SOS Forests

A Mournful Day

by Phil Maguire, Bundarrah Days, Feb. 22, 2009 [here]

TODAY was our National Day of Mourning for Black Saturday. It was a dignified and impressive service, I thought, and it brought Australians together in sorrow in a way that made everyone who saw it feel part of the occasion.

I was particularly touched by the Aboriginal contribution. It was a day that should not have dawned any differently to any normal day. It was an occasion we should never had have had to have.

Just as bad generals lose soldiers and wars bad government and bureaucracies lose citizens to needless tragedies. We can trace the tragedy of Black Saturday back to the premiership of Steve Bracks. Four times in six years Victoria has suffered major bushfires causing deaths and massive property and asset losses.

This is due to the mad green policies of the Bracks Government and the ignorance of its leader. Steve Bracks was, to put it mildly, the most stupid man ever to lead Victoria. Was there ever an issue he actually understood? It is John Brumby’s sheer misfortune that this tragedy should take place on his watch because of all the Victorian ALP he was the one most likely to repair the damage caused by his predecessor.

We’re still counting the cost of Black Saturday in human terms. 209 people confirmed dead, including many children, and many more to be be confirmed. Our family was contacted by the police again yesterday making sure we had escaped. Before long we will be counting the environmental cost.

Fires are still burning in Melbourne’s water catchments and this is yet another tragedy in the making. Burnt forests not only affect water quality - as they regrow they absorb far more more water than mature forests adversely affecting water yield.

Some experts have forecast that a serious burning of Melbourne’s catchments could mean a loss of up to 50 per cent in water yield. This in itself is disastrous. Melbourne is already stealing water from north-eastern Victoria.

As I write this the forecast for tomorrow has temperatures in the mid 30’s with strong northerly winds. The fire danger is again critical. Around 4 million hectares of Victoria’s forested country has now been burnt since 2003 so there is not much left to burn.

But what is left of our neglected forests will burn fiercely in the right conditions. Let hope that communities like Warburton escape the fate of Marysville, Kinglake, Flowerdale, Calignee, Narbethong and the rest.

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Criminal Negligence

Feb 11, 2009

IT is believed that one in five people in my old town of Marysville are dead.

Saturday, February 7 2009, will be remembered in Australian history as a day of the greatest infamy - a day that dwarfed the preceding bushfire tragedies of Black Thursday, 1851, Black Friday, 1939 and Ash Wednesday 1983.

The Victorian environment is no longer a game board for political greens and expediency minded politicians with votes on their minds.

It is a killing field where Victorians have been sacrificed on the altar of green environmentalism that was sold to them as a saviour and ended up being their executioner.

For eight years I conducted horse tours in the bush around Marysville. I know it better than most because I didn’t stick to tracks - wherever possible I took people directly through the bush, interpreting it and educating them in its ways.

I knew very well that those forests were about to burn and what a terrible toll they would take when they did. I tried, but not well enough, to change things.

About six years ago I resigned as a committee member of Marysville Tourism because it adopted an anti-logging stance and aligned itself with a radical green group which later organised a logging blocked in the area. At the time the group president was the manager of a well known guest house which now lies a burnt out ruin in the main street.

At the time I wrote an article for the local district newsheet, The Triangle, going into the background of the fire regime in Victoria’s forests and how it had changed dangerously.

What little things I could do, I did. So did my friends - people like Bob Richardson of Push For The Bush, Graeme and Wendy Stoney, Charlie Lovick and Doug and Christa Treasure.

I put my cattle back on the high plains in defiance of Bracks and Thwaites. I told whoever would listen of the danger. I still have cattle in the Alpine National Park because I am not going to surrender to the criminals who have cost us the lives of so many people.

What I and my friends did was not enough. We should have barnstormed Victorian towns and spread the message far and wide. We failed. I promise you we won’t fail again.

First on my list is Bruce Esplin, Victoria’s disaster commissioner whom I labelled on this blog as Victoria’s Commissioner for Future Disasters. Could I have bestowed on him a more accurate title?

Esplin’s head must roll. The decision making bureacrats in Parks Victoria and DSE must face the axeman too. They should be charged with criminal negligence.

It’s not as if no one knew of the rapidly growing and deadly danger. Tolkien wrote of the evil that was arising in Middle Earth, similarly anyone with experience of the Victorian bush knew the danger that was growing in our forests.

Scientists like David Packham, Athol Hodgson and Peter Attiwill did their utmost to help Victoria avoid last Saturday but the government wasn’t listening.

In the final analysis this tragedy has not come without a lesson. Where are the massive fires one would expect to be burning right across the forests of the Victorian High Country right now. There was no lack of ignition factors, particularly on a day that reached 47C and featured heavy northerly winds.

That the vast majority of country that was burned in 2003 and 2006-07 is not burning now is not a matter of luck. It’s because there is a reduced fuel load.

Australians have been lied to consistently by radical greens and their political friends. Now, it’s no longer a matter of debate over forest management - it’s a question of justice for all those who have died and every family who has lost a loved one.