Victorian fires 2009

This very widely and deeply researched article talks about the role of Australian native animals in protecting forests from fire and reviews the evidence for prescribed burns, criticising Bill Gammage's research on a number of grounds and noting misconceptions about Aboriginal fire management. "Research by the CSIRO published since 1994 has shown that there is a group of around 1000 species of moths called oecophorids whose caterpillars occur at densities of up to 400 per square metre and eat dead leaf litter. These insects are killed by fire and take some years to come back - leaving the bush accumulating leaf litter. With frequent fires they can be lost. Termites consume vast amounts of dead timber Australia wide and in long unburned forests they are particularly dense with huge mounds in southern Australia too but their role in fuel reduction remains unstudied! Cockroaches and a wide range of beetle species and their larvae do the same. Recent research has identified Lyrebirds and Mallee Fowl as playing key roles in fuel reduction, composting litter and twigs in vast amounts reducing fuel loads by tonnes by per year per bird. All these insects, birds and animals that reduce fuel loads are diminished or lost to fire. Fungi are known to be major consumers of dead timber - but their role in fuel reduction is yet to be researched and the role of wallabies, wombats and especially potoroos in distributing fungi, though it is obviously significant, remains unstudied.

Bill Gammage’s popular book ‘The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia’ contains many fundamental flaws and represents ‘blind advocacy’ for repeated burning’ because ‘Aboriginal people did it’.

Like Keith Windshuttle’s ‘Fabrication of Aboriginal History’, Bill Gammage only pursued references - and interpretation of references - that supported his ‘hypothesis’. For Gammage that hypothesis is that all Aboriginal people farmed all of Australia using fire. This proposition was first published by Rhys Jones in an article in Australian Natural History in 1969 ‘Firestick Farming’ - and the references Jones used have as little merit as Gammage’s.

Jones used a painting of Lesueur from 1802 to show landscape burning by Tasmanian Aboriginal people when the painting is clearly of smoke signals. He quoted Peron observing the Derwent River ‘ablaze’ while Peron stated that ‘Tasmanians’ lit the fire to see them off. Bill Gammage now travels the country advocating frequent burning. He is not in any way qualified to do so and often does not look at the bush in these places before he advocates burning. He quotes no Aboriginal people or stories and ignores scientific evidence that cast doubt on his theories.

Mooney et. al. examined over 200 sediment cores of 70,000 years or more of age to determine fire frequency. They found that fire frequency increased 50 fold with the arrival of Europeans. https://palaeoworks-dev.anu.edu.au/?publication=mooney-s-d-et-al-2011-late-quaternary-fire-regimes-of-australasia .

Part of that increase was the use of fire as a weapon by Aboriginal people over more than a century - the firestick verses the musket as Joel Wright, a Gunditjmara Linguist stated in a recent talk. See /node/4240. He (Joel) could find no evidence of landscape burning in the Victorian western district but outlined the use of fire for smoke signals (see TROVE digitised newspapers for many references) and as an effective weapon. Gammage does not deal with these issues yet unlike Rhys Jones and Tim Flannery he had access to all of this information electronically and is a historian - inexcusable in my opinion. He also too often plays on locals’ fear and opinion of fires when he speaks, referring to those who do not want to burn as people or ‘greens’ from the city - see a part transcript of a recent talk by Gammage below.

Australia cannot in any way be seen as an ‘Estate’ nor Aboriginal people as ‘workers’ on an Estate - as if it was destined to be owned by ‘England’. It is a very complex continent geologically which is reflected in its complex plant, bird and animal communities. This in turn is reflected in over 500 tribes and thousands of clans that each manage ‘country’ differently. All are minimalist and complex in their management which is reflected in their more than 500 languages. To apply generalised models of fire management to such a complex landscape is disastrous. To apply American models for fire management is surely wrong and even harder to understand - especially given the radically different landscapes and flora https://www.georgewright.org/243kilgore.pdf. We seem to have adopted our version of ‘Wildland Fire Use’, using fires to achieve ‘other’ management objectives, prolonging bushfires for weeks, especially in National Parks, on the assumption they will make the landscape less likely to burn or burn ‘cooler’.

Eucalypts and other groups of Australian plants have been subjected to volcanic fires for more than 60 million years. We are in a ‘quiet time volcanically’ for the east coast, though volcanoes were active ‘recently’ in Queensland and Victoria 12,000 and 6500 years ago respectively. Humans are able to heal cuts and broken bones but we do not ‘thrive on’ or ‘need’ either. It is likely that vegetation, especially forests, has adapted to recovering from fire but, contrary to popular belief, does not ‘thrive’ on being burned or need it. Even the woodiest seed pods open without fire and many species regenerate from rootstock disturbed by digging mammals like wombats. Burning bush for grazing ‘green pick’ was common in the British Isles in the eighteenth century, though in Australia it often germinated a seemingly ‘inexhaustible’ seed and rootstock of trees and shrubs. Unless burned annually or replaced with introduced pasture species a cessation of burning led to the growth of dense scrub which takes 20 years or more to form a closing canopy and open understorey. This development of dense shrub is what is too often happening in burned bushland today, especially in National Parks and reserves. Just the fact that they can be burned is too often accepted in ‘blind faith’ as ‘reducing fuel’ and making the bush more open and flammable when the opposite is too often the fact. In addition to scrubby regrowth trees and shrubs are almost invariably killed by fire adding to fuel loads, as are the animals and fungi that normally reduce fuels.

The original forests had closed canopies and an open understorey

Judge Stretton stated in the 1939 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission that the original forests had closed canopies and an open understorey which was easily traversed. In regard to fire he said they were relatively safe and it was repeated burning for grazing that opened the canopy, saw the vegetation thicken and made them unsafe. Even heathlands and grasslands are very different with a full compliment of mammals and birds when old - turning them over and maintaining open areas for orchids etc. and reducing their flammability.

There desperately needs to be multi-disciplinary research that incorporates local history. No single scientific discipline or even science alone confers the qualifications required to undertake the comprehensive research needed to inform fire management. For each area there needs to be a collation of all the geological, indigenous and historic data on fire - what was burned when by whom and why as far as possible. Indigenous people need to be resourced to investigate their own tribal and clan history of the use of fire, as Joel Wright did, and not have it ‘done for them’ by botanists and others. This in addition to identifying the fauna that reduces fuels and the impact of burning on increasing wind speed, drying the bush and streams that flow from it as bush regrows etc. for each area proposed to be burned.

Given the massive increase in burning and the threat it poses to wildlife and local economies etc. pausing the lighting of fires and diverting part of that budget to rapidly detecting and extinguishing any that start would appear the wisest thing to do while reviewing their impact.

An example of a very bad and counterproductive burn is the Melaleuca swamp burn in Cape Liptrap Coastal Park in Victoria in 2014 which saw Napalm (Flash 21), a chemical combination not registered for occupational health and safety for its use in Australia, used when torch lighting failed. The impact was dramatic and the fuel load appeared to increase dramatically when it killed all the melaleucas and burned into the peat. The carbon monoxide from this modified napalm killed dozens of burrow dwelling mammals that may well have survived a fire. This is in a remnant damp ferny vegetation strip coastal park that has never had a wildfire and not been burned since 1939 when the messmate forest stopped the grass fire - no wind and wet bark. Despite its common ‘visual’ classification messmate is not closely related to stringybarks and hybridises with ash type species. This and other proposed fires for this bush with 50 or more lyrebirds isolated against the coast by farmland are as a result of ‘desktop research’ by unqualified or barely qualified people. There has been no formal botanical survey work though more than a dozen threatened species of plants are known. Individuals cannot be condemned for doing their ‘job’ - but what they are charged with doing and how it is done has to be evaluated. Fire will clearly make this southeast facing coastline more flammable and diminish or wipe out its abundant ‘fuel reducing’ fauna. (See https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au )

Kakadu has all but lost its fauna ...

Kakadu National Park, subjected to decades of management burning, has all but lost its fauna from too frequent fire, https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s4120215.htm which is likely the cause of the loss of the hollow dependent Gouldian Finch from vast areas of its frequently burned former range.

Northern Australia was the last ‘frontier’ and fire almost invariably used against ‘explorers’ by Aboriginal tribes and clans is too easily interpreted as ‘ecological burning’ by botanists. The northern grazing industry has long been dependent on burning for green pick in a landscape that can barely be farmed.

These species losses are occurring in many parks and reserves across Australia where they have been subjected to so called ‘Ecological Burning’ and they too are losing mammals and especially hollow dependent species. This approach to burning, to increase the biodiversity of plants, may actually be in breach of the amended International Biodiversity Agreement of 1994 which states that tetrapods, animals with backbones, are a reliable indicator of biodiversity - not plants. This change to a Treaty signed in 1982 originally was as if in response to burning in Australian National Parks.

Burning or logging a forest, grassland or heathland may increases plant diversity - but it diminishes structural diversity and fauna and may well make the bush more flammable.

The original forests of Gippsland were not flammable, settlers of Fish Creek were not able to burn the forest to clear land until the railway line was cut through, bringing in a ‘draft’. This is a common story Australia wide in formerly wet forested areas.

Research by the CSIRO published since 1994 ( https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/11-Common%201994%20Introduction%20vol%201.pdf ) has shown that there is a group of around 1000 species of moths called oecophorids whose caterpillars occur at densities of up to 400 per square metre and eat dead leaf litter. These insects are killed by fire and take some years to come back - leaving the bush accumulating leaf litter. https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/13-Problems%20with%20control%20Burning%20NPA%20Bulletin.pdf With frequent fires they can be lost.

Termites consume vast amounts of dead timber Australia wide and in long unburned forests they are particularly dense with huge mounds in southern Australia too but their role in fuel reduction remains unstudied! Cockroaches and a wide range of beetle species and their larvae do the same. Recent research has identified Lyrebirds https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/14-Nugent%20et%20al.%202014%20Wildlife%20Research-%20lyrebirds%20and%20fire.pdf and Mallee Fowl (Leonard unpub.) as playing key roles in fuel reduction, composting litter and twigs in vast amounts reducing fuel loads by tonnes by per year per bird. All these insects, birds and animals that reduce fuel loads are diminished or lost to fire.

Fungi are known to be major consumers of dead timber - but their role in fuel reduction is yet to be researched and the role of wallabies, wombats and especially potoroos in distributing fungi, though it is obviously significant, remains unstudied.

Almost all parrot species, possums, owls and many species of bats are at real risk of extinction from the loss of hollows which has occurred and is occurring right across the landscape - by burning as a ‘forest industry’ and for ‘ecological purposes’.

It’s time to stop lighting fires ...

It’s time to stop lighting fires and to use fixed rotating thermal imaging cameras to detect them and the world’s best and biggest firefighting aircraft, when needed, to rapidly extinguish them while we determine the effects and all the costs of this increased ‘fuel reduction’ and ‘ecological’ burning. We also need to evaluate objectively whether or not burning all bush is a major costly ecological mistake - and academically stop playing ‘my PHD is bigger than yours’.

Farms are repeatedly damaged by escaped ‘prescribed burns; and ‘prolonged’ fires, losing stock and fences, damaging rural community mental and bronchial health and breaking up families when burns go on for weeks.

Domestic and agricultural water supplies are compromised, fisheries and aquatic life are lost as dead vegetation washes into streams with rain following fires, robbing them of oxygen.

We have neglected even more deadly grassfires (per head of effected population).

We have neglected arson, often a mental health issue and an increasing problem we seem to be in collective denial about. Yet arson was was the cause of 50% of the 2009 Black Saturday fires https://www.wilderness.org.au/articles/summary-and-implications-report-victorian-2009-february-fires, most of the Hobart fires of 1967 and was the entire cause of the deadly Dandenongs fires of 1962 and 1968 which killed more than 30 people. Surveillance by fixed rotating thermal imaging cameras will greatly help in catching ‘fire lighters’.

There is virtually no research into lightning in Australia while in Canada ‘hot’ and ‘cold lightning’ has been identified. ‘Cold lightning’ is 95% of all strikes and negatively charged. While it will blow a tree apart and is very dangerous it passes through so quickly it rarely starts fire - but it can likely ‘cook sap’ in a tree and make it appear as if it has been burned in the past. ‘Hot Lightning’ is positively charged lightning that makes up as little as 5% of all strikes and though it starts fires it is almost always followed by rain.

The Australian history of bushfires includes a vast numbers of grass fires - like many of the most deadly on Ash Wednesday and as part the ‘Hobart Bushfires’ of 1967. Introduced species of pasture grasses die off in the summer, especially along roadsides and the increasingly in fire breaks which can act as fuses, ( https://www.myenvironment.net.au/index.php/me/Work/Fire/Fire-Resources/Fire-Break-submission-Chris-Taylor ) representing a high tonnage of highly flammable fuels in the fire season. These flammable grasses in semi rural areas, open to swirling winds unlike closed vegetation, their fires are particularly deadly and are often called bushfires. A good example of this issue is being addressed by the Kirkstall CFA with its replacement of pasture grasses with native species on road reserves. (https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/02-Kirkstall%20euro%20grass%20conversion.pdf) This reduces fuel loads by 50-90% and native grasses are most often ‘green’ in the fire season.

The reintroduction of dead leaf and timber eating insects, the restoration of populations of Lyrebirds, leaf eating Koalas that even have an oecophorid that eats their droppings, where they have been lost should be key to future bushfire management. This approach to fire management is beyond the ‘skill sets’ and qualifications of judges, lawyers, foresters and botanists we have charged with fire management. Current fuel reduction burning becomes a ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ even when it leads to more fires as appears to have happened, especially in Western Australia. To stop burning where it makes bush more flammable may challenge a practice since colonial times, but will cost far less and provide significant economic returns from improved water production, fisheries, tourism and public health.

There is strong support by CSIRO and other scientists for research before we burn what is left of our older bush area in Cape Liptrap Coastal Park which is one of the increasingly rare examples of older bush remaining with its fuel reducing fauna - see letters https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au

In anything to do with fire management there has to be a ‘No Fault Claims Bonus’. Science is rarely ‘wrong’ but biological sciences should be continually evolving on this most recently occupied continent. We are faced with the corrosion of the Indigenous cultural records from loss of scar, ceremonial, birthing and marked trees along with the potential extinction of many species of birds and animals, also of indigenous stories, from unnecessary or ill-informed burning. Both science and the management it informs must be able to change in response to new information. We need the experience of thousands of foresters and botanists to integrate with the breadth of research in other biological sciences which need a significant portion of fire research funding. There is significant rural employment potential Australia wide to control the animals that spread flammable weeds, protect the forests and bushland from fire and realise natural bushland’s potential economic value for water, fisheries production, tourism and carbon sequestration.

Naturalist Bob McDonald January 2015

Bill Gammage Promoting Fire in East Gippsland

Bill Gammage applied his ideas on burning in response to questions from the audience at a meeting he addressed at Bairnsdale on the 5th of November 2014;

Bill Hodge - 3rd Generation Mountain Cattleman

Would you be in favour of giving a certain area of bush for mountain cattlemen to manage as they see fit for say 5 or 6 years?

Gammage: Yes I’ve already suggested to Graeme Stoney (Mountain Cattleman) and others that after that fire which is inevitably going to come, there is already in place a plan that basically divides an area into three - leaves one area alone - doesn’t do anything; puts only fire in another area and then puts fire and grazing and the way cattlemen burn in the third and see what happens in those three different areas.

LR: Why didn’t you interview any Aboriginal people?

Gammage: If I had Aboriginal friends, I did talk to them. Places like around Narrandera and Alice Springs and the Coorong, North east Tasmania. I did speak to Aboriginal people. But if I didn’t know Aboriginal people I felt it was far too rude to roll up from Canberra, especially of all places (crowd snickers) and say well here I am, you got 20 minutes, give me some basic information and I’ll be out of here. It’s just too rude. These are really important matters - not only the land management, but totems and so on and um yeah… you really need to be really trusted before you can even brave such a question and since my book is about the whole of Australia, it would have been more than a lifetime’s work to have done that.

Danny O’Brien, Member for Eastern Victoria: We in the Government have increased the burning targets; we’ve exceeded them once and dismally failed them last year. Is the solution in your opinion more burning of more area or better burning or different burning?

Gammage: All of the above, (applause) and after you’ve done that more of the above (applause).

I have commended the Government for increasing the hectares. I think we should accept that politicians have a very different problem and there are a great many electors opposing any sort of burning and they are translating that into practice. So when they expand their areas of controlled burning they are really softening up public opinion in favour of ALL burning and that is extremely valuable because, let’s face it country people and like-minded people are a minority in a democracy and we’re never going to get anywhere unless you can change the votes of people in the city -and so doing softening up in this way. I congratulate them but I do think that it shouldn’t be seen as a failure if you don’t reach your target. What you do is say, ‘well we’re experimenting with weather and conditions and times of the year and that therefore makes any fixed target problematic and uncertain.’ Local people will give you a bit of leeway to burn locally, to seize the day; and those local people might be DEPI on the ground, CFA, farmers, loggers, whoever it may be. And what we want you to do when you burn is record the results basically and build up information about that area, which can then be translated into more efficient practice

---------------

It’s time to stop lighting fires
Bob McDonald, Naturalist* Pub: Jan 14
15.01.15 4:30 am

Originally published in Tasmanian Times
12 comments

Note: This introduction has been edited for a number of small but important inaccuracies. Candobetter.net editor 29/12/2014.] Fuel reduction and ecological burning etc. are based on the assumption that all Aboriginal people undertook fire-stick farming. Joel Wright, traditional owner in southwest Victoria, is an indigenous language, culture and history researcher. He finds no evidence of wide-scale burning in Aboriginal language and culture, but does find other explanations for the history of aboriginal fires observed by Europeans. These were often smoke-signals exchanged between clans, for general communication and warning of approaching Europeans etc. There was also defensive burning to hinder explorers by burning feed their stock might otherwise eat. Other fires were to 'cover their tracks' when they were being pursued, etc.. Many of these fires were mistaken for landscape burning. Joel also found one record of burning small portions of dry grass around marshes to expose an area to attract birds to scratch for food there, making the birds potential meals for the indigenous hunters. Nowhere did he find anything to justify the destructive and dangerous annual incineration of the landscapes of the Gunditjamara by the Victorian Government. He was concerned that burning the bush as we do now kills the birds and animals so important to vegetation stories, removes scar and burial trees and 'burns micro particles from axes and spears that holds the clues as to what they were used for.The video was recorded from Wright's presentation at Australian Wildlife Protection Council Fire and Wildlife Conference, "Pause and Review Victoria's Fire Management." November 2014

Candobetter.net Editor's comment: The long delay in publishing this remarkable report from researcher, Joel Wright, has nothing to do with its excellence. The delay was the result of fire policy politics associated with the recent change of government, which encouraged candobetter.net and others to suppress discussion until the passing of the Napthine Government. I will try to write about these politics in another article.

I am also waiting on a transcript of the contents of the filmed lecture. - Sheila Newman

Video inside. This article is about the effects of 390,000 ha of native vegetation targeted to be burned every year in Victoria, Australia's most cleared state. The video inside this article documents how vast numbers of Australian wildlife are burned alive in scientifically dubious prescribed burns, mandated by the Victorian Government. It asks whether the cruel and avoidable fate of many wildlife in prescribed burns is really protecting human lives and assets or merely a way of meeting an arbitrary target. Others would be much harsher and say that this may be a calculated strategy to rid the state of wildlife in addition to an apparently deliberate failure to cooperate with wildlife activists in making easily protected wildlife corridors to connect viable habitat.[1]

The Labor Government in Victoria created these machinally destructive laws after the 2009 bushfires, but the Liberal Government has not questioned them. Those currently heading the Victorian animal holocaust are Dennis Napthine, Premier of Victoria (denis.napthine [ AT ] parliament.vic.gov.au),
Ryan Smith, Environment Victoria Minister (ryan.smith [ AT ] parliament.vic.gov.au) and
#10; [email protected]">Peter Walsh Minister for Agriculture (peter.walsh [ AT ] parliament.vic.gov.au).

Government burning off decisions arising from the bushfire commission seem mostly based on spin. They do not acknowledge in their methods to avert bushfires the predominant role of humans in starting them. Nature accounts for only about 6% of fires, mostly in the form of lightening. Ninety point nine per cent (90.9%) of vegetation fires are caused by humans through arson (35.2), through 'accidents' (36.2%), by 'incendiary' (? explosions etc) (13.3%), and through prescribed burns reigniting (5.4%). (3.9% are described as 'other'.)

"Bushfire, arson, what do we know now?" (the source of the above graph and figures) is a Productivity Commission report on the role of arson in creating fires. As we might expect of the economic technocracy, one of their recommendations is prescribed burn-offs to limit the arsonist's bang for his/her buck! In other words, do the job for them? Absolutely no regard or even a thought for the living creatures that suffer. The authors note that it is hard to stop arson in large vegetated areas. We note, however, that there has been a huge reduction in parks and forest staff on the ground, like rangers, since the Kennett government 1992-1999, with Labor governments continuing this folly.

Shooters encouraged in parks, but not wildlife carers

Whilst governments are gung-ho to allow shooters into national parks to 'control pests', what about compensating wildlife activists and carers who are willing to roster themselves in forests during the fire-season and to monitor animal welfare and visitor activity, day and night if necessary? People who care for injured wildlife and love the bush are very unlikely to set fire to habitat.

Faulty bushfire management compounds faulty climate change management

The values of the Liberal Government avoid the issue of climate change. Their population growth and development policies (like the Labor government's before them, despite the rhetoric) actively increase high carbon-emission producing activities and drying and warming of land. Much of Australia's carbon emissions come from land-clearing, but in Victoria (and Australia) the government is encouraging more new development, and consequently more land-clearing. As well, intensification of development means that people are confined to small airless and eaveless appartments which can only be cooled by air-conditioners, which put heat into the air outside and demand more coal-fired electricity to run. Victoria's grotesque 'planning policies' increase local heat island effect and the overall risk of the climate heating and drying. We note that Victoria is soon to subject VCAT to committee regulation that will see even less control over the 'planning' that is overrunning our democracy and heating our environment.[3]

The mass media and government have avoided acknowledging the demonstrable fact that old growth forests burn much less than new or 'managed' forests. New forests and plantations dry through thinning or through repeated burnoffs which then favour combustible vegetation that survives fires, thus creating a man-made fire-vulnerable landscape and reduction to inland rainfall. The prescribed annual burn-off target greatly increases the drying of vegetated land and vegetation kinds. Trees not only create local 'heat islands' but vast old-growth forests cool vast portions of the environment as well as efficiently regulating below-ground and above ground hydration through transpiration.

For those who were in Victoria during the 2009 fires, and remember the heat leading up to the fires, the active promotion through legislation of these drying factors (although in guise of fire-precautions) is insane. At best it appears like gross incoordination of knowledge and policy; at worst it seems quasi-homicidal.

Government by the ethically bereft in Victoria and Australia

It is as if we are governed by a self-appointed moneyed caste which has lost all respect for nature, other species and the citizens of Victoria themselves. The environmental laws are flouted [2]and then, when attention is drawn to this, our corrupt parliaments simply change the laws.

For those of us who grew up in a social environment that enjoyed the outdoors and strongly valued passive interaction with native wildlife, with a culture of wildlife protection and respect, this is shocking. We realise that we are ruled by a planning technocracy that has no higher human values, makes empty promises, speaks in cliches, and makes laws to advantage its members.

It has taken many of us decades to accept that this is really what is happening. At best we are witnesses to great callousness, at worst we are witness to the construction by elites of a kind of civilisation that is only concerned with enriching a small elite at the expense of their fellows and the total destruction of the natural world.

The people responsible are obviously not able to work out the ultimate consequences of their policies, which will see a so-degraded Austrlaia that survival for most, if not all, will become doubtful. They are also not scientists, except in the technologies that further their immediate wealth. They have no humane philosophies. If they are religious, it is with dogmas that blind them to consequences and help them to further their own immediate interests. They are like Steven King's Tommyknockers, whom education has equipped with "a limited form of genius which makes them very inventive, but does not provide any philosophical or ethical insight. Instead, it provokes psychotic violence."[4]

This class is also ruling all states of Australia.

Inquiry into 2009 bushfires

The article below is a report on the inquiry into the 2009 Victorian bushfires, which were among the most frightening ever, occurring in deadly temperatures in the mid-forties. It shows the typical approach of the mainstream media, which always backs the status quo and attributes science and foresight to the establishment in its conditioning comments about how 'scientific evaluations have always been part of intelligent fuel reduction strategy' and its illogical conclusion that 'an effective wildfire control strategy must attempt to control fires throughout the forests. The paragraphs quoted below, however, also contain telling comments from environmentalists, but these paragraphs were right at the end of the full article, where most people never read. To consign these important observations to the end of the article, naturally diminishes their value in the readers' eyes. Also, note the use of 'experts' in the Royal Commission. Experts are usually part of the establishment. If you are not part of the establishment or disagree with it, then newspapers are unlikely to call you an 'expert'.

"Environmentalists, who for years have opposed fuel-reduction burns on the grounds that they damage the environment, have taken a new tack. The Greens, for example, now claim that they never opposed prescribed burning, but wanted a scientific evaluation of each burn conducted before it was approved, to ensure the survival of fauna and flora.

While this sounds reasonable, the fact is that these considerations have always been part of an intelligent fuel-reduction strategy, which must recognise that fires have been a natural feature of the bush, and it can be assumed that fauna and flora are adapted to survive low-to-moderate intensity fires.

[Candobetter comment: The huge arbitrary annual target promotes a regularity of holocaust that was never present in the environment where Australian animals evolved. Furthermore, this pyromaniacal target occurs in the most cleared state and where wildlife are threatened by many other intensifying and expanding processes. To cite evolutionary theory under these conditions is inappropriate and has grave consequences, as we see in the film above.]

Another line of attack, put forward by some environmental groups in central Victoria, is that the DSE should be setting fire to grass and weeds in close proximity to housing, rather than burning forests.

A spokesman for the groups said, "We cannot understand why DES fuel-reduction teams keep burning public forest blocks, when the dangerous areas closer to settlements are neglected." (Bendigo Advertiser, March 24, 2010).

Another member claimed that the DSE had produced no research analysing the effect of fuel-reduction burns on central Victoria's box-ironbark forests. The groups had adopted the motto, "Hazards not Hectares", to emphasise the need for burns in high-risk areas, rather than large areas of bush.

However, an effective wildfire control strategy must attempt to control fires throughout the forests, without neglecting high-risk areas close to human habitation. " (Source: "BUSHFIRES: Victoria changes tack on fuel-reduction burns," by Peter Westmore, News Weekly, April 17, 2010

NOTES

[1] Such as those of Maryland Wilson, Malcolm Legg and Hans Brunner http://candobetter.net/?q=node/1012 and http://candobetter.net/?q=taxonomy/term/73over years on the Mornington Peninsula, attempting to link Greensbush National Park with Devilbend Reservoir, sundry then extant green paces and Frankston Reservoir. All eroded by development and then all prospects of a corridor completely destroyed - some would say gratuitously - by Peninsula Link - which could have provided many underpasses and overpasses but only provided one, in the Pines Flora and Fauna reserve, where the local Frankston Council then failed to use money allocated by government to install a predator proof fence to protect the local bandicoot population, which then became extinct. Now our only hope is a southern brown bandicoot program in the Werribee Zoo. Imagine! Needing a zoo to preserve this once common animal. Everything, from kangaroos to platypuses is now stuck in the remaining isolated and dwindling patches of habitat on Mornington Peninsula, which has been targeted for growth since Jeff Kennet made it part of Greater Melbourne. Instead of a green peninsula biosphere once touted, the Victorian government intends to build new roads and railway down to Hastings Port, of which 400 ha it then means for intensive industrial development.

[2]Victorian Fauna and Flora Guarantee Act
Auditor General's reports

[3] "GENERAL BUSINESS
7 JULY 2014

10. CHANGES TO THE VICTORIAN AND CIVIL ADMINISTRATIVE (VCAT) ACT
Planning Appeals Coordinator: Gareth Gale
General Manager Planning & Development: Stuart Draffin

PURPOSE
The purpose of this report is to brief Councillors on changes made by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) Amendment Bill 2014.

BACKGROUND
On 1 April 2014, the VCAT Amendment Bill 2014 received Royal Assent, and became effective on 2 June 2014. No community consultation occurred as part of this Amendment.

DISCUSSION
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Amendment Bill 2014 contains substantial reforms relevant to the planning jurisdiction.

Most significantly, the reforms would enable the Tribunal to:
1. Invite a responsible authority to reconsider its decision at any time in a review proceeding
2. Make an order in relation to fees (including application and hearing fees), separate from its power to award costs
3. More actively manage the use and giving of expert evidence in proceedings
4. Make an order removing a person as a party to a proceeding if it considers that:
•??the person's interests are not affected by the proceeding; or
•??the person is not a proper or necessary party to the proceeding
5. Delegate certain functions of the Tribunal (such as making procedural orders or consent orders) to its registrars.

It is the first two reforms that are likely to be of most significance to Council. Below is a summary of those two proposed reforms.

New section 51A - Tribunal May Invite Decision-Maker to Reconsider Decision

In the context of the planning jurisdiction, this new provision would enable the Tribunal to invite a responsible authority (usually Council) to reconsider its decision at any time in the proceeding. The new section provides that on receiving the invitation to reconsider, the responsible authority may:
•??Affirm the decision
•??Vary the decision
•??Set aside the decision and substitute a new decision for it.

The new provision requires the Tribunal to ensure that, as far as possible, a proceeding's priority is not affected by inviting the responsible authority to reconsider its decision (unless the parties consent). As a consequence, the Tribunal may specify a timeframe within which a responsible authority may reconsider its decision.

One possible opportunity for Council to reconsider its decision might be following mediation and/or the amendment of plans. However, this process only seems warranted in order to avoid a hearing extending across multiple days – cases which are generally contained within the Major Cases List. Given there is clear intent in the new provisions to ensure a proceeding is not delayed further, coupled with the fact that all Major Cases List applications have hearings listed only six weeks after any mediation, it is difficult to contemplate under what circumstance this process will be useful.

It is further noted that Council already has the opportunity to reconsider its position during a VCAT process. As such, this change to the VCAT Act might not offer any new real change other than introducing a more formal mechanism to do so. This new process raises a number of procedural questions which are yet to be understood.

New Section 115 – New Power to Make Orders in Relation to Fees

This section provides that the Tribunal may, at any time, make an order that a party to
the proceeding:
•??Reimburse another party the whole or any part of any fee paid by that other party in the proceeding;
•??Pay, on behalf of another party, the whole or any part of any fee that may be required to be paid in the future by that other party in the proceeding;
•??Reimburse another party the whole or any part of any fee that may be paid in the future by that other party in the proceeding; and
•??Require a party to pay the whole or any part of a fee in future in the proceeding.

The key area that this could be useful for Council is in Enforcement Order Applications (EAO’s). Given EAO’s are generally only made in the situation where Council is forced to do so, the Tribunal could award the reimbursement of the $802 fee to Council.

SUMMARY
The new changes to the VCAT have been introduced with little forewarning or consultation.

The implications of the changes, and particularly those at the new section 51A, are unclear amongst those working within the planning profession. At this stage, there appears little opportunity to enact this new provision, particularly given there is clear intent in the new provisions to ensure a proceeding is not delayed further.

The new changes will be monitored to better inform our understanding of how they will affect Council and other stakeholders.

HUMAN RIGHTS CONSIDERATION
The recommendation complies with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and
Responsibilities Act 2006.

RECOMMENDATION
That Council note this report."

[4] Quote from Wikipedia summary of the plot of Steven King's The Tommyknockers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tommyknockers

Photo by Jill Quirk

In Victoria in 2010

Why is it that bushfires, regeneration burns, ecological burns, asset protection burns etc., are not considered fuel-reducing?

Why is Victoria logging in water supply catchments when we are short of water - especially after they have burned?

Why has not the impact of continually losing hollow trees as a result of increased deliberately lit fires and logging and the threat of extinction this poses to possums, parrots and other species being referred for consideration under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act?

What are the projected carbon emissions from all deliberately lit fires such as fuel reduction burns, asset protection burns, regeneration burns, etc.?

Why aren't the fuel loads before and after these deliberately lit fires and bushfires measured? If you believe they are, where and when?

The author suggests that readers
Email these questions to the Bushfires Royal Commission enquiries[AT]royalcommission.vic.gov.au your local Federal and State Members of Parliament Victorian State Members in the Upper House http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/mlcs.html and the Lower House http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/mps.html; Victorian Federal House of Representatives http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/mi-alpha.asp and Victorian Senators http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/senators/homepages/index.asp email

Please send all and any replies to jim_w304[AT]hotmail.com

Source of this article was an email.

by Helga Vierich

Abstract:

Fire has long played a part in the ecology of the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa. Among the Kua of the south-central Lalahari the power of natural and man-made fires is well understood. These hunter-gatherers use fire to control ticks, increase plant fruit yields, alter the species composition of wild plant communities, influence the movement of game, and to attract specific animals into snares and traps.

Introduction

I first met Hank Lewis at the American Anthropological Association Meetings in San Francisco. It was during the mid-seventies -1975, I think- and my first reaction was amazement: “I thought you were dead!” I had confused him with Omar Steward (who was dead). Both Steward and Lewis had assumed legendary stature in my mind at that time, since I had been reading everything I could get my hands on about the human use of fire as a tool for shaping the ecosystems. The Proceedings of the Tall Timbers Journal were like sacred works to me. Both Steward and Lewis were among those who had published on early human use of fire as a tool for environmental management. Lewis had reported ethnographic work among Cree and other groups of native hunter-gatherers in Northern Alberta. Steward had documented much the same in a more general way for all of North America. Their work was a revelation to me. Fire - something mentioned in the usual scenarios of human cultural evolution only in relation to cooking and comfort - was revealed as a tool of immense scope and power for managing entire ecosystems - a tool, moreover, easily accessible to hunter-gatherers long before actual domestication of plants and animals was even thought of.

Hank Lewis forgave me my gaffe. We found some coffee and a quiet corner; and settled into one of those long breathless talks that you can only have with someone who shares a mutual obsession. Hank had also written another paper of particular interest to me, on the possible role of controlled burning in the origins of farming in the Middle East. We talked for hours. I was enraptured by the idea of duplicating his observations on the use of fire among other hunter-gatherers. I also thought that the transition to agriculture could be better understood as a move from merely burning to burning and then planting. Hank Lewis was one of those at the very cutting edge; in fact, it seemed to me he had been one of those who had cut the edge. When I told him about wanting to follow, as it were, in his footsteps, he didn’t waste time being flattered. He told me two very important things that day: first, to collect as much information as possible about how the knowledge of burning was transmitted; secondly, to try to get concrete data on what effects fire actually produced in terms of plant productivity.

Less than eighteen months later, I found myself in the Kalahari.

I was extremely lucky in receiving twin blessings in the form of a wonderful thesis supervisor in the person of Richard Lee, and in that I had been funded by the National Research Council of Canada to study fire ecology among hunter-gatherers in Botswana. Then my luck ran out. In the weeks prior to my arrival, the Botswana government had been winding up a lengthy campaign to stop bushfires. Why? Well, Botswana had recently gained markets in Europe for its beef. Now cattle posts were rapidly expanding into the Kalahari as new boreholes made water available in the amounts required by cattle.
Fodder in the dry season was a major limitation, as hay was not generally cut and stored. Thus the dry wild grasses had come to be seen as a vital resource and the widespread practice of burning the dry veld was being widely condemned. Even in small villages, extension agents from the Ministry of Agriculture had announced that burning was now illegal. Fines and even prison sentences were to be given to anyone found guilty of setting fires in the bush. I had not known of this campaign before I arrived, since my correspondence had all been with the Ministry of Local Government and Lands, under whose authority fell all matters touching on the San -or BaSarwa - as the hunter-gatherers are called within Botswana.

For the next two years, no one would talk to me freely about the usefulness of fires set deliberately in the Kalahari - not the local farmers and cattle owners, most of whom were either Batswana or BaKalahadi; and certainly not the San, who in many cases worked for them as field hands or livestock herders. Among the San who were living in areas remote even from the cattle posts, people were still cautious. It was only after months of work on other topics that I was to gather information on indigenous knowledge of fire ecology.

This paper, for the first time, reports the results of these efforts. It is fitting that I write this in honour of Hank Lewis.
Helga Vierich

The People and their Setting

During the next three years, I surveyed the San who lived throughout the Kweneng district in the south eastern part of the Kalahari desert. Most of my more intense fieldwork was carried out among a group of people who call themselves the Kua. The region they inhabit includes part of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and part of the northern Kweneng District of Botswana (Map 1). In the late 1970s they numbered some fifteen hundred, most of whom were still living entirely or seasonally by means of hunting and gathering.

There were varying degrees of employment in the farming and herding economy of their neighbours, the BaKalahadi and the BaKwena. Most of this work was for payment in-kind, in the form of cereal food, milk, and/or meat. Employment tended to take the form of traditional contractual arrangments, and was mutually opportunistic. It was clear from the employment histories and life histories collected that long-term relations between employers and employees were rare, in spite of the fact that the relations between San and these other ethnic groups had been previously described in the literature - and indeed by the employers themselves- as a sort of serfdom. It was also clear that the Kua, despite living for some centuries on the very edge of the ethnic boundary, had remained very flexible. In a lifetime, people might move back and forth between various economic options many times. Sometimes they spent a few years working as herders at cattleposts, and then returned to the life of independent hunter-gatherers. Often the change was occasioned by marriage or by changes in residential arrangments, rather than by any concerns of job availability or peaks in local supplies of wild animals or plants.

More water, more cattle, more ecological change

Many new boreholes have been drilled for water in this part of the Kalahari since 1950. With the securing of new and reliable water supplies came the cattle. Overgrazing has caused ecological change.

Since the push for more boreholes into the remoter part of the Kalahari, there has been an ongoing replacement of open grassland with thornbush within a five to ten kilometer radius of the waterpoints. The wild edible plants and animals preferred by the Kua already showed rapid decline in these areas by 1976. It was in such locations that the Kua found their options beginning to narrow. Even the cattle were regularly trekked out beyond the thornbelt to graze. At Dinonyane, one of the older boreholes, cattle were brought back to the borehole only every second day. Dew on vegetation was their only water for 48 hours.

Sand creates natural water lenses

The Kalahari has been shaped by a pronounced shift between a wet and a dry season, imposed on a stratum of red sand. Dunes and broad, desiccated river valleys dominate a landscape dotted with salt pans. In rainy season these pans fill with water often only a foot deep, teeming with tiny shrimp. Some big pans, like the great Makadikadi pans of north-central Botswana covering hundred of square miles, fill with nesting flamingos and pelicans. Most of these pans are dry within weeks when the rains stop, and there are no streams or rivers flowing all year round[1]. But the sand has a secret. It is very deep - hundreds of meters in many areas - and rainwater seeps down into the sand until air pressure from air trapped in sand below overcomes the flow of water downward between the grains. This process forms water “lenses” which support a rich diversity of plant life. Rather than a sandy wasteland, the Kalahari is a kind of visually stunning open parkland, with beautiful groves of trees set at intervals over a rippling carpet of grasses and shrubs.

A rich ecosystem

This is an immensely rich ecosystem. It is full of tasty and nutritious fruits, nuts, vegetables, and tubers. It is home to over a dozen species of antelope, two species of rhinocerous, six species of cats (from lions to the ancestor of our own housecat), two species of hyena, several species of monkeys, three species of canids, a host of rodents and lagomorphs, as well as elephants, common zebra and cape buffalo; and about a billion birds, large and small and everything in between -including a few found nowhere else in the world. In the region occupied by the Kua, buffalo, elephants, and rhino had disappeared in living memory but had never been common.

Zebra were rare. The children were no longer aware of the word for some of these animals, but the adults told me that their word for the zebra was quag-ha - essentially the same as the word in the extinct language of the Cape Bushmen for their extinct form of zebra, a word we know in English as quagga. Many of the larger herbivores are migratory, as are many species of birds. The herds and flocks flow into the Kalahari during the rains, deeper and deeper as the landscape greens and becomes dotted with temporary waterpoints.

They flow out again as the seasonal drought advances, retreating to the more permanent rivers that flow on the edges of the Kalahari. A few antelopes remain year-round, like the gemsbok, the hardy little duiker, and the sable and khudu.

In the dry season the land is still fruitful, however, if one knows where to look. Many plants have stored up water and starches in their roots, bulbs, corms, or tubers. Even at the height of the dry season, a few hours walking and digging could yield 10-25 kg of such food, much of it surprisingly nutritious as well as flavorful.

Wild berries and tree fruits which survive the attentions of birds and eager human hands tend to dry up on the stem and take on the flavor and consistency of currents, edible well into the dry times.

As well, many plants produced seeds packaged with a dense energy supply to sustain germinatio - in other words, nuts. The Kua, like humans everywhere, know exactly what to do with nuts; and they live surrounded by some of the best nuts that have so far escaped the notice of the rest of the world. Chief among these are those produced by two closely related plants, the one a shrub, the other a vine, about which more will be said when we move on to consider the influence of fire.

The Kua camp in small groups comprising one to five families. I say camp to impress upon the reader the fluid and temporary nature of their traditional residential arrangements. The huts are small and made of local materials (branches and grasses). The people can move camp in a day, as the huts are easily built in a few hours. These arrangements suit the mobile way of life of the hunter-gatherer. When people are working for months or, occasionally, years on end for some family of BaKalahadi or BaKwena, they may stay put for the duration. In such cases they tend to make their camps larger and their huts bigger and more sturdy. Of such camps they say that they are building, not “BaSarwa” but rather “BaKalahadi” style homes. There was clearly a kind of ethnic identity emerging out of their dealings with other groups, for the Kua were quite explicit about what constituted a BaSarwa cultural trait or artifact as opposed to the things and customs and languages of their Bantu-speaking neighbours. Note that they spoke not of things Kua but rather of things BaSarwa, a kind of identification with other Koisan speaking peoples. This conception is remarkable in that in some cases they could not even speak to these other San, as in the case of their immediate neighbours to the south, who spoke a completely different Koisan language, !Xo. So when the Kua did start to speak of BaSarwa uses of fire, I paid attention.

Kua Uses of Fire: Informants’ Testimony

The Kua are adept at life in a harsh Eden. It soon became clear that they also were well aware of the potential benefits of controlled burning to keep it productive of the plants and animals they found most desirable. This use of fire appears to a form a traditional knowledge that children of both sexes are shown and taught by both parents. Knowledge of the use and effects of fires in the environment was part of general knowledge; and even though the sexes tended to use fire differently, girls did not acquire separate kinds of knowledge from boys. There was considerable flexibility about both genders learning all the important subsistence tasks. For instance, there was one young woman who ran an active trap line, as she had been shown by her father and brothers. She also used the knowledge of how fires affected animal behaviour, which she had learned from both parents. Most girls did not do this. They were not interested.*

The information and observations recorded below were collected in the final eight months of fieldwork among the Kua, and cannot possibly exhaust the scope of their knowledge or extent of their practices. They fall into two rough categories: men’s fires and women’s fires. Men’s fires generally were intended to attract game and lure animals to specific traps, snares, or ambushes.

Women’s fires were generally set to keep plant communities stable (inducing a fire climax?), to increase the yield of specific plants (especially nuts), and to thin out the undergrowth in areas frequently walked - so that thorns were not constantly getting caught in toes, and snakes and scorpions were easily spotted - and to control biting insects like fleas and ticks. The bigger the fire’s spread, the more people were involved in monitoring it. So sometimes almost everyone in the camp group would be involved in monitoring a fire, no matter whether it was a man’s fire or a woman’s.

Monitoring a fire usually involved keeping the fire within bounds, especially if the wind turned the fire toward another settlement or towards one’s own camp. Fires were very carefully monitored if set in the dry season (rare) and less so if set in the early part of the rainy season (most common). All of these activities took place against a background of natural fires caused by lightning, which became more frequent in a pattern that followed behind the frequency of human-set fires; in other words, more and more often as the first big thunderstorms heralded the beginning of the rains. The most dangerous natural fires are those that started during a “dry” thunderstorm in early spring (September/October). Even these were not the disasters seen in heavily forested areas in other parts of the world, since most fires in the Kalahari travel along the ground by jumping through little clumps of grass. It is easy to simply step or hop over the fire. The wild animals and the livestock know this and simply move quietly ahead, around or through the path of a fire.

Visions of large game being stampeded into hunters’ traps did not survive my first Kalahari fire. The Kua howled with laughter over the very idea.

Instead, they showed me how it was really done, if one wanted to use fire to hunt. These were generally men’s fires. If a person found a small area that had burned naturally or created one, then snares could be set along game trails leading to this area. Animals, it was explained, liked to come to a recent burn. They came to lick ash (most antelope, especially duikers), to have their young (sable antelope), and to eat the new growth of grass and other plants that tended to follow within a week of the fire (all herbivores). Of course, if snares were set they had to be closely monitored since all the predators also knew about the attraction of herbivores to recent burns. Next, if one found a tree that had had the misfortune to be struck by lightning, or if one found a dead tree and set fire to it oneself, one could set snares all around the tree. The man who told me this was then persuaded by his wife to take me out to his latest set of snares set around such a tree. If a camp was abandoned after someone died there -people were buried in the sand under their hut- the huts were usually burned. This practice was known to attract ostriches which liked to bathe in the dense ash piles where the huts had stood. Snares could be set to catch the birds by their feet; or better yet, by their necks, since an ostrich can often batter a snare to pieces with its powerful legs. To catch an ostrich by the neck one put a charred white piece of bone in the circle of the snare (photo). Ostriches in the Kalahari are always on the lookout for hard chunks of material like this because they need it to help grind up the food in their gizzards. There are few rocks to be had, save the hard white kernels of calcrite that work their way to the surface at pans. In the area where I was shown the bone snare, the nearest such pan was ten kilometers away. Aside from the fact that the snare did in fact have a strangled ostrich in it the next day, I must admit reflecting on the way that ostriches are often presented in cartoons - as creatures with a strange habit of swallowing all manner of unlikely materials like tin can and shoes. Is it all to do with an unhappy gizzard?

Women going out to gather often took along some hot coals wrapped in damp leaves if they anticipated having to light a fire to cook lunch on the road, so to speak. This only happened when the foods they were after were located more than a few hours from camp. In the way it was explained to me, it was most often on these occasions, at the end of the dry season, that they might set fires to specific areas to encourage higher yields, the germination of particular food plants, or the discouragment of undesirable plants*. The particular plants at the heart of these activities were two species bearing nutlike beans, Bauhinia esculenta Burch. and Bauhinia macrantha Oliv.. B. esculenta grows as a vine; and has an underground storage organ that is also a prized food item when found on a young plant.**

B. macrantha is a low shrub which has no tuber. Both species produce large leathery pod contianing up to ten hardshelled nuts.

These are flattened ovals; dark brown in colour when roasted, and are extremely high in protein and fat. These plants are critically important food sources during the dry season. Fire, I was told, could improve the yield of both plants. It also improved the visibility of the seed pods in the case of the vine. Recalling Hank Lewis’ suggestions, I resolved to investigate further.

Effects of Fire on B. esculenta: Field Observations

In the course of my travels along the bush tracks, I frequently came across areas which had burned on one side of the track and not on the other. Frequently, this afforded an excellent opportunity to measure the effects of the fire on an identical plant community, with the burned and “control” areas seperated by the track. There were also areas where the fire had died after burning a small area along and even across the road, leaving part of the same plant community untouched. I took the opportunity afforded by these examples of “burned” and “control” zones to record the immediate and subsequent effects of the fire on the plants.

I decided to limit my observations to areas in which fire had occured in and near Bauhinia macrantha stands. Three meter square parcels were marked off a random number of paces from the road*.

This procedure was done in pairs, one on the burned and one on the unburned area. I counted the number of plants but also the number of white blossoms and seed pods on each plant. The results were tabulated in terms of the number of blossoms and pods per plant, not per plot.

The results showed a striking difference between the fruitfulness of plants burned and unburned. The plants in burned parcels showed a 2 to 23% increase in pods and flowers. The average was close to 12% if the lowest and highest scoring plots were ignored (Table 1).

Unfortunately my sample size was small (only five areas and only twenty sets of plot counts) but time was short as I was coming to the end of my fieldwork. I also began to doubt that the results would be typical because of the lack of rain that year. The burning tended to coincide with the end of the dry season and the beginning of the rainy season. That year (1979/80) the rains failed. It was one of the lowest rainfall years since records began to be kept in Botswana (Diagram 1). Also, my time was limited as I had been hired by the Botswana Ministry of Agriculture to undertake a survey of the effects of the drought on the welfare of people in the Kalahari. This task was especially urgent because the Kweneng District, where I was doing my fieldwork, was one of the areas hardest hit.

Conclusion

I offer these results, however, for what they are worth. I know Hank Lewis was intrigued because we talked about my findings when I first came to teach at the University of Alberta in 1989/90. He also felt, as I did, that both the numbers and the circumstances of my study limited the usefulness of my findings. Nonetheless, having seen much of the literature on hunter-gatherer use of fire for environmental manipulation, I must admit that I do not think these observations quite deserved to languish in the obscurity to which my earlier, more critical self had consigned them. I only wish this work could have been a more worthy salute to the man whose influence inspired me to do it in the first place. In fact, I wish that Hank was still here.

----------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES
[1] Except for the Okavango, a vast inland delta far to the north. In some areas the Kua told of places where there had been year-round springs attracting large herds as the dry season set in, but all of these had been occupied for generations by “people of the cattle.” The seasonal hunting bonanza such locations would have afforded to hunter-gatherers were long past..

*[2] I asked them. They mostly rolled their eyes and giggled in disbelief: “me? hunt? it’s too hard - let the boys do it.” (rough translation of the guist of their replies) In fact the teenaged girls seemed for the most part, quite uninterested in anything but their social lives. They hung out together and gossiped about boys, oiled each other’s skin and distained helping their mothers with the foodquest. They often had to be shamed into doing any work. Teenaged boys, like the girls, tended to be preoccupied with affairs of the heart, but they did seem to take a more enthusiastic view of learning hunting skills. This is not, I suspect, due to the inherently more exciting nature of hunting. Older men often told me that hunting was a boring, generally unrewarding task. You walk all over the place all day and were often hungry.
Only one hunt in four was successful and hunters were not accorded any special status. But the boys viewed learning to hunt as a welcome relief from babysitting in camp under the eye of their grandmothers while their mothers and teenage sisters were out gathering - or worse, being cajoled into coming along and helping gather wild plants.

*[3] which they called by the same word, meaning weeding, that the BaKalahadi used to describe the more usual practice of weeding their gardens ..

** [4] Older specimens can weigh over fifty kilograms but are too tough to eat, although they are sometimes used in tanning leather.
*[5] I put pieces of paper marked with number (multiples of five) into a hat and shook and withdraw at each location anew.

Article about Brown Mountain on the Anarchist media net says that the logging of Brown Mountain will be done by public servants who would be otherwise deployed in our poorly tended ecosystems if they were not sent off to log. However EEG disagrees on this point. See related important corrections to original article in comments below it inside. They also make interesting reading.

(This article was originally published at http://www.anarchistmedia.org/current.html)

Only 8% of Victoria’s old growth forests remain

Considering just 8% of Victoria’s old growth forests remain, you would think the Victorian State government would continue its seven month moratorium on logging at Brown mountain in far east Gippsland. You really have to wonder who the Environment Minister Gavin Jennings is kidding when he states “the old growth forest surrounding Brown Mountain is not top grade old growth forest and did not warrant protecting”.

It is hard to know who to believe about the real worth of the old growth forest surrounding Brown Mountain when a VicForests spokesperson says the area to be logged is “exceptional forest” and “seventy five percent will become high-grade saw logs”. If it is exceptional old growth forest, you would think the state government would be falling over itself to protect it.

Trying to appease some very angry environmentalists, the Victorian Environmental Minister has set aside 400 hectares of old growth forest around Brown Mountain to offset what will be logged. The only problem is century old trees will be logged while much of the 400 hectares set aside was logged in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Just in case you think hundreds of privately employed timber workers are going to lose their jobs; the logging will be carried out by the state’s timber arm VicForests.

Our taxes at work against us and the environment

Yep folks that’s right, no private contractors jobs are at stake and the employees who work for VicForests who will be doing the logging could be re-deployed into other jobs in the state’s commercial arm VicForests. It seems the decision to log the old growth forests at Brown Mountain has more to do with the state government protecting its tough pro-logging image than it has to do with the state making any money out of logging the old growth forests at Brown Mountain. If the Victorian Environment Minister didn’t believe the ALP wasn’t going to garner a few extra votes, the moratorium on logging at Brown Mountain would still be in place." [See inside; this statement has been contested.]

This article was originally published at http://www.anarchistmedia.org/current.html

Leadbeater’s Possum – Victoria’s endangered State Faunal Emblem.

The following article is based on an urgent communication from Friends of Leadbeater's Possum.

Leadbeater’s Possum (LBP) Quick Facts:

- Approx 43% of the Leadbeater's Possum Permanent Reserve System (30,000ha) was burnt in the 2009 fires.
- It is estimated remaining populations are around just 1,000 individuals in the wild.
- There are no Leadbeater's Possum in captivity in Australia, and there is no captive breeding program planned
to help increase their population.
- Massive scale salvage logging and new timber harvesting coupes in areas of un?burnt water catchments are compounding the effects of the bushfires by removing all LBP habitat elements for the next few hundred years!

What can you do to help LBPs this Threatened Species Day???
On September 7th please make the effort to contact Premier Brumby and let him know you are not happy with the way his government is treating our forests and that you want more to be done to protect these forests for threatened species like Leadbeater’s Possum.

- Demand a full scale review of our forest estate

- Demand a full scale review of our forest estate – before any more logging coupes or salvage logging coupes are approved.

We need to ensure our State Government is managing our forests for threatened species, biodiversity & ecological values,
carbon storage, water catchments and air quality – for all Australians, not just those benefiting from our destructive
timber harvesting industry.

- Demand an end to all logging in water catchments. Water scarcity is an increasingly alarming issue, and rather than building destructive pipelines and energy intensive desalination plants, Victoria should be protecting the water catchments
that have provided us with some of the best drinking water in the world!

- Demand more resources be spent on threatened species management, including broad scale monitoring programs, habitat enhancement measures & community engagement.

To Contact Premier John Brumby:
www.premier.vic.gov.au, Twitter: ‘vicpremier’
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JohnBrumbyMP

For more about saving the little Leadbeater's Possum contact
Friends of the Leadbeater's Possum
Email Friends of Leadbeater's Possum
PO Box 1175
Healesville VIC 3777
[email protected]
www.leadbeaters.org.au

Photo by Stella Reid

Cooper

This little kangaroo has been named Cooper, after the little boy who found him on his way to school. "Cooper's mother was hit by a car and is now in heaven", reports Stella Reid of Wildhaven Wildlife Shelter. Wildhaven was totally destroyed in the February bushfires in Victoria this year (2009). You can read about it in "Steve Irwin's dad visits Wildhaven after Black Saturday bushfires".

Cooper's education

Cooper and Stella go for walks in the National Park and watch wallabies and wombats.

Where Cooper sleeps

At night Cooper lives in a shed, where he is warm and comfortable. I have a feeling that Stella and Allen live in the same shed with him, since their buildings burned down in the worst bushfires in Australian recorded history. I have not, however, been able to confirm this.

Stella says that Cooper knows what it is like to lose everything and still find love and hope.

"Happiness is a journey not a destination and together with my new family I begin that journey."

And, as Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC), says, "Stella must also be happier now that there is a baby in the house again."

Alan, Stella and Cooper in Wildhaven send their love and thanks to their supporters.

First new rescue case

Cooper is not the only animal they have contact with in the area of the fires, but he is their first new rescue case. Some of the animals they knew before have returned to see them. They put hay out for them because little grass is growing back, perhaps because the soil itself burned. The soil contains living creatures and, notably, mychorrizal fungi, which are essential for long-term nourishment of forests. Mychorrizal fungi can withstand very high temperatures, but maybe these fires were too much for them.

You can send money for hay and equipment etc here:

by direct transfer

Bank details:

Stella Reid
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
BSB: 063 222
Account: 10262617

By cheque

Postal Address

Stella and Alan Reid
c/o St Andrews Post Office
10 Caledonia Street,
St Andrews
Victoria 3761
Australia

By PayPal

PayPal address : oceanwarrioress[AT]yahoo.com (Remember to put @ instead of [AT])

Please state there: "for Stella's kangaroos"

The PayPal option might be the most convenient for International donations.

Logging this massive forest represents huge CO2 sink destruction

News is just in is that a decision to log the huge forests of Brown Mountain will be made in a week or so and the loggers will go in immediately afterwards! Brumby is not planning to protect it! Be there Tomorrow at 10.30am on the steps of Parliament House Victoria. We want everyone who can come along - young and old.

Old Growth stops this land from drying and burning!

The more old growth we cut down the more drying of the land, reduced rainfall, increased temperatures and risk of more and hotter bushfires. Bushfires dominate in managed and thinned forest, not in old growth! Logging Brown Forest will cause more bad bushfires in Victoria. Campervan, 4WDS and cars needed. Contact 0413927044

Climate Change Activism - less talk - more local action on the big factors - defend the forests!

Crikey news 12 August 2009 carries a relevant opinion article today on the farce that climate action has become.

Emissions trading debate: is this the best we can do?
[...] the public don’t have the faintest idea how emissions trading works and are completely disengaged from the debate over model details. They just want something done about climate change and know that the experts think emissions trading is the way to go.

This entire debate is being conducted under false pretenses or on the basis that what is manifestly not the case, is. Is this the best a democracy can do?

Making the 'solutions' very abstract and removed to a global forum of international 'experts' is the best way to keep people from local action and critical thinking and to mire action in impenetrable jargon and unverifyable accounting of C02 tradeoffs, offsets, sinks etc.

So much more we can do for ourselves here

There is so much more we can do for ourselves, crucially by stopping removal of vegetation for population, infrastructure and economic expansion. For instance we have in Victoria a record of climate change related fires which can be linked at their worst to the thinned and managed forests here. See "Victorian Bush-fires: ABC 7.30 Report ignores facts, creates scapegoats". We have climate refugees now living in tents in the winter cold as a result of these fires. Yet, in this most cleared of states, Mr Brumby is about to send in the loggers to Brown Mountain, where 600 year old trees testify to the very low risk of out-of-control fires in old growth forests. Most recently scientists have tied forest to inland rainfall . Deforestation drys continents - new theory explains how and a huge environmental and political experiment in Borneo by Willie Smit demonstrated they are right , "Recreating Eden". Climate activism is a huge source of organised public action in the name of which small groups should be able to act. Instead we see a crowd hypnotised by Al Gore and captured and harnessed by various local political groups in their usual quest for power and dollars. It amazes me that the Al Gore Climate Change activists, for all their repetitive noise are apparently unaware of or incapable of stopping the destruction of forests in Australia. Why are they not converging in busloads to stop the loggers and the developers' bulldozers?

Home Grown solutions in NSF and Permaculture

We also have at least two homegrown major applied science theories and practice in the structural ecology of Peter Andrews' Natural Sequence Farming (NSF), and the social theory (as well as the farming theory) in Bill Mollison's Permaculture.

With this in mind, I hope I may now return your attention to the crucial local political action to save Brown Mountain Forest for tomorrow in Melbourne. This is a huge forest and logging it will make a HUGE difference to CO2 emissions and local and regional temperature and rainfall if allowed to proceed in this (it bears repeating) the most cleared of Australian states. Protest tomorrow (12 August) at 10.30am on the steps of Parliament House Victoria. Everyone who can come along - young and old. Contact 0413927044

click here for film

The picture above shows an orangutang rescued from the rubbish heap as a baby, now thriving with its own baby.
But this isn't just a tale of a few sad orangutangs living on the edge...

Recreating Eden

Willie Smits went back at night to a market where he had seen a very sick baby orangutang in a cage and was not surprised to find that it had been discarded onto a rubbish heap and left to die. He forced it to drink and saved its life. Soon he had 1000 oranutangs and nowhere to put them.

So he found some very degraded land and reclaimed it. In less than a decade the land was reinvigorated and could provide shelter and incomes to many families as well as a healthy population of orangutangs. He integrated this reclamation with empowerment of the local people whose economic fortunes, he was able to show them, were inextricably linked to the health of orangutangs. He was very careful to make government absolutely transparent and describes what was necessary.

They grew a biodiverse forest with seeds planted in orangutang dung. Then many birds and animals found the forest, very quickly. How wonderful!

This is an incredible film, all biologically credible. It occurs in a third world country where the dyak people (the forest people) have been dispossessed and murdered by Indonesian colonists. The people in the area in question had high infant mortality, high alcoholism and lived in misery.

Rainmaking

The film gives a quick overview of the science of rain-making in the tropics and says that there is a different dynamic there from dry forest rain. However, rehydrating the forest is a matter of how and what you plant.

Now the rainfall in this area is huge. The continual forest fires have stopped.

This could happen in Victoria.

I found out about this film from Natural Sequence Farming, which is an Australian method for rehydrating land. I have been discussing forest rehydration in Victoria, Australia to stop this place burning up completely.

Kangaroo Island scrub fire, photo from CFS by Lisa Dalby, December 2007

In April 2009, Australia's leading bushfire research organisation, Bushfire CRC Ltd, published another important report 'THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF AERIAL FIRE-FIGHTING IN AUSTRALIA'
by Gaminda Ganewatta & John Handmer, via the Centre for Risk and Community Safety, RMIT University in Melbourne.

The report has examined the cost effectiveness of aerial fire suppression in Australia and has made the following important and most relevant findings, which cannot be ignored by fire authorities and their politically disposed masters:

1. "The use of ground resources with initial aerial support is the most economically efficient approach to fire suppression!"

2. "Aircraft are economically efficient where they are able to reach and knock down a fire well before the ground crew arrives!"

3. "Rapid deployment of aerial suppression resources is important, especially in remote or otherwise inaccessible terrain!"

4. "The sole use of aircraft is economically justified in the event of other suppression methods being unable to reach the fire event quickly!"

5. "Critical factors are speed of deployment and turnaround time!"

6. "Aircraft save more damage than they cost to operate, noting that high volume helicopters and fixed wing aircraft are economically more efficient in fire suppression, compared to small helicopters and large air tankers. Air tankers are less manoeuvrable compared to helicopters, thus their use in initial attack is not practical, unless used solely for large events!"

So while Brumby's Royal Commission is working towards finalising its investigation into the Victorian Bushfires, this presents an opportunity for Fire Management to harness such relevant bushfire research. Before next bushfire risk season key relevant bushfire research like this can be evaluated and the costs, budgets and business cases formulated to propose application to fire management operations.

But frankly can one lead a politicised brumby to water?

The following references provide useful illustrations and real life accounts of practical aerial fire fighting resource options out there (print them off and have a darn good read):

www.richard-seaman.com

'Helicopters: Stopping the Blazes'

Tigerquoll
[Licensed Commercial Helicopter Pilot]

• that outlying evacuees will reach them safely
• that shelters will be open to receive evacuees early on each day of bushfire danger.
• that any town can forecast whether it will actually be threatened, and therefore need to have its community shelter open.
• that community shelters used for other purposes on normal days (as they must be for economy) will be able, on any and every day of bushfire danger, to convert their normal activities at short notice, and make ready to receive evacuees. (Would they eject their usual occupants?)
• that those working in community shelters used for other purposes know of their bushfire purpose? The North Warrandyte Community Centre was typical of these (1991). Though it exhibited an `Emergency Refuge' sign, when evacuees from a bushfire arrived at its door, neither the fire brigade nor the Centre's committee had known it was a general evacuation refuge. Staff did not know whom to contact or what procedures to follow. (See Community safe refuges, Chapter 12, The Complete Bushfire Safety Book.)
• that community shelters in tourist towns will be large enough to accommodate the townspeople plus tourists. (If these became overcrowded, would late evacuees be rejected?)
• that if community refuges are redesignated, and if they are made safe, but seldom need to be used as bushfire shelters, their purpose will not fall into a limbo of bureaucractic and community apathy. As has happened with the wonderful, purpose- built bushfire shelters constructed at an average cost of $1/4 million in 1989 at schools in the Dandenong Ranges.

• the use of community and/or family bushfire shelters was originally intended only forchildren, the frail and aged. Able-bodied persons were expected to learn how to defend their homes, or shelter in them, in a safe manner
• unattended homes (of evacuees and other absentees), have the highest incidence of destruction.

Erickson Aircrane Flynn
Courtesy: G. Brooks, January 2009.

['Flynn' part of record CFS fleet']

The Erickson Aircrane, is capable of carrying 7,500 litres of water (freshwater or seawater) and has been proven an effective response and support to 'bolster' ground bushfire fighting crews in Europe, the US and in Canada. “In the past we’ve had to rely on an Erickson Aircrane from interstate but now we can call on this aircraft when needed at short notice." Mr Rann said.

Although Victoria and New South Wales have long had their own Erickson Aircranes and access to other fire fighting aircraft, the scale and number of major bushfires in these two states over recent decades has far outsurpassed the bushfires of South Australia. Similarly, the population sizes and government budgets of both Victoria and NSW far exceed that of South Australia. So why has Victoria and NSW lagged behind in proportional terms with its airborne bushfire fighting capacity?

What is significant coming from South Australia is the Premier of that State declaring: “The State Government recognises its responsibility to provide the best and most effective resources to protect South Australia’s urban fringe and rural communities from bushfires and consistently continues to deliver on this pledge” and his commitment to aerial fire-fighting and bushfire surveillance and his government's recognition that an effective airborne unit can "help accelerate the response times to bushfires!”

Now as a result, bushfire fighting results are coming out of CFS South Australia like that reported by the media below...

[The following extracts from an article by Doug Robertson, Joanna Vaughan and Frances Stewart on AdelaideNow.com.au, 15 March 2008]

'CFS hit heatwave fires hard and early!'

"THE CFS heatwave strategy to strike quickly and with everything has averted a series of potential disasters during our most extreme fire danger period.
Praise yesterday was being heaped on the firefighting force's ferocious attack on fires at Williamstown, Balhannah and Willunga.

The plan – to throw as many people and resources as possible at a fire in its first 30 minutes – kept the SA's three-day fire-damage toll to less than 200ha, one home and only minor injuries.
It is a reflection of lessons learned in the devastating Eyre Peninsula Black Tuesday fires in 2005 and the recommendations handed down in a coronial inquest into that fire.

After 12 days of a record heatwave, firefighters were warned earlier this week that the dry landscape was ready to burn and if a fire had not been controlled within the first 30 minutes, it could spread into a disaster. In a clear example of the rapid response, fire crews yesterday were able to extinguish a "fast-moving" grass fire near Balhannah after only 20 minutes.

Strong winds swept the fire towards Nairne but it was contained to only 8.2ha after several resources, including 120 firefighters, two fixed-winged water bombers, an air crane and two aerial observation aircraft, were thrown at it. The fire at Willunga that destroyed a house, injured nine firefighters and burnt through 153ha, was officially contained yesterday. More than 220 fire fighters were supported by five fixed-winged aerial bombers, one air crane and two aerial observation aircraft. The planes refilled in three minutes and averaged a nine-minute turn-around to the drop site at the height of the bushfire on Thursday.
Erickson Aircrane Flynn
Courtesy: G. Brooks, January 2009

The two air-tractor aircraft carried 3200 litres of foam and three AT-602s – brought in from Port Lincoln – filled up at Woodside and each made more than 25 drops on the fire ground in about five hours. "With the fire behaviour we have seen in Willunga and Williamstown, if there hadn't been such a significant response in terms of numbers and time they spent on the ground, these fires would have taken off and threatened communities far further afield than the areas they have been restricted to."

"When everything works together, it's amazing. The fire bombers are so important helping fight the fires; they help the guys on the ground so much." Australian Maritime Resources chief pilot Peter Bidstrup said the aerial bombers needed the CFS volunteers on the ground to be fully effective.

"We're airborne within two minutes of a page, typically, and able to respond two AT-802 (aircraft) with 3200 litres each anywhere in the Adelaide Hills within 15 minutes," he said. "That gets 6400 litres of foam on to the fire and the idea is to get it on when it's small."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Surely this must send a stark lesson to the Premiers of Victoria and NSW and to the respective bushfire fighting Boards and Executive of Victoria's CFA and NSW's RFS. If only the volunteers in those states could receive what those in the CFS do.

CFA Chairman Kerry Murphy

Victoria's Country Fire Authority (CFA) in its Annual Plan for 2008-09 (CFA's Plan) clarifies its 'Strategic Direction' for the forthcoming year out of its longer range Corporate Plan [2007-2011]. This Strategic Direction was in effect well before the Black Saturday catastrophe and remains in place. No doubt, the longer range Corporate Plan [2007-2011] remains in place too.

The CFA's Plan states that the purpose of the CFA is: "guided by our legislation our purpose is to serve the communities of Victoria in supporting and educating them to protect themselves and others from fire and other emergencies." But herein lies one of the root causes behind Black Saturday. Is the CFA's stated purpose appropriate? Can we now say with the benefit of hindsight that it is still appropriate in the wake of the categorical failure by the CFA to control the many ignitions across Victoria before, during and after Saturday 7th February 2009? Did not the CFA have the benefit of hindsight following the 2003 Victorian Alpine fires and the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires to put effective strategies and resources in place before Black Saturday?

Issue 1: The CFA is dictated by legislation. The Victorian legislature dictates the CFA's role, responsibilities, and functional scope. If the performance of CFA against its role, responsibilities, and functional scope is below standard, then this reflects a failing of the CFA Board and Executive. But if CFA's role, responsibilities, and functional scope is not what the community expects of its prime rural fire fighting authority, then this cannot be the CFA's failing but that of the Victorian legislature.

Issue 2: The CFA considers its purpose in fire fighting as one of "supporting and educating communities to protect themselves from fire and other emergencies." Surely the core purpose of this fire fighting government agency is to fight bushfires - to prepare for, detect, respond, and suppress bushfires! But 'supporting, educating and helping' communities to protect themselves seems to be a cop out. A support focus is inconsistent with the CFA's stated Goal No. 1 'To reduce the impact of fires and emergencies in Victoria'. How has this disconnect come about?

Issue 3: The CFA's Plan desribes the CFA's responsibility as one extending beyond fire fighting to "other emergencies." This seems quite vague and open ended. And is not the State Emergency Service (SES) charged with dealing with other such emergencies? Indeed, how many disparate organisations were whipped up on 7th February? By adding to the CFA's core fire fighting task, these 'other emergency' must surely dilute the resources and skills training the CFA can focus on bushfire fighting.

Issue 4: Given the failure by the CFA, as the lead bushfire fighting authority, to avert Victoria's bushfire catastrophe, one must question the merits of the CFA's Plan to allocate just 18% of its $309 million budget toward Bushfire Response. That $309 million was divied up as follows:

Preparedness..................................$98 million (32%)
Organisational support (overheads).....$85 million (28%)
Response (ACTUAL FIRE FIGHTING)....$55 million (18%)
Infrastructure............................... ....$7 million (2%)
Prevention........................................$7 million (2%)
Governance......................................$6 million (2%)
Recovery..........................................$4 million (1%)

So 1/3 went into preparedness - clearly how that as spent didn't work for Victorians last February! Can the CFA Board and Executive explan how that $98 million in Preparedness helped prevent Black Saturday from being worst that what it was?

Another 1/3 went into 'Organisational support'. What is this? Overheads? One must question whether 28% of funding wrapped up in non-fire fighting overhead tasks is duplicated across the SES and urban Fire Brigades?

And just 18% went into actual fire fighting - detection, response and suppression of bushfires!

Assumedly the CFA budget all relates to bushfire management, however does it? This is not clear given the 'other emergencies' the CFA is required to deal with...and where does the CFA, Fire Brigade and SES budgets, roles and responsibilities start and finish? It is all very loose, perhaps politically so.

The bulk of the CFA's capital budget for 2008-09 has $24.8 million goining into building more fire stations and an additional $24.7 million on more fire trucks. Again the question is, would more fire stations and fire trucks have mitigated Black Saturday? Would more fire stations and more fire trucks avert another Black Saturday in the same area or elsewhere in the State? How is such massive investment of this combined $51 million to address the systemic failings of ignition detection, response and suppression - especially when those ignitions are often in remote inaccessible country?

The CFA's Plan also estimates the volunteer cost component to be in the order of $840 million; approaching a figure triple the government's annual funding allocation! So not only is the CFA supporting, educating and helping communities to protect themselves in the event of bushfires, indeed communities volunteer themselves to do most of the fire fighting emergency work! The government is wanting to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to be seen to be providing a core emergency bushfire fighting service to the community, yet expects this to be done by the CFA with grossly inadequate funding, charges the CFA to mainly support, educate and help communities fight their own fires and expects communities to perform most of the fire fighting anyway.

Lastly, the CFA Plan states that "during 2007–08 the CFA Board worked with executive management to refine CFA’s strategic direction and, in doing so, six strategic issues were identified that both the Board and executive management need to focus on in the coming year.

These themes are:

1. Volunteerism
2. Environment
3. Financial Sustainability
4. Industrial Relations
5. Organisational Health
6. Partnerships

How are these related to the core task of bushfire fighting? Do we as that our police service or urban fire brigades or ambulance service or ineed armed services have such public service themes, or do we expect them to do their job properly and accept we must pay for it through our taxes? I'm sure many rural Victorians would be happy to pay higher taxes if they knew their bushfire authority had what it needed to protect them in the event of bushfires.

Issue 5: Brumby's Royal Commission is soon to deliver its findings and recommendations out of its investigations into the worst bushfire tragedy in Victoria's history. How will the Commission's recommendations contrast with the strategic focuses set by the CFA Board and Executive?

Hopefully, one of the very few redeeming features to emerge from this dreadful tragedy will be a final public realisation of how grossly out of touch CFA leadership has become, how negligent the Brumby Government has been to fund and evolve the standard of bushfire fighting, and how sorely let down Victorian communities were last summer when they entrusted their government to warn and protect them from bushfires.

NASA's Mars Pathfinder photos

One hope out of the avoidable tragedy of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires and out of the political football of the Brumby Royal Commission is that public will demand a paradigm shift in Australian bushfire fighting resourcing and standards.

One of the fundamental changes must be to force a leap frog from post-World War II bushfire detection to state-of-the-art 21st Century remote sensing of ignitions. The current system which relies upon members of the public calling 000 to report bushfires is substandard fire-fighting practice and unacceptable. Allowing ignitions to burn out of control in remote locations and blow up into fire fronts is also substandard fire-fighting practice and unacceptable.

Bushfire research and technologies are well advanced, yet culturally and politically there remains fundamental disconnects between such state-of-the-art developments and fire-fighting practice.

#10;http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/isi/weather/subs/sub19.pdf">

Firewatch IQ Wireless System

The German Aerospace Institute (DLR) has designed a patented scanning technology which as been used successfully in NASA's Mars Pathfinder Mission to survey the surface of Mars. It has since proven highly effective for the early detection of forest fires in Europe.

The Firewatch system includes "a sophisticated sensor/camera which collects data as it rotates on top of a mast or fire tower. Each camera/sensor can monitor an area of 400-700 square kilometres (depending upon the topography) 24 hours a day. Sophisticated software then takes the data feed and interprets it. It is able to detect the difference between 16,384 shades of the colour grey and as such can detect the difference between smoke, cloud, mist, fog and automatically alerts the emergency services command centre when smoke from a fire is detected."

"The third element is the independent power system which is a combination of solar and hydrogen fuel cell technology which means the cameras can operate in even the most remote locations off the power grid. The Firewatch system thus provides real-time information and analysis of all fires within the camera’s range, the exact location to an accuracy of 1.0 meter, and using meteorological data feeds like wind speed and direction, humidity etc, can advise in which direction the fire is moving. Firewatch has been proven to be able to detect smoke from bushfires before the human eye can see it."

"The Firewatch system is not new. It has been used in Germany for the past 7-8 years and in this time it has reduced the area of forest burned each year by over 92%. The benefits to human life, property and carbon dioxide emissions are immense. Firewatch systems are now either installed or in the final stages of commissioning in the United States, Mexico, Portugal, France, Holland, Greece, Estonia and the Czech Republic."

"It is superior to satellite technology for bushfire detection. Satellites only pass over every 6-8 hours and they are horrendously expensive to operate. Satellite systems also do not work when cloud cover is present. Firewatch is the only bushfire detection technology that has a scalable range (radius of 15km) and works day and night. Firewatch is proven to be three times more sensitive that any other bushfire detection technology including infra-red and CCTV."

One can't blame Australian bushfire fighting for not having such a state-of-art remote sensing system if politicans don't enable the organisation with the necessary funding, skills, and trained personnel.
If any blame is to be directed out of the Victorian Bushfires it must be to the systemic lack of political will to properly resource Australian bushfire fighting with proven effective state-of-the-art technologies.

The charred shell of a $350,000 CFA truck near Belgrave Heights during the 2009 Victorian Bushfires. The tanker was able to protect three firefighters from an out-of-control bushfire as it burnt over them. But in 1998, a burn-over incident during a bushfire at Linton, near Ballarat, killing five CFA volunteers. Photo: Craig Abraham [courtesy: The Age 25-Feb-09]

A report by ABC journalist, Jane Cowan, 1-Jul-09, 'Bushfire lawyers blast CFA's Rees' states that lawyers assisting Brumby's Royal Commission into the 2009 Victorian Bushfires have in an interim report concluded that the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) was ill-prepared for Black Saturday. The lawyers have criticised CFA chief fire officer, Russell Rees, as having been "divorced from fundamental aspects of the responsibilities" as chief officer, 'including the provision of public warnings and the protection of life and assert that Mr Rees "should have made himself aware of predictions forecasting the path of the fires."

Criticism has also been made about the reliance by the CFA on obsolete fire fighting technologies. Bushfire consultant assisting the Commission, Tony Cutcliffe, has stated "We still have people running these organisations who are predominantly devoted to a firefighting technology that is no longer in vogue let alone being attuned to the needs of behavioural management and leadership."

What is most disturbing of all is that the CFA looks to continue business as usual. The CFA says it has full confidence in Mr Rees and expects him to be at the helm again this summer. Mr Cutcliffe has expressed his concerns that 'whatever changes are made, as it stands now the same management team that presided over the system which failed to cope on Black Saturday will be required to implement the new regime.'

If the calamity of what happened to Victoria last summer won't force an overhaul of firefighting in Australia, what will?

The CFA's old-school firefighting culture dies hard:

* The CFA remains an emergency response organisation almost totally dependent on a disparate weekend volunteer base (not the fault of the volunteers who are effectively unpaid public servants);

* The CFA's bushfire notification system is wholly reliant on public calls to 000;

* The CFA's fire fighting response system is centred around urban fire trucks that cannot access remote ignitions and so must wait until accessible from a roadside, when the fire is by then often out of control. Taking fire trucks into the bush to fight fires is deadly as the above photo shows;

* The CFA remains a public authority with carte blanche to allow and deliberately cause immense irreversible damage to Victoria's remaining ecolgical habitat, yet with no ecological expertise in its management or ranks;

* The CFA is grossly underfunded by state and federal governments.

Some questions:

1. Given that unprecedented extreme weather was forecast and known to the CFA, what commensurate planning, preparation and response did the CFA deploy and when?

2. What improvements in fire fighting practices have been implemented by the CFA since the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires to avoid a repeat?

3. Where are the statistics showing the fire fighting performance in respect to each reported ignition, namely:

a. Elapsed time from estimated ignition time to detection time (CFA becoming aware of ignition)
b. Elapsed time from detection time and on site response time (CFA arriving at the fire site/front with fire fighting equipment)
c. Elapsed time from response time to suppression time (fire extinguished by CFA)

These are the three core fire fighting performance metrics.

The Bushfire Royal Commission is following its terms of reference in assessing the specific facts and specific causes of the fires and logically as expected is starting to lay blame. What's the bet many findings are similar to those of previous bushfire investigations? If the Royal Commission finds that the current system and structure of Victoria's (read Australia's) volunteer firefighting organisation was at fault, then this is a constructive outcome. Only at such a legal level will change be forced on the system and culture. Previous internal debrief meetings and investigations (e.g. the 2003 Esplin Enquiry) have managed to have lessons from bushfire disasters ignored and fire fighting practices remain relatively unchanged. If fire fighting is becoming more effective then how can such tragedies be continuing and growing in scale? How much more 20-20 highsight is needed by the so-called 'experienced' fire fighting leadership before we can observe tangible improvements in fire fighting performance?

Same old same old. Given the dire inadequacies of this organisation, the culture has forced to become one of absolute defeatism - the only way it believes it can deal with bushfires is to slash and burn as much of the natural burnable landscape as possible, so that there is nothing left to burn. It's as crackbrained as backburning through Belgrave Heights in order to save Belgrave.

Change cannot be brought to the CFA within the CFA. Change must come from Brumby and Rudd.

The Australian Press Council has just dismissed a complaint against Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine about her opinion article back on 12-Feb-09 ‘Green ideas must take blame for deaths.’ Devine's provocative article dogmatically accused "the power of green ideology" for poor forest management practices and as the key reason for the exacerbated scale and ferocity of the Victorian bushfires in 2009. ['Complaint against Devine dismissed, SMH, 26-Jun-09, p.5] But although provocative, Devine's 'opinion' article pales in comparison to the social implications of headline media reporting of extreme bushfire risk immediately BEFORE the bushfires! See also "Victorian Bush-fires: ABC 7.30 Report ignores facts, creates scapegoats" and "Responding to incorrect fire information by joining the debate" and "Comments on recent fire-management in bush-fire areas" and "Greens, logging, forest fires and malaria" and "Deforestation drys continents - new theory explains how"

The Australian Press Council has just dismissed a complaint against Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine about her 'opinion' article back on 12-Feb-09 ‘Green ideas must take blame for deaths.’ But although provocative, Devine's 'opinion' article pales in comparison to the social implications of headline media reporting of extreme bushfire risk immediately BEFORE the bushfires! ['Complaint against Devine dismissed', SMH, 26-Jun-09, p.5] Note that the date of the article was made while fires still raged. Also, note that the article was published on the front page of the Herald, indicating that the editor was unusually highly supportive of it. Normally, the Herald's 'Opinion and Letter's' articles are printed way back around page 12.

The main inflammatory bits drawing criticism in Devine's article were:
“It wasn't climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend…it was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts.” [and] “If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.”

Clearly, the article's emotive tone expresses anger, frustration, retaliation and spiteful provocation. Perhaps this is understandable given the scale of the disaster and public shock, disbelief and for many, the personal loss. People react in their own way to tragedy. Devine's article upset many and presumably it was intended to in order to unseat entrenched community complacency about bushfire management.

If so I agree with her motive, but not her method.

The Australian Press Council considered the article's lead paragraphs as 'dogmatic' and 'confrontational'. But the complainants asserted that the article breached a number of Press Council principles. Yet the Press Council's principles or journalism are vague and advocate the rights of journalists rather than prescribing responsibilities. The principles include noble motherhood ideals such as being accurate, fair and balanced, not being misleading, acting in the public interest and not being biased against minority groups. So then perhaps the complainants were misguided and it is not surprising that the Press Council found that publicising the article didn’t breach any of these principles.

Devine was accused of incitement in her article, which is a fair interpretation. On Crikey, Greg Barns questions whether Devine’s article incited violence. He suggests that in “these fraught times, where there is a smell of blood in the air as well as smoke, as communities, individuals and the media look to find someone to blame for the Victorian bushfires, are just the environment where incitement flourishes.” Barns goes on: “To date no one appears to have acted on the inflammatory statements of Ms Devine and her fellow sabre rattlers, but that does not matter, says the law. It is enough that the incitement to commit a offence occurs, it is irrelevant that no one acted on the statement made.” SOURCE: http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/02/17/did-miranda-devine-incite-violence/

In the press at the time, local anger in Gippsland was palpable and vigilante feeling clearly was at breaking point. But it was targeted at the arsonists.

No-one rationally can blame the conservation movement and its ecological principles for the Victorian Bushfires. The bush and its creatures were innocent victims of the fires, just like people, livestock and houses. Many tend to forget this in the wake of such enormous tragedy. But one must blame the arsonists.

Yet it wasn't apparently just arsonists that caused the ignitions and it is the task of Brumby's Royal Commission to investigate and find out the causes of all the ignitions. However, thereafter, the real problem solving should start, but I doubt Brumby will have the will and instead will want to close the political door on the bushfire tragedy - just like the bushfire investigations of the past and interstate.

But let’s turn more importantly to the media incitement before the bushfires!

The Age newspaper in Melbourne during the Victorian heatwave through January and early February 2009 immediately preceding the bushfires, ran headlines repeating the extreme bushfire risk. On 6 February 2009, the day before the fires started, indeed the Premier of Victoria John Brumby issued a warning about the extreme weather conditions expected on 7 February: "It's just as bad a day as you can imagine and on top of that the state is just tinder-dry. People need to exercise real common sense tomorrow".
Was this wise?

To serial dormant bush arsonists and to would be arsonists, this frenzied media excitement about such pending doom surely would have been been read by arsonists and I suggest directly incited the bush arson. Yet at the time there was no complaining or realisation of this. If bush arsonists are found to have been the key causes of the ignitons and indeed of the most catestrophic firestorms that burt alive people for instance Marysville and Kinglake, then the investigation must focus on the root cause of the arsonist motivations. I argue that media arousal through its sensationalising of the bushfire risk and its portrayal of the bushfire threat is directly responsible and accountable for actual bush arson. Let's see what the Royal Commission concludes.

Getting back to the subject of press responsibility, let’s look at where the Press Council actually prescribes reporting restrictions on journalists. Take the subject of media reporting of suicide. In the Council’s General Press Release No. 246 (i) (July 2001) on Reporting of Suicide, The Press Council “calls upon the press to continue to exercise care and responsibility in reporting matters of suicide consistent with government attempts to curb the suicide rate. Research shows that an association exists between media portrayal of suicide and actual suicide, and that in some cases the link is causal. So the Press Council recommends journalists avoid reporting which might encourage copy-cat suicides and which unnecessary references details of or the place of a suicide, or which uses language which trivialises, romanticises, or glorifies suicide.” [SOURCE: http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/activities/guides/gpr246_1.html]

So on the sensitive topic of suicide, the Press Council is quite prescriptive, moreso than in its broader principles for journalists rights.

Serious thought needs to be given by all levels of government and by the Press Council as the media industry's representative body to the reporting of bushfire risks. Just as links can be drawn between the media portrayal of suicide and actual suicide, causal links can be drawn between the media portrayal of bushfire risk and bush arson arousal.

This is a matter for criminal psychology. Media sensationalising of bushfire risk and of bush arson is known to incite bush arson and copy-cat bush arson. This is a little known and neglected form of social deviant behaviour, yet it has become increasingly prevalent and deadly.

There is an urgent need for national level investment into bush arson criminology research and investigations. Media rights and responsibility for reporting bushfires play a critical role, perhaps more than many of us realise.

We need to dig deeper if we are serious about the bushfire threat, and this doesn't mean just more charity to prop up the existing but failing system, as the PM seems to perpetuate. This goes beyond the Victorian Bushfires. Under-resourcing is a fundamental problem with Australian bushfire management nationally.

The bushfire problem is only going to get worse given the trend toward hotter summers, prolonged droughts, climate change, arsonists and millions of houses now situated in bushfire prone areas. The answer is not to destroy vast swathes of bushland, which embers jump anyway sometimes spotting beyond 10km ahead of a fire front.

Detection, response and suppression are the measures of firefighting success criteria. Yet to adequately perform these, current bushfire management remains chronically under-resourced by all levels of government across Australia.

A fleet of Bombardier 415s (formerly Canadair CL-415) would be a cost effective proactive investment in bushfire response and without doubt preferable to the $2B economic cost of Vic Fires, after the fact. Check this out: http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/bombardier_415/bombardier_4152.html

But also more manoeuvrable water-bombing rotary-wing aircraft like the Erikson Aircrane plus the dropping in of RAFT crews also deserve consideration particularly in rugged terrain, where Bombardiers would not be able to achieve water-bombing runs low enough to be effective.

The cultural problem is that bushfire management is typically fire-truck centric in its thinking, planning and response. And beware of pollies and their devoted fans lobbying red herrings and porkies to try to stimie investigation into these options, when really the debate is simply one of cost.

But research needs to precede any investment. Australia's peak bushfire research organisation, Bushfire CRC, in its August 2006 report on the merits of aerial suppression made the following key findings:

• Aerial suppression can be effective in providing support to ground crews and improving the probability of first attack success by 50 percent or more. (so relies on fast detection of ignitions)
• For an aircraft to provide effective assistance it must be available at call, rapidly dispatched with minimal travel time and with logistical systems in place.
• Air operations effectively integrated into the incident management structure and competent personnel are needed to be available to direct the operations for good outcomes.
• The use of ground resources with initial aerial support is the most economically efficient approach to suppression.
• The use of aircraft for first attack until ground resources reach the fire produces the best suppression outcome.
• Large fixed wing air tankers such as a DC 10 are at a cost disadvantage. This is particularly the case for first attack when fires are small and where water drop accuracy is required. (But no-one could argue that Victoria is now at a cost disadvantage without them..the economic bill alone is $2 Billion, which excludes the psychological, social and ecological costs).

The airborne response is just one strategy to consider. The bushfire management solution is complex. Yes Les, to be effective in preventing a repeat of 7-Feb-09, it demands massive investment and organisation at a level only federal resources can muster.

Tigerquoll
[licensed commercial helicopter pilot]

The Victorian Premier Brumby's Royal Commission into the January-February 2009 bushfires is a mere incident review. If Victoria is to be protected from firestorms in future, it should undertake a root cause analysis, including the numerous past investigations into bushfires, with a view to achieving a cultural shift in rural fire fighting methods, resourcing and emergency management and into ecology management, housing approvals in bushfire prone areas, building design in bushfire prone areas, bush arson criminology and into serious resourcing of rural fire management.

Indeed, given the repeated history of bushfires across Australia and the repeated uncontrolled nature of many of these leading to extensive property damage, the loss of thousands of livestock, widespread ecological destruction, the human lives lost and injuries, and the massive costs incurred every year, the scope of the enquiry should be escalated to a national level.

But the Victorian Commission's terms of reference focuses on the immediate causes and circumstances of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires. It focuses on the immediate management, response and recovery. This is a start, but the real start occurred in 1939 with the shock of Black Friday. It lead to the Stretton Enquiry, but many large and damaging firestorms have occurred since - so the Stretton Enquiry showed that lessons were either ignored or the application of those lessons were ineffective. The Esplin Inquiry of 2003 identified striking parallels between 1939 and 2002-3 bushfires. Now we have the 2009 Bushfires, but each investigation is disconnected from the previous one, almost as if to intentionally ignore history and any prior lessons learnt. Interstate and overseas, many major bushfires and their subsequent investigations have amassed research, insight and lessons. Why limit the investigation to one event?

Incident investigation will uncover causes and flaws and will likely make specific recommendations in the hope of preventing similar incidents. But root cause analysis goes beyond identifying the symptoms of a problem. But the Commission has not started with identifying the problem. Let's say that that at the core is the problem of preventing ignitions becoming firestorms. What are the causes of uncontrolled ignitions in the bush. Where are they typically lit? How are ignitions detected by fire authorities? What is the time lapse between ignition and detection? What is the time lapse between detection and response and eventual suppression? Which causes and interventions would mitigate the risk of these ignitions developing into uncontrollable firestorms? Are the ignition detection tools adequate? Are the communications tools adequate? Do we have the right tools and trained personnel in the right places to effectively respond? Is the entire detection, response and suppression system sufficiently integrated to deal with multiple igntitions in extreme conditions across the State at the same time? How would this be achieved? What budget would be required to have such resources and technology in place to achieve this standard? Is the problem indeed too big for Victoria by itself to adequately deal with and so is the problem in fact a national one?

How would a satisfactory solution be achieved without causing other problems like ecological damage and local wildlife extinctions? Then implement the recommendations and scientifically monitor their effectiveness. But the Commission is looking at what caused the specific ignitions, what damage the specific bushfires caused and specific responses. It will conclude what specifically should have been done in these specific incidents. It will lead to a blame game that will solve nothing. Subsequent ignitions if not predicted, detected, responded to and suppressed to prevent firestorms, will likely have different circumstances in different locations. So how will the problem have been solved by this Royal Commission? How will the Victorian Royal Commission prevent bushfire history repeating itself?

Joan Webster, author of The Complete Bushfire Safety Book and Essential Bushfire Safety Tips believes that some information, contained in the article "Fire bunkers could have helped in the Victorian fires" of 20 Feb 09, is wrong and may put lives at risk. In this article, she explans why.

See also: "Bushfire bunkers strategy an 'after-the-fact' dead end" of 21 Jun 09.

This article, is in response to the article "Fire bunkers could have helped in the Victorian fires" of 10 Feb 09 and comments in reponse to that article.

Hello again. I'm Joan Webster, author of The Complete Bushfire Safety Book (Random House, 2000) and Essential Bushfire Safety Tips (CSIRO 2008). I've been researching and writing about bushfire safety for over 45 years. James asked me to respond to some correspondence on bushfire bunkers, dugouts and tunnels that I saw as misleading in regard to safety issues. Some are dangerous. Others absurd.

The subject matter is dotted, bolded and underlined. Correspondents' comments are dotted and bolded and put in quote marks. My response is preceded by my initials, JW, underlined. (I have turned them into headings with links back to the the ealier article. - JS)

The 1900s timber mill bunkers

JW: Those shown in the photographs would be death traps. For one thing, look at the flammable matter around and in them! It was even suggested they be 'covered with logs'.

Joan Webster argues that a fire shelter such as this would be a death trap.

All undergrowth and litter needs to be cleared around and above them for at least 30 metres, and trees for the distance of at least twice their mature height - in case they fall. Another big problem with dugouts such as those in the photos is that timber and corrugated iron can rot and rust after long contact with earth, and that many timber preservatives are highly flammable.

Those built by the Forests Commission in the 1920s for timber mill workers, the large, well-constructed ones, equipped with solid doors, plenty of water, wetted nose covers and pure wool blankets saved many lives. But in others, many, many people died. These, of the type described on February 10th, as 'simply a ditch dug 3 or 4 foot into the ground … and 2 foot of earth piled on top', were shallow and too small for the number of people sheltering in them. The people huddling in them died of smoke inhalation, asphyxiation, dehydration and heat exhaustion.

Bushfire shelters of any description need to be roomy enough for the number of people who use them. Crowding will not only quickly use up the oxygen in the space, but will further heat people already sweltering because of the hot day and heat from nearby bush and house fires. They may faint. They may suffocate. They may dehydrate. At a bushfire a person can lose up to two litres of body fluid an hour by sweating. Unless this is replaced by drinking at least a glass each 10 minutes, the salts and minerals in the blood become imbalanced, those normally excreted build up in the body tissues, kidneys can fail and death quickly follow.

Timber settlement dugouts were not built in the bush after the 1939 tragedies, both because most had not proved to be safe and because the workers' houses were from then on built separated from the bush in which the men worked.

I've attached pictures of some exemplary bushfire shelters purpose built for schools in the Dandenongs in 1988. They were built by the Victorian Education Department after I made a big fuss about the lethal state of officially designated community refuges. The architects used my (then titled) The Complete Bushfire Safety Book Australian Bushfire Book.

Sassafras Primary School Shelter

'The 1900's fire bunkers … (had an) exit at both ends … (so that) cool air enters the open ends'

JW: Any refuge open at two ends will draw through it not only smoke, but embers and flame.

'The way they (dugouts) work is that under the smoke and running along the ground is a two inch layer of cool air. The fire brings it with it to keep burning.'

JW: This is nonsense. A narrow band of less smoky air can be beneath smoke. The fire doesn't 'bring it with it to keep burning'; it is there because hotter air always rises.

'… the fire front passes over the bunker'.

JW: This, too, is nonsense. A fire front will not pass over any properly prepared bunker. Because a fire 'front' is the leading edge of burning vegetation. A properly prepared bunker will have been cleared of vegetation. If you are in a tunnel, dugout or bunker so badly prepared that fire does pass over it, it won't be cool air that enters, it will be smoke.

'You don't need doors or anything fancy'.

JW: Oh, yes, you do. Any bushfire shelter needs a fire-rated solid-core door fitted with an outer, spark-protective, metal-mesh screen and draught stoppers.

Hessian entrance flaps

JW: The suggestion that 'heavy calico or Hessian at the entrance' of a tunnel or dugout is sufficient needs to be counteracted. Certainly, this could stop the rays of radiant heat. But they would not hinder convected heat, the heat of hot wind and air, that can produce body temperature rise with resultant heat exhaustion and/or dehydration.

The inhalation of superheated air may cause rapid swelling of the throat, which can compress the windpipe and cause asphyxiation.

Concrete bunkers

JW: Advertised as being airtight when closed. You would suffocate. As also in the suggested 'simple idea' of a two metre by two metre diameter cement tank, sunk to 2.5 metres. I doubt any 'ventilation access tube' could both let in enough air for life and keep out smoke.

Shipping containers

JW: Used just as they come, you could both suffocate and roast. Think of the recent death of a prisoner transported in a metal-lined van on a day of high air temperature. Like the above-ground concrete cylinders, potential cremation ovens.

Flatpack bunkers

JW: There is no provision for ventilation. You would suffocate. I can't see the elderly, frail or disabled climbing in and out, up and down the ladder.

Cellars under, or immediately adjacent to, the house

JW: Neither are safe. In either situation a burning house could collapse onto it. While in a normal cellar under a house, floorboards above could ignite and trap you, the burning house could collapse onto you. On January 21, 1997, as a severe bushfire in the Dandenong Ranges threatened homes and radio talkback callers phoned in with their fears, I listened with horror as a woman told of her intention to shelter in a cellar. I tried to get on air to warn, but was not put through. That day a young Ferny Creek couple died in their cellar. Their neighbour Genevieve Erin, trying to join them, was found dead nearby. All were buried beneath the smouldering rubble of the collapsed house.

To be a safe refuge a cellar must have a ceiling of reinforced concrete and an external emergency exit well away from the house walls, opening preferably onto flat ground on the leeward, and shielded by radiant heat screens

.

Radiant heat

'Radiant heat travels in straight lines and so passes over the bunker'

.

'(Tunnels) need a turn on them, to avoid the radiant heat, which travels in a straight-line.'

JW: Certainly, the fortunate thing about radiant heat is that it can only travel in straight lines.

But the risk of radiant heat to shelterers is not from heat rays travelling into the bunker. It is from would-be shelterers being hit by radiant heat as they run to it within reach of it from burning vegetation.

The report that a family in a well-constructed tunnel perished because it didn't have a bend in it and 'the radiant heat which travels in a straight line got to them in minutes' sounds like a shaggy-shelter story to me. The zigzag entrances in the tunnels built by the Forests Commission in the 1920s were to keep out smoke. Radiant heat couldn't affect people in a tunnel, bendless or not, unless the tunnel had vegetation flaming close to the entrance and the tunnel was doorless and so shallow that they were exposed to it. It wouldn't 'get to' them if they were wearing 'coverall' clothes - which was very probable in 1939 and 44 bushfires. Remedy: any shelter needs to be well cleared of vegetation and wear protective clothing.

Radiant heat doesn't 'get to' people 'in minutes'. It is in seconds. But you don't need twists and turns in tunnels to avoid it.

One of the simplest lessons to learn about bushfire survival is that almost any material or object will shield you from its deadly rays. Any material, by interrupting and deflecting rays, gives some protection from radiant heat. Pure wool, textured fibreglass, water, earth, buildings, non-flammable walls, tree trunks, embankments, or the body of a person can shield you securely from radiant heat.

Two more simple radiant heat rules are:

• the killer factor of radiant heat is increased by the amount of skin exposed to it, and decreased by the amount of skin hidden from it; and
• the closer you stand to the flames, the more radiant heat reaches you, and the farther you move back the less reaches you. There is a mathematical formula for this: 'the heat transmitted from a single heat source to any point is inversely proportional to the square of its distance from the source'.

The radiant heat emitted by burning vegetation reaches its peak as flames leap highest at a fire front over the surprisingly short period of 60 to 90 seconds, and lessens as the flames move on to fresh fuel - which takes about fifteen minutes. If you can shelter from radiant heat for that short time, you would survive. There is a very basic shelter that has saved countless lives: The pure wool blanket.

The simplest shelter to save you from radiant heat is a heavy duty pure wool blanket. The grey blankets sold at camping and disposal stores are usually of this quality. Have one for each person - and the dog. Carry them in the car with you during summer. Keep them in a handy spot in the house - and you won't need to build either a flawed or a fancy funk hole.

Oxygen can be sucked out shelters, houses, and the air around you during a bushfire.

JW: This doesn't happen during an open fire such as a bushfire. It only happens in enclosed spaces where the burning process uses up a finite amount of air in a finite space. Bushfires consume enormous amounts of oxygen but, as it is used, more rushes in to take its place: this is the cause of a bushfire's selfmade winds. If all the oxygen were sucked out of the air, the fire would go out.

Sandbags: 'How about a cut-out in a bank lined with a layer (or two) of sandbags and a baffle wall of sandbags in front?'

JW: This could seem a good idea at first until you realize that either embers or flames would make short work of the material covering the sandbags. You'd soon have just a pile of loose sand, that would blow away in the strong winds.

Oxygen cylinders in a shelter: 'A cylinder of air (or scuba kit)'.

JW: Think of all the reports of gas cylinders exploding on Black Saturday. The risk with oxygen cylinders could be worse. It is because of the high risk of oxygen cylinders exploding that anything that could spark them - from cigarette smoking to mobile phones are banned in hospitals.

'You simply cannot prepare for a day as bad as that was.'

JW: Oh, yes, you can. And so many did. And because they prepared their houses and their grounds, and their knowledge of what to do, they saved their lives, their homes, and all the precious things within them. They even saved stock and fences.

The time to start preparing for your safety is not on the day of a bushfire nor even at the start of summer. It is now.

Look around your house and sheds; make and mend, paint and fill. Clean out the roof void, install insulation here and under floors; cover chimneys, skylights, gap-boards and windows with metal flywire; perhaps install window shutters; check roofs for loose tiles, loose or holed corrugated iron and eaves for gaps. Prepare screens or shutters for windows. Check out Chapters 8 and 11, 'Design to keep bushfire out of buildings' and 'How to prepare for the bushfire season - Planning ahead', The Complete Bushfire Safety Book or Chapters 14 and 15, 'Planning ahead' and 'Protective chores', Essential Bushfire Safety Tips.

By the way, the idea of window shutters was not Michael Stasse's ('Rebuilding after the bush-fire holocaust'. It was mine. In March, 1983, and subsequently published in my The Complete Australian Bushfire Book (Thomas Nelson, 1986).

Material in this article is © Joan Webster, 2009, and may not be reproduced without written permission.

See also: "Bushfire bunkers strategy an 'after-the-fact' dead end" of 21 Jun 09.

This article was originally a post to the discussion in response to the article "Fire bunkers could have helped in the Victorian fires" of 10 Feb 09 and a subsequent comment by Joan Webster, an author of books on bushfire safety. Since then, Joan has written a related article "How misconceptions about bushfire bunkers may cost lives" in which she argues that the sort of designs promoted in the article and in associated comments may prove to be death traps. However, an obvious problem with the type of fire shelters advocated by Joan is the greatly increased financial costs. Also, there are ecological costs entailed in clearing the necessary amount of bush from around the fire shelters. This clearing on the scale necessary would almost certainly make Australia as whole, still hotter and dryer than it already is and, therefore, on the whole even more prone to bushfires. These kinds of considerations no doubt motivated Tigerquoll to write the comment whihc has been turned into the article below. - JS

Pursuing the bunker solution is a dead end that no government will underwrite - think of the risk of failure!

What has been avoided in this Victorian bushfire debate are the fire fighting statistics. Where are the fire fighting operational metrics showing the time between ignition and detection and response and suppression?

Is anyone considering the fundamental task of effective bush fire fighting as a key cause of this disaster? The operational metrics, if indeed collated, would be alarming to the general public. The unprecedented extreme risk of uncontrollable wildfires was known to fire fighting operations management, yet no extraordinary resources were deployed in advance. Hours, not minutes, lapsed between ignitions, detection and responses. As a consequence, suppressions via a tired old truck-centric response methodology was demonstrably grossly inadequate. CFA responses were absolute failures in the tactical response to the February 2009 Victorian Bushfires. The whole show descended into an incompetent stuff up which resorted to the worst case scenario - 'every man for himself'. Only vigilante fire response had a chance of working. Acceptable may be in 1909, but not in a sophisticated 2009 supported by millions in annual funding and research. The response at strategic management level was keystone. The field response was like a gallant Gallipoli.

The Marysville community like others didn't deserve official response approach of 'too hard basket' and abandonment. The result was incineration entrapment. This is the lesson of the incompetence of the CFA, DSE and Emergency Management Australia.

An ignition started in the bush is not an uncontrollable tsunami. But in conditions like that in January 2009 in Victoria, an ignition and more so multiple ignitions become equivalent to a tsunami if conditions, delay and inadequate resources are a combined factors.

The systemic failure to deal with 'before-the-fact' (ignition) causes is just as vital in being effective at bush fire fighting. I am not talking about slashing and burning the Aussie bush like an 'Agent Orange' sortie over Vietnam to eliminate all threat and wildlife habitat. I am talking about grossly negligent housing approvals in extreme bushfire areas, about grossly negligent property owners building houses out of flammable materials and doing squat about bushfire preparedness, about governments at all levels that fail to prepare bushfire prone populations and that fail to effectively communicate emergency drills to protect their lives, and that fail to provide sufficient resources to stop bushfires killing people.

Police are only this week interviewing residents around Bendigo to try to identify the suspected arsonist of that fire - five months later as a one-off investigation. Why did Brumby wait 5 months to investigate? I wager the arsonist involved could have been detected well in advance had a co-ordinated permanent bush arson squad been established long ago complete with specialist criminologists, psychologists, experienced bush fire investigators, criminal investigators, etc and enough resources to allow them to do their job.

I have no time for political band-aids or government responses that invariably involve millions that do not address the root causes of the problem. The bush itself, as habitat to millions of Australian animals must first be respected as the mutual innocent victim. Bushphobic responses by fanatics calling for scorched earth blanket responses will only fuel greater ecological catastrophe.

See also: "How misconceptions about bushfire bunkers may cost lives" of 21 June 09 and "Fire bunkers could have helped in the Victorian fires" of 10 Feb 09.

http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/
Preliminary directions hearing on 20 April 2009. Public hearings commence 11 May.
Call for submissions. General submissions close on 18 May 2009.

http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/

"Submissions

Input from Victorian communities will be critical to the Royal Commission's task to fully investigate the causes, circumstances, planning and responses to the bushfires from late January to February 2009.

Submissions are one of the main ways that individuals and organisations can contribute to the Royal Commission.
Call for submissions
The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission is calling for written submissions from any interested individuals or organisations. All submissions should relate to the terms of reference of the Royal Commission.

General submissions close at 4.00pm, Monday 18 May 2009.

Further submissions around specific areas of interest of the Royal Commission may be invited at a later date.

Important information for all submitters

* All submissions will be treated as public documents unless agreed otherwise by the Royal Commission. This means that in all but exceptional cases, submissions will be published on the Royal Commission’s web site. They may also be cited in reports or materials published by the Royal Commission.
* The name and town or suburb of each submitter will be identified as part of every published submission. Other contact details will be removed before publishing.
* Should you wish to make a confidential submission, you are requested to contact the Royal Commission in advance of lodging your submission at [email protected] or on 1800 243 650 to notify us of your request.
* Anonymous submissions will not be accepted.
* The Royal Commission will not publish submissions if it believes that the submission material is or could be defamatory.

Making a submission
Submissions can be made electronically (via this web site) or via post.
(Where possible, the Commission would appreciate submissions in electronic format.)

Supporting materials, such as photos and footage, are welcome if they are considered relevant to the Royal Commission’s Terms of Reference. Materials can be lodged as part of electronic or postal submissions. NB. We request that submitters do not send any original materials.

Download the Making a Submission fact sheet to find out more.

Electronic Submissions
Use the Make a Submission form to lodge your submission electronically.

Postal Submissions
Postal submissions must include a coversheet and should be sent to:

Submissions
2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission
GPO Box 4358
Melbourne VIC 3001
Australia

Need assistance in preparing your submission?
The Bushfire Legal Help service, a coalition of legal assistance providers, is offering free information and advice to those affected by the Victorian bushfires about ways to contribute to the Royal Commission.

For further information, visit www.bushfirelegalhelp.org.au or call 1800 113 432.

Whilst many people have been aware (but have mostly been ignored) that vegetation, especially forests, creates rain, and whilst desertification has been linked to deforestation historically many times, there is a new and robust theory to explain how this may happen.
See also How logging causes forest fires

Original source of article:Rainforests may pump winds worldwide by Fred Pierce, New Scientist, 1st April 2009, issue no.2702.]


Whilst many thoughtful people have worked out (but have mostly been ignored) that vegetation, especially forests, create rain, and whilst desertification has been linked to deforestation historically many times, there is a new and robust theory to explain how this may happen.

The theory argues that forests generate winds that help pump water around the planet. This article says that the theory would explain how it rains as much in the interiors of forested continents as on the coasts.

"If correct, the theory would explain how the deep interiors of forested continents get as much rain as the coast, and how most of Australia turned from forest to desert. It suggests that much of North America could become desert - even without global warming."

The New Scientist article reports that "up to half the precipitation falling on a typical tropical rainforest evaporates or transpires from trees. ... Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia say that forests also create winds that pump moisture across continents."

How can forests create wind?

[Water vapour from coastal forests and oceans condenses into droplets and clouds. The gas takes up less space as it turns to liquid, lowering local air pressure.] Because evaporation is stronger over the forest than over the ocean, the pressure is lower over coastal forests, which suck in moist air from the ocean. This generates wind that drives moisture further inland. The process repeats itself as the moisture is recycled in stages, moving towards the continent's heart (see diagram). As a result, giant winds transport moisture thousands of kilometres into the interior of a continent.

Coastal forests create giant winds that push water thousands of kilometres inland

Huge volumes can be involved.

More moisture typically evaporates from rainforests than from the ocean. The Amazon rainforest, for example, releases 20 trillion litres of moisture every day.

New Scientist reports that Makarieva and Gorshkov told them that, "In conventional meteorology the only driver of atmospheric motion is the differential heating of the atmosphere. That is, warm air rises." "Nobody has looked at the pressure drop caused by water vapour turning to water." The scientists, [whose theory relies on the physics of air movement] have dubbed this the "biotic pump" and claim it could be "the major driver of atmospheric circulation on Earth".

To back up their hypothesis they show how regions without coastal forests, such as west Africa, become exponentially drier inland. Likewise, in northern Australia, rainfall drops from 1600 millimetres a year on the coast to 200 mm some 1500 kilometres inland. In contrast, on continents with large forests from the coast to interior, rainfall is as strong inland as on the coast, suggesting the trees help shuttle moisture inland (Ecological Complexity, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2008.11.004, in press). In the Congo, for instance, around 2000 mm of rain falls each year at the coast and the same amount falls inland. The same is true in the Amazon, the Siberian Arctic and the Mackenzie river basin in northern Canada. But the US, largely forested until recently, now seems be headed for desert. Makarieva and Gorshkov told New Scientist that without rapid reforestation "the degrading temperate forests of North America are on their way to desertification".

Read the full article here Consider reading, as well, two extraordinary books about deforestation and history. One is David Montgomery, Dirt, the erosion of civilisationsUC Press, 2008 and the other is John Perlin, A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization, Harvard Univ Press, 2007. Dirt is the best written, but both are packed with information which will advance your state of knowledge way ahead of most environmentalists' and situate your understanding in a very wide context.

Out of the media frenzy to get ratings out of the Victorian bushfires, a 'so-called' bushfire expert on an ABC 730 Report panel (David Packham) advocated a 6 to 7 fold increase in prescribed burning for Victoria.

Another neo-Dreamtime wizard?

The effectiveness of this strategy is undermined by the live evidence shown (on ABC 730 Report Thursday 12-Feb-09) of local resident Jim Baruta in his home video. Over 200m of clear paddock stood between the bush and his house. This represents hazard reduction to an extreme degree (no trees or undergrowth for 200 m). Yet it was ineffective defence. Only his bunker saved his life.

As the 'heat' of the tragedy cools down, one of the overlooked impacts that needs to be considered in a balanced way is the impacts of broad scale fire (prescribed, wild, arson or otherwise) is having on the habitat of ground dwelling mammals. In the search for answers to avoid a repetition of the firestorm it is important that natural areas of high conservation value including old growth forests receive due recognition as natural assets worth protecting. Its integrity is not being measured and is probably disappearing through fire at a rate comparable to what logging is causing in SE Asia. That the bush grows back is not an indicator of its biodiversity health.

One must recognise that the bush (habitat) is also the innocent victim of these horrific fires. Dense ground cover is a fuel for fire but also home for wildlife. Keep removing the fuel and one removes the wildlife- eventually to its mass extinction. The underlying causes of the fires are the ignition, the lack of non-burnable material to create a buffer between good bush and human settlement, the slow detection of ignitions, the slow response to these while still manageable (remote country or otherwise) and the inadequate resources to suppress many spot fires. As to the ignition cause being arson – Australia needs a serious permanent criminology unit dedicated to this crime. The media and our leaders need to be careful not to incite dormant serial arsonists – just like one read and watched in the days preceding the first arson attack at Delburn on 29 Jan. The media frenzy just fuelled the copy cats’ excitement.

Bushfire management is a complex issue, so poorly under resourced, so poorly disconnected from bushfire research, yet so integrated into the lives of so many Australians. The public deserve a say into the Royal Commission. Those who tragically died and lost everything deserve billions not just in recovery but in the whole task of bushfire management.

See also: "Victorian bushfires by arson" of 26 Mar 09.

During February's bushfires, the Victorian government's Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) has allowed nearly all of the natural ecology of the northern half of Wilsons Promontory to burn. Is the Prom fire (now having destroyed 24,800 hectares of native habitat) being deliberately left to burn by DSE? DSE and CFA have protected private property at Tidal River and Yanakie. So is what's really happening down at the Prom away from public scrutiny?

See also "Wilsons Promontory – DSE fire management risking local extinctions" of 26 Feb 09.

During February's bushfires, the Victorian government's Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) has allowed nearly all of the natural ecology of the northern half of Wilsons Promontory National Park (The Prom) to burn.

Out of control? Lack of resources? Or has The Prom fire (now having destroyed 24,800 hectares of native habitat) in fact been deliberately left to burn? DSE in collaboration with the Victorian Government's CFA have protected private property at Tidal River and Yanakie. So what really has been going on at The Prom behind the fire barricade out of public view? Why was the small fire north of Sealers Cove not extinguished on Friday 13th February when it was nearly out? Why after three weeks with mild weather conditions has this wildfire not been put out? Why, ahead of more forecast hot winds, has DSE risked this fire continuing?

Is this in fact an opportunistic prescribed burn...thanks to lightning? Is it in fact because the DSE doesn't want the fire out..not until its prescribed burn area is burnt?

A DSE operational fire planning document sourced from the Yarram Fire Distict (which includes The Prom) shows that most of The Prom that has now been burnt is in fact part of DSE's 'Planned Burns' for 2009, 2010 and 2011 anyway. The DSE map (attached) shows no fires history for the northern half of The Prom.

...'so quick let's burn it, lest it burns!'

[CLICK MAP TO ENLARGE] Yarram Fire Operations Plan 2008/09 - 2010/11 - showing most of Wilsons Promontory colour coded for planned burning. ©Firemap Tue 14th Oct 2008

On this DSE planned burn map of The Prom, no areas are off limits from burning save the few villages and small pockets of private property and what the DSE has mapped as Zone 5 'Exclusion of Prescribed Burning'.

All other natural bushland areas of The Prom have been targeted by DSE for burning anyway.

This prescribed burning culture labels all bush hazardous 'fuel' and a demonic threat. Instead of putting out the fires in bushland they let the bush burn and all the native animals burn alive in the process.
They brag... 'we save houses, the bush will grow back so what's the problem?'

The 'Department for Sparks and Embers' is living up to its name.
But who's responsible for the fauna?

See also "Wilsons Promontory – DSE fire management risking local extinctions" of 26 Feb 09.

Since Black Saturday - Feb 7, 2009 - when Australia's worst-ever bushfires on the hottest day in Victoria's recorded history completely destroyed all infrastructure at Wildhaven animal rescue and release center, Alan and Stella Reid have had a few visitors, including Steve Irwin's father, Bob Irwin, and Maryland Wilson of the AWPC, and four kangaroos that also escaped with their lives. Allan Reid tells an incredible story of his own survival as the place burned to the ground leaving him and perhaps four kangaroos alive. Please consider donating money for hay and rebuilding.See alsoImportant Wildhaven Shelter in St Andrews NE Victoria perished needs rebuilding and video.

Bob Irwin of the Australia Zoo between Alan and Stella Reid at Wildhaven 11 March 2009

Phone and electricity still not reconnected

Although the Reids at Wildhaven have had a number of visitors wishing them well, after thirty-one days since the fires on February 7, they would very much appreciate a visit from Telstra to reconnect the land-line and they desperately need an electrician to come and inspect their telegraph poles and certify that the electricity may be reconnected.

Bob Irwin's visit and the Department of "Sustainability" (DSE)

I have lots of film of my own recording a visit on March 10 to Wildhaven, but I was glad of this photo I was sent of Bob Irwin with Allan and Stella Reid. It was taken when he visited them at the devastated Wildhaven site yesterday (March 11, 2009).

Bob Irwin's visit probably means a lot to the Reids because it shows that their serious and significant work supporting wildlife has been recognised by people respected world-wide in the hands-on wildlife-help and species-preservation community. Ironically so, since I also know that the Reids were quite hurt recently to be passed over for a small amount of funding by the Victorian Department of Sustainability (DSE), apparently with a remark that the applicant 'lacked experience'.

Do DSE realise how much damage their lumpen conduct towards wildlife and so-called 'Greenies' does?

I am probably not the only one who thinks that that remark reflects pretty accurately where the DSE is at. Stella and Allan have been running their wildlife shelter for 22 years. DSE could learn from them - that is, if it could first master its arrogance. The Reids built Wildhaven 11 years ago and must have wondered what hit them when the ignorant knockback came.

Wildhaven on March 10, 2009

It is worthwhile noting that the DSE insult still comes to the Reids' minds, even after having Wildhaven totally wiped out by the Black Saturday fires, and almost being wiped out themselves.

Few of the wild creatures they lived for survived

Both of them weep every time that they mention the animals that died - "the kids" - as they refer to them affectionately, although the rest of the time they put on a brave face. Something like sixty-plus injured wildlife they were treating or in the process of releasing, of which each one was an individual with which they had a close relationship, will probably never be seen again. The dam below was full of the bodies of animals for whom the water did not prove sufficient shield against this super-hot fire. The CFA and the police helped the Reids to collect tens of dead animals and then took them away.

Between three and five kangaroos they knew probably survived. Alan wonders if they crawled into wombat holes. A doe, her joey and her adult daughter (known by names I cannot recall) came back to Wildhaven with burned paws. They were darted with anaesthetic so that the Reids could send them for treatment to a wildlife-rescue place that hadn't been burned out. They have all recovered, but, worryingly, the doe jumped the fence of the wildlife-hospital with her joey and has not been seen since.

When he was driving down the hill in the evening away from the scene of the fires, Alan glimpsed a male kangaroo he knew well, travelling alongside his car, and was amazed to see that the roo appeared unscathed. (I cannot remember his name either; it seems very disrespectful of me.)

The Reids also hope that the big male kangaroo with mending burned paws, who has been eating hay on the outskirts of the camp, is who they think he is - "Boof" - pictured below in happier times, with Stella.

Stella & Boof in happier times

Grass is starting to grow back, but it is very short and still brown, because there still has been little rain. There is absolutely nothing for animals to graze on. Even the micro-biota in the earth (representing a lot of carbon) were burned and the top layers are sterile. Stella and Alan are buying bales of hay (at about $17.50AUD each) and putting them out for the animals that survived. The Department of "Sustainability" does absolutely nothing for these animals, on pseudo-scientific macho grounds. Since its main job is to grant licences to shoot and 'harvest' our pitifully sparse wildlife, it is not surprising that its policy is to let them die, even though a million or more of Victoria's animals died in these fires, many from threatened species. The Reids walk into the burnt stick-like trees at dawn and at dusk, looking for old friends who may have survived and for any animal they may be able to help. The Reids deserve the salaries currently going to DSE CEOs. They survive on handouts at the moment. Don't get me wrong - they are not complaining - I am.

Thousands of wildlife photos lost

Stella's wildlife photos are much admired because she can get so close to the subjects and the animals look her back in the eye affectionately or with recognition and readable, respectful expressions. She lost thousands of such extraordinary animal photos in the fires, but almost immediately she was able to get her hands on a computer, she put together a CD of the photos she had received back from correspondents over the years. There is so little left now of the youngsters and adults she knew and loved so dearly. She takes us later into the caravan they are living in now to watch it and tells us the names of the animals in the pictures. It is very sad.

Donations

I brought some warm jumpers (because we are entering autumn) and a doona. Alan said they don't need clothing but Stella accepted these and said she will put the doona in the back of the ute for when she transports animals, to make a soft bed. It is good that my doona will be appreciated. Mostly they need money to buy food and treatment for animal survivors for the next few months to two years. The temporary camp they are living in on the burned site is made up of a caravan, a temporary showroom and a porta-potty which have been lent to them.

As I approached the camp I was struck by the surreality of this view, and I started taking stills.

The portable showroom which was lent as shelter to the Reids, looked like a tiny stage-set in a vast empty landscape and the people preparing afternoon tea there looked like dolls in a dolls' house. Stella and Alan had stayed up half the night painting the concrete block in front green, so it looked like a pretend-lawn before a very neat dolls' house, set down by some giant careful child in a vast neglected yard. I set the tripod up again with the digital camcorder running and when I look the film later that night, it is like watching people walking on and off-stage and hearing them talking. I almost find myself listening for clues to some other scripted drama.

It was hard to tell whether it was a strain or a pleasure to receive visitors. Stella had bought a mobile phone to alleviate the isolation. We had come with a visitor from England who is interested in kangaroo-rescues and the Reids have transformed this open temporary building into something like a pleasant lounge and dining-room. We felt very welcome and at home, and probably that's the way they make the wildlife feel.

Stella has been a member of the Country Fire Authority (CFA) for about 9 years and she had been with Steve Martin (the blond man in the beige top pictured above) fighting a fire on a distant ridge while Alan, her husband, was at home with the animals. She had looked across when there was a sudden burst of fire from that direction, wondering if it was Wildhaven. Others thought that it probably wasn't. But it was. Alan saw the fire coming from the hill where, unbeknowst to him, his wife was, and thought he had about 20 minutes. He says he found out he had only seven minutes. I am putting a video up with his story and footage of Wildhaven at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td6tWKDC62s for anyone who is interested.

The Future

We all hope that Wildhaven will soon be back in working order. When that happens the future will take over from this terrible past and slowly the scars will heal. They must be very deep and painful scars though, after 11 years in this place, with a past composed of very close connections with the secret lives of thousands of individual creatures, animals that most humans don't even notice, let alone care about. Indeed the Reids have spent 22 years in this region doing this work, all told.

Animals one lives close to are almost a part of one. My dog Nero died after 16 years recently and it was like a door slamming shut on the past and a familiar star disappearing from the sky. Although his elderly sister is still alive, my life seemed to make no sense for months. Even now it doesn't feel right. How difficult it must be then to see an entire galaxy disappear and the ground change irrevocably underneath your feet.

You can send money for hay and equipment etc here:

by direct transfer

Bank details:

Stella Reid
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
BSB: 063 222
Account: 10262617

By cheque

Postal Address

Stella and Alan Reid
c/o St Andrews Post Office
10 Caledonia Street,
St Andrews
Victoria 3761
Australia

By PayPal

PayPal address : [email protected]

Please state there: "for Stella's kangaroos"

The PayPal option might be the most convenient for International donations.

see Candobetter review here of Peter Andrews' book on Natural Sequence Farming
By Duane Norris (Natural Sequence Farming)[1]

The present circumstances around the country pose a huge headache for Governments with devastating fires in Victoria and floods in Queensland.

Once this Australian landscape ran itself.

The fire cycle, prior Aboriginals, was once in every 300 years. Today, it is once in every 2-3 years (regardless of the cause).

Inground water and a dense cover of fire retardant, biodiverse plants once cooled the Australian landscape.

Today, our landscape is drained, dried, desiccated, barren of plant cover except for incendiaries of Eucalyptus trees waiting to vaporise like petrol tankers.

The answers to the problems we are witnessing are there for all to see...they are simple solutions. Solutions given to us by Nature and available for all to see.*

The floodwaters and fire regimes could be far better managed if only authorities understood these simple landscape processes.

The national landscape catastrophes currently facing our country need to be addressed at the highest levels including the Premier's proposed Royal Commission.

Premier, you will be inundated with experts and eyewitnesses on the ground saying this solution and that solution will be the best.

THE ONLY SOLUTION THAT MATTERS, IN THE END, IS THE ONE THAT WORKS.

The Key is WATER!!

This is the only ingredient that saved lives and houses in the terrible recent events across Victoria.

We need to rehydrate the Victorian landscape like it was once.

This simple proof can be dramatically illustrated by doing a simple test.

"If you purchase two copies of The Age this Saturday, soak one in the bath overnight and read the other. Think of the copy coming out of the bath, as the landscape prior [to the impact of repeated fires] and the dry paper, as the landscape is today." (Article by Duane Norris for Natural Sequence Farming)

If you purchase two copies of The Age this Saturday, soak one in the bath overnight and read the other.

Think of the copy coming out of the bath, as the landscape prior and the dry paper, as the landscape is today.

Next day, put both copies out in the Sun for a few hours. Then take a match and see which paper catches fire.

It’s as simple as that.

There are models available where this information can be dramatically demonstrated as to how our landscape once functioned under a wet rehydrated paradigm.

We would encourage you to see it for yourself.

Duane Norris

* Peter Andrews’s books ‘Back from the Brink’ and ‘Beyond the Brink’ say it all.
[1] This letter was originally sent to Premier John Brumby as a 'Special Message', on 17 February 2009, by Duane Norris, Workshop Coordinator and Personal Assistant to Peter Andrews, originator of Natural Sequence Farming It is republished here with permission. If you would like to participate in the Natural Sequence Forum, go here.