It’s Autumn in the Greater Blue Mountains, and the New South Wales Government’s bush arsonists are out in full swing deliberately setting fire to native habitat at every opportunity. Governmental ‘Habitat Reduction Season‘!
Is this pastime not comparable with the antiquated British imported tradition of the ‘Duck Season‘ – killing NATIVE ducks that is – just for sport. It’s the very same time of year!
“Capital climes for rough shooting old sport, what! Live on peg, we ought to bag a few dozen before tea.”
On Monday 25th March 2024, the NSW Government’s National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) published a media release about its continuing “hazard” reduction burns across the Blue Mountains National Park. It read as follows (main extracts):
“The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has announced plans for an 850-hectare hazard reduction burn in the Glenbrook area of Blue Mountains National Park, set to commence on 26 March, weather conditions permitting. This preventive measure is part of a strategic effort to reduce the risk of wildfires and protect surrounding communities.
Scheduled to unfold over consecutive days, the operation targets the reduction of naturally accumulated fuel loads in the park. The primary aim is to provide strategic protection for the residential areas of Glenbrook, Lapstone, and Mulgoa against potential future wildfires.
…This burn is a component of the comprehensive hazard reduction program carried out by NPWS each year, often in collaboration with the Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW. These operations are crucial for managing vegetation fuel loads and reducing the intensity and spread of potential wildfires.
The planned hazard reduction burns in Blue Mountains National Park underscore the ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety. By taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads, the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires, ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.”
Our comments to this bush arson justification spin doctoring:
The above is bush arson propaganda by contracted consultants with Communications Degrees, justifying the perpetual decimation of Australia’s native habitat since the first day of colonisation and usurpation of the continent since 1788. Nothing has changed or is likely to. Surviving intact wilderness has become reduced to mere islands. Just go to Google Maps [See our extract map below]
“850 hectares” is an area equivalent to about 30km x 30km (√ 850ha). In relative terms, that’s three times the size of Sydney’s CBD, a native habitat area capacity for many fauna;
“preventive measure is part of a strategic effort to reduce the risk of wildfires” – this is because when wildfires do occur the NSW Government invariably fails to (A) detect, (B) respond and (C) extinguish the ignitions promptly whilst small and controllable. It has an attitude that native habitat has a lower value than human habitat. In contrast, the urban Fire and Rescue Service is tasked to (B) respond and (C) extinguish the ignitions involving human property immediately, and unlike their unpaid volunteer Rural Fire Service (RFS) counterparts, they get paid to do it;
“protect surrounding communities” – this means human communities that have been built encroaching more and more into and usurping native habitat. These human “communities” are the only focus of the NPWS and its support RFS. Under this culture, wildlife communities matter not, irrespective of any threatened species impacted/killed. This attitude belies an antiquated anthropocentric mentality. Neither the NPWS nor the RFS employ an Ecologist. They just don’t care about protecting Ecology – in this case forest ecology;
“the operation targets the reduction of naturally accumulated fuel loads in the park“. That’s right, the NPWS as delegated custodial organisation ‘manager’ of the Blue Mountains National Park treats native habitat and its dependent fauna within such national parks in NSW (one of some 800) instead as “fuel loads” to be reduced to sterile urban park status. NPWS should be relegated to managing urban parks like Hyde Park in Sydney’s CBD;
“The primary aim is to provide strategic protection for the residential areas of Glenbrook, Lapstone, and Mulgoa against potential future wildfires.” – this is a reinforcement approach of our Point 3;
“…This burn is a component of the comprehensive hazard reduction program carried out by NPWS each year, often in collaboration with the Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW.” – this is a reinforcement approach of our Point 3;
“These operations are crucial for managing vegetation fuel loads and reducing the intensity and spread of potential wildfires.” – “crucial” for whom? An expanding Sydney human housing sprawl? So the NSW Government’s volunteer and under-resourced RFS has less forested native habitat risk and so less work to do in the event of wildfires because year-on-year there is less forested native habitat left. Perpetuation that long term strategy, there will eventually be little or no native habitat left across NSW. So down the track a future NSW Government may well decide that the RFS is therefore no longer needed and so make the organisation redundant. Sydney that has been deliberately morphed by successive governments (state and federal) into the ‘Greater Sydney Region‘ has, on paper, swallowed whole the ‘Blue Mountains Region‘ (see NSW Planning map below) , presuming its world heritage status is now just outer-upper western Sydney parkland for the rezoning offing. Allowing the 2019 megafires to incinerate 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, clearly has achieved the NSW Government’s intended devaluation of the UNESCO recognised “Outstanding Universal Value” of all the Eucalypts, and is wholly consistent with a usurpation agenda for an even Greater Sydney megalopolis.
“The planned hazard reduction burns in Blue Mountains National Park underscore the ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety. By taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads, the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires, ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.” The spin doctoring clearly by outsourced consultants with Communication Degrees is palpable here. It’s more repetition of contrived persuasive terms: “planned hazard reduction burns”, underscore the “ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety”. Ask the residents of Mount Wilson who lost their homes by RFS reckless arson in 2019 on this point! “taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads”, “the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires”, “ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.” What so burning the natural landscapes to protect them? Seriously? In truth it is all about avoiding bad publicity when the RFS lights a high risk fire on 14th December 2014 causing homes to be incinerated like at Mount Wilson. “The state coroner has confirmed that a bushfire that destroyed homes in Mt Wilson, Mt Tomah, Berambing and Bilpin in December 2019 was caused after a planned RFS backburn jumped Mt Wilson Road.” [SOURCE: ‘Bushfire inquiry: Mt Wilson backburn to blame‘, BMG, 2nd April 2024]
RFS MOUNT WILSON ARSON: Sam Ramaci, like several of his neighbours, claims a back-burn lit by the RFS on December 14, 2019, was responsible for the destruction of his cool room, tractor and the property that was to fund his retirement. “If they hadn’t started the back-burn, my house would be still standing,” he said. (The NSW Government has refused to compensate him and others (nor even apologise) for the reckless misjudgment of its RFS – a NSW Government agency. Who can afford a class action? [Go to Video Link]
The Mount Wilson fire was the sixth backburn to escape along the southern containment line that was intended to protect the upper Blue Mountains from the Gospers Mountain Fire.
What sane person would join the Rural Fire Starters?
Bush arsonists have a psychological compulsion to set fire to see fire . It’s a ritual – they’re eyes light up. “Behold, The Fiery Cross !...”
NPWS is beholden to NSW Planning
A headline environmental protection agency that is supposed to be caring for national parks reporting to a state land use planning authority (aka Development). Is this a warped governmental portfolio conflict of interest of what? Liberal-Labor-Liberal…? Same Same.
The Regional Map of NSW according to the NSW Government’s Department of Planning and Environment fiefdom in 2024. Note that the Blue Mountains Region no longer exists, but has become annexed by the ever expanding ‘Greater Sydney Region’ in the mindset of Macquarie Street’s urban expansionism campaign. Mount Victoria a Sydney suburb now? Lookout Broken Hill!
Deforestation of Australia since colonisation and its usurpation from 1788. Remnant native forests and their native habitat have been decimated to ecologically unsustainable islands. The entire pre-colonial eastern seaboard of the continent was originally blanketed by native forests unbroken, extending about 600km inland. [SOURCE Google Maps – satellite view, April 2024]
It’s no wonder that Australia continues its record of perpetuating the world’s worst rate of wildlife extinctions. It’s akin to countries like Madagascar. It’s all hell bent on serving the Human Plague Order, currently 8.1 Billion! and in 2024 growing (and demanding more) by $75 million p.a. The current population of Australia is 26,654,200 as of Monday, April 29, 2024. Compare Australia’s Federation census of 1901 counted 3,773,801 people across Australia. [Check: Census Bureau Projects U.S. and World Populations on New Year’s Day; and ^https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/]
But wait there’s more bush arson planned…
An update last Friday, 26th April 2024 (just days ago), the NSW Government’s environmental department website again posted a media release advising of its further planned “Hazard reduction burn in Blue Mountains National Park” for the weekend.
It read as follows:
“The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) with assistance from the NSW Rural Fire Service is conducting a hazard reduction burn in Blue Mountains National Park starting Sunday 28 April, weather permitting.
Staff from Metro South West and Blue Mountains regions undertaking the Pisgah Ridge hazard reduction burn near Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains National Park The hazard reduction burn will focus on an area south of Woodford, in the mid-mountains, and cover a total area of about 400 hectares. The burn aims to reduce fuel hazards and assist in the protection of property in the surrounding Woodford, Hazelbrook and Linden areas.
Fire trails around the burn area, including Bedford Creek, will be closed to the public, along with the Murphy’s Glen camping and day use area. The campground will be reopen when it is safe to do so.
Smoke may be seen in the area for up to a week after the initial operation.
The burn is one of many hazard reduction operations undertaken by NPWS each year, many with the assistance of the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) and Fire and Rescue NSW.
All burns around the state are coordinated with the NSW RFS to ensure the impact on the community is assessed at a regional level.
People with known health conditions can sign up to receive air quality reports, forecasts and alerts via email or SMS from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. For health information relating to smoke from bushfires and hazard reduction burns, visit NSW Health or Asthma Australia.
More information on hazard reduction activities is available at NSW Rural Fire Service and the NSW Government’s Hazards Near Me website and app.”
Asthma sufferers? – NSW Government care factor?
Carbon emissions? – NSW Government care factor?
10th December 2019: NPWS world heritage Eucalyptus woodsmoke enveloping Sydney from what started as an abandoned pile burn off Army Road near Gospers Mountain in the distant Wollemi NP two months prior on 26th October 2019. She’ll be right, eh NPWS boss David Crust?
The RFS is one of the planet’s highest emitters of airborne carbon particulates by way of causing mass wood-smoke by repeatedly lighting bushfires and ignoring wildfires. Wood smoke we feel is a tad more polluting than humans exhaling carbon dioxide. But then how many humans on the planet?
Yet the climate change cult remains quiet on this more serious global problem. Why so selective about a lesser pollutant in the hysterical ideology that has morphed from ‘Global Warming‘ (Wallace Smith Broecker’s term of 1975) to ‘The Greenhouse Effect‘ (Mike Hulme’s term in 1994) to ‘Climate Change Scientology‘ (U.S. National Academies of 2014) to currently ‘Climate Crisis‘ actually predating the former (U.S Vice President Al Gore of 2007).
The RFS and NPWS press on regardless – as it’s not carbon dioxide, so all good!
Here’s the latest bush arson schedule to further set fire to the still unburnt native habitat of the Blue Mountains:
RFS:“It’s ok love, it’s good for the bush. She’ll be right.”
It’s an age old mentality of the fox charged to look after the chickens. Both the NPWS and RFS have a cultural attitude that the national parks are NOT to be protected, despite the NPWS delegated to so-called manage NATIONAL parks across New South Wales (NSW). That is despite the Rural Fire Service (RFS) charged with putting out wildfires.
That perverted culture is conditioned to regard native habitat only as a ‘fuel’ that burns and so NOT habitat but a ‘hazard’ to be controlled and burned to prevent it burning. If there is no habitat left, then the meathead rationale, no hazard, so job done! Of recent times the spin doctors in government seconded as contractors with Communications Degrees (aka the art of spin) have softened the community sell of these ‘hazard reductions’ to ‘prescribed burns” to justify and take some noble authority from on high that the BUSH WAS ORDERED TO BE BURNED, WE HAVE NO CHOICE !
All their fire trucks are filled with more flammable liquids light a bushfire than water to put it out. ‘RFS’ should stand for for Rural Fire Starters.
Blue Mountains World Heritage?
Eventually the bush grows back but with a vastly different flora community make up. The biodiversity is gone. The wildlife don’t come back from the dead.
One of countless Koalas tragically burned to death in her native habitat during the Blue Mountains megafires of 2019. They won’t come back. [This website is not suitable for children to view]
This native Koala would have looked something like this:
National parks throughout Australia over the 236 years since colonisation and its continent-wide deforestation, land use destruction and introduced bushfires, have consistently and hatefully made Australia’s ecological landscape very very quiet and devoid of wildlife.
The 2019 mega bushfires of NSW that the NPWS and RFS let get out of control over months, wiped out 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, including rare remnant koala communities and hosts of other at-risk wildlife and their special native habitat that NPWS has no clue of the statistical losses. NPWS does not manage, it mismanages, else just oversees politically drive projects like multi-million dollar tourists track upgrades to benefit humans. The NSW State Government tasked to look after UNESCO world heritage on behalf of the Australia Government?
This habitat reduction regime is to burn the remaining 20% that didn’t cop the 2019 wildfire megablaze. They call this “stewardship”? All trust in the NSW Government to protect world heritage has long gone out the window.
The ‘NPWS’ is a misnomer
‘NPWS” is an abbreviation for the National Parks and Wildlife Service in the state of New South Wales.
Logo of the NPWS
The problem is that this government bureaucracy is supposed to be the governmental (public) custodian for national parks is misleading:
NPWS is not national, rather it is only a NSW governmental sub-department. Governmental ‘management’ of national parks is not national, rather each state and territory has its own national parks, and the Australian Government is not involved – so a bizarre and misleading naming tradition;
NPWS does NOT look after wildlife. Native habitat in these ‘national parks’ is supposed to be protected. Yet every year vast selected areas are burnt deliberately else left to burn on a grand scale, so killing wildlife and destroying their habitat.
As a consequence, the NPWS deserves to be more appropriately renamed as ‘NSW Parks Service‘ just like in Victoria, the Victorian Government calls its equivalent ‘Parks Victoria‘.
On the relevant NSW Government’s website pertaining to its NPWS, it explains that the NPWS is part of a sub-department called ‘Environment and Heritage, which in turn:
“Environment and Heritage is part of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
Our vision is for a thriving, sustainable and resilient New South Wales.Environment and Heritage works with communities, businesses and governments to protect, preserve and strengthen the quality of our natural environment and heritage. We do this through active stewardship that supports a healthy New South Wales.We are committed to creating thriving environments, communities and economies that benefit the people of New South Wales.”
The three most trendy feel-good terms above include: “thriving”, “resilient” , active stewardship”. Pure motherhoodism by the contracted young spin doctors with a Communications Degree. So where are the published wildlife regional extinction stats before and after the Blue Mountains 2019 megablaze?
Recall Tathra Sunday 18 March 2018, the consequence of the RFS deliberately lighting a bushfire on a 38 degree Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) gusty day upwind of this coastal village. [Read Our Article: ‘Bushfire Scenario Was Not Rocket Science‘
[8] ‘Impact of the 2019-20 Mega-Fires on the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, New South Wales‘, 20221129, by P Smith and J Smith, Issue Vol. 144 (2022), Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, ^https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/LIN/article/view/17079
“Over the last thirty years (Ed: 1970s – 2000s] the meaning of the word ‘wilderness‘ has changed and come under sustained attack.
How has the term become so confused? What can be done to reduce this confusion?
This book arose from the Ph.D. thesis ‘The Wilderness Knot’ (University of Western Sydney), and investigates the tangled meanings around ‘wilderness’. This ‘knot‘ is comprised of five strands; philosophical, political, cultural, justice and exploitation. ‘Wilderness‘ as a term is in a unique philosophical position, being disliked by both modernists and many postmodernists alike.
The research uses participatory action research with Aboriginal people and conservationists and wilderness journals. All scholars interviewed agreed that large natural intact areas (‘lanais‘) should be protected, though some did not call them ‘wilderness’.
Confusion declines when one can show that people hold many ideas in common. ‘Mind maps’ are used to investigate the issues and to suggest ways forward to reduce confusion. The idea of shared ‘custodianship’ or stewardship is suggested as a way forward.
This is a book for all those interested in saving and managing the Earth’s remaining large natural areas or wilderness.”
~ Haydn Grinling Washington, Ph.D (2009).
Clicking on our document hyperlink below opens to an internal Adobe PDF document stored on this website, which has been downloaded from the University of Western Sydney’s publicly available website, so it resides in the public domain.
This document is available in the public domain because that was the wishes of its author, the late Australian Environmental Scientist Haydn Grinling Washington – to share and promulgate the environmental philosophy of ‘Ecocentrism‘.
This is the opposite of prevailing ‘Anthropocentrism‘ philosophy. Human beings are NOT the central or most important entity in the universe, despite many arrogantly presuming they deserve to be.
Haydn Grinling Washington [1955-2022]
The document comprises his complete Ph.D thesis submitted in 2006.
Later in 2009, Haydn had his successful thesis published as a book entitled ‘The Wilderness Knot: Removing the confusion‘ in the form of a paperback in A4 size of some 386 pages in length, published by VDM Verlag.
The book version is currently still available to be purchased via reputable Internet resellers for a delivered price for about AUD$180. These currently include FruugoAustralia.com and Amazon.com.
This website’s editor knew Haydn from a number of meeting events (2007-2009) within the Australian conservation movement particular to the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and discussed his work and philosophies before Haydn’s untimely succumbing to bowel cancer in December 2022.
Haydn wanted to share his environmental passion for respecting the values and wonder of wilderness, native habitat and its wildlife with as many people as possible. He was not about fame and fortune from his many literary works (his prolific poetry and six books).
Our editor was invited and attended Haydn’s funeral service at The Brahma Kumaris meditation retreat centre in Leura in the Blue Mountains in Australia on Thursday 22nd December 2022. We counted about 150 attendees. It was an opportune time to catch up with seasoned conservationists, although we would have wished for a different reason. Haydn had attended this retreat on a number of occasions.
This is his Ph.D thesis in full, available to read and to download:
Haydn Washington dedicated most of his adult life to selected environmental campaigns that affected him in eastern Australia about protecting wilderness areas from human harm, most notably the Wollemi wilderness in the northern part of the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales. Haydn at the time lived nearby, so was this noble planetary Nymyism beyond his backyard?
What is wrong with that? It’s such a selfless cause.
Haydn became the lead campaigner for this vast Wollemi wilderness region of 5,000 km2. He successfully saw it legally protected in 1979 as the Wollemi National Park.
The Wollemi National Park was then in 2000 officially incorporated into the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, respected as one of eight contiguous national park protected areas along with the Blue Mountains, Yengo, Nattai, Kanangra-Boyd, Gardens of Stone and Thirlmere Lakes National Parks, and the Jenolan Karst Conservation Reserve.
Tragically, two decades later from Saturday 26th October 2019 into January 2020 the custodial authority (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service of NSW (a misnomer) in cahoots with the New South Wales Rural Fire Service) stood back and allowed a private pile-burn off Army Road near Gospers Mountain inside the Wollomi wilderness get out of control and spread over days, weeks and months.
That single ignition was allowed to blanketly incinerate the pristine Wollemi wilderness in its entirety – all 5,000 km2, endangered Koala communities and all! It was wantonly despicable neglectful act by the Wollemi NP’s and Blue Mountains World Heritage Area’s governmental custodian, NPWS.
Indeed this is why we refer to the NPWS organisation as merely the NSW Parks Service; that’s all it is useful for, just servicing parks, as in urban parks and gardens.
NPWS employs no ecologists, no botanists, no zoologists, no ornithologists, no geologists, and no environmental scientists like Haydn Washington; but only public servants.
This is despite NPWS as a state government agency being delegated with supreme responsibility for the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and all other national parks within the Australian state of New South Wales and their threatened and endangered ecosystems within.
Indeed defacto bush arson on a calamitous scale never before in Australia’s history by a anthropocentric governmental culture, having a total disregard and contempt toward Wilderness values.
Haydn would have been utterly devastated.
The entire loss of his favoured wilderness by preventable fire would have sapped him of energy and hope. He lived next to it, knew it intimately by exploration on foot and down the length of the dominant wild Colo River by paddle. One presumes the 2019 bushfire disaster of the Wollemi wilderness caused him immense grief and impacted upon his mental health.
Did wiping out the Wollemi trigger Haydn’s heath demise?
We think so. The physical cause of cancer can emerge from psychological stress.
‘Psychological stress‘ describes what individuals experience when they are under mental, physical, or emotional pressure.
‘Stressors‘ are factors that can cause stress such as negative external factors that arise outside one’s control or influence, such as the total loss of one’s life work to protect a wilderness area and its ecology as an environmental scientist with a deep passion for its ecology. Perhaps his psychological stress had become enduring and chronic, causing translating into physical harm.
Research has shown that people who experience chronic stress can have digestive problems, heart disease, high blood pressure, and a weakened immune system. People who experience chronic stress are also more prone to having headaches, sleep trouble, difficulty concentrating, depression, and anxiety and to getting viral infections. The medical science is out (unschooled) on the causation of cancer from chronic psychological stress.
But what is established is that chronic psychological stress can lead to many health problems. A 2019 meta-analysis of nine observational studies in Europe and North America also found an association between work stress and risk of lung, colorectal, and esophageal cancers. Even when stress appears to be linked to cancer risk, the relationship could be indirect. For example, people under chronic stress may develop certain unhealthy behaviours, such as smoking, overeating, becoming less active, or drinking alcohol, that are themselves associated with increased risks of some cancers. The condition may also prevent the body’s immune system from recognizing and fighting cancer cells.
Three years hence in late 2022, Haydn died of cancer, a chronic disease, at aged just 67, before his time. It is in this editor’s view that the government’s apathetic destruction of the precious Wollemi wilderness by bush arson that Haydn loved so dearly, contributed to the premature demise of his health.
NPWS Blue Mountains Branch Director David Crust had the temerity to present himself at Haydn’s funeral, appropriately donned in a full blackened suit and said nothing. The past Commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, Shane Fitzsimmons who was in charge of the NSW 2019 Bushfire emergencies, including the Wollemi bushfire, did not attend.
Vale Haydn, we’re on to your noble legacy. Your passionate championing of native habitat values and your tireless campaigning fights for the preservation of Wilderness will not have been in vane on this website!
Further Reading:
[1] Vale Haydn Grinling Washington Ph.D [1955-2022], >https://habitatadvocate.com.au/vale-haydn-grinling-washington-ph-d-1955-2022/ , (NOTE: This article is a work in progress and so currently remains unavailable to access, however we expect to have it completed and accessible before the end of January 2023.)
Pre-2006: The Grose Valley’s 500m+ deep upper Grose Gorge displayed a Blue Mountains profile of sandstone cliffs above talus thickly carpeted by Eucalypt forest supporting rich diversity in plantlife, wildlife, birdlife, creeklife and buglife – just an eco-happy cradle of conservation.
(NB: This photo shows Eucy-mist, not Eucy-smoke. – Ed.)
In 1926, developer Ernest Williamson famously described the Blue Gum Forest in the heart of Grose Valley in the Blue Mountains thus:
“… a flat, unsurpassed on the mountains for the beauty and grandeur of its trees! Magnificent blue gums, straight and towering skyward in great heights … they appear like the huge pillars of a mountain temple.”
Ernest went on to more infamously propose:
“the Valley of the Grose could, in a few years, be transformed from a riot of scrubland to a hive of industry conveniently situated at what has been aptly described ‘the back door of Sydney’”.
According to Blue Mountains historian and author, Andy Macqueen, Williamson’s property development outfit calling itself The Grose Valley Development Syndicate, proposed in the 1920s or the Grose Valley’s forests to be deforested for timber exploitation and that a shale coal mine and coal-fired power station be built there. It would be an industrialised Lithgow Mark II. Other threats to the Blue Gum Forest included a proposed railway line and a dam. So why not a tannery and nuclear waste dump to boot?
Grose Valley Vision Splendid? – a gross Lithgow industrial vision…note the few remnant token gums retained for ambience, or was it just slack ‘clearing’.
Blue Gum Forest – Australia’s Cradle of Conservation
For generations since the 1920s, conservationists have posited somewhat a more respectful plan for the Grose Valley than by Ernest Williamson and his robber-barons. The plan being to respect and conserve the ecological values and the anthropocentric aesthetic ‘eye-candy’ tourist benefits of the Grose Valley.
Since 1875, the Blue Gum Forest was the scene of an artists’ camp established by Frederick Eccleston Du Faur of the Academy of Art. Since then, conservationists have lobbied to protect the Grose Valley from “alienation” – read ruination.
In 1931, during an Easter hiking trip, a group of bushwalkers from the Mountain Trails Club and the Sydney Bush Walkers club, led by Alan Rigby, camped in the Blue Gum Forest.
Since 1931 the Blue Gum Forest has been ecologically recognised and presumed protected.
[Source: Myles Dunphy Collection, Mitchell Library in the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.]
While the bushwalkers camped, an orchard farmer of Bilpin, Clarence Hungerford, rode in on his horse to confront the bushwalkers ‘squatting’ on his property. Hungerford had secured a lease of the forest to graze his cattle. Hungerford told to the hikers that he intended to deforest all the blue gums and to sell the timber in order to finance a walnut orchard.
Blue Gum Forest – flagged for deforestation in 1931 for Hungerford’s walnut orchard ‘vision splendid‘
The bushwalkers’ Hungerford experience didn’t go down well. Incensed and horrified, the bushwalkers immediately started a campaign to stop Hungerford’s decimation of the Blue Gum sanctuary. Their impassioned rallying ultimately raised £130; quite a substantial sum in the depth of the Great Depression. They then paid all the funds to Hungerford in exchange for his undertaking to relinquish his pastoral lease of the Blue Gum Forest.
The bushwalkers met with Hungerford at the Blue Gum Forest on 15 November 1931 in pouring rain, and he agreed with their suggestion. Most of the funding had been donated by James Cleary, then head of the NSW railways, a keen bushwalker and conservationist. One of the key activists in the campaign was Myles Dunphy, who at the time was developing his plans for the Blue Mountains National Park.
“We hold our land in trust for our successors.” (1934) – Myles Joseph Dunphy (1891-1985), architect, legendary long distance wilderness trekker, map maker, and conservationist before his time. Dunphy always took his Lee Enfield .303 with him for hunting for food when trekking, like on this occasion – it’s under wraps under the tent fly. A daily twilight roo kill for protein was the secret behind him managing to trek his incredible distances. Born on 19 October 1891 in South Melbourne, eldest of seven children… [Read More]
Hungerford’s horse track became a developer tribute to Hungerford. The contour-following bush track starts about 300m south of Evans Lookout and descends zig-zagging down the escarpment to the flats of the Grose Valley at Govetts Creek. In its ignorance, the NPWS or more aptly, the Tourist Parks Service, named this track ‘The Horse Walking Track’ – for visitors to walk their horses?
The Blue Gum Forest has since been referred to in the conservation movement as the Cradle of Conservation for it was the focus of Australia’s original ecological protection by a small group of “thoughtful, committed citizens” (Margaret Mead quote extract) and which seeded generations later, the international listing of The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area in 2000. What legends!
David Noble is the parks ranger who discovered Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) in 1994. In September 2012, Noble revisited the Blue Gum Forest leading a hike to celebrate eighty years since the Blue Gum Forest was saved on 2nd September 1932.
Dave wrote at the time:
“This majestic forest lies at the intersection of the Grose River and Govetts Creek near Blackheath. Back in 1932, a large portion of the forest (it was then private land) was going to be felled and replaced by walnut trees. Visiting bushwalkers were alarmed, and rallied together and ended up raising money to purchase the block in question and saving it for conservation. Many regard this as the start of the conservation movement in NSW.”
But conservationist idealism ignored the arsonist culture. Government baby boomer arsonists have had a view of native Eucalypt forests like the Blue Gum not as cherished ecology but as a valueless hazard, just like Williamson, generations before. The New South Wales Government ‘autorities’ have been chafing at the bit for years to hazard reduce Blue Mountains World Heritage “fuel“.
History of Neglectful Arson
In December 1957, a bushfire that was left to burn in bushland east of the Grose Valley, once the wind picked up, ultimately ripped through the timber clad villages of Leura and Wentworth Falls destroying 170 homes.
In December 1976, 65,000 hectares of Blue Mountains native bushland was burnt. A year later, a bushfire burnt out 49 buildings and another 54,000 hectares of Blue Mountains native bushland.
In summer 1982 a bushfire burnt right through the Grose Valley incinerating 35,000 hectares of tall native forest, and wildlife.
Again in 1994 the Grose Valley was let burnt by bushfire.
Grose Valley Arson in November 2006
Again in November 2006 the RFS backburned into the Grose Valley from Hartley Vale. Ignited by Rural Fire Service along the north side of Hartley Vale Road on a day of Total Fire Ban, bush arson incinerated native forest ecology up the length of Hartley Valley Road and then was allowed to spot over the Darling Causeway let descend into the Grose Valley. It was deliberate bush arson sanctioned by the NSW Government under then RFS Commissioner Mal Cronstedt at the time.
The fire was fanned by westerly winds over days, allowed to cross over the Darling Causeway, merge with the Burra Korain wildfire and descend down Perrys Lookdown hiking track in and through the Blue Gum Forest. Many Blue Mountains residents will be well familiar with this infamous photo of the Grose Pyrocumulus (flammagenitus) cloud rising from the Grose Valley on Thursday afternoon 23rd November 2006.
At the time there was local community outrage about how the precious Blue Gum Forest was not defended by authorities and allowed to be incinerated. Blue Mountains resident meetings were staged and a full page article was published in the Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper entitled >’Burning Issues – Fire in the Grose Valley (a statement funded and supported by concerned residents‘. It would have cost at least $2000. Community meetings were held, arranged by former parks ranger Ian Brown. But then it got political and the campaign was strangely suddenly aborted.
Blue Gum Forest burnt in 2006 by an RFS hazard reduction. [Source: Photo by Nick Moir of Blue Mountains Botanist Dr Wyn Jones inspecting the fire damage to the Blue Gums, dated 2006122 in the Sydney Morning Herald, >https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/2006-grose-valley-fire-a-cover-up/]
Grose Valley Arson of December 2019
Then Last month in December 2019 the government Baby Boomer arsonists ultimately had their way. On 16th December, the Gospers Mountain Fire crossed the Bells Line of Road and spotted into the Grose Valley. By 21st December the Blue Gum Forest was gone.
Media warped termed ‘lava waterfall‘ up the Blackheath escarpment in the Grose Valley.
Months prior, a remote rural pastoral property near Gospers Mountain somehow within the Wollemi Wilderness, created an ignition on Saturday 26th October 2019.
Gospers Mountain showing remote historic rural cattle paddocks deep within the Wollemi Wilderness. The Australian Government calls it a national park but takes no accountability by delegating custodial protection but no funding to the state government of New South Wales.
Gospers Mountain is 50km NE of the locality of Bell as the crow flies or fire spreads. Officially declared started by dry lighting in the ‘national park’ on a hot Saturday, this crime of arson and subsequent government firefighting neglect remains secretive. So NSW Police Bush Arson Squad ‘Strike Force Toronto‘ where are you on this – honest or corrupted by the Premier and RFS?
The RFS Gospers Mountain Fire has been the largest bushfire in New South Wales state history. The total number of days between Saturday, October 26th, 2019 and Monday, December 16th, 2019 was 51 days; or one month and 20 days. Over 51 days the fire was allowed to become a ‘megafire’ (likely a new Macquarie Dictionary term for 2020) and ultimately the largest single bushfire in Australia’s history – incineratingmore than 500,000 hectares of bush wilderness…
Of course the Gospers Mountains Fire was left to spread into a mega-fire and to cross over the Bells Line of Road some 50km south-west.
So what did the RFS do for PR but rebrand the Gospers Mountains Fire southerly spread as a new Grose Valley Fire, and to so to be allowed to incinerate down the escarpment into the Grose Valley and to incinerate the Cradle of Conservation – the Blue Gum Forest.
As if RFS arsonists care a damn?
Now government paid white collar fire chiefs have had their way. Forest incineration complete. Easy-peasy till retirement.
Yes RFS let an ignition with a small plume of smoke rising in remote National Park inaccessible to fire trucks burn neglected for days and weeks, negligent of the consequences. What hazard predictably eventuates when ignored for weeks? From the RFS ignition detected at Gospers Mountain on Saturday 26th October 2019 bordering the World Heritage Wollemi National Park …to 16th December 2019 – what response and when was undertaken by the RFS as a supposed fire fighting service?
Truthful answer: Defacto hazard reduction because the bushfire was atthe time not immediately threatening human properties.
Then as normal, the wind picked up, and the wee plume of remote rising smoke morphed into a fire front, then inferno and then into Australia’s worst megafire on record.
Rural Fire Service (NSW) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons (aged 50) is ultimately responsible for the bushfire prevention, planning, resourcing, response for New South Wales outside metropolitan areas services by NSW Fire and Rescue. In our view the he has failed to protect rural NSW to the standards of urban NSW by failing to oversee a government entrusted fire-fighting authority to promptly detect, respond to and extinguish bushfires in a timely manner.
His predecessor also repeatedly failed in his bushfire plan and following the 2006 Grose Valley Pyrocumulus of 2006 promptly skedaddled back to Perth to WA’s chagrin and cost (on record).
If only the ‘000’ Fire Brigade extinguisher standard applied outside metropolitan Australia?
No longer enjoying the benefits of the tourism economy. The Grand Canyon Track closed since 30 November 2019 and still closed on 21 January 2020 -peak tourist season.
What had started as a small plume of smoke off Army Road on Saturday 26th October on a rural property near Gospers Mountain some sixty kilometres to the north, had been allowed to burn away into the World Heritage of the Wollemi National Park wilderness for weeks. It was allowed to destroy all the magnificent Wollemi wilderness from end to end.
By the time the bushfire had crossed to the southern side of the Bells Line of Road 50km south, the RFS changed their pet name of the ‘Gospers Mountain Fire’ to being dubbed the ‘Grose Valley Fir’e. Why not? That was the goal – defacto hazard reduction.
The iconic Blue Gum Forest in the Grose Valley of the Blue Mountains was left to incinerate by the New South Wales Government in December 2019. They did what Williamson in the 1920s failed to achieve. [Source: Editor, The Habitat Advocate, photo taken from Valley View Lookout 100m north of Evans Lookout, 20200121]
Once World Heritage values of the Grose Valley have now gone up in smoke. The icon Blue Gum Forest has been incinerated yet again since the previous RFS successful attempt in November 2006. No wonder the place is very very quiet. All the wildlife is dead and the native birds have flow away.
Close up of the Blue Gum Forest from near Evans Lookout (top of photo) showing the canopy of Eucalyptus deanei incinerated; not much left of the forest in the foreground either. [Source: Editor, The Habitat Advocate, photo taken from Valley View Lookout 100m north of Evans Lookout, 20200121]
This time they have succeeded in total incineration – their goal of converting hazardous forest ecology into anthropocentric manageable parkland has long been misunderstood by ideologically hopeful environmentalists. The misnomer National Parks and Wildlife Service (NSW) ethically should now do the right thing and re-brand itself State Parks Administration Service it commercially is.
More than 80% of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and more than 50% of the Gondwana world heritage rainforests of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland have been burnt in Australia’s worst bushfire disaster in history. The scale of the disaster is such that it could affect the diversity of eucalypts for which the Blue Mountains world heritage area is recognised, said John Merson, the executive director of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute.
The Habitat Advocate has written to UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre expressing shock, outrage and anger over government mismanagement and contempt for Blue Mountains ecology through abject neglect in bushfire response. With most of the world heritage incinerated, we have questioning the status of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area as these values apply to Eucalypt diversity, since 80% has been incinerated.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre has expressed concern about the scale and intensity of bushfire damage to the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and to the Gondwana Rainforests and has asked the Australian government whether it should de-list their world heritage status. In a statement on its website, UNESCO said members of the media and civil society had asked about the bushfires affecting the areas inscribed on the world heritage list as the “Gondwana rainforests of Australia”. The forests are considered a living link to the vegetation that covered the southern super-continent Gondwana before it broke up about 180m years ago.
According to UNESCO:
“The World Heritage Centre is currently verifying the information with the Australian authorities, in particular regarding the potential impact of the fires on the outstanding universal value of the property. The Centre has been closely following-up on this matter and stands ready to provide any technical assistance at the request of Australian authorities.”
Blue Mountains World Heritage is a misnomer and a sick joke. This RFS blackened moonscape now blankets 80% of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. Incinerated, quite dead, quiet, subsequently oven baked in the scorching sun and now sterilised. The tamed moonscape is far easier to manage for the Parks Service, like Centennial Park. [Source: Editor, The Habitat Advocate, photo taken 20200121 of escarpment track near Evans Lookout.]
[2] ‘Wild About Wilderness‘ in ‘The Ways of the Bushwalker’, 2007, a book by Melissa Harper, published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd, pp.258-259.
[6] ‘Bushwalking and the Conservation Movement‘, in printed book ‘Blue Mountains – Pictorial Memories, 1998, by John Low AO, pp. 96-97, published by Kingsclear Books
Right now, Australia is being ravaged by one of the most devastating bushfire programmes the country has ever seen.
So far, more than 10 million hectares of Australian land has been burned to the ground. At least one billion native animals have lost their lives so far, including thousands of koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, birds and other iconic wildlife. Koalas were already on the brink extinction as local governments have approved deforestation of their shrinking native habitat to facilitate housing development. It’s otherwise a culture of anthropocentric greed.
This casualty estimate does not include farm animals, otherwise statistically listed as ‘livestock’. ‘Pets’ neither feature as an identifiable statistic by the authorities. Just humans, whose funerals the Prime Minister and relevant Premier attend for relevant PR.
It’s estimated that as many as 8,400 koalas have perished in fires (read “burned to death”) on the mid-north coast of NSW and Kangaroo Island in South Australia has lost over 50% of their koala population (so far). This is a devastating regional extinction event for an unique iconic species already in serious decline.
But that is where we end the WWF quote, because as eternal optimists they go on to suggest a “wildlife response”, “habitat restoration” and “future proofing Australia”. This is a naive false hope.
It’s too bloody late you environmentalist hypocrites, distracted by notional climate theories while conspicuously silent on palpable government forest arson.
The Braemar State Forest is a 2000-hectare forest straddling the Summerland Way about 25 km south of the town of Casino in northern New South Wales. On 28th April 2008, the New South Wales government gazetted that appropriately licensed people could hunt game and feral animals in Braemar State Forest. Habitat custodians? There is a second Braemar State Forest 30km west of the town of Dalby in Queensland which is west of Toowoomba and Brisbane.
So much for the empty promise of national parks. There were never national, not nationally managed, but delegated to state and territory governments with no custodial interest, little federal funding and conflicting priorities like accommodating the incessant human plague.
Koalas will now be extinct in the wild in many forested regions of eastern Australia due to the combination of human hate toward them- ongoing excessive deforestation for agricultural and urban development, government sanctioned logging, new resident dog attacks, and state arson or abandoned bushfires.
The 2019 Summer Extinction Watershed
Before the summer of 2019 Eastern Australia had remnant native forests, a few of World Heritage listing protection no less to sustain ecological habitats for precious wildlife.
Then 10 million hectares of these forests, most of Australia’s remnant forest ecology, was incinerated in a mass government sanctioned multi-species extinction programmed event.
Post Summer 2019, Eastern Australia’s forests are dead silent parks made more conducive to anthropocentric use.
Quite simply, original ecological Australia has gone – no ifs or buts, no glass half full restoration PR.
Government rural fire lighting service: “Big time hazard reduction job done, about time.”
CFA: “That’s more like it! Burn it before it burns.”
Australia’s wildfires have now burned more than 6 million hectares across the continent, leaving an estimated 1.25 billion animals dead, according to the World Wildlife Fund, which arrived at this figure based on University of Sydney Professor Chris Dickman’s work.
Organizations like Zoos Victoria have found themselves pressed into de facto emergency relief agencies on the front lines of saving impacted animals. Two Zoos Victoria veterinary staff members were recently given permission to go into fire zones in order to treat koalas and other wildlife.
“We’re all devastated. Devastated, but in the really fortunate position that we’ve got the kind of skilled staff that can go into the field and really make a difference,” said Michelle Lang, general manager at Zoos Victoria, which operates three zoos in the state, as well as a host of other conservation programs.
“Despite their injuries and trauma, the bravery shown by the koalas and wildlife at Mallacoota is inspiring,” Dr. Leanne Wicker, who went into the bush, said in a press release.
According to Lang, Zoos Victoria was “pretty well prepared” to engage in their response role, considering the sheer scale of the fires, because of previous programs they have implemented, such as their Marine Response Unit, which was created 2013 responds to calls for assistance with vulnerable animals on a daily basis. Lang pointed out that many of the most decimated wildlife populations will be, “small, unknown, unglamorous animals that are so vital to our ecosystem and our chain of biodiversity.
“Some species, there were only 2,000 of them before the fires, so we hate of think how many of them will be left after this,” she said. In addition to the iconic koala bears, other impacted animals across the continent include the nabarlek, bilby, northern bettong, gouldian finch, numbat, and wiliji.
Dr. Stuart Blanch, Senior Manager of Land Clearing and Restoration at WWF-Australia, identified the long-footed potoroo, mountain pygmy possum, yellow-bellied glider and brush-tailed rock wallaby, as well as the regent honeyeater and glossy black cockatoo, which are both critically endangered, as being particularly at-risk, due to the destruction of their habitats.
Blanch told the media earlier this week that, “Up to 30% of koalas (as many as 8,400 koalas) may have perished during fires on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. This is a devastating blow for a species already in decline, due to ongoing excessive tree-clearing for agricultural and urban development, and pushes the species closer to becoming an endangered species.
“This has the potential to hasten koalas’ slide towards extinction in the wild in eastern Australia,” he said.
Contextualizing the impact of these fires, WWF-Australia CEO Dermot O’Gorman said many of the country’s forests and animals are facing a decades-long recovery, if the latter are able to bounce back at all.
“… some species may have tipped over the brink of extinction,” O’Gorman said in a written statement.
Zoos Victoria, which launched a $30 million initiative to save 20 species from extinction in 2015, has since grown that number to 27. They also operate conservation programs in six countries and can point to several successes such as their breeding of the critically endangered Baw Baw frog last year, and releasing dozens of critically endangered orange-bellied parrots into the wild. On the strength of this experience, they are anticipating which steps will be required after the fires die down. Lang said that potential scenarios include supplementary feeding programs for animals that survive, but are faced with a lack of food, animals that need to be protected from an over-population of predators, new holding areas, specific food items, habitat restoration, and extra staff.
Though Zoos Victoria is currently responding to alleviate the suffering of animals, and planning for possible eventualities, the full scope of the damage at the moment, to say nothing of what the reality will be after the fires die down, is unknown.
“We don’t actually know what we’re dealing with,” Lang said.
Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby incinerated in ‘protected’ Barrington Tops National Park.
“Dad, everything is dying.” – the heartbreaking words from Matthew Faulkner, 7, as he cradled a dead wallaby whose habitat had been incinerated by bushfires.
Matthew’s dad, is Tim Faulkner, who is president of NSW animal protection organisation Aussie Ark. The organisation started in 2011 with a focus on saving the Tasmanian devil from extinction and has since expanded. Aussie Ark has been setting food and camera traps to feed the animals amid Australia’s devastating bushfire crisis.
“Australia is in crisis,” Tim Faulkner says. “It has the WORST mammal extinction rate of any country in the world. Home to more than one million species of plants and animals, Australia’s wildlife is uniquely ours, found nowhere else in the world. Prior to the current fires, over 90 per cent of koala habitat had already been lost with the remaining 10 per cent being fragmented and vulnerable to intense bushfire.”
Native forests of Eastern Australia are no longer. They are mystical history now. All hope is indeed lost. Wildlife species across vast swathes of forest landscape are not Buddhists and cannot be reincarnated. It may shock many in the conservation movement, who are already in shock, that this has been a mass extinction event, and worse that it has been deliberate defacto hazard reduction on a nationwide (continental) scale across what was remnant forested New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland (not so long a go).
It is a sociopathic culture of Baby Boomer native forest hate. It is akin to colonial Australia, when Aborigines were treated as savages and so massacred in a co-ordinated government-sanctioned hunting parties, and when native animals were treated as vermin.
Little has changed since 1788. British colonial aspirations have culturally prevailed in Australia down the generations. The British 19th Century romantic notion of taming the wild (landscape, natives and wildlife) have culturally prevailed indeed in government policy in appropriately named ‘New South Wales’ and ‘Victoria’.
Joseph Lycett’s pastoral landscape interpretation of early colonial Australia.
[Joseph Lycett, b.1774-1828, a convict and artist, born in Staffordshire, England]
Post-colonial Australia is getting there – a tamed British landscape to suit.
In Victoria, the state government from 1st October 2019 authorised mass slaughter of native kangaroo species because graziers on deforested rural landholdings were having problems competing or grass and water with desperate kangaroos during this current drought cycle. The only thing that has changed since colonial times is that the government euphemistically brands the mass slaughter as a Kangaroo Harvesting Programme and the gives it an even more euphemistic acronym, ‘KHP’.
“So whata ya up to today mack? Oh, I’m going out to do a bit of KHP with me pig dogs.”
British cultural feral fox hunting persists generations on, downunder
Australia Post has just issued a Koala postage stamp. Why? Tokenistic public relations to inspire charity post-preventable apocalyse of the species? This is one was pre decimal currency. What has culturally changed?
Government PR is again post-catastrophe upbeat on announcements of military despatch, highway re-openings, re-supplies, generous funding and counselling – playing upon uneducated community ignorance of repeated colonial history.
In urban metros, cities and towns across Australia a call to Triple Zero (000) in the event of a fire emergency, will trigger reliable response quickly by the state government’s professional fire-fighting service – all professionally trained, equipped, resourced and paid.
In Victoria, this professional fire fighting force does not exist outside Melbourne
Outside urban Australia, it’s a different case of locals phoning an unpaid under-resourced Dad’s Army which directs the call to a pager. The Triple 000 emergency response standard is denied. Rural Australians are second class citizens when it comes to government response in emergencies – fire, ambulance, police. This is traditionally and persisted perpetually.
So outside urban Australia, Australians are treated by government differently – like second class citizens.
Locals throughout non-urban Australia often end up joining the local volunteer fire brigade (CFA, RFS, CFS, whatever) because there is no paid fire brigade within coo-ee; more likely to the nearest regional big town.
It’s called ‘Do It Yourself’ emergency response.
State governments require that if any fire fighting service is to be provided to a rural community that the immediate local residents must come forward and do the job of their urban professionals. The professional fire fighting training, equipment, and resourcing is all the same – non existent.
Rural Australia is grossly under-resourced in fire fighting prevention, mitigation, ignition detection and suppression response. Farmers and rural folk wisely advise incoming tree changers that they ought fast abandon their urban ‘000’ response’ expectations upon arrival in rural Australia, and become D.I.Y. rural fire volunteer unpaid members. Else when the state governments’ PR instructions are to abandon your family home and a lifetime’s values, you surrender to refugee status and so beholded to CentreLink discretion as cup-in-hand pensioners.
Non urban Australians may as well dial ’00’ instead of ‘000’. Dialing ’00’ will only deliver the same response as being…’not connected’, “not bothered”, “tell someone in government who cares”. Expect a disconnected phone signal.
One of the decimated native regions of Australia abandoned to fend for themselves in the wake of an impending firefront, known to be imminent for weeks was Victoria’s East Gippsland. In mid December 2019, no attempt was made by the Victorian Government to detect, respond or quell the Snowy River National Park wildfire 20km west of the remote hamlet of Goongerah, 68km north of the town of Orbost in East Gippsland.
By December 30, 2019 rural locals were told to evacuate and abandoned their homes and lives, else D.I.Y. fend for themselves.
Here is one example of isolated rural Australians left in an wildfire emergency to D.I.Y. defend.
A week later, no one in government or media could care a shit about this isolated rural community’s survival or welfare.
National Parks across Australia no longer exist but in name only on the tourist literature. Exceptional national parks of the Blue Mountains region, seven of them, listed with world heritage values in 2000, no longer hold the values of that listing – Eucalyptus diversity has been incinerated on a massively widescale the area of France. Millions of wildlife species have been left to be burned alive.
The evil is that this was intentional by entrusted state government bureaucracy, the RFS and NPWS in NSW. The state minister for Police and Emergency Services, David Elliott, abandoned the emergency at the time for a family overseas holiday in France and Britain.
Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area
The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area is one of the largest and most intact tracts of protected bushland in Australia.
The World Heritage listed Greater Blue Mountains Area is a deeply incised sandstone tableland covering over 1 million hectares spread across 8 adjacent conservation reserves. The landscapes of this World Heritage property lie inland to the west of Sydney and extend almost 250 kilometres from the edge of the Hunter Valley to the Southern Highlands near Mittagong.
An enormous variety of plants occur here, but eucalypts dominate the landscape: the area is home to 96 species (13% of all eucalypt species). Rare and endangered plants such as the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) also occur here. (incinerated by defacto hazard reduction by the NPWS and RFS in December 2019).
World Heritage listing
The Greater Blue Mountains Area was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2000 in recognition of its significant natural values. It possesses unique plants and animals that relate an extraordinary story of the evolution of Australia’s distinctive Eucalypt vegetation and its associated communities.
No longer. The Blue Mountains World Heritage values have mostly gone. Small remote ignitions have been deliberately and systematically ignored and let burn by the New South Wales Government entrusted all-controlling national parks service (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service) and all-controlling fire fighting authority the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS). Days and weeks later, these fires have conflagrated into wildfire fronts then firestorms. These bushfires were never under control because they did not start near habital property – the RFS charter of convenience.
So by abject dereliction of duty to proactively protect World Heitage, the NSW Government has recklessly allowed vast natural areas, cumulatively larger than the size of Tasmania (42,000 km2) -a sanctuary endangered and valuable ecology to be incinerated. Sadly, these World Heritage natural values now no longer exist.
The secretly protected Wollemi Pine Grove from the Jurassic Period (201 – 145 million years ago, when conifers like the Wollemi Pine ruled the world) has likely been utterly destroyed by wildfire, according bushfire ground mapping by the Rural Fire Service (RFS) on its ‘Fires Near Me’ website. The RFS is the entrusted New South Wales state government delegated authority responsible for responding to all non-urban fire firefighting emergencies throughout the state of New South Wales.
The RFS has failed absolutely. It is a serial annual failing fire fighting agency. It lights bushfires and serves but to save the state government billions.
Half a million hectares of pristine World Heritage Wollemi Wilderness has been abandoned to wildfire by government emergency bureaucracy, the RFS, so that the preciously unique Wollemi Wilderness of some half a million hectares be left to be incinerated in a deliberate bureaucratic defacto hazard reduction, dubbed a ‘strategic burn’.
In NPWS/RFS colonial culture, World Heritage Listing means nothing but a fuel hazard to be so burned before it inevitably burns. State based rural firefighting culture across Australia harks to colonial times when wildlife was vermin and Aborigines were savages.
The vast area of the world heritage listed Wollemi National Park is 501,700 hectares. The two bureaucrats charged to protect it were NPWS Upper Mountains Area Manager Richard Kingswood and NPWS Director of Blue Mountains Branch, David Crust. Both jointly delivered Blue Mountains epic fails this Christmas. Both need to be summarily held ultimately responsible and so summarily sacked for gross wold heritage abandonment, incompetence and defacto hazard reduction arson.
This belies this government bureaucracy’s antiquated culture of ecological hate and contempt that has been allowed and encouraged to get its way. Wilderness has been tamed ready for farmland and Sydney’s massive urban sprawl.
Blue Mountains ecology has allowed to be decimated – 80% of it.
This is a programme of widespread blanket defacto ‘hazard reduction’ – we interpret as state government sanctioned ‘bush arson’ – a mindset to burn native habitat before it burns, because capital city centric state governments deliberately under-resource rural fire fighting.
The Habitat Advocate’s subsequent email to UNESCO:
Dear Committee,
We are so sad to inform you that the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area has been mostly let incinerated.
It’s world heritage values perhaps no longer exist as a result.
Sincerely,
Editor of The Habitat Advocate
Katoomba NSW 2780 Australia
Upstream of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
World Heritage listing of the Blue Mountains region by the New South Wales Government (by its phony then Minister for the Environment, Bob Debus) was always with an ulterior motive. The listing’s ulterior motive was always about preserving a water catchment natural area immediately to the west of a massively expanding Sydney, since dubbed Greater Western Sydney that swallows the rural regions of the Blue Mountains, Hunter Valley, Central Coast, Newcastle, Wollondilly and Illawarra.
It’s not just sad; it is strategically planned, calculated, staged and outsourced sold by spin doctors to a naive public.
Rural fire bureaucracy at state and territory level across Australia has been allowed to perpetuate on an under-resourced piecemeal, charity and volunteer ‘Dad’s Army’ basis since the 1939 Black Friday bushfires, some four generations ago. It’s all to save governments money so they can splurge on other things.
Instead of 1939 being a national wake up call to Australia about bushfire unpreparedness, about ignorance of bushfire risk mitigation, about the lack of a nationally resourced and trained emergency unit of military standard to protect Australians, what was the governmental response?
Yet another government enquiry.
This is a photo from the desperate and overwhelming 1939 Black Friday Bushfire Disaster across Victoria.
A government enquiry (indeed a Royal Commission) was ordered into the bushfire disaster – 71 lives were lost, 69 timber mills burt out, millions of acres of fine forest of almost incalculable value decimated, townships were obliterated.
The Bushfires Royal Commission Report 1939 by Judge Leonard E. B. Stretton reported that hundreds of small fires smouldered unattended in the week leading up to Black Friday, when, fanned by the gale-force winds, they joined to create the inferno. Most of the fires Stretton declared, with almost biblical gravity, were “lit by the hand of man“.
His scathing 35 page report (extract below) was presented to the Victorian Parliament on the 16th May 1939. It led to a few token changes to pile burning and fire safety measures for sawmills, grazing licensees and the general public, the compulsory construction of dugouts at forest sawmills, increasing the forest roads network and firebreaks, construction of forest dams, fire towers and RAAF aerial patrols linked by the Forests Commissions radio network VL3AA to ground observers.
Stretton examined the inevitability of fire in the Australian bush and heard evidence from foresters, graziers, sawmillers and academics whether it was best to let fires burn because they were a part of a natural protective cycle or to combat them to defend people and the forests. Importantly, his balanced deliberations officially sanctioned and encouraged fuel reduction burning.
Stretton recommended that the Forests Commission must take complete responsibility of fire suppression and prevention on all public land including State forests, unoccupied Crown Lands, MMBW catchments and National Parks plus a buffer extending one mile beyond their boundaries onto private land.
Most of those initiatives were soon abandoned by the Victorian Government out of complacency and subsequent contemporary political priorities.
The Stretton Royal Commission of 1939 presided over by Judge Stretton has been described as one of the most significant inquiries in the history of Victorian public administration. His work has been referred to in subsequent bushfire inquiries and Royal Commissions such as Ash Wednesday in 1983 and Black Saturday 2009.
Yet, dozens of widespread bushfires later, thousands of homes razed later, ecology on the brink later, and rural fire bureaucracy rave on about the heroic effort by unpaid firefighting volunteer slaves. This despite the fact that rural fire bureaucracy at state and territory levels across Australia has yet again failed rural Australian communities, businesses and ecology.
What’s changed since 1939? Certainly not the governmental culture of leaving locals to fend for themselves.
“Effect your bushfire plan“…. (abandon our home to the fire?)
“Are you going to stay or go?” – (.. to bloody where? Putting out the fires and defending property is supposed to be the job of fire firefighters isn’t it?)
“We can’t guarantee a fire truck to turn up when you call 000.” (why not, the real fire service does. It is statutorily charged to protect the community.)
“Tourists get out now!” (Who compensates lost homes and regional tourism and business?)
The response next week after December 2019? Another government enquiry.
Bushfires typically start in the bush either by lightning or arsonists. Fire trucks are therefore useless; always too little, too late. The arsonists continue to get away with murder, home loss – which often leads to suicides.
Australia’s national parks have been decimated to dead, silent park graveyards for wildlife. They were never national; rather delegated to under-funded state bureaucracies with a record of mass sackings.
UNESCO needs to be told that the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area has gone. It’s world heritage listing was cynically always about setting aside inaccessible forests to preserve and expand Sydney’s drinking water for a growing human plague.
Following the 2006 Grose Valley megafire (started by a Hartley Valley RFS backburn) and the 2009 Victorian megafires, this author was rebuked for daring to critise the volunteer rural firies and laughted at for suggesting a military national organisation take control with live satellite detection of ignitions and wioth paid standby airborne resources.
A decade later the old blokes are waking up. Budget Dad’s Army culture remains stubborn – “we don’t want to be paid. We prefer dependence upon the afternoon teas and charity donations by struggling and homeless locals, and more homes lost instead. Just keep our traditional culture of volunteerism”
Australia’s remnant islands of ecology are being incinerated dead wastelands. It’s a Baby Boomer legacy.
1300 homes destroyed thus far…but you dare not criticize because those authorities responsible for community safety, hide behind the volunteer veil.
Summer 2020 herald’s the 81st anniversary of 1939 Black Friday Bushfires Disaster. Australia as a nation would surely/sadly be up to Bushfire Emergency Mark 81 at least – deploying the same state based volunteer slave labour culture to cost billions and drive ecological extinctions.
What a dishonourable scoreboard of environmental justice.
Welcome to the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. Won’t you enjoy your stay?
An immense evil has been perpetrated upon the remnant ecology of New South Wales.
Natural forests set aside as national parks and world heritage have been allowed to incinerate on a broad scale not seen before in Australian history. The Blue Mountains World Heritage Area has been destroyed.
An tourist campfire unextinguished at the over-popular Ruined Castle Campsite was allowed to burn for days before any government response from custodian NSW National Parks. So now a third of the precious Jamison Valley has gone along.
In the northern part of the Blue Mountains World Heritage, the massive celebrated expanse of the wild and rugged Wollemi National Park (5000 square km, or in firie terms 500,00 hectares) a fire that started in late October 2019 on a rural property off Army Road near Gospers Mountain was left to burn for weeks without emergency response. It was another negligent burn off. On 9th November, the RFS (Rural Fire Starters) rated it’s risk obscurely as ‘Advice’, whatever that means, and reported that it was “being controlled” – famous last words by this mob.
As at 20th December, the fire has been allowed to effectively wipe out the entire Wollemi National Park east to west, Yengo National Park, and spread south into the adjoining Blue Mountains National Park and now it’s in the Grose Valley. It is blackened, still and utterly dead.
The Jurassic period’s Wollemi Pine discovered by chance in 1994 in a remote patch of the Wollemi by Parks Service officer David Noble was reviewed by the NSW Scientific Committee after the International Union for the Conservation of Nature listed it as critical, with fewer than 100 mature individual trees in the wild. The NSW committee recommended the highest level of endangered status because it is so susceptible to Phytophthera cinnamomi, a pathogen which causes dieback of branches and stems. But that was not it’s obvious threat. It was the RFS.
Endangered Wollemi Pine endemic cluster – now incinerated by NPWS and RFS management negligence.
The total World Heritage Area destroyed by this particular bushfire is 720,000 hectares, more than half the size of greater Sydney (comprising multiple fires that have been allowed to all link up into one massive fire ground – Gospers Mountain fire 445000 ha, Kerry Ridge 93000 ha, Little L Complex 92000 ha, Three Mile 45000, Crumps Complex 6000 ha, Paddock Run 29000 ha, Owendale 4000 ha and Mount Victoria 2ooo ha.
The Mount Victoria fire has since been renamed the Grose Valley Fire with ominous implications of what the RFS intends with that one. Even the Goulburn River National Park has been targeted (Meads Creek West Fire 14000 ha) and that will no doubt combine with the others.
Coupled with The State Mine Fire of 2013 started by Army ordnance outside Lithgow on a Total fire Ban day which ripped through the Wollemi National Park in 2013, this year’s effort means there is nothing left of Wollemi National Park pretty much from Baerami Creek 100km south to the Wollangambe River and beyond.
This fire front is currently threatening to link up with another massive blaze that started in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park in the southern Blue Mountains around 26th November. Left to burn it has destroyed most of the national park and the water catchment.
To the south of New South Wales a bushfire allowed to incinerate 220,000 ha of “protected” habitat and wildlife from outside Nowra to Batemans Bay. The firie command dubbed it the ‘Currowan Fire‘. More slaughter.
To the north of News South Wales, two more massive fire grounds, each of comparable size to the above have wiped out more than 2 million hectares of native habitat that is supposed to be ‘protected’ in national parks.
Regional extinctions will be across multiple species of rare and endangered fauna. Across the New South Wales eastern seaboard an area the size of Tasmania has gone. Thousands of koalas have perished.
This is a mass extinction event, human caused alright. This is a war crime against ecology. No wonder the RFS has initiated a media blackout.
“I love a fire burnt country… bigs me head and pays me wages, see.”
The frequency, ferocity and scale of these bushfire emergencies is well beyond a volunteer Dad’s Army limited by a dated Baby Boomer culture of responsive “protecting life and property” that demonises and antropocentrically dismisses Australia’s remnant and disappearing ecology as ‘vermin’, a ‘hazard’, and ‘fuel’.
The RFS is an abject failure and the government’s use and abuse of its century old volunteer firefighting model has again proven incapable and useless at putting our bushfires in time to save ecology, infrastructure, livestock homes and lives. Volunteer fire-fighting subsists only to save goverment money so that politicians when in power can redirect the savings of not paying firefighters away from local communities.
The Federal delegation of emergency management, not just that concerning bushfires, is beyond state and territory resources to adequately prepare, respond and extinguish with the military precision demanded for such emergencies. Australian rural communities each summer witness government overdependence upon an historic volunteer culture that fails rural Australia time and again every summer. Invariably the emergency overwhelms the Dad’s Army and interstate and overseas crews and resources are brought in – usually too little to late. This national dependency is reciprocated interstate.
PM Scott Morrison’s Boomer regurgitation of perpetuating the “spirit of volunteers” is a time old abuse of ordinary rural Australians trying to do their bit for their local community. It’s callous government paying lip service thanks with no payment or compensation more than a cheap slap on the back for the media, a sausage from the volunteer sizzle and another hollow pet talk.
Crocodile Tears Culture
Australia’s Prime Minister was publicly ressured last week to return from his Christmas holiday in Hawaii to show some degree of leadership in the wake of New South Wales declared bushfire state of emergency. The nation’s Hume Freeway between Melbourne and Sydney was closed because of the mega bushfire that had ignited weeks prior many kilometres deep in the wild Blue Mountains Kanangra-Boyd National Park, and so left by authorities to hazard reduce itself until it arrived uncontrolled to cut the Hume Freeway.
Too little to late yet again. Government is culpable for the ecological holocaust, the 3000+ Koalas burned alive, the utter destruction of World Heritage and ‘protected‘ national parks, the human lives lost, the family homes gone forever, livestock perished, business revenue lost, regional economic losses, and a massive polluting contribution to worsen global greenhouse gases.
Extinction Rebellion need to redirect their targeting of offenders to NSW RFS Headquarters at 4 Murray Rose Avenue, Sydney Olympic Park and to every petrol despatch unit branch.
The Rural Fire Starters (RFS) of New South Wales have set fire to Blue Mountains World Heritage yet again.
They call it ‘Hazard Reduction’ because they deem native habitat to be a hazardous fuel, nothing more. Government is dominated by men and women in power their sixties (Baby Boomers currently). Their worldview is anthropcentric if not a contempt for ecology and the survival conservation of Australia’s wildlife fauna. They consider native forests to be mere ‘parks’ for human recreation. Their forebears happily shot wildlife as vermin.
So yet again more vast areas of native forest habitat have been incinerated as if it were a wildfire. The hazard reduction flames reach fully up into the tree canopy in the same way. Hazard Reduction is government condoned bush arson. It is a prime cause of local wildlife extinction.
Hazard Reduction adversely alters Forest Ecology
Hazard Reduction used to the intensity, canopy height and broad scale of a wildfire is no different to wildfires in ecological impact. Deliberate bush arson whether by arsonists or government sanctioned, harm native habitat. The penchant for increased fire regimes out of fear of government incapacity to deal with wildfires, has inculcated a mindset of a ‘burn the bush before it burns‘ mentality.
When applied to moist Closed Forest ecosystems, hazard reduction dries out the delicate moist microclimate. The complex topsoil chemistry is destroyed. Only fire resistant flora regenerate; other species die and do not return. The forest become more bushfire prone. Wildlife perishes especially territorial wildlife. The close forests become drier Open Forest Parks – ones you can more easily walk through.
“Bushfire danger is increasing as a consequence of climate change predicted by scientists. Heavy logging and burning of forests increases rather than decreases flammability. Forests permitted to exist in their natural state (with dense shading canopies and intact boundaries) lose less moisture from drying wind and direct sun. An unlogged forest can remain cooler and damper – for longer. It has been demonstrated that it can slow, and even halt a fire.” – Dr Chris Taylor, Ecologist at the University of Melbourne, in the journal Conservation Letters 2014.
“Fuel hazard is often assumed to increase with fuel age, or the time-since-fire. However, studies on fuel hazard in long-unburned forests are scarce. We measured overall fuel hazard in Eucalyptus forests and woodlands in south-eastern Australia at 81 sites where time-since-fire spans 0.5 years to at least 96 years. Overall fuel hazard was higher in forests and woodlands burned 6–12 years previously than those unburned for at least 96 years.
The probability of high, very high or extreme overall fuel hazard – which is an operational threshold considered to equate with almost no chance of wildfire suppression in severe fire-weather – was highest 0.5–12 years post-fire, and lowest where fire had not occurred for at least 96 years. Frequent burning can maintain forest understorey in an early successional ‘shrubby’ state, leading to higher overall fuel hazard than forests where a lack of fire is associated with the senescence of shrubs.
Protecting long-unburned sites from fire and managing to transition a larger proportion of forest to a long-unburned state may benefit fuel-hazard management within these forests in the long-term.” (Source: International Journal of Wildland Fire, 20180723, (Refer Note 1 in Further Reading).
Hazard Reduction fuels Carbon Emissions
The toxic wood smoke blankets communities and the entire Sydney basin as the prevaling westerly wind drives the choking smoke for a hundred kilometres.
Thick smoke from a prescribed arson by the RFS in precious forext habitat around Faulconbridge and Springwood has blanketed the entire Sydney basin just like what happens regularly in Beijing.
The wood smoke is expected to last for days and health warnings have been issued by the New South Wales government who approved the burning. NSW Health has warned that people with existing heart and lung conditions should avoid outdoor physical activity. NSW’s Office of Environment has labelled Sydney’s air quality “poor” and warned people with health issues to stay indoors.
Outside the RFS Bushfire Season (September to March), this is the contra Habitat Reduction Season (April to August). If the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area isn’t subjected to arson wildfire in the on-season, it is targeted by arson habitat reduction in the off-season. The impact is the same.
“These are important controlled burns which will reduce the risk to people and properties from bush fires,” NSW RFS said in a statement.
Up to 30 tonnes of CO2 per forested hectare is emitted by bushfires and hazard reduction alike, according to Philip Gibbons , Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University; more than coal-fired power stations.
“Burning biomass inevitably releases CO₂ (Carbon Dioxide), CH₄ (methane), N₂O (Nitrous Oxide) and other greenhouse gases (GHG) to the atmosphere. Emissions from vegetation fires account for about 3% of global GHG emissions. Bushfires in Australia burn over 500,000 km² annually, mainly in the northern half of the country. They account for about 6-8% of global fire emissions and contribute significantly (about 3%) to the nation’s net GHG emissions.” – Matthias Boer, Researcher, Western Sydney University.
Bushfire smoke contains particulate matter, respiratory irritants and carcinogens such as benzene and formaldehyde. These can travel for thousands of kilometres. Hazard reduction burns, which are being conducted more frequently due to climate change, also contribute to increased pollution.
In 2009 bushfires, back-burning and hazard reduction emitted an amount of CO2 equivalent to 2% of Australia’s annual emissions from coal-fired power. Bushfires burnt an area of forest greater than Tasmania to generate CO2 emissions equivalent to a year of burning coal for electricity. Bushfires must burn an area of forest the size of New South Wales to generate CO2 emissions equivalent to a decade of burning coal for electricity.
Wildfires and hazard reduction across Australia released millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to more than a third of the country’s CO2 emissions for a whole year, according to scientists.
The climate costs are dire because of the type of forest that burned, according to Mark Adams of the University of Sydney. “Once you burn millions of hectares of eucalypt forest, then you are putting into the atmosphere very large amounts of carbon.”
Because hazard reduction burns have been increasingly more widespread and deliberately encouraged to blanket a wide landscape , rather than edge low level and mosaic in pattern, hazard reduction burns are litteldifferent in impact that wildlfires. A high-intensity burning into the tree canopy causes equivalent forest carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Australia’s total emissions per year are around 330m tonnes of CO2. Adams’ previous research has shown that the bush fires in 2003 and 2006-07 had put up to 105m tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because they burned up land carrying 50 to 80 tonnes of carbon per hectare.
This time, however, the forests being destroyed are even more carbon-rich, with more than 100 tonnes of above-ground carbon per hectare. The affected area is more than twice the size of London and takes in more than 20 towns north of Melbourne, so the CO2 emissions from this year’s disaster could be far larger than previous fires.
So ‘hazard reduction’, ‘fuel reduction’, ‘prescribed burning’, or indeed the more honest term ‘government arson’ – must cease because it releases vast quantities of CO2 and other toxic chemicals that pollute the atmosphere.
“The world’s forests are crucial to the long-term future of the planet as they lock away millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide,” said Robin Webster, a climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “More must be done to protect them – deforestation is having a devastating effect and as climate change takes hold, forest fires like those in Australia are likely to become more frequent.”
The carbon dioxide emissions from forest fires are not counted under the agreements made by countries in the Kyoto Protocol, though it is being considered for inclusion in the successor treaty that will be debated later this year in Copenhagen. The usual reasoning behind it was that, with any fires, new growth of vegetation would take up any extra CO2 that had been released. “That is true to a point, but if the long-term fire regime changes – we are now starting to have more fires – we may completely change the carbon balance of the forest,” said Adam.
He added: “All informed scientific opinion suggests that whatever new protocol is signed [at the UN summit] in Copenhagen or elsewhere will include forest carbon, simply because to not do so would be to ignore one of the biggest threats to the global atmospheric pool of carbon dioxide, the release of carbon in fires.”
“Nature reserves are areas of land in predominantly untouched, natural condition, with high conservation value. Their primary purpose is to protect and conserve their outstanding, unique or representative ecosystems and Australian native plants and animals.”
NPWS has become more an agent for Tourism than Conservation
The New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service is a state government entity and the sole custodian of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, the state’s 870 national parks, and nature reserves. It’s management has the same recreational mindset of the RFS, that national parks are set aside areas of recreation for humans to play in, not remnant habitat sanctuaries to be protected across Australia’s otherwise deforested landscape.
Successive state governments have slashed the departments funding to a skeleton service and merged it into other incompatible departments such as repporting to the Department of Planning. The fraud of the naming this grossly underfunded and mismanaged custodial authority warrants a name change to the ‘Parks NSW’, which hereafter we shall refer to them. It functions more like a department of tourism and recreation. Victoria calls its equivalent ‘Parks Victoria’.
It’s logo should better reflect what the Parks NSW actually does in national parks and nature reserves. May be it should take on manicuring council parks and gardens as well. A can of petrol and a tourism sponsor logo like North Face should replace its Superb Lyrebird and Boomerang.
RFS ‘hazard reduction’ inflicted upon Mount Solitary world heritage of a scale the same as a wildfire – all wildlife incinerated so that the ‘national park’ becomes a sterile park.
Rural Fire Service (starters) and National Parks unnecessarily incinerated Mount Solitary, The Jamison Valley and Cedar Valley by indiscriminate aerial incendiary in May 2018. What carbon emissions?
Ironically, today is the government-sanctioned day of the unpaid wildlife arsonist. Give generously.
Not a forest ecologist in sight. Volunteer bush fire-fighters no longer fight bushfires with water, but with petrol.
[2] ‘A comparison of fuel hazard in recently burned and long-unburned forests and woodlands‘, by Dixon KM, Cary GJ, Worboys GL, Seddon J, Gibbons G, 2018, in International Journal of Wildland Fire 27, 609-622, ^https://www.publish.csiro.au/WF/WF18037. Note: Associate Professor Philip Gibbons, currently an Associate Professor at The Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University where he teaches courses related to biodiversity conservation. He has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters, including three books.
“For those who object to the burning of ‘our’ bushland for fire ‘hazard’ reduction, perhaps they could assist by adopting..the method of raking the forest floors.”
– Rod Tuck, Katoomba.
Finns beg to differ and send a message that RFS unpaid slaves are just redneck knuckle-dragging dumb arses..
Government rural fire lighting service: “Big time hazard reduction job done, about time.”
Bushfires typically start in the bush either by lightning or arsonists. Fire trucks are therefore useless; always too little, too late. The arsonists continue to get away with murder, home loss – which often leads to suicides.
Welcome to the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. Won’t you enjoy your stay?
It’s logo should better reflect what the Parks NSW actually does in national parks and nature reserves. May be it should take on manicuring council parks and gardens as well. A can of petrol and a tourism sponsor logo like North Face should replace its Superb Lyrebird and Boomerang.
