Academic over-reach lies at the heart of this summer's fire blackened landscapes

1. the progressive loss of the most experienced and capable forest fire-fighters who formerly worked in the timber industry or for government agencies that managed commercial forestry. For example, Victoria has lost over 100 logging contractors and several hundred very experienced earth-moving operators since the mid-1980s as the state's timber industry has been progressively closed by the state government. These contractors formerly worked throughout the bush each summer and their presence, together with the roads and tracks that they used, enabled quicker ground-based containment of forest fires by machinery operators with the skill and experience to deal with the topographical risks;
2. a consequential increase in national parks and other conservation reserves which typically employ fewer management resources and are often governed according to a disturbance-averse management philosophy which lacks perspective and can weaken the response to wildfires. During the huge 2003 fires in SE Australia, this philosophy was exemplified by the infamous line – "I'd rather see the bush burnt than buggered" – uttered by a senior park manager opposing plans to contain the fire by constructing a dozed firebreak in the Alpine National Park. By not employing this tactic, significantly greater areas of the park were ultimately burnt. There are allegations that a similarly gross loss of perspective by park managers was responsible for allowing at least one of the recent Victorian fires to burn a far greater area than if more aggressive fire-fighting tactics had been employed;
3. reduced state and local government support for fuel reduction burning based on a failure to recognise that the ecological impact of cool season hazard reduction burning, even if based on imperfect knowledge, is infinitely less damaging compared to that incurred when heavy fuel loads in long unburnt forests are burnt by hot summer wildfires.

At the heart of the consequently weakened fire management capability, is a lack of practical experience of fire amongst the most vocal and influential conservation academics and eco-activists who have the ear of state governments. Accordingly, far from 'protecting' the environment, their influence in shaping policies to unnecessarily close timber industries to create national parks has done little more that create an illusion of conservation that the majority of voters, residing in the cities, cannot see through.

Those with practical knowledge and experience of managing forests have recognised for generations that the central plank in conserving their unique biodiversity is the capability to effectively deal with the fire threat. It is to be hoped that last summer's huge fires will enable our conservation scientists to learn this simple lesson, but the recent examples cited above don't provide much optimism.

The simple reality is that bushfire outcomes will not improve until state governments take far less notice of strong opinions on forest management emanating from vocal conservation scientists (and eco-activists) who lack practical fire management knowledge and expertise.