Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Bushfires

Litigation Over Canberra Fires, And

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The Coronial Inquiry into the 2003 Canberra bushfires ended with an application for disqualification of Coroner Doogan. A decision from the Supreme Court of the ACT is expected some time soon.

Last month, perhaps in frustration with the ACT Government’s perceived interference with the Coronial inquiry, sixty-two victims of the January 2003 bushfires brought a class action against the ACT, NSW and Commonwealth Goverments for damages, accusing the governments of negligence.

A summary of this action, written by the ACT government solicitor, can be found here, Download file .

Today I was sent information about a new website for volunteer fire fighters,
http://www.volunteerfirefighters.org.au/ .

There are several other websites, borne of frustration with government’s approach to controlled burning and hazard reduction including,
http://www.bushfires.net/ .

I am keen to collect links to bushfire sites. I know there is a site maintained by retired WA foresters, but can’t find a link to it through google or on my computer.

UPDATE 4TH AUGUST
This WA bushfire site just brought to my attention: http://www.bushfirefront.com.au/

Fire, Folly & Dead Canaries

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In National Parks, Reserves, and on private property in south-western Australia, grasstrees are under termite attack, rotting, breaking off, and toppling over, due to vast accumulation of thatch. The grasstree in this photograph, with heavy thatch removed by hand to show the decay underneath, is typical of thousands.

View image of grasstree rotting under long fire exclusion in Yalgorup National Park, Western Australia (38kbs).

Had grasstrees been covered by heavy thatch when Europeans first arrived, there would have been no reason to call them ‘blackboys’, since the black stems would have been largely hidden. Only rarely would they have produced a flower stalk, usually weak and twisted, quite unlike a spear. More likely popular names with British settlers would have been ‘greybeards’, or ‘haystack trees’. Early sketches and paintings consistently show them, quite clearly, as recently burnt, with black stems, little thatch, and a prominent flower stalk, like a spear.

As a rule of thumb, a grasstree thatch fire lasts as long in minutes as it has been unburnt in years. A three year old thatch will flare for only a few minutes, doing little damage to the green crown. A thirty year old thatch will burn for half an hour or more, reaching an incandescent thousand degrees Celsius.

Such fierce thatch fires often kill the grasstree immediately, because the protective mantle of old leaf bases is rotted away. Where dead eucalypt leaves, or casuarina needles have formed a ‘birds nest’ in the green top, the rot is exacerbated, the green top is reduced in size and vigour, and the eventual fire may completely burn the green top. If the grasstree survives the immediate fire effect, it is forced to live on starch reserves until a new top can grow. Complete replacement of the top can take a year, and the plant may die in the meantime, if its starch is exhausted.

If grasstrees are burnt more often, when the thatch is small, they flower and seed profusely, the protective mantle remains intact, the green top remains largely unburnt, nutrients in the thatch are recycled, and soil pH around the base is raised. The needles become obviously greener, longer, and thicker. Fire scars on some grasstrees along the old railway track in John Forrest National Park show annual burning by railway gangs when the railway was operating from the 1890s to the early 1960s. These grasstrees obviously survived. Now, under long fire exclusion, they are beginning to die.

There is a serious conservation problem with these old icons of the bush. Although still plentiful, the possibility of mass collapses and local extinctions cannot be ruled out. Grasstrees are like the Miner’s Canary – they are warning us that something is amiss in our bushland. The West Australian Government’s”Threatened Species Unit’ has been informed, but, apart from asking me to fill in a form, I am unaware of any action on their part. Perhaps the concept of ‘common and endangered’is too intellectually audacious for those accustomed to the familiar mantra of ‘rare and endangered’. But would a miner be wise to ignore his canary falling off the perch, because canaries are still plentiful?

By David Ward, Retired Senior Research Scientist with the Department of Conservation & Land Management, Western Australia, and formerly Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University School of Environmental Biology.

Copyright David Ward, 30th June 2005

Stop Global Warming, Stop Burning-Off in the NT

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Maybe I have been a bit harsh with my title for this post? Then again, I am, after all, at heart, a global warming skeptic.

And now the NT government is proposing aboriginals stop burning-off to reduce C02 emmissions.

“Government figures show the Territory has Australia’s highest rate of emissions per person. The service’s hazard reduction officer, Patrick Skewes, says Indigenous land owners and communities need to change the way they use fire.

“They need to understand the damage that they’re doing too and that’s an educational program,” he said. “Just because you’ve had a bad habit for 100 years doesn’t mean to say that it’s a good thing … bad habits become cultural as well.”

Would this be a good outcome for the NT environment? Is there too much burning-off in the NT?

At this blog David Ward from WA has suggested:

“By insisting, through our political representatives, that CALM burn the bush more often, and more patchily, we will make it safer, see more wildflowers, avoid most animal deaths, and avoid dense, choking smoke from fierce wildfires. We will have to live with occasional light smoke from prescribed burns. If most litter were less than five years old, smoke would be minimal, and arson would be futile. All it could cause would be a mild, creeping fire, which would benefit the bush.

Think of the savings and benefits by working with nature, instead of fighting it. No more squadrons of aircraft, anxious home owners, and choking smoke for a week or more. The police could get on with catching burglars. More young Noongar people should be employed by CALM to help manage the bush with fire, restoring their culture and healing their self esteem.”

Read Ward’s entire post at https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000672.html

On Pious Hope & Queensland’s Rangelands

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The following note on rangeland management is from a reader of this blog who lives in western Queensland. The note was followed by the the comment that, “a major problem of rangeland management is that politicians and bureaucrats have undying faith in the efficacy of pious hope and regulation to rectify problems now largely caused by previous doses of pious hope and regulation”.

He writes,

“Among the myths of rangeland management are:-

1. that rangelands are fragile

Wrong on either meaning of “fragile”. In the sense of Wedgewood china, wrong because the organisms involved have had some millions of years of the vaguries of semi-arid and arid regions and are basically as tough as old boots.

In the ecological sense of “fragile” (having frequent changes in species composition), wrong because “resilience” is the ticket in these regions, not “stability”

2. that things happen slowly in the rangelands

Wrong – more that nothing much happens, then things can happen very rapidly and then nothing much happens – (but you don’t get to see this if your rangelands watching is by intermittent visits). Contrast “state and transition” vs “Clementsian succession”.

3. that one size fits all (the shifting spanner of management)

Lower George Street (in Brisbane) has a bad case of this at the moment.

So fire or not depends on what we have to manage. Pretty well documented that lack of fire got us to the current woody vegetation increase problem. And New England and Southern Africa experience says fire for managing some pasture species. Unusual to need fire every year for such management.

And (for rangeland) one of the Charleville Pastoral Laboratory results is that out here we are looking at about 90 percent of the dry matter by about the end of March, and we shouldn’t be aiming to use more than about 30 percent of that via grazing animals over the next 12 months – so there is the rest for roos etc and insects and mulch. And on the economics side, at least 90 percent of the net income will come from around 70-75 percent of the stocking rate.

I’m afraid we didn’t doo too well on this score for the last 4-5 years. But there is hope – a warm winter so far and 119mm in May and 72mm so far in June, and the pasture species are finally responding (even buffel seedlings in June), so we may be able to get back to the above.

This note follows the posting by Graham of 28th June which was Part 2 of ‘Managing our Rangelands’.

Noongars Knew Best

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The following essay is from, and by, David Ward of Western Australia. Thanks David.

Before Europeans arrived, Noongar people managed our south-west dry forests and woodlands very well without fire trucks, water bombers, helicopters, television journalists, concerned politicians, the Conservation Council, hundreds of firefighters, or the Salvation Army to give them all breakfast. They did this by burning frequently, in most places as often as it would carry a mild, creeping fire.

Even where there were no Noongars, most of the bush would have burnt frequently by unimpeded lightning fires, trickling on for months. Such large lightning fires continued up to the 1920s, before there were any Bushfire Brigades. They could travel a hundred kilometres before autumn rain doused them. Most of the landscape would have burnt as often as it could carry a fire. Fire suppression and exclusion are unnatural, new fangled notions.

Frequent fire made the bush safe, and promoted grass for yonka (kangaroo), and a host of bush tucker plants. It produced byoo, the red fruit of the djiridji, or zamia. Frequent light smoke germinated seeds, and provoked flowering of kangaroo paws and balga grasstrees.

Kangaroo paws and byoo are increasingly rare, under a muddle headed advocacy which claims that we should exclude fire from large bush areas for long periods. This phoney idea makes the bush very dangerous, as we have recently seen. Fire cannot be excluded indefinitely, and the longer it has been absent, the fiercer, and more damaging it will be.

Ecomythologists claim that, left alone, the litter will all rot down to enrich the soil. The truth, as any Perth Hills resident will testify, is that there is some decay in winter, but the summer blizzard of dead leaves, bark, and capsules is far greater, so litter builds up. After twenty years or so, there is a mulching effect, and build up ceases. However, by then most wildflowers are smothered and straggly, and most of the nutrient is locked up in dead matter. Frequent, mild fire releases the nutrients, sweetens the soil, and prunes the plants. Gardeners will appreciate that.

In the 1840s, the early West Australian botanist James Drummond wrote “When I was a sojourner in England, I never remember to have seen Australian plants in a good state after the second or third years and that, I think, is in a great degree owing to their not being cut down close to the ground when they begin to get ragged; how for the pruning knife and a mixture of wood ashes in the soil would answer as a substitute to the triennial or quaternal burnings they undergo in their native land, I am unable to say, some of our plants never flower in perfection but the season after the ground is burned over…”

There are many historical references to frequent, widespread burning by south-west Noongars. In 1837 Lt. Henry Bunbury mentioned “…the periodical extensive bush fires which, by destroying every two to three years the dead leaves, plants, sticks, fallen timber etc. prevent most effectually the accumulation of any decayed vegetable deposit… being the last month of summer… the Natives have burnt with fire much of the country… ”

In 1975 Mr. Frank Thompson was interviewed about his memories of fire near the south coast, before the First World War. He said “You see, the Natives …they used to burn the country every three or four years… when it was burnt the grass grew and it was nice and fresh and the possums had something to live on and the kangaroos had something to live on and the wallabies and the tamars and boodie rat …It didn’t burn very fast because it was only grass and a few leaves here and there and it would burn ahead and… sometimes there?d be a little isolated patch of other stuff that wasn’t good enough to burn the time before, but as it burnt along perhaps there might be some wallabies or tamars ?those animals didn’t run away from fire, they’d run up to it and you’d see them hopping along the edge of the fire until they saw a place where the fire wasn’t burning very fierce...”

It is hard to imagine wallabies hopping along the flame front of the recent Karagullen fire, looking for a way through. Long fire exclusion is causing fires of unprecedented ferocity, and many avoidable wildlife deaths. The longer fire has been excluded, the longer the bush takes to recover when it is eventually, and inevitably, burnt.

Over the last decade, research in south-western Australia by the Department of Conservation & Land Management (CALM) and Curtin University into fire marks on hundreds of balga grasstrees has confirmed traditional two to four year fire in dry eucalypt areas. Ridges with pure jarrah burnt every three to four years, slopes with some marri every two to three years, and clay valleys with wandoo every two years. There would have been thousands of small refuges, in rocks or near creeks, which would have burnt less often, perhaps never. Recent fierce fires destroy these, and the fire sensitive plants they protect. The ecomythology of long fire exclusion over large areas, is destroying the very plants and animals it claims to care for. Equally guilty are those ‘talking heads’ in politics, and the news media, who unthinkingly promote ecomythology.

The oldest balga records go back to 1750, and show traditional frequent, mild fire until measles epidemics killed many Noongars in 1860, and 1883. In some places two to four year burning continued until the First World War. In others, it continued up to the 1930s, and even the 1950s. Some old Perth Hills families remember when any fire could be put out with wet bags or green branches. This is only possible when fires are in litter no more than four years old, with flames less than a metre high.

Far from destroying diversity, this frequent burning enhanced it, by creating a rich mosaic of different aged patches. Animals had both food and shelter, and wildflowers flourished. Today’s muddle headed blanket fire exclusion leads to an eventual single, blanket, fierce fire, which simplifies the ecosystem down to a single age.

By insisting, through our political representatives, that CALM burn the bush more often, and more patchily, we will make it safer, see more wildflowers, avoid most animal deaths, and avoid dense, choking smoke from fierce wildfires. We will have to live with occasional light smoke from prescribed burns. If most litter were less than five years old, smoke would be minimal, and arson would be futile. All it could cause would be a mild, creeping fire, which would benefit the bush.

Think of the savings and benefits by working with nature, instead of fighting it. No more squadrons of aircraft, anxious home owners, and choking smoke for a week or more. The police could get on with catching burglars. More young Noongar people should be employed by CALM to help manage the bush with fire, restoring their culture and healing their self esteem.

Copyright David Ward
10th April 2005

Expert Advice on Alpine Grazing

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If we care about the environment, we must also care about rural and regional Australia because this is where most of our environment is.

A lot of people in the bush (I use bush in the broadest context to include even rainforest dwellers) are extremely unhappy with how national parks are being managed/not managed.

The banning of cattle grazing in the high country has become a catalyst for the coming together of different groups in Victoria and the new Country Voice website.

This site includes an expert opinion on grazing in the Alpine National Park from x-University of Melbourne botanist Peter Attiwell. He writes:

“It is now critical that Parks Victoria clearly define goals for management of biodiversity. A critical goal for future management is the definition of appropriate burning regimes. The question should not be one of grazing or no grazing. The critical question is: what are our goals for management of ecological diversity and of fire?

The critics of alpine grazing use science to support the basic tenet that grazing is incompatible with use of the land as a national park, as encapsulated in the slogan ‘National Park or Cow Paddock?’. The slogan is totally misleading. A cow paddock, once abandoned, will never return to the ecosystem that was destroyed to create it.

In contrast, there is no evidence that cattle grazing in the High Country has eliminated rare and threatened species, nor has species composition or diversity been irrevocably altered. Indeed, 170 years of controlled cattle-grazing has left by far the greater part of the High Country in excellent condition. Clearly, at the long-term and landscape levels, cattle grazing over some part of the High Country can be accommodated within management plans to achieve specific goals without an irreversible deterioration in biodiversity.

There is no doubt that the opponents of grazing use science to achieve their end of stopping grazing completely (just as the opponents of timber harvesting in native forests will continue to pursue their aim until there is no harvesting in native forests). That is, there is no point of compromise, despite the fact that both the intensity and extent of cattle grazing has reduced dramatically over the years.

… Cattle-grazing in the Alpine National Park now covers less than 15 per cent of the area. Let us now stop quibbling and taking the high moral ground offered by this or that bit of science. The record stands for itself – the quality of the ecosystems of the High Country has not been destroyed by grazing over the past 150 years, and the cattlemen are hallowed within the image and folklore of Australia.”

While Attiwell’s opinion is respected, and on the Country Voice website, there is a lot of anger with ‘expert scientists’ generally as expressed in the following comment:

“As a long time resident of the Licola area, a landholder and a fire Brigade Captain with landholders adjacent and surrounded by the Alpine National Park to look after, I am just appalled at the level of scientific debate supporting the removal of Alpine cattle grazing. The so called science to support this has been non existent, less than honest or shonky at best, with I believe deliberate efforts to mislead.

After the Caledonia fire of 1998, plots were fenced off around rocky outcrops, dead limbs, fallen bark and places where little grass ever grew, then monitored to see how they would grow. Botanists placed transect lines beside active wombat and rabbit burrows and on areas last burnt out decades ago as there was so much grass on the areas under study. “Expertise” was bought in from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife service – who had been repeatedly burnt out.

Decisions on grazing in burnt areas were made with vegetation surveys consisting of two drafts and a summary, all unsigned. A “Draft Internal Working Paper” was passed off as “scientifically credible information needed to determine management options for the area.” This had no finding or conclusion, no indication of who did the work, or their qualifications and no references from text books on the methodology, which in places could have been little more than guess work.

The science was so bad even their own people on the “expert” panel to recommend on the return of grazing were critical “is the PV draft proposal a joke? Its appalling! I have read both drafts of the proposed methodology and, in their current state, neither would pass as first year biology assignments”.

Grass fuel on areas burnt in 1998 is now at dangerous levels around sphagnum bogs, ancient single trunk snow gums and private land holdings and in two years would have carried a hotter faster fire. The risks from snow grass on places like the Wellington Plains can only be measured in how many times it is off the fire intensity scale over the extreme category. Much of this country that did not burn in 1998 because of grazing, would now carry a frightful fire from 4 to 16 times the extreme intensity. This is on areas where grazing was banned and not allowed to continue because of claims it had not regenerated enough, as there was too much bare ground.

A few years ago we were told by alpine ecologists that fires were not part of the ecology. Now that their management has failed, with the 2003 fires, we are told fires are a one in a hundred year event. If this is the best we are getting out of our universities they should close down the environmental sections and concentrate on turning out engineers, chemists and bushfire scientists where they have an impressive record.”

L.Ralph Barraclough Target Ck Rd. Licola Ph 5148 8792. 14-6-2005

I am keen to post some text/opinion from those against grazing in the Alpine National Park, or perhaps the Macquarie Marshes?