"FERAL FIRES"

 WILL RETURN AND KEEP RETURNING

Victoria's forest fire management

 is in a parlous state.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

Budget papers for 2006-07show the number of DSE personnel with fire accreditation fell from 1,546 in 2004-05 to 1,500 in 2005-06. On Thursday 21 September 2006 the Minister for the Environment announced that an additional 55 permanent DSE firefighters would be employed from October 2, as part of a Bracks Government 2004 budget commitment for an additional 200 firefighters. Arguably,

• the addition of 55 permanent firefighters does not lift DSE's capability to manage fire to the level that was found wanting in 2003.

• It certainly does not compensate for the skills and resources that were available from hydro-electricity projects, contractors and licensees that were lost post-1985.

Common factors, 2003 through 2006.

• a lack of political will to face the obvious reality that the system is not working, a "spin" approach that avoids and/or manipulates due process to make the government look good even when they have failed miserably.

• an organizational structure of public land management agencies that downgrades the importance of fire in the landscape and a lack of will to fix the problem with clear and unambiguous lines of responsibility for fire prevention and suppression on public land.

• a firefighting approach that consistently avoided fast aggressive first attack and a reliance on "remote" firefighting.

• a lack   of  suitable,   skilled   and   trained   resources   well   versed   in   public   land management and available all year round for fire related work. 

• a   lack   of  suitable,   skilled   and   trained   resources   well   versed   in   public   land

The problem

The problem is not with the personnel on the fire-ground who do their best at a difficult and sometimes dangerous job. They are seriously hampered by a lack of support, absurd protocols and the problems identified in the Esplin 2005 Report. The reasons lie in policy and political shortcomings at the highest level.

The solutions

NOT  "learning to live" with feral fires,

NOT how to respond to them better,

but in finding ways to get the right kind of fire back into the landscape.

The health of our water catchments and the bio-diversity and sustainability of our native forests are at risk, not from climate change, but from flawed policies and blinkered politics. Until Victoria gets  inspired leadership that recognizes the need to re-connect rural communities to our forests and parks, and makes the system work better,

FIND OUT MORE !!!!   CLICK HERE   to download report  (521Kb)

FOREST FIRE VICTORIA IS A NON-POLITICAL, NON-SECTARIAN ORGANISATION

we just care about our forests and the people who live near them.