Bushfires and logging: Crusading ecologists eroding public trust in science

Unfortunately, the timing of the publication and promotion of the three papers smacks of an orchestrated campaign by some academics to influence a likely key driver of future public policy on forests and bushfires. This perception is somewhat strengthened by the determination of the papers’ various authors to use the media to misrepresent themselves as experts on bushfire (even though only one is); and to manufacture a sense of widespread scientific consensus (when clearly there is not).

For example, an op-ed in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald by Professor Jamie Kirkpatrick and five other academics on 7 June, asserted that: “The clear and overwhelming evidence is that logging makes forests more flammable. These are the findings of four peer-reviewed, published scientific studies from four institutions in six years, and of multiple scientific reviews”.

Days later, a letter written by the same group (with the exception of Professor Kirkpatrick), published in Hobart’s The Mercury on 11 June, started with:“We are the authors of multiple peer-reviewed studies on bushfire science, and the clear and overwhelming evidence is that logging makes forests more flammable”.

Arguably of greater concern is the determination of these ecologists to dismiss or denigrate alternative scientific research by forest scientists that gives a different finding. Professor Kirkpatrick et al in The Age on June 7^th asserted that:

The logging industry funded a contradictory piece on fire behaviour in 2014, using members of a group called the Institute of Foresters of Australia. The paper, led by Peter Attiwill with co-authors employed by the logging industry, was titled, Timber harvesting does not increase fire risks and severity in wet forests of southern Australia. Immediately, a peer-reviewed paper called Errors by Attiwill (Bradstock and Price, 2014) responded that Attiwill had “erroneously reported our results” and pointed out other key flaws……

In fact, Peter Attiwill, a forest scientist who had been a Professor of Botany at the University of Melbourne, was the lead author of a peer reviewed scientific paper (rather than just a ‘contradictory piece’), that was neither ‘funded by the logging industry’, nor co-authored by ‘logging industry’ employees.

Attiwill’s co-authors included a former head of the CSIRO’s former Bushfire Research Unit, and five employees of state government land management agencies in Western Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, including two who are amongst the nation’s foremost bushfire researchers. Further to this, the so-called ‘group called the Institute of Foresters of Australia’ is in fact the professional association for the nation’s forest scientists, which was established in 1935.

Unlike the three paper’s authored primarily by ecologists, Attiwill et al, took account of the area and spatial arrangement of post-harvesting regrowth in the context of the broader forested landscape, and concluded that regrowth did not significantly increase fire risk. One aspect of the Attiwill et al paper was subsequently criticised by bushfire scientists, Bradstock and Price, for citing evidence from one of their papers which suggested that their work had insufficient data to conclude anything about wet forests. Attiwill et al had subsequently responded to Bradstock and Price in the scientific literature to correct their concern, which was about availability of their data rather than their conclusions.

One wonders what is becoming of science when a group of researchers from one scientific discipline uses ad hominem attacks to besmirch what they perceive as a competing scientific discipline. This, plus what appears to be rushed publication of flawed or context-lacking scientific papers, and especially their strategically sensationalised media promotion by the authors, is suggestive of a departure from the professional ethos of academia.

We have come to expect such behaviour in campaigns run by mainstream environmental activist groups. However, it is surely unbecoming behaviour for credible scientists because it dumbs-down complex issues to create headlines that will be every bit as divisive, and ultimately, unhelpful in informing sensible public policy. Of considerable concern is that it also diminishes the respect which the community currently affords to scientists and their academic institutions.