Howitt Society weighs into debate

Philip HOPKINS

HIDING behindclimate change is not astrategy to address the increasing number and intensity of fires and floods across Australia, according to the Howitt Society.

The society’s president,Rick Cooper,said even if all burning of fossil fuels was stopped across the world tomorrow, climate change was not going to shift into reverse.

“In reality, genuine climate change reversal strategiesare years awayfrombeing internationally adopted, and decades away frombeginningtoimpact fireand flood regimes,” he said.

“So we need to adapt our managementstrategiestodealwith thechanged conditions as they aretoday.”

The Howitt Society is agroup of experienced landand fire managers and bushmen concerned for the health and safety of the Australian bush and in particular firemanagement. They areinspired by the work of 19th centuryGippsland scientist Alfred Howitt, who wrote extensively on Gippsland’s geology, ecology forests, fireand the region’s indigenous people.

The society’ssecretary,Garry Squires,said therewas agood analogy between managingthe potential impacts of fireand flood and managing diseases such as COVID-19.

“Prevention is better than dealing with the aftermath of apandemic or flood or firedisaster.The key is tocarry out mitigationworks beforethe disaster,” he said.

“In the case of both disease and bushfire, it is possible to forestall the inevitable tragic outcome.” With adiseaselikeCOVID19, there was atwo-pronged attack: first, apublichealth program -washing hands, social distancing, masks, contact tracing -followedby alongerterm vaccination program.

Similarly,therewas atwo-staged program for fire: apublic education program -leave early orders, emergencywarnings -followed by a‘vaccine program’ wherethe bush is inoculated with amild dose of fire-‘cool burning’.

“This builds up immunity in the bush so it is better able to resist the impact of wildfireand allow fires to be more easilycontrolled,” he said.

Regarding the recent floods, Mr Cooper said hopefully the calls for increased permanent levees to protect people and assets would be completed now and not when the next disaster was imminent.

From afireperspective, Mr Cooper said theHowitt Society supported the call from parts of the community forbetter fuel management in the bush.

“Whilst the climate is becoming warmer and drier,itisnot this that is making the fires moreintense and moredifficult to control, but ratherthe unprecedented amount of fuel that land managers have allowed to accumulate,” he said.

“Mitigation works arerequired urgently.”

Mr Squires said therewerethree factorsthat allow fires to burn-an ignition source, oxygen and fuel.

“The only one that we areable to influence is the amount of fuel available when ignition does occur, whether it be lightning, an arsonist, a campfire or any other source,” he said.

“The science tells us that as fuel availability doubles, fire burns four times moreintensely and that this formula also works in reverse and so thereare great benefits in reducing fuel loads.

“Wealso know that fuels can be reduced over large areas using existing and familiar technologies.”

Mr Squires said all that was requiredwas policychangeata governmentlevel and appropriate funding.

“A well funded, well led, statewide, even nation-wide fuel mitigation campaign would be an effective firststep in protecting Australian lives and propertyand the bushitselffromthe grip of awarmer and drier climate,” he said.

The Royal Commission into Victoria’s 2009 fires identified both the threat of climate change on futurebushfirerisk and the need to fuel reduce at least over five per cent of the forest area annually to help mitigate the threat.

Mr Squires said the recommendation was only implemented for acouple of years beforeit was dropped by government in favour of the current residual risk approach. “This clearly is not achieving the area of fuel reduction required to mitigate the current conditions,” he said.

The Howitt Society called on the governmenttoimplement the minimum five per centofforest area to be fuel reduced annually as per the 2009 RoyalCommission recommendation.