Testimony of Dr. Peter Kolb on Mountain Pine Beetle
Peter Kolb. 2009. Testimony of Dr. Peter Kolb, Montana State University, before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water and Power Hearing on Mountain Pine Beetle: Strategies For Protecting The West, June 16, 2009.
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
My name is Peter Kolb, and I am the Montana State University Extension Forestry Specialist and an Associate Professor of Forest Ecology and Management at the University of Montana College of Forestry and Conservation. I’m here today speaking on behalf of the Society of American Foresters (SAF), an organization of over 15,000 forest managers, researchers, and educators. I’ve been a SAF member for 27 years.
I am here today to offer you my testimony with regard to the bark beetle situation across western forests with specific reference to the conditions across the Montana with which I am most familiar. My perspective is not that of an entomologist, but that of a forest ecologist and management specialist whose main work objective is to help implement the results and conclusion of scientific research into practical working applications. I work in both academic circles as an applied researcher and educator, and in the forest practitioners’ realm, which gives me the opportunity not only to conduct relevant research, but to examine the effects of forestry applications. Just three days ago I returned from a week of working with family landowners and the Cree and Chippewa tribes of central Montana where we examined the forest conditions there and the effectiveness of various forest practices in combating a mountain pine beetle outbreak in the Bearpaw Mountains.
Bark Beetles
The bark beetle outbreak we are experiencing across the entire western portion of North America is the result of multiple ecological factors converging at the same time. Its occurrence is not a surprise for foresters across western forests as the current expansiveness of bark beetle activity has been building for many years. Bark beetles such as mountain pine beetles, one of the main culprits in the current outbreaks, have been extensively studied since the mid 1970s. Its life cycle and ecology are very well understood. It has been a natural part of western forests for millennia and its population cycles are fairly predictable. Under what we would characterize the average forest and climatic conditions of the past century it exists as a chronic population within pine forests, colonizing and killing trees that are unable or incapable of defending themselves due to a variety of physiological, genetic or environmental factors. It may be considered analogous to wolves circling a herd of caribou, culling out the weak, unfit and injured. As with any species, bark beetles have numerous pests and predators themselves including a variety of predatory beetles, wasps, nematodes, mites, fungal diseases, and larger predators such as bark gleaning birds and woodpeckers. Depending on the populations of these predators and pests, chronic bark beetle populations might be kept in check.
Fire History and Research, Big Bar Ranger District, Northwestern Trinity County, California: Critique of Fire Suppression Practices
Concerned Citizens for Responsible Fire Management*. 2008. Fire History and Research, Big Bar Ranger District, Northwestern Trinity County, California: Critique of Fire Suppression Practices. Report to Congressman Wally Herger, October 2008
* David Rhodes, Committee Chairperson, Lewiston, 37 years in Trinity County, retired, 30 years with the U. S. Forest Service (all in fire and fuels management); 11 years on the Angeles National Forest with 5 of those years as Hotshot Crew Foreman and the remainder as Fire Prevention Technician and Engine Captain. 19 years on the Big Bar Ranger District in Fire, Fuels Management and Law Enforcement, the last 15 of those years as Fire Management Officer. Large Fire Qualifications, Class I Operations Chief, Class II Incident Commander, Division Supervisor, Helitorch Burn Boss, and Fire Behavior Officer, and Class II Planning Section Chief. Incident Commander on the Shasta-Trinity Class II Fire Team for 14 years. Fuels Management Qualifications: Prescribed Fire Manager for Multi-Burns, Burn Boss, and Helitorch Burn Boss.
Charley Fitch, Redding, California resident for the last 42 years, having lived in Southern, Central and Northern California amongst the National Forests, employed by the Forest Service. Twenty of the years were in Trinity County as District Ranger for the Big Bar Ranger District, later incorporated into the Trinity River Management Unit, before retiring in January 1999. Fire suppression experience with the Forest Service included fire assignments ranging over 35 years. Positions included Crew Boss, Sector Boss, Division Supervisor, Forest Supervisor’s Representative, Planning Section Chief Type II, Liaison Officer for both Type I and Type II Incident Teams as well as Line Officer for fires located within my Ranger District. I am a professional forester with a degree from Colorado State University in Forest Management. Other experience with fire beyond being a firefighter was as a project leader for controlled burns and a land manager dealing with post-fire land management.
Michael Jameson, Weaverville, resident of Trinity County for 18 years, retired California Department of Forestry (CALFIRE). Started with CDF as a seasonal firefighter in 1978 with the San Bernardino Ranger Unit. Promoted to Engineer in San Bernardino and worked in both schedule A and schedule B contracts (Structure and Wildland Fires). Promoted to Captain in 1987 at the Fenner Canyon Camp in Los Angeles County, transferred to the Pilot Rock Camp in San Bernardino and then Trinity River Camp in Lewiston in 1990. Qualified for Division/Group Supervisor, Map display processor, Field Observer, Strike Team Leader and Task Force Leader. 25 years all in fire control.
Clarence Rose, Weaverville, Trinity County resident since 1974. Oregon State University graduate, B.S. in Forest Engineering, 1974. California Registered Professional Forester since 1977. Member of California Board of Forestry, 1985-89. Founder and co-owner of R&R Timber Co., Inc., a logging company which was active in contract logging in Trinity County from 1979-1998, averaging 2000+ truckloads of logs per year, and which provided contract heavy equipment (dozers, water tenders) to CDF and USFS. Currently owner and manager of 1,000 acres of sustainably managed commercial timberland in Trinity and Shasta County. Member of Weaverville Community Forest steering committee, which works with Trinity County Resource Conservation District to attain fire-safe, fire-resilient forests on public lands in the Weaverville basin. Volunteer missionary in Russia (1994-95) and Ukraine (2001-2005). Member of initial board of directors of Mountain Communities Healthcare District, which owns and operates the formerly county-owned Trinity Hospital.
Jerry McDonald, Lewiston, 40 years in Trinity County, retired, 30 years with the Forest Service, 27 of those years in fire and fuels management. District Fire Management Officer, Calaveras and Miwok districts, 4 years; retired as Stanislaus National Forest fire staff operations; Type II Team Deputy Incident Commander and, Operations Section and Safety Officer, Type I Team Safety Officer; prescribed fire manager for helitorch and hand fire; Interdisciplinary team leader and NEPA team leader for fuels and fire projects; fuels committee chair for Stanislaus National Forest for 5 years; member of Forest Service Southwest Region fuels committee for 6 years; HAZMAT coordinator, Spill Response coordinator; agency representative on fires and other projects, including with CDF; Forest representative for local fire companies in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties.
Frank Grovers, Big Bar, 11 years in Trinity County with an RV park business along the Trinity River; 40 years in sales experience in the U.S. and foreign countries, dealt with different teenagers in a counseling capacity, involved with church and local community; three children, five grandchildren, two great-grandchildren. 2008-09 Trinity County Grand Jury.
Stan Stetson, Hayfork, in 1968 began working summers for the U.S. Forest Service in Trinity County while attending Humboldt State College. Upon graduating continued to work seasonally in fire prevention, fuels and fire suppression until 1973 when I received a permanent appointment. Worked as Engine Foreman until 1979 when I became a Timber Sale Administrator. Retired after 36 years, all in Trinity County, having served as Division Supervisor, Strike Team Leader, Burn Boss, Logistics and Ground Support Leader in Fire organization and Supervisor in Timber sale preparation and administration. Three years with Watershed Center as Project Coordinator for fuels reduction and thinning operations. Present Commissioner of the Hayfork Fire Protection District. Currently retired and concerned citizen.
Dana Hord, Junction City, Trinity County resident 1993-present, business owner, Trinity River Rafting, Big Flat. Trinity River Rafting features scenic quality of the Wild and Scenic Trinity River and is tourism based. Appointed Member of Trinity Adaptive Management Working Group for Trinity River Restoration Program, 2001-present, representing Big Bar Community Development Group. Dana has been actively involved in the transition of the local economy from one focused on commodity production to one that is more dependent on tourism and recreation. Ms. Hord has a degree in sociology, and experience in small business management, grants administration, and public relations. Junction City Volunteer Fire Dept., 2002-present, trained in wildland fire suppression, and structural fire protection. Former Aide, U.S. Senator S.I. Hayakawa. Daughter of Donna Hord, deceased, Shasta County GOP delegate.
Gay Berrien, Committee Secretary, Big Bar, 45 years in Trinity County in Denny and Big Bar; retired U.S. Forest Service employee, clerk and archaeological technician for 30 years mostly Big Bar Ranger District; wrote all news releases for Big Bar for first several years of 1970s including articles on fire suppression, fuels reduction, controlled burns, special high elevation fire study (study by a fire behavior specialist, first such study in Forest Service Southwest Region), attended 32-hour fire training (but only participated in one controlled burn from 9 a.m. one morning until 9 a.m. the next and was on fire standby at Denny Guard Station one day), responded to fire assignments as initial attack and communications dispatcher, fire information officer, personnel time recorder, and procurement officer; Trinity County Historical Society board of directors, 2008-09 Trinity County Grand Jury.
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
CONTENTS
Cover Letter to Congressman Herger/Introduction ………. 3
Meet the Committee ……………………………….. 12
Fire Location Map 1999-2008 ……………………….. 14
One-Page Summary of Catastrophic Fire Analysis ………. 15
2006 Catastrophic Fire Analysis ……………………. 16
Fire and Forest Management on the Big Bar District …… 23
Local Businesses Affected by 2006 & 2008 Fires ………. 28
Heritage Resources in Iron/Alps Complex 2008 ………… 29
Big Bar Ranger District Annual Rainfall …………….. 31
Typical Fire Suppression 1930s-1970s ……………….. 33
Jim Jam Fire of 1951 ……………………………… 36
Denny Guard Station Removal ……………………….. 37
How Liability Fears Affect Fire Suppression …………. 41
Fires Burned Nationwide by Decade Compared with Timber Harvest, Fire Suppression Policies and Local Rainfall* ………………………. 43
* added after October 10 meeting with Congressman Herger
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People of the Prairie, People of the Fire
Stephen Pyne. 2009. People of the Prairie, People of the Fire. The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center.
*****
Dr. Stephen J. Pyne is Regents Professor at Arizona State University. He is author of Awful Splendour: A Fire History of Canada (2007) Univ. British Columbia Press, Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (1982), Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia (1991), World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth (1995), Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told Through Fire, of Europe and Europe’s Encounter with the World (1997), The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica (1986), and numerous other histories, memoirs, essays, and texts about fire.
This essay is one of three related essays about fire in the Midwest. The others are:
Missouri Compromise [here], and
Patch Burning [here]
*****
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
Twice over the past 20,000 years the Illinois landscape has been destroyed and rebuilt. In the first age the agent of change was ice, mounded into sheets and leveraged outward through a suite of periglacial processes from katabatic winds to ice-dam-breaching torrents. The ice obliterated everything, leaving as its legacy a geomorphic matrix of dunes, swales, moraines, loess, great lakes and landscape-dissecting streams.
For the second, the agent was iron, forged into plows and then into rails. Coal replaced climate as a motive force, and people pushed aside the planetary rhythms of Milankovitch cycles and cosmogenic carbon cycles as a prime mover. They left behind a surveyed landscape of squared townships.
The first event worked through a geologic matrix; the second, a biological one; and they were equally thorough. All the state went under ice at least once; the last outpouring, the Wisconsin glaciation, pushed south from Lake Michigan and covered perhaps a third. The frontier of agricultural conversion put nearly all of the state to the plow, or where rocky moraines prevented it, to the hoofs of livestock. When it ended, only one-tenth of one percent of the precontact landscape remained more or less intact. Less than one acre out of a thousand held its founding character, and that acre was itself minced into a thousand, scattered pieces.
In both ice age and iron age, however, life revived after the extinction with fire as an informing presence – fire in the hands of people. The biological recolonization of the landscape after the ice had fire in its mix and expressed itself as oak savannas, tallgrass prairies, and grassy wetlands, stirred by routine burning. Fire was a universal catalyst; in particular, prairie and fire became ecological symbionts. The reconstruction of the second landscape has relied on industrial combustion, fueled by the fossil fallow of biomass.
But those intent on sparing, or actively restoring, the former landscape must appeal to open burning. A fire sublimated through a tractor does not yield the same effects as one let loose to free-burn through big bluestem. The regeneration of such settings is troubling –- unstable and scattered, an inchoate genesis still in the making, its reliance on fire both essential and challenged.
Patch Burning
Stephen Pyne. 2009. Patch Burning. The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center.
*****
Dr. Stephen J. Pyne is Regents Professor at Arizona State University. He is author of Awful Splendour: A Fire History of Canada (2007), Univ. British Columbia Press, Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (1982), Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia (1991), World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth (1995), Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told Through Fire, of Europe and Europe’s Encounter with the World (1997), The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica (1986), and numerous other histories, memoirs, essays, and texts about fire.
This essay is one of three related essays about fire in the Midwest. The others are:
Missouri Compromise [here], and
People of the Prairie, People of the Fire [here]
*****
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
It is a biotic border that spans a continent, and it displays a continental sized roughness. In rude terms it traces the coarse shoreline between a sea of grass to the west and a land of mixed forests to the east, an edge sculpted into the ecological equivalent of bays, narrows, skerries, and estuaries, as climatic tides, the tectonic lurching of glaciers, and the sprawl of colonizing species have tugged and twisted, and here and there allowed grass or woods to mostly prevail. That textured shoreline holds a jumbled geography of incombustible wetlands and free-burning bottomlands, fire-flushed Barrens and fire-hardened forests, prairie peninsulas and prairie patches, oak mottes and woody copses, and landscapes latent with bits of them all, some extending over hundreds of miles.
It is a fractal frontier, patchy at every scale, with small patches within larger. And it is a frontier of fire, with each part checked or boosted by the ferocity and abundance of burning.
Cross Timbers
Even so, the Cross Timbers stand out. They proclaim a bold, woody headland, as distinctive as the White Cliffs of Dover, between the grassy sea that swells to the west and the humid forest that crowds the east. It is here that storm surges of fire, roaring over the long fetch of the Great Plains, whipped by the westerlies into whitecaps of flame, crash against the less combustible woods. The belt is long, stretching from the Edwards Plateau of Texas to the Flint Hills of Kansas; irregular and sinuous, roughly cruciform, historically varying from five to 30 miles wide, but at places spanning most of Oklahoma; and persistent, its 4.8 million hectares defying settlement’s attempts to log, plow, graze, or burn it into oblivion. Instead, it continues in Oklahoma to thicken with stubborn oaks – blackjack, shin, live, and post.
Re-Inventing the United States Forest Service: Evolution from Custodial Management, to Production Forestry, to Ecosystem Management
Doug MacCleery. 2008. Re-Inventing the United States Forest Service: Evolution from Custodial Management, to Production Forestry, to Ecosystem Management, IN Reinventing Forestry Agencies: Experiences of Institutional Restructuring in Asia and the Pacific, Edited by: Patrick Durst, Chris Brown, Jeremy Broadhead, Regan Suzuki, Robin Leslie and Akiko Inoguchi. Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission, FAO-UN, RAP Pub 2008/05.
Douglas W. MacCleery is Senior Policy Analyst, Forest Management Staff, USDA, Forest Service, Washington, DC
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
INTRODUCTION
Forest policy and institutional frameworks in all countries are fashioned according to their larger sociopolitical context, traditions and history. A major factor in shaping the historical sociopolitical context in the United States has been decentralization. At the time of their independence from England, the 13 original colonies entered the union as largely autonomous entities or “states” — and over time they have guarded this status jealously. In spite of this, over more recent decades, many policy and institutional functions have been centralized at national or federal levels. This trend has been slow at times — and has often been resisted by the states — with occasional attempts to reverse such centralization.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT LEADING TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION FRAMEWORK AND THE FOREST SERVICE
Throughout the nineteenth century, United States policy encouraged rapid settlement and economic development of its western territory. To accomplish this, a variety of approaches were developed, including transfer of federal (public domain) lands to individual farmers, ranchers and corporations, especially railroad companies that built transportation infrastructure.
After 1850, the population grew rapidly (20 to 25 percent per decade) and settlement of the western territories accelerated. Concerns began to be voiced over some of the environmental and economic implications of rapid development, including: (1) accelerated deforestation (forests were being cleared for agriculture at the rate of almost 3 500 hectares per day); (2) massive wildfires due to logging and land clearing (wildfires annually razed 8 to 20 million hectares); (3) extensive areas of “cut-over” land or “stump lands” remained unstocked or poorly stocked with trees for decades (estimated at 32.5 million hectares in 1920); (4) significant soil erosion by wind and water in some places; and (5) major wildlife depletion due to commercial hunting and subsistence use (Trefethen 1975; Williams 1989; MacCleery 1992). It was gradually recognized that these conditions were jeopardizing future economic development, as well as being concerns in their own right.
Revitalizing Science in a Risk-Averse Culture: Reflections on the Syndrome and Prescriptions for Its Cure
G. H. Pollack. 2005. Revitalizing Science in a Risk-Averse Culture: Reflections on the Syndrome and Prescriptions for Its Cure. Cellular and Molecular Biology 51, 815-820
Gerald Pollack is Professor of Molecular Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in the Dept. of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle WA
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
Abstract
This paper considers problems with the scientific culture and granting systems, the most important of which is an aversion to risk. Grant awards tend to be “safe” rather than bold. This discourages the fresh approaches that may bring important breakthroughs. The paper then suggests remedies that could restore the scientific enterprise to one that is friendlier to fresh thinking.
Preface
The thoughts contained herein arise in part from my experience as a frequent dissenter from prevailing orthodoxy, and in part from my experiences attending workshops convened to address problems with granting systems. Inevitably, such experiences generate ideas. In this case, they have brought modest insights into how granting systems might better serve transformative approaches that challenge the status quo. At present, such approaches have little chance of success. Yet they are the very ones that could bring spectacular advances.
Here, I outline the problems as I see them with today’s system of doing science, and their etiology. I also suggest remedies that could enhance scientists’ natural proclivity to seek the truth. Some of these thoughts have been passed on to the funding agencies in the context of campaigns designed to make the peer-review system more responsive to highly innovative, “out of the box” approaches.
Bushfires, Prescribed Burning, and Global Warming
Roger Underwood, David Packham, and Phil Cheney. 2008. Bushfires, Prescribed Burning, and Global Warming. Bushfire Front Inc. Occasional Paper No 1, April 2008 [here]
Roger Underwood is a former General Manager of the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger currently directs a consultancy practice with a focus on bushfire management and is Chairman of The Bushfire Front Inc.. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.
David Packham is Senior Research Fellow, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Victoria.
Phil Cheney is Honorary Research Fellow, CSIRO, Canberra, ACT
Full text:
This is not a paper about climate change or the contentious aspects of the climate debate. Our interest is bushfire management. This is an activity into which the debate about climate change, in particular “global warming”, has intruded, with potentially damaging consequences.
Australia’s recent ratification of the Kyoto Treaty has been welcomed by people concerned about the spectre of global warming. However, the ratification was a political and symbolic action, and will have no immediate impact on the volume of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, and therefore will not influence any possible relationship between CO2 emissions and global temperatures.
However, the ratification could have an impact on Australian forests. Spurious arguments about the role of fire contributing to carbon dioxide emissions could be used to persuade governments and management agencies to cease or very much reduce prescribed burning under mild conditions.
Decades of research and experience has demonstrated that fuel reduction by prescribed burning under mild conditions is the only proven, practical method to enable safe and efficient control of high-intensity forest fires.
Two myths have emerged about climate change and bushfire management and are beginning to circulate in the media and to be adopted as fact by some scientists:
1. Because of global warming, Australia will be increasingly subject to uncontrollable holocaust-like “megafires”.
2. Fuel reduction by prescribed burning must cease because it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus exacerbating global warming and the occurrence of megafires.
Both statements are incorrect. However they represent the sort of plausible-sounding assertions which, if repeated often enough, can take on a life of their own and lead eventually to damaging policy change.
Watershed Response to Western Juniper Control
Timothy L. Deboodt. 2008. Watershed Response to Western Juniper Control. Dissertation for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Rangeland Ecology and Management, Oregon State University, presented on May 8, 2008.
Full text [here] (4.6 MB)
Abstract:
Western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) encroachment has been associated with increased soil loss and reduced infiltration resulting in the loss of native herbaceous plant communities and the bird and animal species that rely on them. Hydrologically, however, change in water yield has been linked with the amount of annual precipitation a site received. Studies published in the 1970’s and 1980’s, suggest that a minimum 450 mm (18 inches) of annual precipitation was necessary before an increase in water yield manifested itself following vegetation manipulation.
In 1993, a paired watershed study was initiated in the Camp Creek drainage, a tributary of the Crooked River of central Oregon, to evaluate the impacts of cutting western juniper on the hydrologic function of those sites. The study involved a paired watershed approach using watersheds of approximately 110 hectares (270 acres) each to evaluate changes in a system’s water budget following the reduction of western juniper.
The 30 year average annual precipitation for the area is 350 mm (13.75) and during the study period, annual precipitation ranged from 80 percent to 129 percent of average. In 2005, following 12 years of pretreatment monitoring in the 2 watersheds (Mays and Jensen) all post-European aged juniper (juniper < 140 years of age) were cut from the treatment watershed (Mays).
Analysis indicated that juniper reduction significantly increased late season spring flow by 225 percent (alpha > .05), increased days of recorded ground water by an average of 41 days (alpha > .05) and increased the relative availability of late season soil moisture at soil depths of .76 m (27 inches) (alpha > 0.1).
Reconstructing the Fire History of the Jarrah Forest of south-western Australia
David Ward and Gerard Van Didden. 1997. Reconstructing the Fire History of the Jarrah Forest of south-western Australia. A Report to Environment Australia under the Regional Forest Agreement December 1997.
David Ward is Senior Research Scientist, Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) in Western Australia and Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Curtin University, Perth
Gerard Van Didden is a Retired Department of Conservation and Land Management officer
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
Introduction
… The jarrah forest is a complicated system, involving humans for thousands of years. Anthropologists tell us of the importance of fire in Aboriginal culture, and there is historical evidence in the letters and journals of early European explorers of south-western Australia that fires occurred as frequently as every 2-4 years, at least in some parts. …
This study reconstructs fire history from marks on the stems of grasstrees (Xanthorrhoea spp). This information meshes with the broad perspectives of history and anthropology, giving a framework within which we can link the concerns of biologists, soil scientists, fire fighters, and managers. In turn, the framework can be used to create a map of consciously linked research questions, relevant to management of the jarrah forest. …
Methods
Grasstree (Xanthorrhoea spp) stems were cleaned with a grinder, so exposing cream and brown growth rings (Ward 1996), which match with internal growth bumps (Lamont and Downes 1979). The grinding also exposed some bands of dark pigment in the old leaf bases. These dark bands occurred consistently at points on the stems where fires were known from CALM records to have occurred; and where fires were likely to have occurred, since the grasstree had flowered at that point. …
Xanthorrhoea thorntonii. Photo courtesy Department of Conservation and Land Management [here]
Some leafbases were carefully removed, washed in alcohol, and cut into 1 centimetre pieces measured from the proximal end. The length of leafbase can vary from tree to tree due to burning away by past fires (Drummond 1847). In this case each leafbase gave 5 pieces. Each year showed the twin band of cream and brown leafbases shown in Figure 1, and these were separated, giving a hundred samples for the decade. These samples were analysed by pyrolysis gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to identify the dark pigment (Challinor 1989, 1995). They were also analysed for zinc, calcium, magnesium, manganese and copper. …
Australian Bushfire Management: a case study in wisdom versus folly
Roger Underwood. 2009. Australian Bushfire Management: a case study in wisdom versus folly
Roger Underwood is a renowned Australian forester with fifty years experience in bushfire management and bushfire science. He has worked as a firefighter, a district and regional manager, a research manager and senior government administrator. He is Chairman of The Bushfire Front, an independent professional group promoting best practice in bushfire management.
One man’s wisdom is another’s folly – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many years ago, still a young man, I watched for the first time the grainy, flickering black and white film of the British infantry making their attack on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. The stark and terrible footage shows the disciplined soldiers climbing from their trenches and, in line abreast, walking slowly across no-man’s land towards the enemy lines. They scarcely travel a few paces before the German machine gunners open up. They are mown down in their thousands. They are chaff before a wind of fire.
I can still remember being struck nerveless by these images, and later my anger when I realised what that calamitous carnage represented. It spoke of the deep incompetence of the Generals who devised this strategy of doom and then insisted upon its implementation. It spoke of front-line men led by people without front-line experience. It spoke of battle planners unable to think through the consequences of their plans, and who devalued human lives. It spoke of a devastating failure of the human imagination.
Worst of all, the strategies of the World War I Generals demonstrated that they had not studied, or that they had forgotten, the lessons of history. In the final year of the American Civil war, 50 years earlier, the Union army had been equipped for the first time with Springfield repeating rifles, replacing the single shot muskets they had previously used and still were being used by the Confederate army. The impact on Confederate soldiers attacking defenders armed with repeating rifles was identical to that later inflicted by machine guns on the Western Front. But it was a lesson unlearnt, of collective wisdom unregarded.
None of you will have any difficulty in seeing where this analogy is taking me.
The catastrophic bushfires in Victoria this year, and the other great fires of recent years in Victoria, New South Wales, the ACT and South Australia are dramatic expressions not just of killing forces unleashed, but of human folly. No less than the foolish strategies of the World War I Generals, these bushfires and their outcomes speak of incompetent leadership and of failed imaginations. Most unforgivable of all, they demonstrate the inability of people in powerful and influential positions to profit from the lessons of history and to heed the wisdom of experience.
