Australian Rural & Regional News asked a couple of questions of Vic, answered below the article. This article relates to the ongoing debate on ARR.News: Open for Debate – Bushfires, Logging, Burns & Forest Management
Vic Jurskis
Professor Ross Bradstock set up what is now NSW’s Bushfire Research Hub after his predecessor, Professor Whelan, sat on the 2004 Council of Australian Governments Bushfire Inquiry. Whelan was against prescribed burning. He said it threatens biodiversity. The COAG report gave us education, emergency response and evacuation instead of sustainable fire management. Its recommendations prevailed over those of the prior Parliamentary Inquiry into the 2003 megafires, when 500 houses were destroyed and four people were killed in Canberra.
The House of Representatives Inquiry had heard from experienced land managers across Australia. It concluded “there has been grossly inadequate hazard reduction burning on public lands for far too long; local knowledge and experience is being ignored by an increasingly top heavy bureaucracy”.
In 2015, Bradstock’s team at Wollongong produced a paper purporting to show that prescribed burning doesn’t work in most of southeastern Australia because of biogeographical differences compared to the southwest. However, their data indicate that there’s not enough burning to make any difference anywhere in the southeast. Their model didn’t even test the effects of the tiny amount of burning. It compared the area of subsequent wildfires against prior fires, whether prescribed or wild. Biogeographical variation in the potential effectiveness of prescribed fire in south‐eastern Australia – Price – 2015 – Journal of Biogeography – Wiley Online Library
Long term data from Western Australian show that prescribed burning of at least ~ 9% of the landscape each year is necessary to have any influence on control of wildfires during extreme conditions. The effects persist for up to six years. These data show that the benefits of burning accrue in bad fire seasons: “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”. Long-term impacts of prescribed burning on regional extent and incidence of wildfires—Evidence from 50 years of active fire management in SW Australian forests – ScienceDirect
In the southeast, a miniscule percentage is burnt, nearly all on a longer cycle and much of it far too hot. After Black Summer 2019/20, Bradstock’s team advised the NSW Bushfire Inquiry. Their new paper Disturbance causes variation in sub-canopy fire weather conditions – ScienceDirect suggests the team understands neither the importance of fuel quantity and arrangement in generating unstoppable fire behaviour during severe weather, nor the difficulty of deliberately igniting fuel in damp, shady and still conditions.
Restoring a naturally open, sunny and airy microclimate, which provides a larger window of opportunity for burning at lower fire danger ratings, would restore ground-layer biodiversity as well as healthy soils and trees. Mild fire at intervals of 3 to 6 years is needed to maintain healthy, safe and diverse eucalypt forests. 129-138_human_fire_maintains_a_balance_of_nature.pdf (bushfirecrc.com)
The Wollongong academics say that “changes in vegetation associated with logging and to a lesser extent, wildfire, increase the risk of fire”. In fact, logging together with fuel management can make it much easier to maintain fire safety, but this is largely irrelevant because logging affects a tiny proportion of the landscape.
Most of our public lands are subject to a Lock It Up and Let It Burn ‘conservation’ paradigm. Megafires, such as the Gospers Mountain holocaust of half a million hectares, started by lightning, will continue to explode from unmanaged wilderness in severe weather, and no amount of fire engines or waterbombers will stop them.
Another new contribution from the Bushfire Research Hub (17) (PDF) The 2019–2020 Australian forest fires are a harbinger of decreased prescribed burning effectiveness under rising extreme conditions (researchgate.net) seems to build on the flawed 2015 paper reporting that burning mostly doesn’t work.
The academics attempted to estimate changes in risk, following increased prescribed burning, of houses and areas of land being burnt by wildfires during extreme weather. They did case studies of four areas, where, according to their modelling, burning does work. Currently only 0.5% of the bush is deliberately burnt each year in three of them and 2.5% in the fourth.
In one area they simulated burning 1% per annum, at five-year intervals, on the edges of settlements. In the other three areas, they simulated burning up to 5% of the available landscape, mostly at ‘tolerable fire intervals’ according to regulations. The minimum allowed interval for prescribed burning in most of the Blue Mountains area, incinerated by the Gospers Mountain fire, is 7 years.
These simulations provide no information on the potential risk of houses and land being burnt under severe conditions if there were effective levels and intervals of prescribed burning in the landscape. Furthermore, the models assume that the effects of wildfires on fuel dynamics are the same as those of well-managed prescribed fires. They ignore rapid fuel accumulation as a result of woody species stimulated to germinate and/or resprout en masse by hot fires.
Real measurements in dry eucalypt forests have shown that fuel levels doubled within 18 months of high intensity fires, compared to pre-fire levels. After massive proliferation of scrub in much of the area burnt by moderate and high intensity fire during Black Summer, fuel loads in the landscape are already at very dangerous levels. We can confidently expect greater disasters in the next severe fire season.
Our first megafire occurred in South Gippsland around 1820 after Aboriginal burning was disrupted by a 1789 smallpox epidemic. In 1851, 5 million hectares of Victoria exploded in the Black Thursday fires. In 1898, South Gippsland was yet again incinerated by the Red Tuesday fires. These fires and others, before our official 1910 baseline for climate change, burnt so much biomass that they produced an unprecedented peak of charcoal deposition in 70,000 years of record.
Charcoal in sediment cores shows that biomass burning declined, against a trend of rising temperatures, after foresters started reintroducing mild fire to the landscape from the mid-twentieth century. But, since academics influenced fire management from the 1970s, charcoal deposition in alpine bogs has reached even higher levels than before. Corroboree frogs are now critically endangered as a result of the fire damage.
In 2003, lightning fires in State Forests and private lands adjoining Kosciuszko National Park were quickly extinguished with little damage. The fires in National Parks went on to cause havoc in Canberra. Prehistory and history, as well as the knowledge and experience of some of our living elders, black, white and brindle, indicate that we can reinstate resilient, healthy and safe landscapes irrespective of climate change. How Australian Aborigines Shaped and Maintained Fire Regimes and the Biota :: Science Publishing Group
Sadly, death and destruction will continue to escalate whilst governments rely on advice from academics and firechiefs and give them increased funding after every disaster. Sustainable fire management would be very much cheaper and better.
Questions from Australian Rural & Regional News
ARR.News: You say: “Real measurements in dry eucalypt forests have shown that fuel levels doubled within 18 months of high intensity fires, compared to pre-fire levels. After massive proliferation of scrub in much of the area burnt by moderate and high intensity fire during Black Summer, fuel loads in the landscape are already at very dangerous levels. We can confidently expect greater disasters in the next severe fire season.” What is your support for this?
Vic Jurskis: Birk and Bridges (1989) found that a wildfire in blackbutt forest promoted rapid understorey development, producing more than double the prefire weight of understorey fuel (up to 0.9 metres above the ground) within 18 months of the fire. Litter accumulation and cycling were altered by the wildfire, indicating that high intensity fires alter ecosystem function (Birk and Bridges 1989).
The photo (above) illustrates the problem. This was my clean and healthy country with a diverse ground layer, managed by gentle burning before Black Summer. But the moderately intense wildfire germinated soil-stored seed from the scrub that developed after the previous wildfire in 1980, before I bought the property and started restoring it. Years of work were wasted and I can’t even walk into the scrub now, let alone clear it.
Birk, E.M. & R.G. Bridges 1989. Recurrent fires and fuel accumulation in even-aged blackbutt (Eucalyptus pilularis) forests. Forest Ecology and Management 29: 59-79
ARR.News: Generally speaking, would you say in the area of bushfire management that there has been a breakdown in open communication between academics and forestry practitioners that has led to inferior outcomes? If so, why do you believe this has this developed and how would you suggest rectifying this?
Vic Jurskis: No. The thrust of my article is that bureaucrats and academics have the ears of government, whilst experienced land managers – farmers, foresters, graziers etc. don’t. The 2004 COAG Inquiry was a whitewash. The NSW ACT and VIC governments boycotted the 2003 Nairn Inquiry. They set us up for Black Saturday and Black Summer. The Royal Commission after Black Summer endorsed the climate cop-out.
Vic Jurskis has written two books published by Connor Court, Firestick Ecology and The Great Koala Scam.
Australian Rural & Regional News welcomes and will seek a response to this article from the Bushfire Research Hub.
