Robert Onfray, 26 March 2025. This article is in response to Robert Onfray’s response misses core scientific realities – logging makes forests more flammable for many decades: David Lindenmayer. The entire series of articles and interchanges is listed below.
This debate is closing. Australian Rural & Regional News intends to ask a few questions of each of the participants with a view to rounding out the debate.

Professor Lindenmayer’s latest response continues to assert the hypothesis that logging increases the severity of bushfires; however, he fails to address the key issues I raised in my original piece and previous rebuttals. Rather than engaging with the complexities of fire dynamics, he relies on statistical modelling that confuses correlation with causation, ignores field-based studies that contradict his claims, and overgeneralises the impact of logging without considering key variables such as fuel management and fire suppression efforts.

The claim that my arguments align solely with industry interests is both inaccurate and misrepresentative of the evidence-based debate required in fire science. Science does not progress by dismissing opposing views merely based on alleged affiliations; it advances through rigorous debate and testing hypotheses against real-world data. If there was a compelling counterargument supported by field evidence, it should be presented. Instead, we see deflection by trying to discredit the source rather than engaging with the argument.

It is claimed that I confuse fire intensity with fire severity and that I fail to understand the difference between empirical studies, modelling, and literature reviews. These assertions are groundless and merely distract from his inability to back up his claims with solid field data.

Firstly, I fully appreciate that fire intensity indicates a fire’s heat energy output, while fire severity relates to its impact on vegetation and soil. However, the critical issue overlooked is that fire severity alone does not determine fire spread or risk. Firefighters and land managers engage with fire intensity and behaviour in real time, not merely through post-fire severity mapping. Professor Lindenmayer misrepresents the true drivers of fire dynamics and the capacity to manage fires effectively by focusing solely on severity.

Secondly, Professor Lindenmayer’s claim that I misunderstand the difference between empirical studies and modelling is ironic, considering his dependence on post-fire mapping and statistical regression instead of direct field studies of fire behaviour. His research lacks real-time measurements of fire behaviour, unlike several peer-reviewed field studies documenting fire behaviour across various forest structures.

A key issue with this reasoning is its reductionist approach—attributing high-severity fires in regrowth forests primarily to logging without fully accounting for other contributing factors. This oversimplifies a complex issue.

It is well understood in fire science that bushfires are driven by a combination of factors, including:

• weather conditions (temperature, wind speed, and humidity);
• fuel loads and structure;
• time since last fire; and
• topography and landscape connectivity.

A proper systems-thinking approach would acknowledge all these variables rather than attributing fire severity to a single factor like logging. Conclusions drawn without isolating these key influences remain speculative rather than definitive.

Professor Lindenmayer presents statistical models based on post-fire mapping and regression analysis to support his hypothesis. However, these models do not establish causation; they merely identify relationships between variables without proving that one factor—logging—directly causes another—increased fire severity.

For example:

• His studies do not include controlled experiments to test whether the same fire conditions would produce different outcomes in logged versus unlogged forests.
• His methodology fails to account for active fuel management, such as prescribed burning and thinning, significantly influencing fire behaviour.
• His reliance on historical datasets lacks direct field measurements of fuel loads, fire intensity, and suppression efforts at the time of ignition.

In contrast, Professor Lindenmayer continues to dismiss field-based studies based on fire behaviour observations rather than retrospective data analysis (e.g., Proctor & McCarthy 2015, Volkova et al. 2017, Burrows et al. 2023), which have demonstrated that thinning and prescribed burns can reduce fire severity, directly contradicting his claims and theoretical conclusions. A broader analysis that considers all available studies, rather than a limited selection, would offer a clearer understanding of whether logging influences fire severity.

A key limitation has been the tendency to group all forms of logging together without acknowledging critical distinctions:

• Clearfelling vs. selective harvesting—Sustainable forestry practices differ significantly from broad-scale clearfelling, yet they are often treated as equivalent.
• Thinned forests vs. long-unburned regrowth— There is no differentiation between forests actively managed for fire risk and those left untouched for extended periods.
• Regrowth caused by fire vs. logging— Much of the young regrowth studied was established after past wildfires rather than logging, yet even-aged stands are frequently assumed to result from logging alone.

This misrepresentation of forestry practices undermines the validity of Professor Lindenmayer’s argument.

Policy decisions based on statistical correlations rather than practical fire suppression experience risk overlooking real-world fire dynamics. Effective bushfire management should rely on established field practices rather than theoretical projections.

As I mentioned in my previous rebuttal and repeated by Australia’s pre-eminent fire management specialist and fire ecologist Phil Cheney, “Firefighters deal with reality, not models.” Policymakers must ensure that fire management decisions are based on practical, tested strategies, not assumptions drawn from contested theoretical work such as selective regression analysis.

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;
David Lindenmayer fails to engage with real-world fire dynamics: Robert Onfray;
Research outputs – Talk about logging but don’t talk about national parks: SETA.

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