Green groups are lobbying hard to make global warming the number one environmental issue for the upcoming federal election. However, this cannot be the outcome of a process of selecting priorities based on environmental need or rigorous cost-to-benefit assessment.
If we were to properly do this, then bushfires would no doubt be high on the list -- at least higher than greenhouse in terms of a threat than can be reduced in a cost-effective way.
In terms of outright destruction to wilderness areas, including old growth forest and rare and endangered species, the 2003 bushfires were an environmental disaster of incredible proportions.
More than three million hectares were incinerated including three quarters of Kosciusko National Park. Compare this with annual clearing rates of native vegetation by farmers in NSW and Victoria amounting to less than 20,000 hectares.
In my recent report When Will We Ever Learn?, I described "the outpouring of greenhouses gases in the bushfires" as being "matched by an outpouring of denial by some green groups".
The National Parks Association rushed into print on 22 January last year proclaiming there was "not a skerrick of evidence" to support the accusations of insufficient hazard-reduction burning. Subsequent official reports contradict this.
One conclusion in the October 2003 House of Representatives Select Committee Report "A Nation Charred" was that "there has been grossly inadequate hazard reduction burning on public lands for far too long".
Green groups seem surprisingly uninterested in bushfires as an environmental issue, and at the same time, are reluctant to endorse an acceptable level of control burning for hazard reduction.
The many reports published since last year's Canberra region fires give the impression that advances in fire science and fire-fighting technology are being negated by a political reluctance to reduce massive fuel build-ups, with the problem only exacerbated as more land is declared National Park.
Last week the director of ACT forests told the continuing coronial inquest in Canberra that more resources should have been sent out as soon as the bushfires were detected. In the broader scheme of things, more resources should also be spent on hazard-reduction.
As I wrote, "you can buy a lot of mitigation for the $11,000 per hour paid for an Ericsson crane helicopter" -- and we could save a lot of native animals if we got our environmental priorities even half right.
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