Land Management in Review

Since 1984 Russell Smith has lived on the edge of the Bogong High Plains.

Up until the Australia Day fire attack, the adjacent Alpine National Park was a dry forest with almost impenetrable noxious blackberry, sweet briar and forest floor litter.

The area had not been burned in 100 years.  It was a disaster waiting to happen.

The public lands are managed by Parks Victoria and the Department of Sustainability and Environment, or as we say, the Department of Scorched Earth.

The lands are breeding grounds for feral dogs, cats and goats, blackberry, St John's wort, sweet briar, broom, Patterson's curse -- the list goes on.

It was almost impossible to gain access to the pristine High Country rivers because of weed infestation, but the annual green spotted tree frog count still goes on in the Bundarrah headwaters.

Fire prevention/ minimisation is part of the management of public lands;  but nothing has been done.  Optimum forest floor litter coverage for ecological balance is 4 tonnes a hectare;  in my area the litter was hundreds of tonnes.

Horses could not traverse parts and travel by foot was exceedingly difficult.  There had been no official fuel reduction burning in living memory.

Now fire has consumed more than 1.1 million hectares.

But will lessons be learned from this disaster?  For the first few days of the fires, the public land management authorities allowed the fire to burn and thereby gain ground and momentum.  It was on public land, but there was very little information available.  The local CFA was being told nothing and had nothing to pass on.

By January 14, Russell had a phone call from the Swifts Creek incident control centre.  The person had no local knowledge and refused to provide information on the Feathertop fire, as it was in another fire control area.

On January 21, there was a weak southeasterly wind blowing and Russell asked permission to start a back-burn into the national park.  He was refused.

Knowing the fuel problem on the ground and that the weather was to get worse, Russell decided to back-burn along my boundaries -- it proved to be the right decision.  It saved his property.

The next few days were a disaster of organisation.  Information was either wrong or non-existent.  Suggestions to request defence resources were ignored and they never knew when there would be extra resources available.

Russell had been requesting the department to force an absentee owner to clear his property for 10 years, to no avail.  Omeo CFA was left out of the loop until a week after January 26.

The incident controller did not visit the northern fire areas at any time.  Crews on the ground did not receive briefings.  Local knowledge was not used to guide outside crews.

Unless locals wore a DSE uniform they were not listened to at all.  Information-passing telephone operators did not have any local knowledge or even maps.

Given the technology available, there were periods when communication ceased -- there is no excuse whatsoever.

There needs to be political will to ensure proper management practices are put into place.  Above all, there should be standardised procedures and joint regional exercises carried out.

There must be no division of responsibility between authorities on the ground and those responsible for resource management should not be in charge of the fires -- a clear conflict of interest.

But the most important thing of all is that MPs must accept responsibility for their actions.

Russell didn't see one professed greenie or Senator Bob Brown at the ACT, Kosciuszko or Victorian fires -- so much for commitment.

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