Bushfire 'experts' not helping us adapt to climate change

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.