Australia Bushfires

[Gman]

Haven't seen this discussed in the forum. I get tired of the push to use these fires as an illustration of "climate change" caused by humans. I was a forestry major at Texas A&M for a couple of years before deciding that as much as I love the outdoors, jobs were fleeting as logging became more restrictive. I had a class that worked with the US Forest Svc. to do a controlled burn near The Woodlands, TX.

Like other organisms, trees don't live in a healthy state forever. We don't allow the forests to burn and there's more forested land in the US now than when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. I think it's a mistake not allowing the forests to burn naturally, or as the native Americans would start fires to manage the land when nature didn't accommodate. Forests should be a patchwork of different ages/stages of growth, which protect the whole and create diversity in the ecosystem. Us modern folk have taken a stance that fires are bad, and that smoke and evil CO2 are poison, which leads to the flora becoming old and unhealthy, and ultimately leads to huge firestorms.

I ran across this article and it struck a chord with me. I think we could also learn to better manage our natural resources from the example.

Australia fires: Indigenous people have a solution for the country's bushfires. And it's been around for tens and thousands of years

The fires in Australia have been burning for months, consuming nearly 18 million acres of land, causing thousands to evacuate and killing potentially millions of animals.

They're showing minimal signs of slowing down. The Australian state of New South Wales, where both Sydney and Canberra are located, declared a state of emergency this week, as worsening weather conditions could lead to even greater fire danger.

But a 50,000-year-old solution could exist: Aboriginal burning practices.

Here's how it works.

Aboriginal people had a deep knowledge of the land, said historian Bill Gammage, an emeritus professor at Australian National University who studies Australian and Aboriginal history. They can feel the grass and know if it would burn well; they knew what types of fires to burn for what types of land, how long to burn, and how frequently.

"Skills like that, they have but we don't know," Gammage said.

Aboriginal techniques are based in part on fire prevention: ridding the land of fuel, like debris, scrub, undergrowth and certain grasses. The fuel alights easily, which allows for more intense flames that are harder to fight.


The Aboriginal people would set small-scale fires that weren't too intense and clear the land of the extra debris. The smaller intensity fires would lessen the impact on the insects and animals occupying the land, too, as well as protect the trees and the canopy.

And though current fire fighters on the ground still use some fuel control and hazard reduction techniques, Gammage said it's not enough.

"Some of it is being done, but not skillfully enough," he said. "We don't really take into account plants and animals that might be endangered by fire. And secondly, we don't really know what's the best time of year, how much burn, how to break up a fire front."

It's not like they know nothing, Gammage said, especially the firefighters on the ground. But he said it's not enough to make Australia safe.

Why Aboriginal techniques are so difficult to implement

Setting smaller, low-intensity fires to prevent larger bushfires may sound like common sense. In practice, though, it's really hard.

It comes down to knowledge, Gammage said. When do you a start a fire? What time of the year? What time of day? How long you want it to burn? What plants are there? What's the weather like ? is there a drought like now?

"You have to have a lot of local skill," Gammage said.

He cited an example. In Australia, fires that are too hot actually allows the flammable undergrowth to germinate more. When early Europeans tried to copy Aboriginal techniques by lighting fires, they made the fires too hot, and got even more of the flammable scrub. So, they tried again. And again.

"Even though people can see the Aboriginese doing the fire control, and could see the benefits, they couldn't copy it," he said.

Now, the juxtaposition is clear.

"Where the Aboriginal people are in charge, they're not having big fires," Gammage said. "In the south, where white people are in charge, we are having the problems."

As climate change worsens, so will the fires

The bushfires in Australia are never going to go away but will get worse. That's according to Justin Leonard, a researcher dedicated to understanding bushfires and land management. Bushfires are ignited both naturally and by humans, but Leonard called them "inevitable."

Climate change only worsens the conditions for fires, he said. Droughts and hotter weather only make for more intense fires and longer fire seasons ? changes that are already being observed, he said.

Under worsening conditions, fires are harder to put out: They grow too big to get to safely, and even aerial suppression isn't necessarily possible because of the wind.
So, what does that mean for indigenous fire techniques?

They'll still help, Leonard said. Areas that have undergone preventative burning lead to less intense fires. But the problem is, under the worst of conditions, the fire will still be able to burn straight through the land, despite any preventative measures.

Which means that towns are still in danger.

"We need to solve that inevitability by effective township design," Leonard said.

In other words, indigenous burning techniques aren't enough on their own. Communities will need to properly manicure adjacent forests, landscape their own private property, and have effective house design and maintenance, Leonard said.

Aboriginal techniques require more money. The cost might be worth it

The most common way fires are handled now is with medium-intensity fires, Leonard said. It's similar to these smaller, more frequent fires, except it burns a little hotter, covers more land and is just a little more intense.

Basically, it's more bang for your buck. And that's what this comes down to.

You have to "use limited budget on what will be the most prolific way" to prevent fires, Leonard said.

It takes a lot of labor to ignite small frequent fires everywhere ? even just using these tactics near towns can be labor intensive, Leonard said.

Gammage noted that cost is a common concern when it comes to transitioning completely to Aboriginal fire practices. But he said he's not impressed by that argument.

"It's costing much more (to fight these fires)," he said. "Fires that destroy 2.5 million acres, which is what's happening now, it's shameful. It's a disgrace that anyone could let such terrible fires run amok."

What Australians should really learn from the Aboriginal people is custodianship over the land, Leonard said. The way Aboriginal people deeply know and care for the land is something Australians should ponder and embrace.

Gammage pointed to an incident on Tuesday, when a local fire brigade managed to steer a bushfire around their community, despite being told their town was "undefendable," according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The brigade, using their knowledge of the land, stayed behind while others evacuated. And rather than burn right through their town, the brigade was able to save houses and prevent deaths.

It just shows the importance of knowing local fire conditions, Gammage said. Knowing the land -- just as the Aboriginal people do.

[Irving]

That is exactly how fires in the North are handled. They start by themselves from lightning, and they burn themselves out without interference from people. That method is not some secret. I'm under the impression that the South is different and is a different situation, especially since the North is also burning right now, but no one cares because it does so every year.

[Bailey Guns]

The amount of ancient knowledge that's been lost to modern techniques and modern ways of doing things is evident in many areas. I didn't know this about the Aborigines but it doesn't surprise me.

Related to the fire story, the loss of animal life to the fires really breaks my heart. It's just horrible.

[Irving]

Australia doesn't allow the export of it's animals, so there are no stable populations else where in the world, apparently. This is what they're talking about when they say that some of these species are functionally extinct. You'd think there would be some in zoos, but I don't know.

[Grime]

Australia doesn't allow the export of it's animals, so there are no stable populations else where in the world, apparently. This is what they're talking about when they say that some of these species are functionally extinct. You'd think there would be some in zoos, but I don't know.

I think the San Diego zoo has some, but not having some in a wildlife reserve might make it really difficult to keep any from extinction.

Sad situation.

[Gman]

It makes sense that the people in an area would have learned over time how to be the stewards of nature around them for their mutual benefit. I have to wonder if many of our indigenous people have passed along their tribal knowledge in respect to managing the lands that were their homes? Many of them were removed from their native lands and moved to reservations far away from the areas they knew.

[Duman]

Good article, thank you.

[Jayhawk]

Here is another article on how to manage these fires "]

Fight fire with fire: controlled burning could have protected Australia

A kind of ecological fundamentalism has taken the place of common sense

Tim Blair

Sydney
By modern standards, my grandfather would probably be considered an environmental criminal. To clear land for his farmhouse in north-eastern Victoria ? and for his milking sheds, pig pens, chicken sheds, blacksmith shop and other outbuildings ? he cleared hundreds of trees. And he cleared thousands more for his wheat fields, cattle paddocks and shearing sheds.

Old man Hobbs would probably be found guilty of cultural appropriation, too, because he adopted the Aboriginal method of land-clearing. He burned all of those trees. He also established fire-delaying dirt paths through surrounding bushland.

This was once standard practice throughout rural Australia, where the pre-settlement indigenous population had long conducted controlled burns of overgrown flora ? known as ?fuel? in current fire-management talk. They knew an absence of controlled burns would invite uncontrolled burns ? such as the gigantic wildfires that have ravaged much of this drought-hit nation since September.

As those fires roared through Australia?s eastern coast, killing residents and volunteer firefighters and destroying hundreds of houses, a not-unrelated court report appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. It told the story of 71-year-old John David Chia, who in 2014 paid contractors to cut down and remove 74 trees on and around his property.

The judge in this case noted that Chia?s primary motivation for the tree removal was ?his concern about the risk of fire at his property?, but found also the Sydney pensioner?s actions had caused ?substantial harm? to the environment. Chia ended up copping a $40,000 ($27,000 US) fine ? more than $500 ($340 US) for each tree.

Similar legal rulings have become frequent in Australia, as a kind of ecological religious fundamentalism has taken the place of common sense. In 2004, Liam Sheahan was charged $100,000 ($68,000 US) in fines and legal expenses after clearing land around his hilltop property in Reedy Creek, Victoria. Five years later, that property was the only structure left standing in the area following the state?s deadly Black Saturday fires.

In 2001, electricity transmitter TransGrid sensibly bulldozed a 65-yard clearing beneath high-voltage power lines in the Snowy Mountains. The company took the view that high voltages and close-proximity combustible material is not the best combination, but duly lost $500,000 ($343,000 US) in fines and settlements paid to the New South Wales state government, which described the actions as ?environmental vandalism?. Two years later, the journalist Miranda Devine reported that the TransGrid clearing became sanctuary for kangaroos, wallabies and three TransGrid staffers who were desperately attempting to create a wider firebreak against that year?s bushfires.

?We?ve been burning less than 1 percent of our bushfire-prone land for the past 20 years,? Brian Williams, captain of Kurrajong Heights fire brigade, told radio station 2GB recently during a brief break in his ninth week of battling a monster blaze north of Sydney. ?That means every year the fuel load continues to build.?

Even minor attempts to reduce that fuel load are punished. Let?s suppose, for example, you have a wood fireplace at your rural house. Doing the right thing by the law and the environment, you do not cut down any trees to use as firewood. Instead, you simply collect dead branches and fallen trees lying around in the bushland dirt. This also reduces the amount of fuel available for potential bushfires, so you?re on the side of the angels.

But wait! Heed the warning from NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service Central West area manager Fiona Buchanan, in April last year: ?We are getting the message out there that removing firewood, including deadwood and fallen trees, is not permitted in national parks. We want people to know the rules around firewood collection?it?s important people are aware that on-the-spot fines apply but also very large fines can be handed out by the courts.?

She wasn?t bluffing. A man had earlier been fined $30,000 ($20,000 US) for illegally collecting firewood in the Murrumbidgee Valley National Park. Why? Because, as Buchanan explained: ?Many ground-dwelling animals and threatened species use tree hollows for nesting, so when fallen trees and deadwood is taken illegally, it destroys their habitat. This fallen timber is part of these animals? natural ecosystem.?

Those natural ecosystems are now, across thousands of hectares of national parks in New South Wales, nothing but cinders and ash. Enjoy your protected habitat, little ground-dwellers.

Those woodland creatures would have been better off under the stewardship of my grandfather, whose Aboriginal-style controlled burns were not limited to his own property and its immediate surroundings. Every year he would burn the long grass growing alongside local roads to make those roads more effective as firebreaks.

He never sought permission from the local fire brigade captain to light these fires, because my grandfather happened to be the local fire brigade captain. His decisions were law, and his law was driven by an obsession to protect his family, farm animals and property from the ever-present risk of fire.

Some were not as vigilant. My mother, now in her eighties, recalls an occasion when her father loaded the entire family into the car and drove for 40 minutes or so to a nearby small town. The children assumed this was their destination, but their father kept on driving. He didn?t speak much during that trip, until eventually he slowed as the vehicle approached a newly incinerated farm. Sheep and cattle lay burned and dead in the fields. The farmhouse was a charred ruin.

?This,? my grandfather said, ?is what happens if you don?t prepare for fire.?

He stayed there for a good long while, sufficient for the children to absorb his message. One of those children later took over as the local fire captain and continued his father?s careful preventive burning. Close to 100 years after he built it, my grandfather?s farmhouse is still standing.

Fire has never touched it.

This article was originally published in The Spectator?s UK magazine. Subscribe to the US edition here.

[Aloha_Shooter]

The Australians do have some of those native species in natural preserves or sanctuaries but I think some of those preserves and sanctuaries are threatened by the current spate of fires. While the points about ancient land management practices are good ones -- and ones we've seen stated here in the US in past years -- realize as well that there are significant differences in the environments and climates between New South Wales and the Northern Territories.

I would liken the NT to be somewhat like the southern US with areas ranging from rainforest (ala FL or LA) to dry desert (ala NM or AZ) while NSW is much more like Colorado or California. The area I saw around Darwin has dense forests but is lush and moist, much more difficult for fires to rage to the extent we're seeing in California or they're seeing in NSW now. The areas around Canberra (in NSW) that I saw also have dense forests but they seemed to me to be drier, even when they're green. When the summer hits and they get parched, it's much more like things were in COS with the Black Forest fire or the Waldo Canyon fire.

Very imperfect analogies because Australia really is its own continent and there are vast differences between the different regions but it's not some homogeneous conglomerate.

[Irving]

So a bunch of people with zero knowledge of Australia or what they're dealing with aren't able to solve the problem from a far by reading an article or two? Weird. Heh.