While the title, UNAVOIDABLE IMPACTS, is a true reflection of what happens when an uncontrolled fire needs to be extinguished, most out-of-control bushfires are completely avoidable!
It’s difficult to understand the mindset of those landowners that continually set fire to their properties, a practice otherwise known as ‘burning off’, with no means or intention of containing it.
This scenario is particularly prevalent where the land in question adjoins state forest, national parks or other public land, and this year has seen huge expanses of parks and reserves in the Clarence Valley burned out by neighbouring landowners. Everlasting Swamp, Nymboida, Chaelundi, and Ramornie National Parks, Sherwood, Banyabba, and Chambigne Nature Reserves, have all suffered, along with the entire Shannon Creek dam catchment, which has serious implications for the quality of the Coffs-Clarence regional water supply.
Out of
control fires result in enormous financial losses for neighbouring landowners,
and all too often result in the loss of homes, livestock, and even human lives.
The laws governing the seemingly ritual burning off of bushland are strict. All neighbours must be notified before burning takes place, and the fire must be contained within the property. However, the alerting of neighbours rarely takes place, and statistics suggest that many landowners light fires, knowing they can’t control them.
Out-of-control bushfires have cost millions of dollars-worth of property damage in the Clarence valley this year, and the cost to taxpayers of fighting those fires is even greater, and then there’s the clean-up. Removing fallen and potentially dangerous trees from highways and replacing power poles and wooden bridges. Water supplies are polluted and in extreme cases fish-kills can result, and the list goes on.
The
environmental cost of too frequent burning is well documented, leading to
ecosystem and species decline and even extinction. Despite all of this,
authorities continue to condone these practices and turn a blind eye to
breaches.
Earlier this year, an out-of-control fire at Dilkoon saw a Section 44 emergency declared, yet two days earlier, landowners had been free to burn-off without a permit.
Bushfire threat must be taken seriously.
- John Edwards
Published in the "Voices for the Earth" column in The Clarence Valley Independent , November 22, 2023
