Forest planning to cut fire risks

On a dry continent prone to deadly bushfires for centuries, fuel reduction through controlled burning is vital. Writing from experience on Wednesday, volunteer firefighter Ross Hampton said “the only thing most firefighters are discussing as we race in our trucks towards a blaze is what the fuel load is on the fire ground. And yet the sad truth is this is the one thing in Australia we have been making worse for ­decades’’. Mr Hampton, the chief executive of the Australian Forest Products Association, said climate change was drying some areas and reducing the ­window for burning off. Changes to climate change policy, however, would have no immediate impact on bushfires. What would make a difference by next summer, and in following years, he said, was better managing the continent’s 132 million hectares of native forest.

The NSW government is on the right track. It is considering two proposals, both of which should improve hazard reduction. One option would strip responsibility for land management and hazard reduction from “conservationist” environmen­tal agencies. Instead, a new, stand-alone body would be created for the sole purpose of reducing fuel loads and clearing more land to mitigate fire risks. Under the second option, the NSW Rural Fire Service would be made the lead decision-making body on forest clearing and hazard reductions. Its priority would be to significantly reduce fuel loads and clear both public and private land. NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said on Wednesday that hazard reduction was important but not a panacea for bushfire risk. It had “very little effect at all” on the spread of fire in severe or extreme weather.

Victoria, unfortunately, has been slower than NSW to learn the lesson of carrying out controlled burning in good time. The state carried out just over half the fuel reduction burns it planned in 2018-19, as Rachel Baxendale and Mark Schliebs report on Thursday. And the controlled burning conducted was only a third of the target recommended by the Black Saturday royal commission. While weather conditions have at times caused cancellation of planned burns, some have also been hampered by green groups. Near the East Gippsland town of Nowa Nowa, evacuated as fires roared through the region last week, a controlled burn scheduled in September was delayed and then scaled down in response to environmental protests. While 370ha of land had been earmarked, just 9ha were burned off.

Queensland has also fallen behind on controlled burning. Despite the need to reduce its fuel load, just 439 of 812 hazard reduction burns planned by the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services since 2016 have been completed. Private landowners wanting to conduct hazard reduction burning have found red tape a problem, as Craig Johnstone wrote on Wednesday. A review of Queensland’s 2018 bushfires by the state’s Inspector-General of Emergency Management, Iain Mackenzie, was told landholders struggled to obtain the necessary permits for controlled burning on their properties. The review recommended “more appropriate and flexible means at the local level for the reduction of intense fires’’.

In the aftermath of the current fires, the Morrison government will insist states step up efforts to increase land clearing and reduce the fuel load in the bush. Last month Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud announced a parliamentary inquiry into the effect of vegetation and land management practices on bushfires. Many farmers, he said, felt “let down when they can’t clear firebreaks and reduce fire loads’’, with vegetation a powder keg, “ready to go off in a bushfire’’.