A concerted campaign across Australia is pressuring governments to approve and fund increased burning of our natural environment. This burning, variously called “prescribed”, “fuel reduction” or “controlled” burning, is promoted as satisfying two objectives: to protect life and property and to maintain biodiversity.

The dangerous campaign for more burning relies on six myths.

The first myth says that our flora and fauna are adapted to fire. Our ancient continent contains tens of thousands of native species right down to microorganisms we never see, all connected through complex relationships in ecosystems we know little about.

Rather than being “adapted” to fire, all native species and ecological communities can be seriously harmed, and even made extinct, by fire, depending on its frequency, intensity and extent. While they can recover after fire, many recover slowly and may not survive two or more fires in quick succession, especially when followed by drought.

CALM foresters exclude fire from post-logging jarrah and karri regrowth for at least 15 years because young jarrah and karri trees are fire sensitive. This raises two interesting points. First, when the vegetation is young commercial tree species, no expense is spared to protect it from fire, despite the claim that everything is adapted to frequent fires. If young jarrah and karri are fire sensitive, what about the thousands of other species that make up a forest? Second, how could the jarrah forest have regenerated and flourished if, over thousands of years, Aboriginal people burnt the entire forest every three or four years, as the burning lobby claims?

The second myth says our biodiversity depends on fire, without specifying which species or how often fire is needed. CALM scientists say that the shortest interval between burns should be double the time to flowering of the slowest obligate seeder (a plant that can only reproduce from seed). This could be 12 years or more, which contradicts current targets of forest burns every five to seven years. If biodiversity conservation is the aim, current prescribed burning frequencies don’t measure up.

While some species germinate well in response to smoke, this does not mean they need fire. They can reproduce without fire, and smoke covers a much larger area than actual burning.

The third myth says Aboriginal people burnt country frequently. Certainly the Nyoongar people used fire in the South West for various reasons, but many species of flora in this biodiversity treasure house would not be here today if burning by Aboriginal people was as frequent and extensive as the burning lobby claims.

While the frequency and extent of Aboriginal burning is uncertain, Nyoongahs did not burn the way we do today. One Nyoongah person described Aboriginal fire practice as “walking the fire through the bush”. Today incendiaries are dropped from aircraft over thousands of hectares in a few hours.

Furthermore, we now live in a vastly different environment to theirs. Natural vegetation has been cleared or fragmented; we have built in and adjacent to bushland; logging has changed the structure of our forests (and left huge volumes of debris on the ground); we have introduced weeds and dieback; we have pushed many species to the brink of extinction (and beyond). And with climate change the South West is becoming drier. This results in less vegetation, but it is more flammable.

The fourth myth says prescribed burning is essential for community protection. But do the benefits of frequent broadscale prescribed burning outweigh the risks and costs? In what ways are we increasing our exposure to the threat of wildfire by building poorly located and designed communities, promoting fire-prone species by repeated burning, and failing to tackle climate change?

Published scientific research such as the recent paper by Williams, Karoly and Tapper (2001), clearly sets out how global climate change is “likely to have a significant effect on biosphere-atmosphere interactions, including bushfire regimes…by increasing the number of days of very high and extreme fire danger.” Resorting to more burning in the face of such changes is simplistic and irresponsible.

Fire research shows that prescribed burns would have to be conducted every couple of years to provide a high degree of community protection, but even then under severe conditions wildfires will occur and in the meantime, the biodiversity we love and need will be destroyed.

Myth five says we aren’t doing enough prescribed burning (because of “city-based greenies”). Every year CALM has a target of burning over 200,000 ha of forest and associated ecosystems across the South West, including national parks and nature reserves. This figure is based on simplistic “fuel accumulation” tables. Burning on this scale does not allow for the niceties of the professed fine scale mosaic burning involving low intensity burns. Instead, tens of thousands of hectares of remote forest and other ecosystems are ignited from aircraft dropping incendiaries resulting in large virtual blanket burns.

Last year in the South West alone, CALM burnt about 120,000 ha of forest, heathland and woodland at a cost of more than $2.3 million. A further 150,000 hectares were burnt by a combination of local fire authorities, wildfires from arson and lightning, and escapes from CALM burns.

Proponents of more burning never discuss the assumptions, drawbacks, limitations and trade-offs involved with such a heavy focus on prescribed burning.

The sixth myth deals with the 1961 Dwellingup wildfires. Contrary to popular perceptions cultivated by the burning lobby, there was extensive prescribed burning in WA’s forests prior to those fires.

The Royal Commission into the 1960-61 wildfires reported: "…most of the forest in the Dwellingup division had been controlled burnt in recent years, and the litter on various parts of the forest represented accumulations generally speaking of from 0 to 8 years…Statements that the Forests Department does not carry out controlled burning in the Dwellingup forests are entirely without justification. The Department has control burnt extensive areas each year for the last 40 years and more than ever at the present day.” (Report of the Royal Commission, 1961, pp. 15, 21.)

Clearly such burning did not save Dwellingup.

Contrary to the misinformation put about by the burning lobby, no one to my knowledge opposes all prescribed burning. Rather, conservationists want a much more rigorous public examination of the costs and benefits of, and alternatives to, more and more burning. If, for example, the community can be better protected by a different, safer mix of planning, design, prevention, targeted reduction of flammable vegetation and early suppression, then that is surely the way to go.