Bushfire 'experts' not helping us adapt to climate change

The Bushfires Royal Commission totally failed to address the absence of sustainable land management which led to Black Summer. It didn't even properly fulfil its requirement to consider the outcomes of previous Inquiries, stopping short at the 2004 COAG Report by two academics and a fire chief. COAG effectively swept under the carpet A Nation Charred, the report of the House of Reps Inquiry into the 2003 disasters, which heard from experienced land and fire managers across Australia.

Now we've got another expert report from academics at Griffith University and Australian National University, led by Professor Brendan Mackey. He's the Director of the "Griffith Climate Action Beacon". Having seen some of his scientific papers, I wondered why he'd be the lead author of a paper about bushfires, so I checked his "bio" on the university web site. Mackey is a Bachelor of Applied Science, University of Canberra, and PhD in ecology ANU. Apparently he's an expert in climate adaptation, but there is no indication of any relevant experience in land and fire management.

One of Mackey's colleagues on the Bushfire Recovery Project is Professor David Lindenmayer from ANU. Over a 30 year career as a PhD, Lindenmayer has published an outstanding 1300 scientific articles and books – that's nearly one a week. His bio on the BushfireFacts website lists 3 Fellowships, 15 prestigious awards and an AO, but doesn't mention any experience relevant to bushfires.

On Thursday, Professor Mackey was spruiking an "expert review", hot off the press, of "51 peer-reviewed scientific papers" about bushfire. I freely admit that I haven't bothered to read the expert review, because the key findings released to the media are not right. To be effective, peer review must be critical. This rarely happens when the peers have similar experiences, ideas and institutions as the authors whose work they review. In these circumstances, expert reviews tend to suffer from double confirmation bias.

Professor Mackey told a reporter that climate change was the key factor contributing to the severity of recent bushfires because we had one of the worst droughts in our history. In fact, our written history goes back only 230 years but we've had equally bad or worse droughts without holocaust.

During the Settlement Drought in the early 1790s, Aboriginal fires were burning 24/7/365.

There were many occasions of extreme fire weather including 3 consecutive days of searing northwesterly gales and temperatures in the 40s which saw masses of flying foxes and lorikeets dropping dead at Parramatta. When fires reached the European settlements they were able to be contained using hand tools and green branches, because fuels were light and discontinuous. The landscape was healthy and safe.

Aborigines managed fire through 40,000 years of climate change in our country "of droughts and flooding rains". They didn't have boots or overalls, let alone advice from experts on climate adaptation. Megafires are caused by stupidity – fighting fire instead of using it.

According to Mackey's expert academics, mild burning can't prevent natural disasters such as Black summer. But there was nothing natural about it. A 70,000 year record from sediment cores shows an outstanding increase in charcoal deposition, that is, biomass burning, when Europeans arrived. After foresters re-introduced mild fire in the landscape from the mid-twentieth century, charcoal deposition declined against a trend of rising temperatures.

Sixty years of empirical data from multiple use forests in southwestern Australia show, as managers know from experience, that prescribed burning helps to reduce the incidence and extent of wildfires. Furthermore, the academics and modellers have the story exactly back to front. Burning makes little difference in average fire seasons. It main effect is to prevent the development of megafires during severe fire seasons when extreme weather would otherwise drive the development of unstoppable firestorms and long-distance ember showers.

In the southwest, "Our results show prescribed burning to be more effective in reducing the upper values of the annual area burnt by unplanned fire than the median".

In the southeast, academics make models supposedly showing that burning doesn't work because the bush is different.

The real difference is that we don't burn enough anywhere in the southeast anymore to make any difference. Experience in WA clearly shows that there is a minimum threshold of 8-10% of the landscape which must be treated each year to reduce the risk of wildfires. Effects of treatment persist up to 6 years. Burning is effective where half the landscape has had recent maintenance.

Prescribed burning is not intended to create firebreaks. It can create a safer landscape where fire control activities can be effective most of the time and prevent the development of broad fire fronts which inevitably explode from the wilderness under extreme conditions. The idea that we can effectively protect communities from such scenarios by fuel reduced zones around their edges is stupid and dangerous. Many lives have been lost. We should have well and truly learnt our lessons before Black Summer.

Ecologists should also realise that fire risk is part of a big picture. Maintenance by mild fire is essential to natural nutrient cycling and healthy forests. Our neglected forests are suffering chronic decline and pestilence even when they're not being incinerated. Scrub booms as trees decline, and 3D continuous fuels feed towering infernos during extreme weather.

But the supposed fire experts tell us that opening the canopy by timber harvesting increases sunshine, wind and fire risk. Here again, the Professors have it back to front. Healthy forests are sunny and airy and easy to burn gently in mild conditions. The dense scrubs created by our Lock it up and let it burn conservation ethic are damp and still and almost impossible to burn under mild conditions. That's why they explode when they are inevitably ignited under extreme conditions during droughts.

The professors also say that harvesting trees increases fire risk by putting slash on the ground and promoting sapling growth. However, residues can be burnt to reduce immediate risk and promote growth of saplings so they quickly achieve canopy closure and prevent the accumulation of fuel in understoreys. After canopy closure, litterfall can be safely burnt to recycle nutrients and maintain healthy growth and carbon sequestration. In any case a miniscule proportion of the landscape is affected at any time.

Having argued that harvesting increases fire risk, Mackey stated that extreme fires burnt everywhere, irrespective of land use. He got that right, because irrespective of tenure, the rules and regulations governing forest management are based on the wilderness mentality pervading our academic institutions and bureaucracies. Our prehistory and history demonstrate beyond doubt that megafires are a consequence of our fatally flawed conservation paradigm.

P.S. Somebody should tell the professors that back-burning is a firefighting technique, not a mitigation strategy.