Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Bushfires

Kyoto Fuels Forest Fires

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I thought it was cattle and cane that was driving the destruction of rainforests in the Brazilian Amazon, but according to an article in New Scientist titled Forests paying the price for biofuels by Fred Pearce, it is soybean grown for biofuels.

Pearce writes that rising demand for biofuels is being driven by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels be blended with subsidized biofuels. All pushed along by recent announcements from the British government mandating that 5 percent of transport fuels be from biofuels to help meet Kyoto protocol targets.

A major source of biofuel for Europe is apparently palm oil from south east Asia. The Malaysian Star newspaper in an article title All signs point to higher crude palm oil prices states that demand for palm oil is being driven by demand for biodiesel production in Europe, implementation of biofuel policies in Asia, GM issues in Europe and the US, and high oil and fat consumption in China.

The article by Hanim Adnan also comments that if Asian countries implement their biofuel policies as planned, an additional nine million tonnes of vegetable oil, equivalent to about 14 percent of current total Asian oilseed production, will be required.

So are we talking about more carbon dioxide emitting forest fires, so the transport sector can reduce its carbon dioxide emissions!

I wrote a few months ago about forest fires for palm oil production, click here.

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I now have my own website www.jennifermarohasy.com that lists many of my newspaper articles, a few of my publications, and I will also endeavour to get more speeches up there. The website also gives me a capacity to send out a monthly newsletter to everyone who subscribes, click here.

Noongars Knew Best (Part 2)

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On 17th June I posted an essay from David Ward, WA, titled ‘Noongars Knew Best‘ about aboriginal management of the dry forests of the SW of Western Australia.

In this new post, which is a powerpoint presentation from David, four scenarios for bushfire management are explored.

The powerpoint is 850kbs and may only work if you save it first … Download file.

David emailed the powerpoint with a note welcoming feedback/comment/debate.

Interestingly ABC Online reported on Friday that the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service was planning a large scale hazard reduction burn at Berowra Valley Regional Park and in adjoining land west of Hornsby and Hornsby Heights. The four-day burn-off was aimed to “lessen the intensity of wild fires in summer”.

To Burn or Graze

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There has been a bit written at this site about the importance of burning landscapes including comment from David Ward in WA that:

“I have recently developed geometric evidence that frequent burning is the only (repeat only), way to maintain a reasonably fine grained fire mosaic, with small, mild, and controllable fires; a rich diversity of habitat for plants and animals; and protection of small fire refuges for that minority of plants and animals which are not adapted to frequent fire. Aborigines clearly knew, and still, in some parts, know this. Anyone who does not understand should go and talk to an Aboriginal Elder.

“It can be demonstrated, with geometric certainty, that any deliberate long fire exclusion over large areas, such as a National Park, will lead inevitably (repeat inevitably) to large fierce fires, and a coarser mosaic, with little diversity of food and shelter for animals. Small refuges, important for some rare plants and animals, will be destroyed by the ferocity of the fires.”

I have just discovered Christine Jones’ website at http://www.amazingcarbon.com/ courtesy of Graham Finlayson.

Jones suggests that regular burning is extremely detrimental to soft forms of native ground cover and encourages a dominance of relatively unpalatable grasses, removes surface litter leaving the soil unprotected, reduces potential for nutrient cycling, reduce water-holding capacity and degrade soil structure. … concluding that “fire is a tool which should be used cautiously and infrequently”.

Jones suggests that the recruitment of productive native legumes and grasses is favoured by mulching which is destroyed by regular burning.

Jones promotes grazing on the basis that “The open, park-like appearance of many areas at the time of European settlement has often been attributed to indigenous burning regimes. More recent evidence suggests that the healthy grasslands and friable soils described by the first settlers were more likely to have reflected the high abundance of small native mammals, such as bettongs and potoroos most of which are now locally extinct … with the loss of the regenerative effects of small native mammals in Australia since European settlement, managed grazing is now arguably the only natural means by which grasslands can be ‘improved’ in a holitistic way.”

The above is my summary of page 7 and 8 of http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/general_doc/46_sti1%20final%20report.pdf, titled ‘Recognise, Relate, Innovate’ by Jones – at the same website.

Are Jones and Ward talking about different landscapes?

Burning Sumatra

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The hundreds of forest and plantation fires burning in Sumatra are choking out Malaysia. Greenpeace have commented that “the 1997 fires in Indonesia’s rainforests added as much carbon to the atmosphere as all the coal, oil and gas burned in Western Europe that year.” How much is this?

Interestingly The Australian newspaper has focused on the impact of the fires on the Indonesian-Malaysian relationship:

The Australian, 12th August
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16232761%255E30417,00.html

“The thick smog presents the country with its worst pollution crisis since 1997, when smoke mainly from Indonesian bushfires blocked out skies across Southeast Asia. Fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which is a short ferry ride from peninsular Malaysia’s west coast, flare up around this time every year as farmers, plantation owners and miners burn forests to clear land during the dry season.
The opposition Democratic Action Party said Malaysians were “furious and worried” about the pollution and that it would mount a protest at the Indonesian embassy today as well as a public rally on Sunday.” end.

A Malaysian newspaper is comparing the cause of these fires to the 1997 fires and considering the role of their own companies with plantations in Sumatra:

New Straits Times, 13th August
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Columns/20050813075949/Article/indexb_html

“According to Plantation Enterprises and Commodities Minister Datuk Peter Chin, who has just returned from Medan after meeting with Indonesian Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban, fires on plantation land made up 30 per cent of the hotspots while the rest of the fires were caused by slash-and-burn farmers.

This seems to be the reverse of the situation in 1997-98 when most of the fires were said to have been started deliberately to clear land for oil palm plantations. According to one estimate, up to 80 per cent of the burning in 1997 occurred in plantation company concessions, and 75 per cent of these were oil palm estates.

Oil palm plantations were certainly over-represented in the list of 176 companies charged in court for starting the fires of 1997-98.” end.

The Indonesian Jakarta Post seems to look to government for answers and suggest the fires are about slash and burn agriculture:

Jakarta Post, 14th August
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20050813.E02&irec=1

“Too often the fires have been the result of land clearing by either farmers or speculators. While slash-and-burn agriculture is common among the indigenous populations, these fires can spread uncontrollably in dry conditions.

Since the major forests fires of 1997 and 1998, which created a region-wide crisis, various mechanisms and high profile meetings have been held to set up a joint mechanism to manage such catastrophes and provide early warning.

The repeated recurrence of fires proves that much of these efforts simply don’t work, or more precisely, haven’t been made to work.” end.

I wonder about the impact of the fires on the local fauna and flora?

ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management

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ABC Television program Catalyst ran a story last night featuring the work of botanist Rod Fensham. Fensham has done some great research work on Queensland’s rangelands. But the program, by putting a popularist spin on it all, did our rangelands and Fensham no favours.

Catalyst started off by suggesting most of Queensland’s old growth forest had been cleared by graziers and then went on to explain how vegetation thickening is real. An overriding theme was that the bans on broad scale tree clearing are good and that current thickening is natural and a consequence of higher rainfall over the second half of the last century. Furthermore drought, not land clearing or fire, should be left to maintain the balance of nature.

I was left wondering what they meant by old growth forest, and how the old growth forest had survived the terrible drought to be destroyed by graziers. And wasn’t it generally acknowledged that these areas have been a fire mediated sub-climax ecosystem as in South Africa and the southern USA?

The following comment as part of the voice over was interesting:

But seeing the timbers dying in all districts of western Queensland it would seem not unreasonable to conclude that drought was the cause of thousands of miles of country in the never never to be denuded of scrub. …So there it was, proof that the climate had caused tree death and thinning.

The full transcript can be read at
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1435595.htm .

I used to have a beer with Fensham and other Brisbane-based botanists and entomologists on a Friday afternoon at the St Lucia golf links in the early to mid 1990s.

The Catalyst program suggested that Fensham was against the use of fire, as well as broad scale tree clearing. It didn’t ring true to me.

A link to a piece by him at the bottom of the Catalyst webpage also suggests otherwise.

In this piece titled ‘Trial by fire’ Fensham makes the following points:

1. The role of climate in shaping vegetation patterns should not be ignored in a land of notorious climatic extremes.

2. The structure and density of eucalypt woodlands in the Queensland pastoral zone is influenced by management (fire), land use (grazing) and climate (especially drought).

3. Appropriate burning regimes may offer Queensland pastoralists a management option that maintains productivity and is less devastating for biodiversity than tree clearing.

Read the complete article here
http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/publications_pdf/PN040707_trial_by_fire.pdf .

Earlier in the week I was sent this link
http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/environmental_research/2005_winner.htm .

It came with the note, “An interesting rewrite of history – a negative reality inversion.”

The link is to an announcement titled ‘Research that shaped new bush clearing laws’ and is about how Fensham has won the Eureka prize for Environmental research and includes the following text:

The recent debate on land clearing in Queensland was fierce, with the arguments often unsupported by clear scientific evidence. Dr Rod Fensham and Russell Fairfax changed that. Over ten years, these two scientists from the Queensland Herbarium have methodically developed a scientific foundation to measure and understand the fate of Queensland’s native rangelands. Their research, and their science advocacy, gave the Queensland Government the information it needed to create stronger laws on land clearing. Their work now earns them the $10,000 Sherman Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.

I observed at close range the politics that drove the bans on broad scale tree clearing in Queensland including as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Council – Vegetation Management (MAC-VM). Fensham’s work didn’t enter this policy debate which was driven almost exclusively by very dumb (but effective) campaigning by a coalition of environment groups spearheaded by the Wilderness Society and Queensland Conservation Council and supported by a Queensland University Professor.

Had Fensham’s work been influential, the clearing laws may have turned out at least half reasonable.
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Update 2pm

Following discussions with Rod I have the following additional comment, and I hope Rod might do a guest post for me/us:

The Eureka Award was in recognition of Rod’s contribution to our understanding of regional ecosystems and how they can be mapped. This mapping work occurred independently of the campaigning by the Wilderness Society and the mapping is critical to the current legislation and important if the current legislation is to ever deliver reasonable rangeland protection and management.

I have also updated the title for this post from ‘ABC TV and Eureka Awards Got it Wrong on Fensham’ to ‘ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management’.

Supreme Court Decision on Coroner Maria Doogan

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The IPA held a conference in March 2003 about the lessons to be learnt from the 2003 bushfires which destroyed over 3 million hectares including three quarters of Kosciuszko National Park.

This was just before I started with the IPA and so I didn’t get to hear what Phil Cheney, one of three invited experts, had to say.

According to the summary as published in the IPA Review key messages included failure of land managers to follow established scientific principles as a result of green politics, see http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=198 .

The summary concludes that “there is little doubt that the management of Australia’s parks, forests and other public lands will come under greater scrutiny as a result of the horrific fires of 2003.”

This was the hope of many ordinary Australian who live in rural and regional Australia when Coroner Maria Doogan began hearing evidence on October 7th 2003. The inquiry had been established by Jon Stanhope, the Chief Minister and Attorney-General of the ACT.

Then the inquiry was closed down by the same government, on the basis of ‘apprehended bias’ on the part of Coroner Maria Doogan.

Michael Duffy summarized the situation in a piece titled ‘The firing line’ published in the SMH on 23rd May, see
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/The-firing-line/2005/05/22/1116700595179.html .

Yesterday Justice Crispin of the ACT Supreme Court handed down a long judgement dismissing the application from the ACT government.

The judgement is a fascinating read and includes much comment about the views of Phil Cheney, http://www.courts.act.gov.au/supreme/judgments/doogan1.htm .

And page 33 of 69 (paragraph 92) includes:

An apprehension of bias may easily arise when, as appears to have occurred in this case, a judicial officer has been led to believe that an expert witness has been independently appointed to assist the court when, in fact, he or she has been engaged by the ACT Government and that entity has also been granted leave to be represented as an interested party to the proceedings. It may be understandable that departmental officers accustomed to treating courts as a sub-branch of their department may have failed to appreciate the impression that could be created in this manner. However, s 59 of the Act was clearly intended to permit coroners to engage investigators who would be independent of any of the interested parties, and whose opinions could not therefore be called into question on the grounds that they may have been influenced by competing loyalties. A lay observer could well become apprehensive on learning that a coroner had treated a person as an independent investigator when, in fact, he or she had been engaged by one of the interested parties.

Despite Mr Burnside’s able submissions to the contrary, this was clearly a matter of potential concern in the present case and, if the evidence given by Mr Cheney and Mr Roche had generally favoured the ACT Government, a finding of apprehended bias may well have been inescapable. However, that was not the case. On the contrary, Mr Tracey’s submissions clearly reflected concern that aspects of their evidence was critical of Government employees and/or agencies. It is true, of course, that a party who has engaged experts may itself come to feel that it has suffered from subconscious bias due to them “bending over backwards” to be fair, but it will, of course, have been largely responsible for the situation that has led to any such psychological inclination. In any event, Mr Tracey did not raise any such contention. Nor did it lie comfortably with the ACT Government that, having created a situation of potential conflict, it then sought to complain of it.

The next really interesting read should be Coroner Maria Doogan’s final report – given she can now hopefully get on with the job of writing it.