Recent research suggesting that hazard-reduction burning increases bushfire risk has come under fire from the NSW Rural Fire Service. Source: Timberbiz
RFS community risk director Simon Heemstra has echoed comments from Forestry Australia that there is no panacea for reducing the impacts of catastrophic bushfires.
The research – “Identifying and managing disturbance-stimulated flammability in woody ecosystems” – published in scientific journal Biological Reviews, draws on studies of the severe bushfires in 2009 and 2019-2020 to identify factors that may increase the intensity of a burn.
It found that that the risk of extreme blazes decreased as trees grew taller.
However, Dr Heemstra told the ABC that while the report offered some insights regarding fuel accumulation it did not outline anything the organisation could put into practice.
“To wholesale adopt the recommendations of this report would make the landscape much more dangerous and threaten life and property,” he said.
Dr Heemstra said prescribed burns reduced the fuel load, helped certain vegetation reproduce, made putting out small fires easier, and provided training for RFS staff.
“There is always a reduction in risk when you reduce part of the fuel,” he told the ABC.
“Fires are going to be not as intense, not run as fast, and be more easily controlled.
“Our losses of property and risk to human life are significantly reduced once we reduce fuel load.
“The more we implement prescribed burning and have strategies to try to reduce ignitions and suppress fires, the more we’re reducing these big fires with a very significant impact.”
Dr Heemstra said the report was overly simplistic in its suggestions about lightning strike modelling and drones dropping retardants on ignitions to prevent sparks becoming bushfire blazes.
“There are options we need to look at in the future, but it’s not a silver bullet and it needs to go in the mix with everything else we are doing as far as bushfire risk management,” he said.
Dr Heemstra told the ABC the RFS aimed to burn bushland every five to 10 years to minimise risk.
He said that was an ancient practice.
“The Australian landscape was shaped after tens of thousands of years of management through Aboriginal Australians and their cultural burning practices,” he said.
“There is a lot to be learned and understood from the use of fire in the landscape.”
Forestry Australia Science Policy Adviser Dr Tony Bartlett said that while there was no panacea for reducing the impacts of catastrophic bushfires, prescribed burning was a scientifically proven part of the solution.
“Simply, reduced fuel levels in forests will reduce the severity of bushfires on all bar the most catastrophic fire weather conditions,” he said.
“Any criticism that prescribed burning can make Australian forests more flammable is misguided. Criticising prescribed burning is like dismissing the value of seat belts in cars because people still die in car accidents. Both seat belts and prescribed burns are highly beneficial most of the time.
“Forestry Australia’s view is that using cool burning to reduce fuel hazards is critical to good forest fire management and very consistent with the way Aboriginal people managed these forests for thousands of years.”
