Comments on: Fuel reduction burns not included in Australia’s C02 accounting

By: John Spresser

John Spresser — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

What a specious argument.
This is all part of the natural cycle of existence.
What would you rather have? A wild fire that destroys everything in its wake or a controlled burn that leaves most plants living and for the others, provides the natural way of regenerating.
Next I expect you to be saying that baked beans causes flatulence which is a green house gas so let’s ban them. That makes about as much sense as the argument put forth in this article.

By: Evan

Evan — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I totally disagree with this premise. Do you think we should include bushfires in our CO2 account? Large parts of Australia have habitat that is dependent on fire. Many eucalypts and casuarina can't spread seeds nor germinate without fire. Most of the greenies and environmentalists that I know think we're probably not letting the bush burn often enough, so that when it does burn it's way too hot.

The concerns over south east asian burning are not their CO2 emissions. The concern is the contribution of the wood smoke to the Asian brown-cloud, and that it typifies an extremely poor famring practise. In some cases it is forestry waste in rainforests being burnt, a habitat not used to fire. Burning is also associated with slash and burn agriculture, known to destroy soil structure and contribute to erosion and run off.

The comment about the 'perverse impacts' is absolutely spot on. Try and tell Canberra residents that reduction burns can't be carried out because we can't afford the carbon credits. Or better yet giving home owners a bill for the CO2 emitted when their house burnt down.

By: John Beasley

John Beasley — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Burning will occur whether or not it is done by National Parks staff. Over 50% of fires in the Wet Tropics area of north Queensland are the result of lightning strikes. The real issue is the timing and scale of burning. Here the Parks managers have much to learn. A misguided crusade to remedy the decline of the small amount of wet sclerophyll forest bordering the rainforest has resulted in aggressive burning of adjacent open forest late in the dry season. This is probably destroying biodiversity in the area, but we really don't know because very little monitoring occurs, and even that is of poor quality. Much Aboriginal burning occurred early in the dry season, creating less carbon emission, and preventing wildfires later in the year. Even today satellite imaging reveals that a significant area around Kowanyama and Aurukun Aboriginal communities in Cape York retains a burning mosaic that snuffs out wildfires. Meanwhile the National Parks and pastoral properties across the rest of the Cape are regularly burnt by large, late and destructive fires.

Surely it is time for a win-win-win solution. Employ Aboriginal people to burn 'country', giving them some real income as well as ownership. Early burning will aid biodiversity, particularly if it occurs in the traditional way where the mosaic is made up of many different fire events somewhat randomly distributed. And to cap it all, early burning prevents wildfires by reducing fuel strategically, thus lowering carbon emissions. This is already being trialled successfully in the Northern Territory, and is urgently needed in other states.

To those who say this is a romantic reconstruction of a fantasised Aboriginal past, I say look at the current evidence around Aboriginal Communities in Cape York. Its happening there now.

By: Charlie McColl

Charlie McColl — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

The thrust of the article is that prescribed burning is not included in Australia’s carbon accounting. Without going into the peripheral debates that arise from this observation, maybe we should entertain the idea of attempting to create that prescribed burning account - as a purely technical exercise - and then let the debate begin.
In that way we can entertain and try to understand the views of those who push the benefits of Aboriginal mosaic burning in the Gulf country and Cape York balanced with the obligations of managers of peri-urban lands (near our metropolitan areas) who necessarily have a different agenda, seeing both (or all) in the light of our aspirations for carbon reduction.

By: Edward Thompson

Edward Thompson — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

When you have a dry winter and spring and then get out into the scrub and see some of the areas that haven’t been burnt for a fair while, you are left wishing there had been some fuel reduction burns done in years prior. When the fuel load is high and dry, when the fires come they burn HOT, big difference in the landscape the following summer and not a pretty one.

By: dk

dk — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

As a proffessional land manager this article enrages me.
Fires are an essential and natural element in Australia's forests and grasslands.
To deny this fact is ignorant in the extreme.
We can either choose to manage fire sensibly, through planned controlled burning, or we can let wildfires burn at conflegration intensity during summer.
That is the simple equation for land managers in Australia.
We can not let carbon politics dictate bad land management outcomes, it would be a disaster.
Forest CO2 balance must be looked at in the very very long term, which when including fire (and even timber harvesting) is carbon positive (i.e. forested lands are carbon sinks).

This debate must always be framed with this statement put foremnost: We can not avoid fire in the Austrlian landscape.

By: soil carbon

soil carbon — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Solving Global Climate Change by Healing Land Holistic Management International Conference 2008 Store / Shop Now
For the Love of Fire
by Allan Savory

“As we witness the Australian resource management pendulum once again swing back to promoting fire as the major management tool to reduce fire risk and brush encroachment and maintain grasslands and savannas, one wonders what prompts such love of fire when all evidence points to its destructive capacity. To understand why this occurs we must go back in time - see
http://www.holisticmanagement.org/n7/Info_07/in12_love_of_fire_07.html
for a well reasoned alternative to this use of fire.”

By: K Stockwell

K Stockwell — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Unfortunately, some recent DSE burns in northern Victoria have badly damaged or killed old trees. For example, a burn alongside Burnside Road in Kamarooka Forest (a section of Greater bendigo National Park) burnt some old Yellow Gum trees. One was completely burnt through at the base and has fallen down.

It is desirable that DSE employs more staff whilst undertaking fuel reduction burns. There is a need to extinguish the base of trees before they burn through. It is also a nonsense to have fuel reduction burns in the middle of box-ironbark forests ~ there have been very few large wildfires in Victoria’s box-ironbark forests ~ well away from houses. Some of the burns are destroying the very asset that DFSE is custodian of. Decisions taken today will affect the nature of these forests for hundreds of years to come. LBurning box-ironbark forests often results in a profusion of melaleuca and other plants, possibly increasing the intensity of future of fires. Burning at a time when endangered bush birds are nesting is also most undesirable.

By: Richard McGuire

Richard McGuire — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

An interesting article, although I’d assume the fuel reduction burns alluded to, would only destroy understorey vegetation, not mature trees, where the most carbon is stored. Understorey vegetation does tend to recover quickly. Nevertheless for the sake of biodiversity, water quality ect, thought needs to be given to the location and frequency of fuel reduction burns. Of course such arguments cut no ice with those who rant against “the bloody greenies” when destructive fires do occur.