Fire: a ‘learning experience’

The May 24 information session was followed by a briefing by researchers who produced the Box Ironbark mosaic burning project [see our Posts here, here and here].

As we reported last week, possibly the biggest question raised by this project is that it simply is not enough: a project run over only two years—and two unusually wet years at that—necessarily has limitations. This problem was raised at the information session, and we were told that DELWP workers would continue some of the project’s monitoring. This is better than nothing, but is obviously not the same as continuing a rigorously designed and managed research program of the kind that could form a reliable foundation for fire managers in the future.

One encouraging thing to emerge from the session, however, was the statement by fire managers present that the research project [in which they had been involved] had been a ‘learning experience’ for them. There’s an interesting idea: that fire operations should be integrated with ecological research, and should always have ecological outcomes in mind.