Letter to the Editor: Climate change ‘does not cause bushfires’

DEAR News Of The Area,

In recent media, climate change has been blamed for the rising frequency and intensity of bushfires. 

However, climate change does not cause bushfires and hiding behind climate change does not provide a practical strategy to combat the increasing number and severity of bushfires.

Fire requires three elements  – an ignition source, oxygen, and fuel.

Once a fire starts, the meteorological conditions of temperature, wind, slope etc and the fuel quantity will determine how it burns.

The only factor we can influence is the amount of fuel available when a fire starts.

While our climate is becoming warmer and drier, it’s not this that’s making fires more intense or harder to control.

Instead, it’s the unprecedented accumulation of fuel in our forests, a result of poor land management practices over recent decades.

Scientific facts support this reality: without fuel, fires cannot burn.

The less fuel present, the less intense and destructive a fire becomes.

Even with a complete global halt to fossil fuel burning tomorrow, the warming effects of climate change will not reverse overnight.  In the meantime, the urgent need is to adapt our land management methods to the conditions we face today and reduce the fuel.

Reducing fuel loads across large forested areas must be our focus.

Technologies and techniques for fuel reduction have been developed and are well understood by land managers.

What’s needed now is a policy shift at the government level and dedicated funding to achieve at least five percent of the forest area fuel reduced annually – aligned with recommendations from the Royal Commission after the 2009 fires.

A comprehensive, well-funded fuel mitigation campaign is the most effective step that can be taken now to lower fire frequency, severity, and protect lives, property, and our ecosystems in an era marked by increasing warmth and dryness.

It’s time to prioritise proactive land management and policy action to reduce wildfire risks before more lives, property and landscapes are lost.

Regards,
Peter FLINN,

President,
The Howitt Society.