It's surprising how long the prescribed burning issue has been circulating. I think the modern news cycle has only made it worse.
This is worth a read if you're interested.
www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/cib0203/03Cib08
"Fuel reduction burns may not halt bushfires under severe conditions. However, they do have some moderating effect on the fire and allow for control when conditions improve. In order to put fuel reduction in context with fire fighting under extreme conditions, John Fisher of New South Wales State Forests told the New South Wales Bushfires Inquiry that:
The opponents of fuel reduction burning fail to realise the operational difficulty of fighting a wildfire in extreme conditions. The only option or tool that State Forests NSW has available is the manipulation of fuel in the fire triangle (heat/ignition, air, fuel) There is no question that on extreme fire days we would not attempt a direct attack in heavy fuels. Even in a fuel reduced area on extreme days there is no question that fires would burn through those fuels as well, but the moderating effect of that fuel reduction activity is quite profound and is quite useful in the periods of the day when those extreme fire behaviours wane. We use that through the nightshift to effect further fuel reduction burnings or back-burns, as you have seen, and that provides us with a safe and effective means to control fires on our estate.(34)"
Interesting and (from my non-expert's view) apparently balanced. But when you speak of "opponents of fuel reduction burning", can't it be pointed out that very few organisations seem to oppose ALL such burns?
The quote you gave confirms what others have said (and quotes some of us gave) that said that fuel reduction burns were not going to stop the extreme fires we saw. Your quote therefore seems to confirm our point, which is that the people who said the recent huge fires were caused by a lack of such burns were incorrect. That's NOT saying there should be no burns.
The reportalso confirms that many of the worst fires we have seen this year (Carrai Creek and the many others in that complex, those around Tenterfield AFAIK, Clyde Mountain, areas of the Gospers Mtn fire) were in areas where hazard reduction burns are difficult, often unsuccessful, or impossible due to topography and forest type (ie temperate rainforest or Blue Mountains gullys, where your report says that burns increase the fire risk as often as they reduce it).
FWIW as a layman I've never said we shouldn't burn; my beef is with those who seem to regard it as a cure-all with no negative side effects.
But the problem is Ian that we're getting secondary burning through our control lines. Some have had km of black in prep of the front. Wholesale land clearing in front of the flames isn't the answer either.
All we do is steer the fire and reduce much of the damage as we can until the weather improves.
If you've read that here's another one. We are currently being fed information that seems to have forgotten or doubts the lessons learnt about prescribed burning in the past.
We assume that a climate change to hotter and drier conditions will make the fire problem worse. Maybe, but not all aspects. One clue might be past observations of how fire behaves in eastern Jarrah forests further from the coast where the climate is hotter and drier. In the hotter, drier Jarrah forest a prescribed burn is good for preventing the development of a crown fire for an extra 2 years.
www.bushfirefront.org.au/resources-2/seminars/the-dwellingup-fire/
"Post-fire Review
A post-fire review team, led by noted forester W H Eastman, undertook an intensive study of the management of the fire and of the fire effects in the forest. Actually they also included information from the numerous other severe fires in that year. The conclusions they reached with respect to fire behaviour were as follows:
Under severe weather conditions (i.e., high temperature and strong winds), fuel ages greater than 5 years in the western jarrah forest, and 7 years in the eastern forest, would carry a crown fire, and thus be virtually uncontrollable.
Areas of fuel-reduced forest caused the crown fire to descend to the litter, but did not stop major fire runs unless the burn was less than a year old, however, it was possible to fight a fire in litter less than 5 years old.
A fuel-reduced area of forest needed to be at least 2 miles in depth (say, 3 km) to enable a running fire to be contained. Such buffer zones need to be oriented more or less east-west across the forested zone of the State to arrest the run of a major fire.
Fire damage to trees and other forest values was in direct proportion to the fuel load. The higher the fuel load the more severe the damage and the more difficult it was to control the fire."
Select to expand quotekato said..
But the problem is Ian that we're getting secondary burning through our control lines. Some have had km of black in prep of the front. Wholesale land clearing in front of the flames isn't the answer either.
All we do is steer the fire and reduce much of the damage as we can until the weather improves.
Yes Kato, but remember you've been working with the Parkies for 15 years and I spent 25 years working with the foresters. The two camps have always disagreed on the details of prescribed burning. And no doubt we have both been influenced by our colleagues.
But at least we all agree a prescribed burn won't stop a fire under extreme conditions. Do we agree that a recent prescribed burn diminishes the environmental damage and makes it easier to control when conditions ease?
Select to expand quotekato said..
Nah, 24 years for me ??. Must be retire time soon ??
24, sorry, I really have lost track of time. Be careful with retirement, you never know, the climate still might be good for 5 wet years in a row.
What an odd piece.
Griffiths is arguably a whacko right-wing cult leader; try watching his stumbling videos where he promises to cure the human condition. He also says that Australian native animals can't live inside eucalyptus forests - what the hell does he think they have been doing for eons? For heaven's sake, he's talking about the danger to koalas caused by gum trees - which are the only thing koalas can eat!
The opening shows a shot of trees near Mogo - almost certainly INSIDE the national park near the village. What does Griffith want - the national parks like that to be bulldozed, plowed, and sewn with oaks or something with a watering system? Apparently he does, although exactly what we're going to do with the land remains unclear. That land around Mogo they photographed, for example, isn't any good for farming IIRC. It's not as if planting pines for softwood plantations works to control fires very well, either - the damage to the pine plantations in southern NSW has been huge.
It's odd how right wing media are happy to talk about imposing laws and raising taxes when it suits them. Imagine if the Greens or a left-wing party proposed similar laws restricting the plants that people can grow, and calling for expensive forest management. Some farmers hate the "green influenced" restrictions on land clearing, but Griffith, Jones, The Spectator and their friends seem to be calling for even more draconian restrictions around people's houses.
Jones, of course, lies when he says we've ignored the issue of fuel in fires. No one has done that; even the Greens support hazard reduction burns to reduce fuel loads.
PS - it's funny how they quote Prof David Bowman with approval. Bowman believes strongly that climate change is happening and that it will have a huge effect on our landscape.
Select to expand quotecisco said..
Interesting point and observation. I come to very similar conclusion and attempted to replace as much as possible trees on my land with another species. My thought now is about all sorts of nuts trees.
Lets think about recent Corona virus infection. One may think that hiding on 300 ha remote farm guarantee survival of any global catastrophe. But there is one problem. In our wild bush land there is nothing absolutely to eat. So we could survive viruses attack but starve to death.Now by replacing most of the trees with all sorts of fruit trees may help not only to survive cataclysm but also rise value of the property. This useless millions of hectares of native bush could be productive bringing tonnes of nuts .I am thinking specifically about nuts because unlike sofer fruits seems to be less troubling while left alone and unsupervised. For many outback bushy farmers output in nut production could be higher then from grazing cattle.Now we could as our firefighters if they do rather prefer to handle bushfire inside walnut plantation or eucalyptus bush forest. This biologist scientist point also to quite important thing to consider. Eucalyptus forest is not so much native, natural environment for given region. For thousand of years those invasive species with help of people eliminated all competition to become monoclonal culture.Beside artificial irrigation those replanting our bushes with Nut trees could be the easiest way to help in mitigation of Australian bushfires.Nut plantation also are sustainable self financed structures. Gathered nuts could finance proper maintenance. Unlike other plantation that requrie 20 -30 for harvest, nut production starts early and could continue delivering funds every year. So LETS REPLACE EUCALYPTUS WITH WALNUTS TREES.
Hey, while we're killing native vegetation, why not eat all the koalas? After all, they'll all die out when you wipe out the trees they feed on anyway so may as well BBQ them now. In fact, why stop at gums and koalas? We've got some yummy platypus in our creek; why not toast them and then concrete over all the rushes? I hear humpback whales are easy to catch these days, too.
It's bizarre to claim that gum forests are "useless"; they provide the habitat for koalas, lyre birds, echidnas, and countless other species. Sure, you may love to kill things but not everyone does. Animals have rights to existence too, y'know. You want to tear down our trees, destroy much of our rivers and kill our animals - why the hell did you come here if you hate so much of what we have?
Oh, by the way, walnut trees burn pretty damn well; www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6557051/various-shades-of-black-walnut-farms-crop-wiped-out-in-currowan-fire/ so there seems to be no reason to think that they will do a lot to stop fires. And it's just bizarre to claim there's nothing to eat in the Australian bush - ask the people who have been living there for tens of thousands of years.
That main matter is economics. To manage and handle out large forestry we need a lot of people , machinery and funds.Government is very unwilling to provide even modest 11 mln for firefighting services when most needed.
Even if parts of the "natural" eucalyptus , gumtree forest could be transformed into walnut plantation -all management could be self funding.Export market for healthy food like nuts is unlimited and fully sustainable.
Unlike coal and iron, we could regrow nuts quickly.
Economics;
Walnut plantation could yield 2-4 tonnes per ha.
at the market price $10 per kg it is 20-$40,000 income from one hectare.
In comparison to cattle farm that require 2 ha+-5 ha per head and yield few hundred dollars profit if any at all.
www.agrifutures.com.au/wp-content/uploads/publications/00-100.pdf
In such case even public land could be leased for nuts plantations and profit income shared: supply labour to local people, funds to government coffers, safer environment not as prone to bushfires .
Greenies should be happy too, as walnut tree is green and capture Co2 produce O2 as any other tree. Beside massive supply of nuts could also encourage switch from meat consumption to vegetarianism in the future.
Select to expand quoteMacroscien said..
That main matter is economics. To manage and handle out large forestry we need a lot of people , machinery and funds.Government is very unwilling to provide even modest 11 mln for firefighting services when most needed.
Even if parts of the "natural" eucalyptus , gumtree forest could be transformed into walnut plantation -all management could be self funding.Export market for healthy food like nuts is unlimited and fully sustainable.
Unlike coal and iron, we could regrow nuts quickly.
Economics;
Walnut plantation could yield 2-4 tonnes per ha.
at the market price $10 per kg it is 20-$40,000 income from one hectare.
In comparison to cattle farm that require 2 ha+-5 ha per head and yield few hundred dollars profit if any at all.
www.agrifutures.com.au/wp-content/uploads/publications/00-100.pdf
In such case even public land could be leased for nuts plantations and profit income shared: supply labour to local people, funds to government coffers, safer environment not as prone to bushfires .
Greenies should be happy too, as walnut tree is green and capture Co2 produce O2 as any other tree. Beside massive supply of nuts could also encourage switch from meat consumption to vegetarianism in the future.
It's worth thinking about Macro but the idea will get a reaction. Not that we haven't already changed the vegetation on a huge percentage of the continent, but the suggestion of going the full distance is out there. It has been done before though. The first human inhabitants changed the ecosystem they inherited on arrival, probably a more complete turnover than we have been responsible for in the 200 years since our invasion.
It's worth reading Tim Low's the New Nature. He goes over all the changes, intentional and unintentional we've made to the ecosystem. He has found that for every loser to our changes there's a winner. Your new forest may not be good for koalas but something else will thrive.
How much water do walnut trees need? Are you sure they'll grow in place of eucalypts? We can be pretty sure they'll be much less flammable, especially if you pick up the nuts.
Select to expand quoteIan K said..Macroscien said..
That main matter is economics. To manage and handle out large forestry we need a lot of people , machinery and funds.Government is very unwilling to provide even modest 11 mln for firefighting services when most needed.
Even if parts of the "natural" eucalyptus , gumtree forest could be transformed into walnut plantation -all management could be self funding.Export market for healthy food like nuts is unlimited and fully sustainable.
Unlike coal and iron, we could regrow nuts quickly.
Economics;
Walnut plantation could yield 2-4 tonnes per ha.
at the market price $10 per kg it is 20-$40,000 income from one hectare.
In comparison to cattle farm that require 2 ha+-5 ha per head and yield few hundred dollars profit if any at all.
www.agrifutures.com.au/wp-content/uploads/publications/00-100.pdf
In such case even public land could be leased for nuts plantations and profit income shared: supply labour to local people, funds to government coffers, safer environment not as prone to bushfires .
Greenies should be happy too, as walnut tree is green and capture Co2 produce O2 as any other tree. Beside massive supply of nuts could also encourage switch from meat consumption to vegetarianism in the future.
It's worth thinking about Macro but the idea will get a reaction. Not that we haven't already changed the vegetation on a huge percentage of the continent, but the suggestion of going the full distance is out there. It has been done before though. The first human inhabitants changed the ecosystem they inherited on arrival, probably a more complete turnover than we have been responsible for in the 200 years since our invasion.
It's worth reading Tim Low's the New Nature. He goes over all the changes, intentional and unintentional we've made to the ecosystem. He has found that for every loser to our changes there's a winner. Your new forest may not be good for koalas but something else will thrive.
How much water do walnut trees need? Are you sure they'll grow in place of eucalypts? We can be pretty sure they'll be much less flammable, especially if you pick up the nuts.
We always have some cons and pro. Koalas may not thrive on walnuts very well but squirrels will. Beside what is the point of growing animals to burn them all alive regularly either in planned burn back or natural fires.
We also could plan for mixed plantation with planned eucalyptus , gumtree squares located at safe distances each other. As to water requirements , since I am going to plant some nut trees, I could tell you in 10 years from now- how they could withstand our outback conditions.
Planting nut trees doesn't seems to be cheap exercise as small plants I could find online cost $50 to $100 each.
So I need to find cheaper way to produce hundreds from nut seedlings or cuttings. Always something new to learn.
www.daleysfruit.com.au/Nuts/walnut.htm
Select to expand quoteholy guacamole said..
This discussion has become totally nuts.
Hmmm... I wonder what the main reason is that it went that way??
Perhaps we need re-education camps for the koalas so that they learn that they should be eating walnuts, and sometimes they should even eat them toasted?
What happens if the extra humidity from the lakes makes it rain too much for the new walnut munching koalas? What if they develop into a new super species and take over from humanity?
Planet of the koalas anyone?
Has anyone here ever looked at supply and demand and how it works? I.e. you increase the supply, demand is static, and the price falls? Hmmmmm.....
Everyone will have a quote to buy a minimum number of walnuts each day. I could double my typical annual consumption if I bought two.
2.You could lower your risk of heart attack by 37% thanks to nuts or extend your sex life by heaving healthy arteries delivering blood where is needed the most. Eventually the same apply to TOW for those oldies, when your vascular system refuse to function.
Select to expand quoteholy guacamole said..
This discussion has become totally nuts.
Yep !!!!! No mention of the water uptake of walnut trees... it's huge.
Dont like of native bush... F&$K OFF
Select to expand quoteMacroscien said..
Replacing useless ecuclyptus with productive nuts is cash flow positive and can be formulated into prosper business.
No problem then. I look forward to hearing how you have transformed your property from cattle grazing to walnut production. Cash flow positive!
Perhaps you could keep both and feed the walnuts to the vegans and the steak to the rest of us?
Somehow I think your cattle raising in drought declared Dalby will be more successful than your nut farm in drought declared Dalby, but they both need water, so who is to know?
Remember, cash flow positive! is better than just feeding and watering the cows.
Select to expand quotekato said..holy guacamole said..
This discussion has become totally nuts.
Yep !!!!! No mention of the water uptake of walnut trees... it's huge.
Dont like of native bush... F&$K OFF
Actually eucalyptus is using water too. In India is commonly used to drain water logged area and lower table water levels. I think that repalacint one tree with another will not effect water balance at all.
Select to expand quotekato said..holy guacamole said..
This discussion has become totally nuts.
Yep !!!!! No mention of the water uptake of walnut trees... it's huge.
Dont like of native bush... F&$K OFF
Yep - as shown here www.agrifutures.com.au/farm-diversity/walnuts/ they also have limited geographical spread in Oz.
Bizarre that someone can say that walnut plantations don't burn when one of the few ones we had just did exactly that.
Select to expand quoteFormulaNova said..holy guacamole said..
This discussion has become totally nuts.
Hmmm... I wonder what the main reason is that it went that way??
Perhaps we need re-education camps for the koalas so that they learn that they should be eating walnuts, and sometimes they should even eat them toasted?
What happens if the extra humidity from the lakes makes it rain too much for the new walnut munching koalas? What if they develop into a new super species and take over from humanity?
Planet of the koalas anyone?
OMG...... it's hard enough keeping the lid on the whole drop bear thing so the tourists keep coming. Imagine if they started liking tourists with a toasted walnut sauce.
Select to expand quoteChris 249 said..
Yep - as shown here www.agrifutures.com.au/farm-diversity/walnuts/ they also have limited geographical spread in Oz.
Good , informational link. Unfortunately indicate that Queensland is too warm for my Walnut plantation.All I could do is stick to Macadamia nuts or wait a bit for global ice age.
statements.qld.gov.au/Statement/2019/12/18/global-demand-goes-nuts-for-queensland-macadamias
There could be some benefits too as Macadamia nut is harder to crack by parrot thief.
era.daf.qld.gov.au/id/eprint/1964/2/mac-growing_guide_Part2.pdf
still possibly better outcome than cattle farm grazing on gravel and dirt.
Avocado nut may be next to consider in Queensland.
So this cattle farm in a drought area is suddenly going to find 350 litres of water per week per tree, is it? Macadamias require up to five megs per hectare per year. How many megs of reliable water has your drought-stricken property got?
Jeezers, I've got a 17 meg license (plus of course riparian rights) and that's very high for a place of this size. Five megs per hectare is huge AFAIK. Check out this map www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/climate_averages/rainfall/index.jsp and see how few areas have the 1200 mm per annum required. Oh, and it looks as if avos need just as much water.
Gee, maybe gum trees work in Oz because gum trees work in Oz?
Select to expand quoteMacroscien said..kato said..holy guacamole said..
This discussion has become totally nuts.
Yep !!!!! No mention of the water uptake of walnut trees... it's huge.
Dont like of native bush... F&$K OFF
Actually eucalyptus is using water too. In India is commonly used to drain water logged area and lower table water levels. I think that repalacint one tree with another will not effect water balance at all.
But which one's survive low water levels the nut tree or the gumtree?
