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FORESTRY Australia has appointed two new cochairs to lead its Future Foresters Initiative Committee. Alannah Rowe and David Faluyi will head up the committee made up of young forestry professionals and forest science students which aims to support career growth and foster the next generation of forestry leaders. Ms Rowe and Mr Faluyi replace outgoing co-chairs Pat McCarthy and Tegan Brown. Paull retires Damian Paull has retired as CEO of the Forest Stewardship Council Australia and New Zealand after three years in the role. Patricia Fitzsimons will be taking the reigns as the newly appointed Acting CEO of FSC ANZ. Wind turbines INSTALLING wind turbines in just five sites in State-owned pine plantations could generate up to 2.5 gigawatts of energy a year, a registration of interest process has revealed, prompting Forestry Corporation to formally call for Expressions of Interest to develop renewable energy generation and storage in plantations near Oberon, Sunny Corner, Bondo, Orange and Laurel Hill. Forestry Corporation Strategy and Risk Manager Gavin Jeffries said close to 50 providers responded to a Registration of Interest process, identifying enormous potential to boost renewable energy production in NSW and power over 1.5 million homes annually. Carbon trading AMENDMENTS to Western Australia’s Forest Products Act 2000 that will allow the Forest Products Commission to trade in carbon assets has passed through State Parliament. Until now, the FPC’s functions were restricted to dealing with forest products, which are defined to mean trees, parts of trees and similar products. The statutory expansion of the FPC’s functions under the new legislation, will now grant the FPC the right to own, trade and otherwise deal with carbon assets. 10
Bushfire policy must be driven by science, not politics Philip Hopkins
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USHFIRE policy needs to be driven by rigorous science underpinning politics if the landmark federal-state national bushfire management strategy is to be successful, according to one of the nation’s leading bushfire experts. Dr Kevin Tolhurst, AM, Associated Professor of Fire Ecology and Management at Melbourne University, said fire management was dominated by alternate paths based on politics and science. “Political has dominated the fire world for several decades and is based on perceptions and beliefs,” he said. Being popular and understood was important, as was being accepted by the public through royal commissions, public inquiries, government reviews and the media. “But the political approach has major problems with long-term vision and solutions to long term issues,” he said. Dr Tolhurst was presenting a paper ‘Turning the National Bushfire Management Policy Statement into Reality’ at a recent three-day conference in Melbourne on ‘Fire and Climate’. The conference was presented by the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF) in partnership with Natural Hazards Research Australia, which is building
on the work of its predecessor Cooperative Research Centres, the Bushfire CRC and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. Dr Tolhurst said the statement for national bushfire management had been agreed to by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in 2014. It was comprehensive and included a vision, principles, four strategic objectives and 14 national goals – “a national consistent vision of what fire management should look like”. Dr Tolhurst said unlike politics, the approach of science was based on evidence, known assumptions, with the process repeatable and objective. “You can have both, but policy needs to be science driven” and spelt out to politicians, the public and media. “The science process shows what we know of the world. It is not based on thoughts and opinions, which does dominate some science,” he said. Some peer-reviewed papers in scientific literature did not “cut the mustard” and were “very poor from a scientific point of view”. Dr Tolhurst said sciencebased management was needed to change beliefs – “to make sure we have a social licence so that we are trusted, and can justify to
ourselves what we are doing, garner necessary support in terms of dollars and people to implement the management strategy”. “We also need to progressively increase the skills and the knowledge of outcomes we are trying to achieve. We need clear direction.” This included key performance indicators (KPIs) measured on an annual basis and “that you can report on publicly”. Dr Tolhurst said analysing the forest through more local natural fire catchment units was one way to achieve this. Such fire landscape units were not administrative areas on a map, but smaller, natural units for planning, managing and reporting on the policy. These fire catchments may have some naturally lower fire frequency due to a gully, ridgetop, or rocky outcrop. “Fire tends to stay within those catchments, although not always,” he said, citing specific areas in the Highlands, Glenmaggie and Avon in Central and West Gippsland within Victoria. Analysing these units would be a way to gauge the progress of the bushfire strategy Dr Tolhurst said impediments to a successful bushfire management policy included a social and political focus on response and recovery, not prevention, preparedness and fire re-
Australian Forests & Timber News August 2022
• Dr Kevin Tolhurst. gime management. “It’s like trying to improve public health by buying more ambulances,” he said. Individuals, communities and agencies all had a specific role to play in fire management. “However, the role of professional groups, such as IAWF and Forestry Australia, is to set the professional standards and communicate them to governments and the public,” he said. Dr Tolhurst said our scientific knowledge always exceeded the level of practice. “It is not more research that is needed, but greater efforts to use the knowledge we have,” he said. Research did not provide all knowledge but could deliver valuable insights and guides to future directions. “Adaptive management, properly used, uses a scientific approach (evidencebased) to management in a way that we ‘learn by doing’ to continually improve management outcome.” Dr Tolhurst said the implementation of policy needed to be done incrementally but comprehensively. “It needs to be based on good science and be defendable. Achieving the vision requires the national government, states and territories to work together. That’s a big task, but if to make any improvement, we need to work in one direction.”
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