Watching the horrible reports on the devastating fires in my homeland is gut wrenching, but what’s more devastating is the reporting and political emanations attributing all the fires to climate change. Ignoring the dozens of arson arrests the press and public officials further ignore the chief culprit eloquently described by a veteran of Australia’s forest management professionals. Read the entire report, and also the comments to follow if you want to grasp the reality in Oz.
“Yet despite the science, the evidence presented by bushmen, the dramatic history of this continent’s relationship with fire, and the findings of numerous inquiries, successive governments in Qld, NSW and Victoria over the last 25 years have consistently failed to prepare potential firegrounds in the expectation of the inevitable. Not only this, they seem to have actually go out of their way to make things worse: the cut-backs to fuel reduction burning, the closure of access roads and trails in national parks, the decimation of professional forestry and fire management expertise, the turning of the blind eye to the creation of residential subdivisions in capable of being defended, the funding of “research” in the universities that is aimed at making the job of the firefighter more difficult, and the erection of a complex bureaucratic edifices that hinder sensible bushfire preparedness and make fuel-reduction burning almost impossible.” Read the full report from down under. Peter Reshetniak: President