How 1970s conservation laws turned Australia into a tinderbox

Bush fire

Hardly a surprising conclusion in this research. A classic example of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
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Southeast Australia’s bushfire crisis culminated in the devastating bushfire season of 2019 and 2020 that burnt nearly 25 million hectares of bush, says Phys.org.

Our new research demonstrates how the scale of this disaster blew out due to legislation introduced in the 1970s, which was based on idea that nature should be left to grow freely without human intervention.

We investigated the bushfire history of one of the worst hit areas: Buchan on Gunaikurnai Country in Victoria.

We found no bushfires burned there for almost a century until the mid 1970s, following the establishment of the Land Conservation Act of 1970—legislation that sought to protect the Australian bush from humans.

This legislation banned farmers from mimicking Aboriginal burning practices by using frequent fires to promote grass for livestock. As a result, the amount of flammable trees and shrubs exploded in the region.

It was only after this prohibition on burning that catastrophic bushfires became an issue in the Buchan area.

The prolonged neglect of southeast Australian forests under the guise of conservation means our forests now carry dangerous levels of fuels. This creates the conditions in which climate-driven bushfires become megafires, devastating Country and people’s lives.

Full article here.
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Related — in California ‘roughly 127 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent…were released by the state’s 2020 wildfires…[The] draft 2022 Scoping Plan…urges state and federal authorities to drastically increase the thinning and treatment of forests that have become dangerously overgrown with flammable vegetation.’