Report finds risk increased by hazard reduction burns

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A study has found traditional fire management strategies like, hazard reduction burns, logging and thinning out forest undergrowth may actually increase the flammability of Australian bushland.

Transcript

00:00 So, what we've found is that forests that have been logged or have a history of thinning

00:06 or a history of prescribed burning actually become quite flammable for between 5 to 70

00:13 years after the disturbance.

00:15 So what we're seeing is a pulse of flammability that is triggered by the disturbance, either

00:20 be it logging, thinning or prescribed burning.

00:23 Did these results surprise you or is this something that you anticipated?

00:27 Some parts of it are surprising, but when we think about fundamental ecological principles

00:31 about how forests grow and develop, it actually makes quite strong sense.

00:37 What we see is that as forests get older, they often get more moist, they get cooler,

00:44 often darker, the microclimate is less windy, and these are some of the most fundamentally

00:50 important parts of flammability in these forests.

00:54 So there are some fundamental ecological reasons why older forests that are long undisturbed

01:00 are the least flammable.

01:02 And my understanding is, you say that prescribed burns reduce fuel loads for a period of time

01:07 and then there's that pulse in flammability.

01:09 So what if those prescribed burns were happening before the pulse?

01:13 Is that a safe way to do things with that kind of regular upkeep?

01:17 Well what the paper is really showing from a whole range of studies across Australia

01:21 and also overseas is that prescribed burning in many cases, not all, but in many cases

01:27 leads to short-term gain but long-term pain.

01:32 And that's because prescribed burning can trigger a pulse of flammability, regeneration,

01:38 regrowth of the forest, which can be flammable for many years afterwards.

01:43 And this is really quite a concern, particularly when we're burning in remote areas with large

01:48 scale industrial prescribed burns that change the forest in ways that increases the risk

01:54 of high severity fire.

01:56 And this is something that many fire chiefs have actually known.

01:59 I've had quite a bit of correspondence about this.

02:02 And for example, a senior now retired fire manager wrote to me recently and said, "You'll

02:08 be attacked for daring to question the prevailing philosophy within fire services.

02:13 But from a firefighter's perspective, what you've described, I've actually been seeing

02:19 for decades, that the more you burn, the more you have to burn.

02:23 It's the old conundrum.

02:25 If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got."

02:29 And I think that's really quite profound from people that were very senior in the firefighting

02:33 agencies actually recognising that what we're describing in this new paper is something

02:38 that they've known for quite some time.

02:40 I mean, the implications of this are pretty significant.

02:43 Over management of bushfire areas can be a matter of life and death.

02:47 So how important is it for fire authorities to pay attention to these findings?

02:52 Well I think it's critically important to rethink what we're doing here.

02:56 Often what we're seeing, for example in Victoria right at the moment, plans to do extensive

03:01 industrial hazard reduction burns over thousands, if not tens of thousands of hectares.

03:07 And what this work shows is that some of that country will be made more flammable, not less.

03:13 And our perspectives on this is that if we are going to do prescribed burning, you need

03:17 to do it very frequently and you need to do it very close to where it matters.

03:21 And where it matters is where we're trying to protect people and property.

03:25 So we need to dispense with this idea of burning large areas of remote country, the middle

03:31 of Kosciuszko National Park or the middle of other remote areas, and refocus where we're

03:37 doing that work in places that are going to matter in terms of protecting people and property.

03:42 Yeah, the RFS has pushed back against these findings.

03:45 The Community Risk Director says that reducing fuel loads always reduces risk.

03:52 Do you think there's something that they are not understanding here or refusing to take on?

03:57 I think they're not understanding the basic principles of how forests grow and mature

04:02 and become less flammable as they get older.

04:05 And I think really the evidence is starting to mount here now to indicate that we need

04:11 to have a rethink of how we're doing prescribed burning and focus it where it really matters.

04:18 The budgets to do prescribed burning are not unlimited and the time window to do prescribed

04:26 burning is now narrowing.

04:27 So we need to focus it where we get the best return on investment for protecting the most

04:33 people and the most property.

04:34 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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