Tackling some myths

The latest issue of Parkwatch magazine contains a pertinent article attacking a few popular myths about fire. Here’s a sample:

‘Our land managers seem to have been subservient to a litany of inherited myths, and display a puzzling lack of curiosity over recent research.

‘An important element of that research shows that fuel reduction burns will be effective for a few years, but can be followed by a couple of decades of greatly increased growth of flammable shrubs, followed over the long-term by relatively open and less flammable

‘Publication of those important studies has failed to alter fire management in Victoria; it hasn’t even prompted FFMV to implement a monitoring program whereby the changes in forest composition and structure are measured, over time, after management burns are performed.

‘Indeed since the 1930s, when the Victorian Government began formally recording its fuel reduction burns, there has been no program to monitor the results of those burns: no recording of changes in flammability levels over time, no documentation of understorey species changes or, for that matter, no measurement of effective increases in public safety.’ (FOBIF emphasis)

The article goes on to discuss  the relevance of indigenous approach to fire, and recent attempts to use Indigenous fire practices as somehow incompatible with current conservation thinking.

You can find the article here. Have a look.