Questionable environmental science and ill-informed eco-activism now endangering Australia's forests

From a forestry perspective, an expectation that investing in drones and AI technology can dramatically improve bushfire outcomes reflects a limited understanding of the complexities of bushfire control. The advocacy of AI technology to more quickly detect bushfires assumes that already quick detection of fires and rapid response can be significantly improved upon. Even if true, while slightly quicker fire detection may improve control of bushfires that can be quickly accessed in well-roaded plantations or near towns; it would make little difference to the remote area fires that are more likely to develop the size and momentum to cause catastrophic environmental outcomes.

In these remote area fires, the limiting factors that generally determine successful fire control are the availability of ground-based fire-fighting resources and the speed at which they can reach the fire-ground. This is dependent on the nature of the topography and the highly variable quality and maintenance of the road and track network which, in this era of increasing national park declarations, frequently includes closed-off, over-grown, or unusable tracks due to unmaintained drainage infrastructure, such as log bridges. Given that overcoming such constraints is often measured in multiple hours, using AI technology to detect a bushfire a minute or two earlier than conventional detection methods, would make little overall difference to fire response and control outcomes.

The advocacy of drones is perplexing. While they could be useful in an observational role, the prospect of drones carrying water to extinguish going bushfires is fanciful given that not even helicopter or fixed wing water bombers dropping far larger payloads are generally capable of doing much more than temporarily halting the spread of small remote forest fires, or holding parts of the perimeter of a larger fire. The main benefit of aerial water bombing is in saving houses and properties when bushfires adjoin towns or suburbs. They can assist remote area fire suppression, but are not a panacea for conventional ground-based fire control strategies.

The already huge annual expenditure on aerial water bombing capability is often cited as a reason for the decline in funding for off-season preventative measures such as prescribed burning. It has been noted elsewhere that despite a dramatic expansion of aerial fire-fighting capability over the past 20 years, the incidence and extent of hot summer bushfires has significantly increased, rather than declined as had been envisaged.

It has been said that criticising fuel reduction burning for not stopping bushfires is akin to criticising seat belts because people still die in car accidents. The aim of fuel reduction is to reduce fire intensity and thereby improve the capability for fire control, which can then result in improved outcomes for human life and property, as well as the environment, if fires can be contained and extinguished sooner rather than later.

The real problem with fuel reduction burning is that not enough of it is being done. This has been a recurring theme in the dozens of public inquiries arising from the aftermath of major bushfire disasters. Small isolated fuel reduced patches or narrow strips are easily by-passed or overwhelmed by large intense bushfires, whereas large, contiguous blocks of reduced fuels can and often do stop or significantly slow large fires under most circumstances, thereby improving the chances for control. There were many examples of this during the 2019-20 'Black Summer' bushfires.

Recently it was reported that record numbers of native species were added to the national threatened species list last year. Apparently over the last two years, 223 threatened species and eight ecological communities have been added to the threatened species list. Of these, 130 were bushfire-affected species and eight were bushfire-affected ecological communities, largely arising from the 2019-20 bushfires. It is highly likely that this outcome would have been substantially mitigated if we were doing sufficient broadscale fuel reduction burning to significantly ameliorate the extent of hot summer bushfires.

Given that unnaturally severe bushfire ranks with introduced feral animals and weeds as the greatest threats to Australian forest ecology, and that prescribed burning is a major tool employed to mitigate it, there are potentially very dangerous consequences attached to calls by environmental scientists and eco-activists that it be sidelined in favor of theoretical or unproven fire management approaches. Forest fire management is best left to the specialist field practitioners and fire scientists with genuine experience, understanding and insight into what will or won't work.