|
December 16, 2003
It is extremely hot in Adelaide today. Tis another one of those 40 degree plus days when the hot north wind blows down from the desert, turning the city streets into a furnace. Power bills will soar. More blackouts. No doubt ETSA will blame the weather for the power cuts.
It's another day in an Adelaide summer. That means the bush fire season is on us again.
Extremely hot & dry conditions means that it is a fire danger day. Red alert. Total fire bans across most of the state. Police patrols out looking for arsonists.
Remember the Canberra fires last year?
I remembered reading this a week or so ago by Alan Oxley, a director of ITS Global, a strategic consultant on international issues. Oxley is also acting as consultant for the Sustainable Timber Industry Coalition.
From what I remember the article was about the logging industry's case for greater access to our forests to prevent a repeat of last summer's tragic bushfire season. Commercial loggers are the good guys because they practice forest management, whereas environmentalists are the bad guys as they just lock up the forests and do not practice the active management of the noble loggers.
A moral is drawn from the Californian experience:
"California's timber industry has pointed out for years that unmanaged forests not only create fire hazards, but get sick and die. Insect infestation and dead wood are killing the Sierra Nevada range. California environmentalists want it preserved as a wilderness "biosphere" to protect the spotted owl. But foresters warn that if nothing is done to restore the health of the range, it is increasingly at risk of being destroyed by super wildfires.
The moral? Wilderness is no good. Plantations are good. Oxley's conclusion? "Our forests do need protecting. But not from the timber industry. They need to be protected from bad environment policy."
That's how the Timber Industry understands sustainability. Unmanaged forests are a firebomb waiting to explode. They need to be logged and burnt regularly to make them less fire-prone.
Unlock the forests is the subtext. Let foresters manage forests. As Gavan McFadzean, a Victorian campaigns manager for the Wilderness Society, says:
...."letting the loggers into Victoria's precious and protected old-growth and native forests to be managed by foresters is like giving Dracula a key to the blood bank."
So true. So very true.
|
wasn't it that 'managed forest' next to Duffy that cost the lives of some Canberra residents?