UNAVOIDABLE IMPACTS OF UNCONTROLLED FIRES

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

 

The NSW Government and the Management of the State's National Parks Estate

What the NSW government is doing to our national parks through repeated restructuring and staff cuts is an absolute tragedy. Remaining staff are demoralised and frustrated, seeing their wonderful conservation reserves deteriorating, species declining, with invasive weeds smothering native vegetation, and feral predators sending threatened species to extinction.

According to a report in the Land newspaper: “In the past six years, Parks have shed about100 rangers and about 300 field officers. A number of regional managers have also been axed taking with them decades of bushfire management and pest control management knowledge”.

At the same time Parks regions in NSW have been cut from 66 to 35.

The official stance of the Office of Environment and Heritage that: “Our key focus on fire, pests, weeds, asset maintenance and visitor facilities remains unchanged” is, to put it mildly, fanciful nonsense.

The following is an example of reality.

Fifteen months ago, during an extended dry period, two bushfires lit and left unattended by graziers, burned out the whole of the Chambigne Nature Reserve south west of Grafton, across some 1,500 hectares of conservation land under Clarence Valley Council's management, and all or part of at least five private properties.

Property damage was extensive and environmental damage massive, and the three days of fire-fighting and follow-up removal of trees that were threatening to fall on roads and transmission lines would have cost tax-payers millions, yet not one person was held accountable.

Fifteen months on, and because the parks service does not have the available monetary or human resources, none of the kilometres of park fencing that were damaged by the fire have been repaired. As a result the nature reserve, and the shores of the regional water supply dam at Shannon Creek have been overrun by cattle, trampling the unique threatened flora, and defecating in the region's drinking water.

The “Land's” observation: “For the few staff which are left it must be very demoralising to know that they can't do their job with the resources they have been provided”, would be a massive understatement.

Is this really the best we can do?

- John Edwards

This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on September 11, 2017.