Western Australia’s peak environment and sustainability organisation is calling on the state government to review its prescribed burning policy following a study that shows burning of the kind used in WA does little or nothing to protect homes.
A team of scientists from California and Australia made 12,000 measurements at 500 houses affected by the 2009 Black Saturday, eventually concluding that large-scale prescribed burning did little or nothing to save homes from being destroyed. Instead, homes were more likely to be saved by physically clearing vegetation from around properties.
This has direct implications for WA, where escaped prescribed burns destroyed more than 50 properties in December last year.
Conservation Council of WA spokesman John McCarten said, “This is clear evidence that prescribed burning will never be a silver bullet that can save us from future devastating bushfires.
“Last year Western Australian authorities burned 3.2 million hectares of bushland – that’s an area bigger than Belgium. These fires are causing incredible damage to already over-stressed native plants and animals.
“This study found that prescribed burning conducted more than a few kilometers away from homes had almost no effect in terms of protecting houses on Black Saturday.
“In Victoria the average distance between a prescribed burn and houses was 8km, which was found to be too far away to have any real impact. When you consider that prescribed burns in WA are routinely lit hundreds of kilometers away from any human settlement, this is a very significant finding.
“Last year the Department of Environment and Conservation had seven aircraft whose sole job was to go deep into the bush and firebomb huge areas of uninhabited bushland with incendiary devices. This is a huge cost to the taxpayer for apparently little benefit.
“By enforcing an exhausting year-round burning schedule the government ensures that these fires will be lit at the worst possible times. Fires lit too late in the year have a much higher chance of escaping, while routinely burning in spring incinerates native animals that are too preoccupied with nesting and breeding to get away. The government is taking big risks and causing huge environmental damage for apparently very little benefit.
“Prescribed burning will always have a place in WA’s forest management planning. But we want it to be part of a real solution and clearly the current wide-scale prescribed burning schedule isn’t the way to do that.”
The full study can be found online at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029212
For further comment
John McCarten – 0403 900 193
