management

News BRIEFS

Future Foresters

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.

Bushfire policy must be driven by science, not politics

Philip Hopkins •Dr Kevin Tolhurst.

BUSHFIRE 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 regime 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.”

Forestry’s future role affirmed

THE role of forest products as industries of the future has been affirmed with the recent announcement of funding from the Australian Research Council for new research hubs and training centres.

Acting CEO of the Australian Forest Products Association Victor Violante said this funding highlights the essential role being played by forest industries in delivering clean and smart solutions for big challenges including addressing climate change and developing next generation products and processes for the building and construction industries.

“Timber is the ultimate renewable and low-emission building material for the 21st century, so it’s terrific the Federal Government through the ARC is backing innovation particularly for next generation engineered wood products and architectural design with advanced manufacturing,” Mr Violante said.

“As Australia looks for ways to reach net zero by 2050, timber in the built environment must be part of that plan. Wood products store carbon over their lifetime meaning that our houses and other buildings can be a massive positive carbon sink.

“It’s also why it is crucial that Australia secures future fibre supplies to meet its needs in coming decades, and that we prioritise the Billion Trees Plan.”

Funding for the research hubs and training centres – including an Advance Timber for Australia’s Future Built Environment Hub – is provided through the ARC’s Industrial Transformation Research Program. In 2022 critical industry priorities included advanced manufacturing, agribusiness and recycling and clean energy.

The ARC funding complements other recent commitments to innovation for the sector including the establishment of a $100 million National Institute for Forest Products Innovation and the $300 million Timber Building Program through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Fire and rain – we need to get our act together

Philip Hopkins

WITH climate change set to drive bigger and hotter bushfires, much more money needs to be spent on preparations to mitigate against fires in the first place, according to Climate Councillor, Greg Mullins.

Mr Mullins, the former Commissioner of Fire & Rescue NSW, said the fire agencies com-munity needed to “band together to make a bigger pie” instead of “fighting for the crumbs on the table”.

“It’s time for the fire management sector to band together and argue the case for a mas-sive increase in the budget across fire research. Up to 97 per cent of spending is on re-sponse and rebuilding during and after events, and only three per cent on preparation and mitigation. That mismatch needs to be turned around but not at the expense of insufficient current operational budgets,” he said.

Mr Mullins was making the keynote address at a recent three-day conference in Melbourne on ‘Fire and Climate’. It was presented by the International Association of Wildland Fire 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.

Mr Mullins said unfortunately, current fire management continued to have a clash of cul-tures between foresters, fire fighters, land managers and scientists. “These should be com-plementary, not competing. There should be no endless, pointless arguments about who is responsible,” he said. “In particular, we need clarity on future strategies on prescribed burning as it will become even more vital.”

The likelihood of hotter and drier summers through climate change was reducing the oppor-tunities to burn safely. “It’s either too wet or too hot and windy. Fires under extremely catastrophic conditions burn over most recent hazard reduced areas,” he said. “Progressively fire-prone weather is likely to make prescribed burning less effective into the future. What do we do? This is one of the only major tools. Some research is contradictory - thinning, the effects of logging, fire spread, self-thinning of old growth, reduction around human assets (communities) as the most effective approach in the future. We need to get together for the best guidance for people out there trying to deal with this.”

Mr Mullins was scathing on the performance of the Morrison Government regarding cli-mate change and climate policies. The new Government, backed by the teals and Greens, offered the chance of a reset in policy.

“Fire management leaders can now speak out on the dangers of climate change and fire. They could be powerful and encourage the Government to do more,” he said.

Massive action could lead to a massive increase in funding, the development of new tech-nologies in detection, rapid response and investment in remote area fire detection capabili-ties.

“Every fire starts small. There should be a focus on finding them and jumping on them be-fore they get too big. Part of that focus must be in reaching broad agreement on prescribed burning and how to optimise and protect properties,” he said.

“That also includes work with cultural burning experts to remove the many institutional bar-riers to heal and protect Country. There is strong resistance from some government agen-cies and a plethora of risk-averse rules.”

Mr Mullins said the bottom line was that things on a human scale had changed for the worse forever and would only continue to worsen. “Hotter, drier, wilder weather will con-tinue to drive bigger, hotter fires, with a focus on preparation. Some communities will need to be moved out of harm’s way,” he said. Bigger budgets and more in the fire space should be allied with community-led response programs.

Science needed to be trusted more by fire emergency agencies, whose warnings had been ignored in the past. “Some people don’t like hearing bad news. The chronic lack of funding is only patching up the system as conditions continue to worsen,” he said.

Mr Mullins said the Australian Climate Service, a formal recommendation of the Common-wealth Royal Commission RC, could be a strongly entity to conduct detailed, down-scale climate weather modelling. State and territory agencies responsible for emergency man-agement could use this more confidently prepare for future.

“Frankly, I’m not sure what ACS has delivered so far,” he said. It appeared caught in a tug of war between the Bureau of Meteorology, the CSIRO and Geo Science Australia. “Perhaps it should be placed in more neutral spot, such as the new Climate Change Authority when it is formed. It would have a clear mandate to deliver outputs to states and territories for fires driven by extreme weather never before experienced by human beings,” he said.

Mr Mullins, who began fighting fires with his father in 1971, said fighting fires in NSW in the past was based on observations and generally panned out in a predictable way. “I still re-member after the 1994 fires, my Dad said, ‘Things have changed, but I’m not sure why but I can’t predict the bad years anymore – the weather is all over the place’. He said that as did other old-timers.”

Mr Mullins said he had decided to speak out against political inertia and denialism regard-ing catastrophic bushfires and climate change fire. “This came at a personal cost and emergency people like me were more than willing to pay given the stakes were so high,” he said.

•Climate Councillor Greg Mullins.