www.safirefighter.com
Not really. Its a pretty common theme for NPWS. I've had colleagues on the top of a hill when NPWS have decided to light up the bottom of the hill for no apparent reason.COMMENT: Part of the problem with backburning is taking responsibilty and being 100% sure it is done in a competent and controlled manner. A perfectly predictable but "accidental" fire in the middle of summer becomes no one's responsibility.They are not nicknamed "National Sparks and Wildfires" for no reason.
Try NPWS lighting a backburn when your appliance is in the middle of the scrub chasing a flank, and all your plastic on the appliance melts as a result with the crews screaming CHECK CHECK CHECK on the radio as the fire goes over the top. I have a picture somewhere of the end result :-o
forums.whirlpool.net.au
Regarding recreational small hovercraft...
Running along a beach or a hard surface is fun. I've always wanted to run it on the snow up at perisher valley, but I have fat chance with the National Sparks and Wildfires environmental nazis.
COMMENT: Admittedly the "nazi" word gets used far too loosly these days. It is easy to see that environmentalists are getting themselves a reputation as people who seek to destroy other people's fun and lifestyle. The greens have become neo-puritans in their own way, each trying to outdo the other in living a more pure and impact-chaste life. This will only get worse as carbon tax starts to bite.
www.jennifermarohasy.com
So where does this claim come from? "If the world could halve the rate of global deforestation we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by three billion tonnes a year"For this to be true we would need 6Gt in annual LUC emissions. But from only 1.33Gt at present?
They must have factored in the emissions from a continuation of the broadscale clearfiring by the boys and girls at National Sparks and Wildfires.
COMMENT: Clearly there's a big difference in attitude between green groups believing that too much backburning goes on, and just about everyone else who believes that too little goes on. However, for the purpose of calculating CO2 emission, ALL dead wood will either burn (sooner or later) or rot, releasing exactly the same CO2 under all circumstances. Where else can the carbon go?
www2b.abc.net.au
First I am a country dweller, second I am a conservationist, third I have fought bushfires when they are near us and fourth my cousins lost houses, property and stock in Victoria's fires. My cousin has a well published photo with Kevin Rudd to prove it.So all of your basic assumptions are wrong in my case buddy. I am sick and tired of stupid, ignorant people simply blaming 'greenies' for things they have no hand in. Why not blame government departments who are terrified of fires getting out of control when they light it. They aren't called National Sparks and Wildfires (National Parks and Wildlife) for nothing. That is one of the major factors in Canberra's fires a few years ago. Second, people who build houses in that region need their head read. These forests burn every few years, they know that, and they take the risk. Why they don't have adequate fire shelters is beyond me. My cousin accepts that but says governments approved their housing so should have installed a better disaster management plan. This is also the case for building on flood plains. Thirdly, many conservationists (there are different shades of green mind you) believe that animals are penned in by roads and fences and so cannot escape a fire. Many of those who got through are now counted as road kill. Forests need animals. Once a major fire goes through specific types of forests (such as open sclerophyll), most trees and shrubs will have mechanisms to regenerate. Many of these require animals to assist in the process. This is seriously curtailed without movement of animals back into the forest (roads, cliffs and fences for the memory poor).
COMMENT: Looks like this person is in favour of backburning but doesn't believe that green groups are standing in the way of the backburning, only government incompetence. I'd argue that certainly some greens are trying to block backburning (as per the comment on CO2 emissions above) but government incompetence is also part of the problem. A lose/lose situation really.
www.theherald.com.au
The National Sparks And Wildfires couldnt run a choko vine over an outhouse, they are a joke.
www.exploroz.com
Until 20mths ago we were living in Portland and we used to go camping out there all the time. Funny how the place changes for the worse after national sparks and wildfires take over. More weeds, traffic, rubbish etc and not as many animals around now, I guess too many vehicles.
UPDATE 2008-11-28
A quote about causes of bushfires.
The facts, though, are beyond dispute. In council chambers, green ideologues have prohibited or stymied preventive burning and fined those who dared to clear the land around their homes. In universities, theorists insisted that their research had scuttled all the popular notions that Aborigines once put much of the countryside to the torch. In government departments, a shameful institutional incompetence prevailed. Emergency calls went unanswered, general alerts rather than specific warnings were offered, bureaucratic rivalries and petty jealousies abounded -- all adding fuel to Black Saturday's pyres. And the thing is, there was no excuse, especially that of ignorance.This is from the book, "Inferno; The Day Victoria Burned" by Roger Franklin, although the title really should be "Inferno; The Day Victoria Burned (Again)" .It wasn't as if the bush's propensity to explode was an unknown. Almost since John Batman arrived in Port Phillip in 1835, the forests and grasslands have been going up in smoke. At Melbourne Library, you can examine artist William's lurid depiction of the Black Thursday fires that consumed almost the entire state in 1851, just 16 years after the first humpies went up on what would become the site of modern Melbourne. His painting is a work of kitschy horror, a broad canvas of people and every conceivable animal, native and domestic, all fleeing in white-eyed terror from the flames. If Strutt had included the odd devil and a few infernal imps, it could be taken as a homage to the works of Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, because what he painted is a guide to hell itself.
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