Submission
to the Council of Australian Government Inquiry into
Bushfire Mitigation and Management: The myths of prescribed
burning
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 Dwellinup.
Contrary to the misinformation put about by the burning
lobby, no one to our 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.
Recent
pre-emptive burning extent in south west WA
- 1992-93:
120,000 ha
- 1995-96:
200,000 ha
- 1997-98:
125,000 ha
- 2000-01:
80,000 ha
- 2002-03:
120,000 ha [CALM Annual Reports; Hansard]
“The
greenies are stopping CALM burning.”
Contrary to claims that conservationists are stopping
CALM from burning, CALM Annual Reports state that less
prescribed burning has been done because of: continuing
reductions in burn size; the increasing complexity of
burns; the need to protect increasing areas of fire
sensitive forest regeneration; efforts to minimise smoke
haze over Perth; and the risk of severe fire behaviour
and possible escapes.
The
pre-emptive burn ‘target’
CALM still maintains an annual ‘target’
of 250,000 ha of pre-emptive burning in the South West.
Not only is this target ecologically, financially and
operationally unsustainable; the attempt to reach it
involves considerable risk and damage while the consistent
‘failure’ to reach the target is then used
by the proponents of more burning to claim that the
community is in danger of “another Dwellingup”.
This is a no-win situation for the whole community.
Fire
and science (1)
“Frequent fires can reduce the native fauna species
diversity of an area and the habitat availability…There
is increasing evidence in the [scientific] literature,
and via personal communications from experts in their
fields, that frequent fires have a disastrous effect
on many species of flora and fauna and their habitat
structure.” [Kings Park Bushland Management Plan,
1995-2005]
“Species
of fungi that require the conditions associated with
a litter layer will not be favoured by a fire regime
where the litter layer is frequently removed by burning.”
[EPA, 1992] “What
fire control and land management authorities describe
as ‘fuel’ and a ‘hazard’, I
prefer to think of as the food and the energy that keeps
our ecosystems functioning.” [Professor Harry
Recher, Edith Cowan University]
A
fire sensitive environment
This
is just a small sample of the scientific research and
expert opinion that contradict claims that frequent
burning is harmless and effective (see over for more).
Numerous peer-reviewed and published scientific papers
setting out the risks and impacts of frequent repetitive
burning are available from the WA Forest Alliance/Conservation
Council office.
What
scientific research indicates again and again is that
many components of our natural environment are in fact
fire sensitive, and not, as the proponents of more burning
claim, uniformly adapted to frequent repetitive burning.
If WA’s environment was as fire-prone, as fire-adapted,
and as frequently burnt as the proponents of more burning
claim, there would no longer be any fire-sensitive species
or ecological communities left: they would have been
burnt into oblivion thousands of years ago, and south
west WA would be one vast, biologically simplified and
homogenized environment.
Noongar
burning
Attempts
have also been made to construct a version of Aboriginal
fire use in south west WA that justifies frequent repetitive
burning. The proponents of more burning now claim that
the Noongar people of south west WA burnt the entire
jarrah forest (about four million hectares pre-European
extent) every four years, which means a million hectares
of burning per year. The only way such a massive annual
burning program could have been achieved is by vast
uncontrolled wildfires that would have destroyed wildlife,
habitat, and everything else the Noongar people needed
and valued.
Whatever
burning the Noongar people may have done, it was done
in a very different manner compared to modern burning,
for very different reasons and in a very different environment.
The
D’Entrecasteaux National Park fire
The 2002 wildfire in D’Entrecasteaux National
Park has been used to target conservationists and promote
more burning. In fact, as is so often the case, this
fire could have been suppressed before it became a wildfire
if appropriate resources had been used when the fire
was first detected. A series of recent fires in conservation
reserves seems to indicate a policy of allowing small
fires to turn into wildfires, which are then used to
justify more pre-emptive burning.
The
Dwellingup wildfire – example of what?
The reason the oft-cited Dwellingup wildfire was so
severe was not the lack of pre-emptive burning. The
1961 Royal Commission report says:
“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.”
Rather,
logging operations, which had opened up the forest canopy
and created vast amounts of logging debris, were a major
cause.
The
NSW wildfires
Responding to the chorus of calls for more and bigger
prescribed burns in NSW, Rural Fire Service Chief Commissioner
Phil Koperberg warned:
“The
previous practice of broad acre burns runs the risk
of permanently changing the balance among the plants
and animals which make our landscape unique and attract
millions of tourists each year…. The prospect
of regular, comprehensive prescribed burning to convert
the entire 5.4 million hectares of national parks into
a garden landscape is, however, out of the question…Strategic
fuel reduction, not widespread burning, is central to
protect lives and property.” [Sydney Morning Herald,
7 January 2002; full article available from WAFA]
Fire
and the greenhouse effect
"On
the other side of the issue, fire has short-term potential
feedback effect into the greenhouse effect. N. Burrows
(pers comm.) has calculated that the present fuel reduction
burning program throughout the State forests produces
annually about 46,000 tonnes of particulate matters
and 4.14 million tonnes of CO2" [The Greenhouse
effect and Western Australian forests, unpublished (suppressed),
1991.].
Not
only does pre-emptive burning contribute to WA’s
massive annual greenhouse emissions, but the already
apparent climate change occurring in the South West
(e.g. the 20% decline in rainfall over the past 25 years)
has significant implications for fire management, e.g.
the ability of ecosystems to cope with repeated burning.
It is increasingly apparent that fire can no longer
be considered in isolation: the cumulative impacts of,
and interactions between, climate change, fire, pests
and diseases (and a range of other factors) can no longer
be ignored.
Facts
about pre-emptive burning
There are five facts that must be explicitly taken into
account in the formulation of fire policy:
- frequent
burning does have harmful ecological impacts;
- doing
less pre-emptive burning but targeting it more carefully
will produce better results than increased broadscale
burning;
- pre-emptive
burning is of limited effectiveness under severe conditions,
while other strategies may be more effective;
-
CALM’s risk assessment and fuel accumulation
methodologies are crude and outdated;
- frequent
burning can make us more vulnerable to fire, not less,
by promoting fire-prone species and conditions.
Fire
policy is slowly evolving
Traditionally, land and resource ‘management’
has meant high-impact intervention and heavy-handed
manipulation of natural systems. This outdated approach
is gradually being replaced by a new understanding of
the values and sensitivities of natural systems. In
the area of fire management there are moves to modernise
approaches to pre-emptive burning (by reducing and varying
the size, intensity and frequency of burns and varying
their season) and to adopt more rational, effective
and sustainable strategies for community protection.
The
WA EPA has recently commenced a public review of fire
and CALM’s fire management, to be completed in
2004.
A
rational approach
Pre-emptive
buring at the scale and frequency proposed by the proponents
of more burning will impoverish our natural environment
and leave our community just as, or even more, vunerable
to fire.
The
rational response to fire risk is more investment in
a sophisticated, multi-faceted pproach to fire management
and protection, which includes limited and carefully
targeted pre-emptive burning, but does not rely upon
it. We need four things:
1.
More focus on preventing fires, including arson. There
is a risk that constant talk of the need for more burning,
and of how much our environment likes fire, will encourage
arson;
2.
More investment in our capacity to detect fires soon
after they start, and our capacity to put fires out
before they become wildfires. This means better aerial
fire fighting capacity and also ground-based rapid response
teams;
3.
More care in where we allow settlements to occur, discouraging
building in areas at risk from wildfires. If people
choose to live in such places they must accept the risk
of wildfire;
4.
More focus on improved strategic firebreaks and buffers
around vulnerable communities and assets, as opposed
to frequent broadscale burning of remote bushland.
Fire
and science (2): a sample of recent scientific concern
over prescribed burning
“Detrimental fire regimes contributed to the extinction
of two of the three bird species, and three of the four
sub-species [including two WA sub-species: Rufous Bristlebird
and Lewin’s Rail] which have disappeared from
Australia since European colonisation. Inappropriate
fire management is now a factor in the threatened status
of at least 51 nationally recognised threatened bird
taxa…. Of the threatened [bird] species whose
relationships with fire regime has been comparatively
well documented, almost all show clear preference for
much less frequent fire than that currently prevailing.
The long-unburnt vegetation favoured by these species
is becoming disappearingly rare, and will require concerted
management effort to maintain or increase. Most fire-sensitive
threatened birds have low reproductive output and limited
dispersal ability. The persistence of these species
is further jeopardized by habitat fragmentation, which
accentuates the handicap of these traits for recolonisation
following fire.…[In temperate eucalypt forests]
the most detailed long-term study suggests that frequent
mild fires will lead to the decline and loss of some
species which are now perceived as common and little
affected by mild fires.”
“Too
frequent burning has endangered species such as Noisy
Scrub-bird, Western Bristlebird, Malleefowl and Ground
Parrot. The old growth (or mid to late seral) vegetation
that these species require, or are most abundant in,
is now becoming disappearingly rare.… The endangerment
of so many species reliant on relatively old vegetation
is a clear indication that land managers are generally
burning far more extensively or frequently than prior
to European settlement, or that fires now are generally
more destructive. The very low fire frequency, or fire
exclusion, required by many of these species (e.g. preferred
intervals of at least 20 years for most threatened heathland
birds, or at least 60 years for Malleefowl) will ose
serious management problems….”
Woinarski
J.C.Z., Fire and Australian Birds: A Review, in Australia’s
Biodiversity – Responses to Fire; Environment
Australia Technical Paper No. 1, 1999, pp. 57, 83.
“This
research indicated that frequent burning resulted in
a simplification of large-scale spatial patterning in
the litter (fine -fuel) environment. The components
(leaves, twigs, bark etc) that give the leaf litter
its physical structure changed with regard to their
relative abundance and spatial distribution.…
Top-soil moisture levels were, on average, 18% lower
following 20 years of frequent burning…. These
shifts in [invertebrate] community composition were
substantial and suggested that the extensive and frequent
application of fuel-reduction burning could result in
a reduction in terrestrial invertebrate biodiversity
at a regional scale, with this decrease potentially
as high as 50%…. [T]here remains a need to establish
secure refuges for species with specialist requirements
and limited dispersal abilities, and provide links (i.e.
corridors) between habitat patches to facilitate recolonisation.…
Realistically, the conservation of biodiversity cannot
be achieved without consideration of the important role
that invertebrates play…. [S]ubstantial measured
changes in the structure of invertebrate assemblages
and the loss of species associated with the decomposer
cycle implies frequent burning may be impacting upon
nutrient cycling and transfer within these forests.
If this is the case, it would have serious implications
with regard to the maintenance of ecological sustainability.”
York,
A., Long-term effects of repeated prescribed burning
on forest invertebrates: management implications for
the conservation of biodiversity, in Australia’s
Biodiversity – Responses to Fire; Environment
Australia Technical Paper No. 1, 1999, pp. 183-4
“Historically,
many plant species have become locally extinct due to
too-frequent fires. Typically, these species have fire-sensitive
adults and rely on seed for their re-establishment after
fire (“obligate seeder species”). Fire-sensitive
species may become rare and become confined to “fire
shadows” in the landscape.… Fires are easy
to ignite and can spread widely. They can be a cheap
management tool and a costly reality…. Examples
of fire-induced local extinctions of native plants in
Australia span the continent.… Leigh and Briggs
(1992) list 19 species as being threatened with extinction
at state or federal level due to the inappropriateness
of current fire regimes.”
Gill
A.M. and Bradstock R., Extinction of biota by fires,
in Conserving biodiversity: threats and solutions, Surrey
Beatty & Sons, 1995, pp. 309-311.
WAFA
October 2003
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