Victoria Bushfires, February 2009; photo by Andrew Brownbill, EPA
The tragedy of the 2009 Victorian bushfires – the deadliest in Australia’s recorded history – is something one watches, from a distance, in sadness and horror.
It was a small natural disaster by global standards. But Australia is not the world. It’s population is approximately 20 million. An equivalent per capita death toll in the USA would be around 3,000 – or many more than 10,000 in China.
Australia is a large continent, very scantily populated throughout most of the typically dry land mass, with some large urban centers and a rural area – perhaps 20% of the continent depending on how one draws the boundaries – that’s been lightly settled by modern Australians.
Googlemap of Australian Terrain: remaining forests shown in dark green
At the risk of GROSS oversimplification, one could say there are three Australias: the cities (c. 1%), the desert (c. 80%) and the rural areas (c. 20%).
In desert, there are no forests or even woodlands capable of sustaining large-scale bushfires. Fires occur there – but by far the biggest concerns about major life-threatening bushfires are in the higher-rainfall, more wooded parts of the continent, which I’ll call ‘rural’.
The ancestral forests of Australia were rainforests, which were very widespread tens of millions of years ago. Today, rainforests occupy a tiny area (around 0.25%) of the total land mass. They are not fire-adapted. A massive fire destroys rainforest – or at least triggers a lengthy succession process that would require many hundreds of years for mature rainforests to return.
However, most of Australia’s forests are fire-adapted. They evolved out of the rainforests and are dominated by two large plant families: the eucalypts (gums) and the acacias (wattles).
These forests range from dry woodlands, with scrubby stunted trees and no connected canopy, to luxurious wet eucalypt forests that include the largest trees found in the southern hemisphere. Fire plays a role in each of the many forest types. But the role it plays is not the same in all cases. The natural fire regime for a wet eucalypt forest might be in the order of hundreds of years. On the other hand, woodlands and the drier eucalypt forests typically experience much more frequent fires – in the order of once every decade or so.
Fire itself is a major cause of change. Until approximately 50,000 years ago, the patchwork of dry and wet eucalypt forests and rainforests was in constant change (rainforests were typically along gullies and riverbanks, but in some areas were more extensive). Long-term, climate change was the dominant factor (glacial v inter-glacial). Shorter term, minor climatic fluctuations and chance events such as bushfires would cause subtle local changes in this vast – and largely inter-connected – quilt of forest types.
Aboriginal occupation of Australia undoubtably changed the vegetation and fauna in some places, while in other, less habitable areas, is probably left it unchanged.
One of the ways Aboriginal people controlled the landscape for their own survival and benefit was by judicious and skilled use of fire, in specific places at certain times. Controlled burning was used in some woodland areas to stimulate growth of fresh grass, boosting wallaby and kangaroo populations. In this way, Aboriginal people practiced land management that helped regenerate foods they liked, without adopting settled agriculture. Given Australia’s massive short-term climatic fluctuations (the El Nino-La Nina cycle influences climate as much if not more than the seasons), these mobile, flexible practices made good sense.
Wallaby in tall grass: good tucker all round
There is no evidence that Aboriginals burnt all the landscape regularly – and compelling evidence they didn’t. If they had, there would be no rainforests left. As it was, some 1% of the landmass was rainforest prior to European invasion.
It would even be an exaggeration to suggest that Aboriginal people regularly burnt all of the much more extensive eucalypt forests and woodlands. We can only guess the true extent and sophistication of Aboriginal burning practices. Like so much indigenous cultural wisdom and lore, most of this information was lost when British colonists so brutally and suddenly disrupted the traditional way of life that had evolved over tens of millennia.
Regrowth Wet Eucalypt; densely packed thin trees
When outsiders arrived a couple of hundred years ago, as well as decimating Aboriginal culture, they also made huge changes to much of the landscape. By now, almost all the country’s ‘old growth’ forest have been logged. Overall, there has been a massive reduction in forest cover. The amount of ‘missing’ forest varies from place to place.
Old Growth Mountain Ash: most of these giants are gone - a major ecological change
The nature of the remaining forests has also been modified in most places – not irreversibly, but in a significant and long-lasting way. Most forests are now regenerating, immature forests with smaller trees than old growth. They are typically less biodiverse than the original forest. Forest areas have also been fragmented – by roads, farmlands and urban development.
The overall consequence has been a rapid extinction rate. Most forests have been so poorly studied for very small creatures that vast numbers of species have probably been driven to extinction without Australia’s new settlers ever knowing of their existence. We have better statistics for vertebrates such as mammals and birds. Suffice it to say that, over the last two centuries, Australia has the worst extinction rate for native mammals of all continents on earth.
Even if deforestation and land modification stopped now (it hasn’t, of course), many additional species are already on their way to extinction. An active program of re-establishing forest corridors would go some way to lessening this risk… but such programs remain the exception rather than the rule.
On top of this, the highly fragmented and stressed forest and woodland area may be about to undergo climate change at an historically unprecedented pace. If that occurs – on top of everything else – a second major wave of extinctions is inevitable. Indeed, if the climate changed along the lines suggested by the IPCC’s median scenario, the very existence of forests in many currently forested areas will be at risk by the end of the century, if not before.
This has profound implications for the long-term habitability of large areas of rural Australia. It has implications for future food production. From the perspective of someone who cares about wildlife as well as people, it’s a grim prospect indeed. But even if one only cares about people, such a loss of natural assets should be cause for serious concern. The driest continent on earth may be about to get a whole lot drier…
Add to this the frequency of major bushfire events. Australia has suffered occasional ferocious bushfires since European settlement (and presumably before as well – although there are no historical records before British colonization). Catastrophic fires don’t occur every year. They do happen every decade or so, in different parts of the forested and semi-forested landscape. Various factors contribute to the cycle. Human management is one of those factors.
It’s more than a shame that some people use the tragedy of bushfires to push an anti-conservation agenda – but it’s as predictable as night following day. Every time there’s a major bushfire tragedy, after a period of a few days, the media-driven hunt for culprits begins. Arsonists, who amazingly enough seem to start a significant proportion of these fires, are infrequently caught. But one sector of society is a sitting duck: the conservation movement.
Andrew Bolt: conformist hack who obeys Walker's Law
I’ll call it Walker’s Law and claim the credit for officially naming this phenomenon, although I’m by no means the first to notice it. Within a few days of any major bushfire disaster in Australia, there will be grumblings, sometimes leading to a full-blown assault, in Australia’s mass media – usually led by the same set of repeat offenders. It’s open season again on greenie bashing… Then, as the horror fades, reality slowly intercedes once again and we get back to normal life.
There is, of course, a case for ‘fuel reduction control burns’ in areas close to habitation – and more generally in some forest areas and types. That’s as long as it’s done intelligently and with a well-planned, widely agreed, and ecologically-informed management strategy.
There is zero case for the kind of ‘burn everywhere often’ argument that’s bandied around in the crasser sectors of our society at these tragic times.
Fire management is an appropriate and necessary ecological tool in the management of the Australian continent. But it’s not a panacea. It’s not a matter of ‘the more the merrier’. Like most medicines, too much can be lethal.
NCC: Intelligent engagement in bushfire issues
This complex policy area requires input from various interest groups and areas of expertise. Ideally fire management planning should be done at a regional and local level. In New South Wales, pioneering work by a small number of dedicated conservationists after the disastrous 1994 bushfires lead by Dr Judy Messer, Chair of the Nature Conservation Council, met an intelligent and welcoming response form the Carr Government. As a result, interested conservationists were assisted at a State level to participate effectively in the development of bushfire strategies at more local level. The result has been more dialogue and understanding between all interested people and better plans.
Conservationists have a vital role to play in achieving the best and most balanced overall policy. Fire management strategies should themselves be embedded within a broader land management strategy encompassing all aspects of land use. The idea of this type of ecological planning without conservationists is like banning the most enthusiastic fans from sports games.
Of course, one doesn’t want a noisy bunch of enthusiasts arrogating to themselves all the decision-making power. But when does that ever happen, in real life? Show me one green dictatorship and I’ll take the ‘threat’ seriously. Until then, I maintain that the scare of ‘excessive green influence’ – especially when it’s implied that conservationists are in some way responsible for large-scale human deaths – is dishonest and ugly.
Miranda Devine: Judgement first, Inquiry later
I hope no conservationists used this bushfire tragedy to say ‘I told you so’ about climate change. It would be as silly to do that as to claim that Europe’s cold winter is a sign that climate change is not happening. No single, localized catastrophic climatic event is proof of long-term global change. However, it is reasonable to note that the frequency of disastrous bushfires seems to be increasing. That’s at least consistent with the hypothesis of human-induced climate change.
Managing this planet so our way of life becomes sustainable rapidly is a highly complex business. Fortunately, we have a lot of people with a lot of skills to do the job.
In Australia, it would help if a significant part of that mix of necessary skills and enthusiasm is not denigrated, in the most banal way, every time there’s a natural bushfire disaster.
One thing is for sure. Just as this wasn’t the first horrific bushfire in Australia, it won’t be the last. We need to help those who’ve suffered and have an intelligent debate about the best way forward to achieve complex multiple objectives. Intelligence is the key – tempered with a little humility and wisdom.
Real life is not University Challenge. We should not be trying to out-smart each other, whenever we can.
We need to put our heads together – not bang them together.
