Victoria’s fires, has a lack of clearing made them worse?

Tonight we go over the issue of planned burns, and a lack of it over the past 3 years in Victoria. Has this contributed to the bushfires around Victoria. From the guardian article (below), this means in the last three years of planned burning, it is at a level either equal to or less than the 130,000 hectares the 2009 Royal Commission called inadequate. 1.7% burned at best despite the royal commission flagging the need for 5%.

Back in 2019, the ABC wrote in an article which warned of a possible problem "I've been begging them [Forest Fire Management Victoria] for 20 years to burn off the state forest at the back of our place and still to this day it hasn't happened, I honestly believe the ferocity of that fire was fuelled by the trash in the bush — I think my place might not have been impacted nearly as much, it would have been much more controllable if there'd been some forest management out there."


In the same year, the Guardian revealed “The royal commission into the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, which killed 173 people on 7 February 2009, recommended that 5% of Victorian public land be burnt each year. But planned burning in Victoria declined from more than 125,000 hectares in 2016-17 to about 74,000 hectares in 2017-18, the environment department’s annual report shows.”


Have to thank the firefighters all over the country, putting their lives on hold, and at risk, fighting these fires. Lets hope when the dust settles, that governments will learn lessons. For Victoria, that is lessons clearly set out in the 2009 royal commission:

RECOMMENDATION 56
The State fund and commit to implementing a long-term program of prescribed burning based on an annual rolling target of 5 per cent minimum of public land.

This episode contains material used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015)

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