According to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change late last month, sequestering carbon dioxide is only one of the crucial climate-regulating attributes inherent to the world’s forests.
According to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change late last month, sequestering carbon dioxide is only one of the crucial climate-regulating attributes inherent to the world’s forests.
This is the classic story of how fires are the perfect fodder for a media that love real life drama and conflict. The opportunity to do a bit of enviro-bashing on the side is just too good to miss as truth and verification of claims fly out the window.This was started by The Age and …
A number of departmental mistakes caused a fuel reduction burn at Wilsons Promontory National Park to become a large bushfire that burnt out thousands of hectares. Victoria’s Emergency Services Commissioner, Bruce Esplin, made this finding after he was asked to look into the April ’05 disaster. The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) did not …
Many friends of the environment were lost to us over the February fires this year. Many others lost their friends, family members and their homes. It was a shocking time. Besides having to deal with these losses, the environment movement was accused of being responsible. Let’s analyse this … The shameless politicisation of such an …
City and country residents have had to cope with choking air during April as DSE lit up over 150,000 hectares of healthy forest in its “management burns”. The EPA does not take air quality readings in regional areas – they don’t want to know how bad it is. In the city a reading of 150 …
Science is clearly not a part of the Brumby government’s justification to triple burns across the state to almost 400,000 ha, or 1/20th of public land a year. Despite the ENRC inquiry quoting scientific papers, Jenny Barnett from the VNPA, discovered that these papers didn’t back up calls for increased burning at all. They in …
Here’s another example of the government being at odds with itself. Two recent reports contradicted each other. In early December, at the same time the Environment Commissioner, Dr Ian McPhail, released his damning State of the Environment report for Victoria, the Brumby Government supported the other bushfire report and a trebling of burns across our …
Journalist and writer, James Woodford, recently wrote of his concerns about the level of pyromania within our land management agencies and the lack of science behind the hype for more burning. The annual sensationalist stories predicting a horrendous bushfire season ahead are about to begin. Fearful unprepared farmers and townies alike will blame the DSE …
By May 2004, the Victorian Government had funded the clearfelling of forests burnt in the 2003 fires to the tune of $6.9 million. Another $4 million was given to help the woodchip industry continue its access the following year. Then in 2007 we taxpayers gave at least $868,000 to help the industry clearfell the 2006 …
After the state government was caught out during and after the ’06 fires, thumbing its nose at its own planning regulations let alone Federal laws, these careless cowboys have now changed the laws to allow them to continue! Over 200 km of these lineal logging coupes were bulldozed through the heart of many intact and …
“European settlement certainly brought an extraordinary increase in both frequency and intensity of fire in south-eastern Australia. People lit fires everywhere, at any time, to burn off or to clear land. Rural manhood was forged in fighting fires.” Paul Collins, author of BURN
