Isn't it sad to see more of our beautiful natural habitat going up in smoke, it seems that due to mismanagement, every year somewhere in Australia our wildlife have to endure the destruction of their habitat and also endangering our own lives, there must be a way to avoid these frightening disasters. I feel sorry for both the people, who love living in such beautiful places, and our beautiful native animals and trees that are caught in such horrible situations. Our under funded emergency services really need more resources on the ground and in the air in order to spot and prevent disasters like these.
Do you think the hard decisions on human population reduction, human population location, massive increases in habitat extension & protection, personal responsibility education, fire fighting personnel & technology, housing development etc will ever be made, doublebar?
I think its sad too. Its such a waste. I guess we can get better at stopping grass fires to save farms, etc but unfortunately nothing is going to stop a roaring blaze in dense bushland on a hot windy day. Some people advocate cutting down trees merely on the chance that one day they might contribute to the spread of a fire. I would rather have the trees.
The logical extension of removing trees to stop bushfires is to concrete the country. I wonder sometimes if that strategy is well underway.
It's certainly sad to see the destruction of any habitats, whether it's for humans or animals. But how would you do it better?
Australia burns extremely well, and it always has done. Fire is not just inevitable it’s a natural part of our landscape. Indeed some native flora relies on fire cycles to re-seed and regenerate. Bizarrely, there are even insects that specifically use fire-grounds in their breeding cycles. It’s even arguable that deliberately restricting the cycle of fires is in some way “unnatural” and leads to higher fuel loads and different balances of species. And of course the potential for a hotter and bigger fire next year. It’s a highly complex situation with no clear answer, alas.
It’s easy to blame governments or “mismanagement” - and I’m sure we all do that at times - but whose mismanagement are you complaining about and what would you do instead? Clearly, there’s a place for fast response crews to get quickly by air to spots such as lightning strikes and extinguish fires while they’re small. But that has its own dangers, and if the crews are unlucky they can get trapped and killed (as happened not long ago in the USA to just such a crew). Unfortunately, there’s no obvious perfect answer, no matter how much money you throw at it. And there's a lot of people around the world working on trying to improve solutions.
I live in the bush. We lost over 50 houses just down the road from our house only a year ago. But I feel that my best chance of having an effect is to look after my local areas as best I can. So I look after my own property properly - both by doing regular maintenance to reduce fire risk, and by having a range of fire fighting resources and equipment that’s independent of public services (i.e some water reserves and independently powered fire-fighting equipment). Most people accept the wisdom of doing proper maintenance on a boat and not putting to sea without lifejackets, flares, radio, life raft, etc. Yet the level of preparedness to protect homes is abysmally low. I know, because I’m one of the people who put on those yellow suits and get out there and put the bushfires out. It's astonishing how many people's response is to clear off and expect somebody else to fix a problem which they've done little or nothing to protect against. Which usually means another local person in a Volunteer Bushfire Brigade outfit attempting to save a poorly maintained property. It's not just all about government, there's a lot that could be done if more people would accept a higher degree of personal responsibility.
I don’t want to see habitats destroyed - with my own habitat at the head of the list, closely followed by all the nesting spots, burrows and mini homes on our block. But I don’t expect others to fix it.
And we’re not especially poorly funded either. We have two fire trucks in our Brigade (which I get to drive - and don’t let anybody tell you that’s not fun…) and there are similarly equipped brigades scattered all round the area. We can call on heli-tankers and fixed wing water bombers, who do a wonderful job, especially when access on the ground is difficult and dangerous - which it often is. But neither the vehicles nor the aerial support can be at a fire instantly. It takes a fair time from the initial call out to arrival at a fire - by which time it can be well under way. The great majority we get out quickly, and you never hear about them. But that’s simply not possible all the time.
If you think we’re mismanaging it, then how about joining a brigade and showing us how to do it better? You might be surprised at how complex it can be. Oh, and you might enjoy being part of the solution too. :-)
I have great respect for the Rural Fire Service, they do a great job and it's a pity they get criticised for the few times a fire manages to get away. Sometimes I feel they get a bit over enthusiastic with the back burns but it's easy to be an armchair critic.
A very balanced reply Greg. Well said.
Believe me, it’s not just “armchair experts” , that can be critical of the services involved. There’s also a great deal of robust discussion within the ranks of the people who actually have to make the hard decisions and do the work. And many different valid points of view.
One of the most contentious issues is controlled ‘cool’ burning. Do you do it or not? And if so, how much, where and when?
There is no doubt that the Australian landscape, including both flora and fauna, has been shaped by fire over millennia. That’s beyond question. What is impossible to answer in any simple or consistent way is how to respond under modern conditions. For instance, do we just let “nature take its course” and allow wildfires that start by lightning strikes to burn unchecked through millions of acres, and go through a cycle of cleaning and regeneration? Or do we deliberately try and manage fuel loads and risk levels, and try and find some kind of workable balance?
I’ve had ample opportunity to observe at first hand how devastating fires are, yet how well the bush responds to a fresh start. I could post numerous photos of fresh colourful scenes of bushland absolutely thriving after fire has swept away decades of accumulated litter. But the vibrancy of regenerated bushland is not much consolation to all the insects that perished, the small mammals, and all the other creatures that see the smaller ones as food. Although the magpies that often follow fires and enjoy a free barbecue of grasshopper etc. might vote otherwise.
Even on our own small piece of land, the situation is no less complex. We have two pairs of galahs that regularly use the nesting holes in some of our old trees, two regular pairs of “28” parrots, and numerous other birds that both nest and/or forage here, including a fairly large tribe of magpies. Plus bandicoots, lizards from the tiny varieties up to big monitors, possums, countless thousands of insects, etc. etc. It would take years to catalogue everything and pages to list them.
And of course there’s us. It’s our habitat too. I make no apology for seeking to defend my own habitat, exactly as every other creature does. It’s a battleground out there and we’re all jostling for space and dominance, right down to the smallest ant.
So we burn off small sections. A practice known as checkerboard burning. The size of the notional board may vary hugely, but in our case it’s very small - measured in fractions of an acre. The idea is to keep the accumulated fuel down to levels that would not sustain such an intense fire. Intense burns do a lot more damage than cooler burns and take longer to regenerate. In any given year only a small section of our block (if any) will be burned off, allowing for a continuation of the overall balance of growth, foraging sources, etc.
This sounds OK in theory, but does it work? Well, we’ve been here for nearly thirty years and our block is teeming with wildlife. So I’d say yes. Our nesting spots have been preserved, and when you burn small areas slowly many creatures do get a chance to escape the fire-front. The burnt sections are soon re-occupied.
As I said above, it’s highly complex and there will never be a solution that everybody (and every creature) involved will agree wholeheartedly with. But if anybody here feels that they can contribute to a fairer and more workable solution then I do urge you to join a local brigade, do some work, find out more about the problems we face, and then let your voice be heard. We have men and women of all ages who contribute either on the fire-ground or behind the scenes. Criticising from the outside is unlikely to achieve anything. But you might just be able to help save some habitats with a hose in your hands.
Extremely well put, Chris. There's so much we still need to learn.
I'm particularly interested in your checkerboard burning approach to managing fire risk & natural habitats on your property. This seems to be the same sort of approach used by indigenous Australians for many years & from what I've learned results in a richer biodiversity than relying on lightning strikes. I'm not sure how I would manage this on my 17.5 hectares where in some places tree & shrub litter is increasing. How do you actually achieve this on your patch?
With our national penchant for an ever-increasing population with its attendant & irresponsible no limits approach to life it seems to me that there will be an ever increasing number of bushfires. This is exacerbated by climate change producing drier fuel loads further exacerbated by the increasing number of nature-deprived people who want to live close to nature but don't want to accept the risks or responsibilities involved. It seems to me big decision makers are yet to understand or come to terms with some of these broader issues. Witness the ridiculous decision of state & local government in SA to agree to a tripling of the population of Mt Barker which is in a bushfire prone area, not to mention the heavy climate change, oops, variablity chain that's dragged at federal level.
A couple of thoughts & questions, Chris:
In SA there was a short & inconclusive debate about the value of "controlled" burns in areas where the burned areas are almost immediately colonised by Golden Wattle Acacia pycnantha, a quite flammable small tree. Is there a need for controlled burns to be more carefully thought about & executed in a more sophisticated way?
Wide firebreaks are sometimes bulldozed around areas of natural bushland in an apparent effort to prevent bushfires or make them more easily controlled. Yet we know that soil disturbance is a wonderful stimulant for invasion by annual feral weeds which provide a high fuel load in summer. Is there a need to rethink the bulldozer strategy?
Many bushfires start on roadsides where dry annual weeds with their heavy fuel loads are prevelant. Is there a need for government authorities & individual landowners to be assiduous in their managment of roadside vegetation to reduce the fire risk there?
Encouragement of native grasses would seem to be a useful strategy since they retain a green tinge in summer, especially after rain, & provide a lower fuel load.
Protection of native wildlife & habitats is a big issue in all this. Do we need to set aside & develop larger areas of habitat so that wildlife has areas to which it can escape & from which it can repopulate burned areas?
Our society places a high value on the right to know so summer TV news broadcasts are replete with footage of bushfires. However, a different perspective might be that the TV channels are colluding with arsonists by displaying the results of their efforts thus meeting their needs to be recognised & to feel that they have power. Is there a need to examine our right to know & balance this with the need to avoid rewarding arsonists?
There is so much variability in the Australian landscape I think it is dangorous to make too many generalisations. In the blue mountains and other high rainfall areas the fuel load builds up until it is inevitable there will eventually be a fire, especially considering the high human populations with the tendency for firebugs. When you go to lower rainfall areas the fuel load is much slower to build up, I live just west of the Blue mountains but the conditions are quite different. Further west again on the plains grass fires are the big risk.
Islandisation is also a big concern, where natural areas are discontinuous, fires can have a much more devestating impact for flora and fauna.
I'd totally agree with you there Greg. And it's why policy is so hard to make. The notionally "best" management or response strategies can vary not just from State to State but from areas only a few kilometres or even metres apart. For instance, the fires we get in coastal sandy country here are completely different from the rocky and thickly treed conditions we experience in the Hills. Us hills lads who get called to help down there tend to get bogged the minute we hit sand too! In the West we get some reasonably hairy fires but mostly just not in the league of fires that you can get in the Blue Mountains and some of the high rainfall areas in Victoria. As you say, generalisations are dangerous and not helpful.
And the weather conditions are probably the biggest factor of all. We lost 57 homes here last January in a fire that came within a couple of hundred metres of my own house. A power pole fell over and lit up some grass. We were there in a few minutes of getting the call-out. I'm talking in the 10-15 minute range to get crews out of their homes, down to the station, suited up, rolling out the trucks and arriving at the fire ground. Other brigades from nearby areas kept arriving in a steady trickle. Normally we would have got the whole thing wrapped up in less than an hour. But it was a 40+ degree day and there was a wind. And there was a dry creek line that had access problems and served rather like a wick. So it went off like a rocket and was just expanding faster than we could put it out and faster than the backup crews could arrive. No plan and no amount of money can cover all situations.
Woko,
Checkerboard burning.
The idea is simple. Don’t burn the whole lot at once. Break it into small chunks, like a checkerboard, and don’t burn adjacent chunks at the same time. Spread it around so that only a small percentage is freshly fire affected at any given time. How big your chunks are will depend on whether you’re talking about a National Park size or a private property.
In my case the biggest section is not much more than half an acre and the smallest not much more than 10 x 10 metres. But it’s up to you. Provided you leave a good percentage alone for habitat and foraging purposes in any given year the birds shouldn’t have a problem. Ours certainly don't. The flora will mostly flourish (I’m not a botanist so I can’t quote any exceptions or things to watch out for) and the wildlife too. We have a long list of birds and other creatures that pass through or live on the block, and a wide range of flora including a few varieties of native orchid. No problems with any of them either.
How often you return to a spot that you’ve burned before and do it again is up to you. Seven to ten years is often recommended here. But I’m sure opinions vary. As Greg points out, so do local conditions. Doing it more frequently probably wouldn’t be necessary or good, but you can vary your practices to suit each location. Of course you don’t really need to do every part at all. You can leave a few selected areas completely untouched (I have). They will be protected to some degree, or at least made more manageable, by the cleaner areas around them. It really depends on the fuel loads and types, and the energies and preferences of the owner.
From a fire safety perspective, the idea is to keep the understory clean enough not to sustain crown fires. The TV likes to show flames leaping high in the air and paint pictures of unstoppable fireballs racing through the treetops and jumping kilometers ahead. That can most certainly happen but often it doesn’t. If there’s not enough fuel below the trees it doesn’t provide the heat necessary to sustain the crown fires. Look at the photos after any major fire (and I’ve study a great many of them) and you’ll often see burned or burning houses with bizarrely intact trees right next to them or scattered around the neighbourhood. Usually that’s because the houses are often (in fact usually, according to research) ignited by ember attacks from denser burning areas. And the trees did not have enough fuel immediately around them to make it inevitable that they’d burn.
So if you can keep your property fuel levels down, if it does suffer a bushfire it will be much easier to put out and your chances of successfully defending your own home will greatly increase. And It should also greatly reduce the possibility of a major destruction of habitats.
I aim for cool burns. In other words slow running ground fires that don’t go too high up the trees. There are only two times of the year you can do it - autumn and spring. I avoid spring because of the young life of all types that is around at that time. Don’t go too cool though or you’ll end up with ratty looking half burned undergrowth that will still be a fire hazard.
Then you just follow basic procedure. Don’t burn if it’s windy. But if there is some breeze burn into it not with it. Burn downhill never uphill. Don’t light up more than you can control and don’t do it on your own. Have adequate help and equipment. Tell your neighbours. Get a permit if you need one (depend on the timing). The time of day can effect the heat of the fire too of course. Don’t leave the fire ground until you’ve throughly blacked it out around the edges. That means extinguishing it properly with water, not just hoping it’s gone out. Bush can smoulder for days. For weeks after a big bushfire.
What will it kill? I won’t lie to you, not everything will survive. The birds will move out of the way of course. So will bandicoots and small creatures generally. Anything that can hop crawl, wriggle or fly faster than the speed of your fire-front will generally do so. I’ve seen frogs hop across firebreaks and cockroaches scuttling across too. But if you’re a fan of spiders (and I confess that I do rather like them) then you may have a few premature deaths on your conscience. Alas, poor Incy-Wincy I knew him well Horatio… But I’ve never yet found an identifiable corpse of any type or size after our own modest burns.
Below is a corner of our block that we burned off not long before the photo. You can see the grass trees reshooting and the magpies already patrolling through. The second photo shows the same area taken about 50 meters back from the burnt section, taken on the same day. The burned part is the woods pretty much across the whole back of the picture, to the right of the track as it sweeps away to the left out of sight. You wouldn’t know from that picture that there’d had been a fire there as it didn't wipe out the top storey.
The third picture was taken at the top of the hill in a small strip that was burned on June 30th 2010. The last photo was taken in the same patch a little over four months later, showing vigorous regrowth of the original native bush plants. It might sound like I’m some kind of pyromaniac constantly arcing up my own property but in fact in adds up to maybe a single morning in a whole year, and most years nothing at all. The birds are fine with it. The magpies - known as being fire followers - actually seem to rather like it. Mostly, the only way that you can tell that we ever burn here at all is that the bush subtly doesn’t look as much of a fire trap waiting to to happen that some local properties do. I’d have no hesitation in defending it, on my own if necessary, if a fire did come through, because I know exactly what the fuel loads are and have a pretty fair idea how the fire would behave.
I don't do this lightly, because we have a very big range of creatures on our block and I care for them all. But the fact that they all continue to thrive here seems to support the strategy.
But let’s hope I never have to test the theories!
That makes a lot of sense, Chris. And thanks for the information & great photos.
The question of burn frequency is an intriguing one. There's a debate in SA about whether fires that are too frequent will severely alter the structure of the bush because many plants don't become sufficiently mature to produce viable seed.
One thing that strikes me about your comments & those of Greg is that we need to become a lot more sophisticated in the ways, plural, that we manage our bushlands.