This is no time to score points in a cynical blame game
Michael Fendley, director, Victorian National Parks Association, Carlton
The Age (letter) 22/1/03
The 1939 Black Friday fires burnt an area 10 times that of Ash Wednesday,
1983. There was extensive logging and cattle grazing in 1939, but only
a handful of national parks - and "greenies" had not even been invented.
How frustrating it must have been not to have parks and environmentalists
as ready scapegoats for the Black Friday inferno.
These days we have no such troubles. The opportunistic seize on fires
to run campaigns against the bush itself and the people who cherish it,
and the predictable flow of letters has begun.
These letters are characterised by four points of attack: that logging,
grazing and 4WD tracks reduce fires, and that greenies are to blame for
urban-rural subdivisions.
The facts are:
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Logging does not reduce fires. If anything, dense regrowth post-logging
increases fuel loads.
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Grazing does not reduce fires. If anything, grazing reduces more succulent,
fire-resistant vegetation and promotes woody, flammable shrubs.
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Endlessly extending 4WD tracks will not reduce fires. Approximately 75
per cent of fires are started by humans, either through arson or by accident.
Increasing the already extensive track network merely extends the opportunity
for such deliberate or accidental acts.
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City fringe residential developments are usually resisted (unsuccessfully)
by greenies as it leads to loss of native vegetation. Once built, they
run cheek-by-jowl with high fire-risk environments.
Fire in the Australian environment is complex, challenging, sometimes necessary,
and sometimes downright dangerous. Along with aridity, it is probably the
most difficult aspect of our environment to deal with.
The challenge will only be met with great care, thought, planning and
goodwill - not by the egregious twisting of events to find simple answers
and easy targets. We must resist the unprincipled who seek to use the human
tragedy of the Canberra fires to further their bash-the-bush agenda.