the Greens insist their environment policies adopted in November 2017 do not prohibit cool burns.

One of the biggest problems in developing bushfire management policies is overcoming public hysteria and misinformation. In this respect the media and many commentators have been needlessly hysterical:

• "Catastrophic" has been introduced asthe highest fire danger rating, describing "high temperatures, strong winds and low humidity that make conditions dangerous". The problem is that there is not always a catastrophe every time such conditions exist, so that the term is an exaggeration. A term such as "unstoppable" fire conditions might be more appropriate and cause less public panic.
• Media reports at the time of writing put losses in NSW alone at 1,588 homes destroyed, 20 lives lost, and 4.9 million hectares burnt. This is a major disaster by any standard.

While there has also been a horrific animal toll, especially of koalas, there has been a lot of sensationalising.

It was widely reported that 500 million animals are believed to have died in bushfires since September. Some reports even put the figure at a billion. These figures are based on estimates from ecologists from the University of Sydney. Stand Up for Nature, an alliance of 13 organisations, is calling for an immediate halt on logging of native forests in NSW until the impacts of the catastrophic bushfires on species and habitat are understood.

Sydney University released a statement explaining how the 500 million figure was reached. Firstly, it seemingly refers to the number of animals affected rather than those necessarily killed (although the title of the release talked about 480 million being killed). It estimated that there were an average of 17.5 mammals, 20.7 birds and 129.5 reptiles per hectare in NSW. The university academics then multiplied these numbers by the amount of land hit by the fires to reach their figure of 500 million.

The problem is that many animals affected by fire survive. Animals like kangaroos and deer flee the fire. Birds can fly away, while burrowing animals and reptiles can survive underground. It is mainly tree-dwellers and less mobile and smaller species that are most hit. The 500 million figure is thus a wild exaggeration that bears no relation to reality, though some species, such as koalas, have suffered huge mortality rates.

The biggest area of misinformation about the recent fires concerns attempts to blame events on climate change. Proponents of this hypothesis include the Climate Council, economist Ross Garnaut, and much of the "progressive" media (to mention but a few). The main argument is that "it's drier and hotter". What about the wind? It is heat, wind and fuel that result in extreme fire conditions.

The widely quoted consensus is that "the Earth has already warmed 1 degree Celsius since the 19th century". Is it logical to suggest that a mere one degree (say 38 degrees with a strong wind compared to 37 degrees with the same wind) makes a lot of difference? I think not.

You can to some degree test whether higher temperatures and lower rainfall lead to more bushfires by comparing parts of Australia. In NSW, the tablelands and slopes average about 600mm annual rainfall. The adjacent western plains experience more like 300 to 475mm and are several degrees hotter. Which area is the most bushfire prone? Without a doubt it is the cooler and wetter tablelands and slopes (probably because they are better grassed and have denser, faster-growing forests)!

While there are other factors that are material (e.g. the western plains are flatter, which moderates fire spread rates, and have fewer national parks) it is not obvious that (under Australian conditions) dryer and hotter is likely to lead to more bushfires.

So where are we headed?

In the wake of the bushfires we can expect a lot of wringing of hands about fuel management, and there will probably be (yet another) Royal Commission. The fires themselves will provide protection from high fuel loads for five years or more but, if past events are anything to go by, there is a strong risk that the lessons of the recent fires will soon be forgotten. While the fires will reduce available wood for logging in the short term, people may come to realise that foresters and logging industries are better friends to koalas and Leadbeater's possum than the environmentalists that claim to save them.