Use Foresters to save the Forests. By Viv Forbes.

Green extremists plan to convert Australia into “tree heaven”. They will bully this through, no matter what the cost.

Huge areas of forest are already converted to “locked-up-land” – national parks, world heritage areas, Kyoto protected trees, remnant vegetation, aboriginal reserves, wildlife habitat and corridors etc. Many lock-ups are so large and so poorly managed that they have become extreme bushfire hazards and a refuge for wild dogs, cats, goats, camels, pigs, lantana, groundsel and other weeds and pests.

Australia exports food yet imports timber:

Now Australia faces a shortage of timber for farms, industry, homes and furniture. While our vast forests lie idle or burnt, we import timber. …

Fire management evolved and improved:

Aboriginals managed the whole landscape with fire — they burnt grasslands and forests at irregular but frequent intervals. … Once a fire was lit, it ran its natural course until it ran into a previously burnt area, or rain put it out. …

As Australia became more settled, squatters needed to protect fire-vulnerable fences, farm animals, crops, machinery and homesteads as well as neighbours and towns. They soon learned to use fire with more care and planning. They used roads and firebreaks, took account of expected conditions for temperature, wind and vegetation, and tried to collaborate with neighbours. They aimed for annual cool-season burns. And when lightning, vandals or careless neighbours lit dangerous fires at the wrong time or place, they fought fire with fire – using back-burns to protect homesteads and other infrastructure. Squatter fire management was superior to aboriginal management for a settled Australia, but both involved the deliberate and skilled use of fire.

Then came the foresters with the motivation, equipment and knowledge to protect their forests, sawmills, neighbours, equipment and villages from summer wildfires. The sale of timber products funded active full-time forest management. Foresters were also effective fire-fighters – they made and maintained roads and tracks, built and manned fire lookouts, managed woody weeds and undertook fuel reduction burning.

But then came the greens:

But Australian foresters have been forced out of most Australian forests which are now in the hands of green zealots.

The new forest policy is “control everything, debate endlessly, allow nothing and do nothing. Then, when everything burns, blame climate change, call another enquiry and ignore the findings.”

Under green forest management, new roads are banned, old roads and fire trails are closed and bridges are allowed to fall into disrepair. Dead timber and weeds are allowed to accumulate, and water catchments are choked with trees and lantana. Graziers are locked-out and remedial action is constipated by never-ending bushfire royal commissions, green-black corroborees, urban activists and federal, state and local bureaucracies. Then, when flames are leaping through the tree-tops, money and water are wasted on flashy water bombers. As a result, too many forests, animals, farms and houses go up in smoke.

Now we get clear skies punctuated by mega-fires:

Australia’s flora and fauna evolved to survive and thrive in the grasslands and open forests created in “the Land of Smoke”. They were not threatened by the many small fires of aboriginals or squatters. But the infrequent Mega-fires created by Green Policies in Locked-up-Land are a lethal threat to all forest dwellers and their neighbouring farms and towns.

Conclusion:

It is time to open the sawmills, unlock the gates and roads and put foresters back into the forests. …

Neither climate change nor wild weather causes wildfires. The real cause is the growing invasion of flammable bush into grasslands and the unnatural suppression of the cleansing effects of frequent small fires. If small fires are continually suppressed, mega-fires will inevitably destroy the forests and the surrounding areas every decade or so.

Forestry will improve bushfire protection as foresters clear roads, add tracks, clean up flammable undergrowth, reduce fuel loads, maintain the equipment and train workers to locate and isolate any fire outbreaks.

Greens cause mega-fires.

Greens waste our timber, consigning it to go up in smoke.