Originally Posted by
Sunfish
As for hazard burning, once it’s been done once and properly, it should be relatively simple to do a cool burn every few years. If we don’t do that, then it’s catastrophic fires every 20+ years.
The whole greeny argument about not burning and trying to put fires out in wilderness areas is just totally counterproductive. From my front gate I can see the millions of grey dead trees on our nearest mountains - victims of the “no burn” policy right up until the bad fires we had around 2012. They produced “full thickness burns” in that forest that will take hundreds of years to recover. Burn early and often for the sake of the forest.
Hi Sunny,
You are mostly on the money, but the policy of the Greens is not counterproductive at all in my opinion:
https://greens.org.au/nsw/policies/b...isk-management
Now, I have never voted Greens, but I think their policy linked above is pretty much on the money - and for what it’s worth is one of the few areas I agree with them. It would cost more than current practice, which the current government would be wholly against.
The Greens are in fact in favour of control burning, but not just a blatant “light a match everywhere every 5 years” which was your suggestion. They want to put some science to it. Some areas benefit from regular burns, and others don’t. Some species of vegetation benefit from regular burns, and some don’t. Some areas pose a risk to society, others don’t. If there were sufficient resources, that approach might work, but it might not be economically viable according to some. But don’t let me paraphrase it, read it - unless your finger would catch fire if you pressed on the link. Mine didn’t.
They even suggest looking at the past practice of indigenous Australians, which is exactly what you suggested earlier.
There has also been a problem in recent years that planned control burning could not go ahead because it became too dangerous in the conditions, and indeed many control burns have gone out of control because of these conditions. I don’t think it’s the greenies supposedly preventing control burns that have put us in the fire conditions we have experienced over the past several years - I would be more inclined to point the finger at lack of funding of the incumbent governments.
The various state agencies in charge of control burning have limited resources and limited windows of opportunity. They would do more if better funded.
The funding for properly maintaining our public lands, forests and rivers by Australian governments over history has been, quite frankly, appalling, and it is not improving. We pay for it in the long run, but it just doesn’t show up in the annual budget, so it is invisible to the economists.
And when voters find themselves in “Vote for the Economy” election campaigns, who can blame them?
We supposedly model our economy on our sister nations such as the UK, USA and Canada, but when you travel to these countries you see that they try to look after their lands, and we don’t.
I’m getting a little distracted here but I’m making a point - looking after the forests requires money, and our Government chooses not to spend it. Maybe we don’t have enough money, unless of course it’s a railway track for an Indian coal mine, then oh suddenly here’s a billion dollars we happen to have lying around.
But that coal mine will support the economy. Control burning the forest that Sunny sees from his yard won’t. Until disaster strikes.
I pay a lot of tax. I would certainly support diverting some of my tax revenue from social welfare to our lands, forests and rivers, but I can’t find a single political party in Australia who agrees with that. I am an army of one.
So, don’t blame the greenies. Blame the current and recent governments that have been in charge of the resources allocated to control burning. But as I alluded to earlier, it’s not their fault, we voted for them. For the Economy. They are acting out a mandate of the majority of Australians, apparently.