This submission is in response to the article Logging does indeed increase fire risks!: David Lindenmayer, by Professor David Lindenmayer, published on ARR.News on 12 February 2025, which in turn responded to Debunking false claims about bushfire risk and native logging in Australia, by Robert Onfray, published on ARR.News on 17 January 2025. The entire series of articles and interchanges is listed below.

Professor David Lindenmayer’s response fails to engage with the key points I raised. The core argument in my piece is that the peer-reviewed studies claiming logging increases fire severity often rely on unknown or poorly defined methodologies, selective data, weak correlations, or literature reviews rather than empirical fire behaviour analysis.

Professor Lindemayer repeats the claim that logging increases bushfire risk without addressing the reality that the most severe wildfires this century have overwhelmingly burned in forests that have never been logged or where harvesting ceased decades ago. This is not a minor oversight—it directly contradicts the premise that logging is a major driver of fire severity.

If logging were the primary cause of severe wildfires, why have millions of hectares of unlogged national parks and conservation areas experienced catastrophic fires in recent decades? This remains unanswered. Professor Lindenmayer dismisses my argument as “illogical,” stating, “This argument is deeply flawed. Logging occurs over thousands of hectares of wood production forest every year.”

However, the data supports my position. Australia has 10.7 million hectares of forests dedicated as state forests, yet only a fraction is available for timber harvesting. In New South Wales, for example, just 60 per cent of state forests—around 1.2 million hectares—are available for logging. Of that, only one per cent is harvested annually, equating to approximately 12,700 hectares per year. Meanwhile, New South Wales has 5.6 million hectares in reserves.

To suggest that merely 0.16 per cent of land harvested each year is a significant factor in fire severity—while overlooking the much larger area of unlogged, fire-prone reserves—represents an extraordinary assertion that contradicts logic and scale. If Professor Lindenmayer has empirical evidence to the contrary, he ought to share it with the public.

During a recent month-long visit to the South Coast of New South Wales and the Snowy Mountains, I saw firsthand the aftermath of devastating fires that destroyed millions of hectares of forests. The common thread in these landscapes was not recent logging but decades of passive land management that allowed dangerous fuel loads to accumulate.

Mr Lindenmayer co-wrote a literature review in 2020 that was promoted as presenting the latest evidence from peer-reviewed scientific literature about bushfires. It states, “Native forest logging increases the severity at which forests burn. This is likely because such operations increase the volume of coarse woody debris, and the density of elevated and vertically oriented live fuels. In addition, by opening up the forest canopy, logging operations probably alter microclimate conditions, causing drying of soils and fuel”. 

However, using qualifiers like “probable” and “likely” indicate a lack of direct empirical evidence, meaning the conclusion remains an untested hypothesis rather than a proven fact.

Nevertheless, I wanted to grasp the basis for these claims, so I reached out to one of the co-authors of the literature review. I asked fundamental scientific questions: Where was the data collected? What was the experimental design? How were the variables controlled? How was fire history considered? The response clarified that the review did not present new field data but rather synthesised findings from previous studies. The author recognised that different reviewers might assess the same papers and arrive at different conclusions. 

That is precisely what experienced fire scientists have done through field-based data like Peter Attiwell, Phil Cheney, Kevin Tolhurst, Neil Burrows and Greg McCarthy— who consistently show that fuel accumulation, fire weather, and topography are the dominant drivers of severe bushfires, not past logging activity.

This highlights a crucial distinction: a literature review summarises existing work; it does not generate new empirical evidence. 

A perfect test for Professor Lindenmayer’s hypothesis would be the jarrah forests of southwest Western Australia, where logging has recently ceased. If his claim is correct, we should expect a significant decline in severe bushfires in these forests. However, as any scientist would acknowledge, fire severity is influenced by multiple factors—including fuel management—so isolating the impact of logging requires thorough, field-based analysis. This cannot be achieved through literature reviews alone. 

If logging is indeed a key factor in driving fire severity, then Mr Lindenmayer should be able to provide clear, direct answers to these questions:

• What empirical evidence demonstrates that annual harvesting of around one per cent of Australia’s public forests leads to severe wildfires?
• Why rely on literature reviews instead of primary fire behaviour research?
• Why does he continually ignore the papers I referenced, plus others, such as Proctor and McCarthy’s excellent study on thinning forests when he presents his case?
• Why cite studies based on forest types different from Australia’s unique eucalypt forests to support claims about fire severity?
• What empirical data (not modelling) supports Professor Lindenmayer’s statement: “that forest when it is regenerated, remains in a more flammable state for up to 70 years”?

These are fair and reasonable questions that deserve clear, evidence-based answers. 

However, instead of addressing the concerns, Mr Lindenmayer continues to claim that logging supposedly increases the risk of bushfires, despite ample evidence indicating that land management practices—especially fuel accumulation in forests that haven’t burned for a long time—are far more significant.

This discussion must be based on evidence, rather than assumptions. The emphasis should be on practical solutions—active land management, strategic fuel reduction, and fire mitigation strategies driven by empirical research, not merely theoretical models and selective literature reviews.

Story series (in order of publication): 
Debunking false claims about bushfire risk and native logging in Australia; 
Logging does indeed increase fire risks!: David Lindenmayer; 
An alternative perspective to David Lindenmayer: South East Timber Association; 
Logging and bushfire risk: Robert Onfray responds to David Lindenmayer;
Bushfire risk and native forest logging: David Lindenmayer responds to South East Timber Association;
Fire severity is always greater in areas that have been logged: David Lindenmayer responds to Robert Onfray;
David Lindenmayer ignores core points and key questions: Robert Onfray’s further response;
Megafires thrive on high per hectare fine fuel loads across the forest landscape, regardless of land tenure: SETA’s further response to David Lindenmayer;
Robert Onfray’s response misses core scientific realities – logging makes forests more flammable for many decades: David Lindenmayer;
SETA’s claims ignore established science and economic realities: David Lindenmayer

This debate is drawing to a close. Australian Rural & Regional News intends to ask a few questions of each of the participants with a view to rounding out the debate.