Living With the Bush

posted September 7, 2009 , 15:00

Last week the State Government released its 10-30 metres ruling which will allow residents to remove trees within 10 metres of their house and 'ground fuel for up to 30 metres'. This will legalise what many locals have already been doing in the Kinglake Ranges and possibly confirm the prejudices of some residents in regard to vegetation, many of whom appear to have become afraid of it. Lyn Gunter, Mayor of Murrindindi Shire made statements to the press last week "that she did not believe that fire affected residents would use their new clearing rights to denude bush towns of greenery". I thought this comment was a bit rich given the amount of 'authorised' clearing that has already been undertaken on Lyn Gunter's watch. It was only after a great deal of pressure from the community that the Council declared that it would revise their management of the logging works on the mountain and consult more with the local community.

What I am starting to hear is a very simple argument that goes; "no fuel equals no (mega) fires", a fact which is true on a fundamental level, but ignores the complexities of fire behaviour and our interrelationship with the environment. Steve Werner, a Kinglake West resident believes that the cleared area around his house saved it on Black Saturday. Roger Cook, (President of Kinglake Landcare) who lost his home in Pine Ridge Road has said that even though there was not much vegetation within a hundred meters of the houses, not a single one was left standing. A cleared area around a house may not save it from a fire that is throwing out embers forty meters to a hundred meters ahead of the front.

To turn on vegetation as the new enemy and to see fuel reduction as a magic wand that will save us from future fires should be of great concern to us all. But I see the battle lines already being drawn. Former Mayor of Nillumbik Shire (burnt out Strathewen is in the Nillumbik shire, which shares its northern boundary with Murrindini Shire) Margaret Jennings, wrote an impassioned letter to The Age last week. In this letter she says that "those screaming for fuel reduction are wrong if they think that tree and vegetation removal even figure in the big picture of reducing the impact of fire". On the other hand, landowners have long wanted the right to remove trees or vegetation on their own land that they consider pose a risk to safety. In their view, ownership of the land should have already bestowed this 'right' on them.

Victoria is already the most cleared state in the country. We are also one of the most bushfire prone states. The remaining forests and bush are the state's "lungs" (and ours). What we can't do is concrete the whole place as insurance against the sort of fires that threaten lives and property. Because of the pain caused by this disaster I am concerned that we are going to fixate on fuel reduction as the holy grail of bushfire prevention. And I fear that the argument and debate going on is sinking to a basic level which pitches "greenies" against "fuel reductionists", with the latter claiming the high moral ground by invoking the need to save human life. 

But before we go too far down this path of the seemingly irreconcilable positions of 'there is no fire without fuel'and 'we still need to save native vegetation'there is one statistic I want you all to be aware of. In the 2006 Californian fires approximately 2000 homes were destroyed and 8 lives lost. In our fires approximately 2000 homes were destroyed and 173 lives lost. Geographically the area that burnt in California is somewhat similar to the Kinglake Ranges; a populated hilly region that abuts native forests, on the outskirts of a major city.

If we are going to live in bushy areas we need to understand the risks. And perhaps we need to re-examine planning laws that allow residential development in places of significant risk. I am certainly not the first to say this and I doubt I will be the last. But I will admit to you that I am haunted by those statistics above. The most obvious difference is that California has mandatory evacuations. But it is hard to be certain that it was their evacuation policy that accounted for the large difference in the lives lost in the two fires. But I don't think we should forget those statistics as debate rages over fuel reduction and the future safety of townships and the outer suburbs in coming summers.

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Topics: Environment and wildlife,

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  miss hap :

  10 Sep 2009 1:12:22pm

  What vegetation!! Marysville has been stripped of so many trees that it is now like a new estate.Any new 'right' of property owners to clear land of trees or vegetation is irrelevant.The damage is done, and as a tourist who valued this once magic place, I won't be back again.It was so distressing to see a place so altered and I know that I will never see it as it once was ever again in my lifetime.

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  Jeff Mueller :

  09 Sep 2009 11:44:38am

  The questions of clearing around houses, and fuel reduction are much more complex than the intuitive 'no fuel, no fire argument'. In the Beechworth fires, and I believe elswhere, paddocks that had been eaten down to dirt burnt up to houses. Each vegetation system and circumstances need to considered individually and in relation to the construction of houses. Kevin Tolhurst has also backed away from broadscale clearing as the answer to reducing the threat to houses. I pity the CFA officers who will be sent out to make assessments of defensibility of houses this season. They risk giving people a false sense of safety, or givng the blanket assessment of indefensibility, which will be as bad. The development of a fire risk overlay which cannot be built on would fit with existing regulations for flood prone and landslip areas under State Planning Laws. This would cause a hue and cry from landowners who own wooded land adjacent to the suburban edge. I live in a rural area in the North East surrounded by State Forest and would count myself as a greenie but am happy to have had DSE fuel reduction burns in that forest twice in the last two years. I would guess luck with weather and a clear delineation of forest and farmland with few houses in the transition zone has made this possible. I'm curious about the local attitudes in Kinglake to the fuel reduction burns and whether they were possible the last few years, or with so many houses tucked into forested areas.

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