Mount Evelyn environmentalist Franc Smith.
By Casey Neill
INCREASED fuel reduction burns are “tantamount to draining the ocean after a shark attack”, according to Yarra Ranges’ 2010 Environmentalist of the Year Franc Smith.
The Mount Evelyn Environment Protection and Progress Association (MEEPPA) president last week commented on the State Government’s response to the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission final recommendations.
Mr Smith said human safety was obviously paramount but questioned the plan to invest $382.4 million to more than double fuel reduction over the next four years to 275,000 hectares.
The State Government will then review the program and scale up to its 385,000 hectare target over the following two years.
“I have become fearful for our forests and the bio-diversity they demonstrate,” Mr Smith said.
“Will they really be able to sustain such a pattern of expansive continuous burning, and such a transformational assault?”
Mr Smith said an area nearly half the size of Gippsland would have been put to the flame just over four years from now, and an area larger than Port Phillip two years later.
“All of this within the same ‘window of opportunity’ which exists now,” he said.
“And which of necessity will have to be larger fires and which will mean multiple burns on the same day in many regions.”
Mr Smith is also on the Yarra Ranges Council Technical Reference Group on Open Air Burning.
“I just cannot see how this is going to be achieved without a massive community campaign and oxygen tanks available in every country town or even suburb,” he said.
“In all my travels throughout the bush I have not yet found a self combusting tree.
“The vegetation should be seen merely as the ‘medium’ – it was never the cause.”
Mr Smith welcomed a new high-visibility arson operation on high bushfire risk days.
“But education appears not in any way to be associated with this laudable response,” he said.
He said education would be one of the most effective and proactive tools in combating arson, “to identify programs before they begin”.
