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Lorne will soon be almost completely surrounded by a 40 m wide strip of land containing quite a few trees but little or no undergrowth or surface litter. This is the strategic firebreak. In effect, it is a strip of forest that is being converted to grassy woodland. For those of you who are surprised about having trees in a firebreak, their presence is supported by conceptual modelling backed by experience (for more on this go to the 32:37 minute mark in webinar session 3).

No one is claiming that these breaks will protect us in extremes or from all fires. Nothing will do that. But they are expected to help fire fighters protect property in lesser burns, including planned fires (eg fuel reduction burns) that go astray. They will also make some areas more accessible for fire fighters.

For a list of firebreak maps for the whole Surf Coast click here, for Lorne only click here. The information sheet for Lorne includes an invitation to inspect work and contact addresses.

The fire authorities are also attempting to reduce the likelihood of access roads becoming impassable during fires by selectively felling trees along the Deans Marsh and Great Ocean Roads.

Fire management, a personal view

Probably most of us accept that ‘the protection of human life [in bushfires] is paramount’. What is next most important? Like Kevin Tolhurst (52 min, session 2), I have reservations about the ascendancy of property protection over environmental considerations.

I can’t find an official document that rates property ahead of environment (which is not to say one does not exist), but it’s not hard to see why property always ends up as our prime concern. Its loss is easily costed, environmental loss is not. Property loss has obvious and immediate consequences, environmental loss may not (for humans anyway). It is easier to think about property protection than to undertake the expensive and time consuming monitoring needed to understand what happens to biodiversity (4:30 min session 1). And yet Victorians cite the natural environment as being the thing we value most about the coast (for 2018 survey results click here).

If we are serious about addressing the risks fire poses for the natural environment (and human life and property), then we have to be serious about mitigating the root cause of the worsening situation.

As all the webinar speakers agreed, that cause is climate change (for Lorne climate trends 28:20 min, session 1). Not only do we have to mitigate change,  we also have to adapt to our situation as it is now or soon will be.

Unfortunately mitigation and adaptation do not necessarily go hand in hand. Take the firebreaks. By adding a layer of protection they go some way to counteracting the enhanced risk we are already experiencing, and in that sense they are adaptations to climate change. But their creation also reduces the amount of carbon stored in the forest and releases some of it to the atmosphere as greenhouse gases. The opposite of mitigation. In other words, and taken in isolation, dealing with the symptoms will make the disease worse.

Unless, that is, we take compensatory action. Forests can be a source of greenhouse gases or a way of capturing them from the atmosphere and storing them for the long-term. The issue of carbon capture and storage is broader than the firebreaks. It involves our forest management in totality. Has action been taken to compensate for the emissions created by the firebreaks and other fire management practices? As far as I can tell potential impacts have been pigeonholed as too small to bother with and left undefined.

Surely this judgement that small acts are inconsequential is misguided. Collectively they are undoubtedly consequential. Who is responsible for the collective effect? Is it no one? Or is it those responsible for each small act?

Wondering just how small is ‘small’, I sat down to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to answer the question ‘how much carbon dioxide will be generated by the creation of the strategic firebreaks around Lorne?’ Four hours (and two spreadsheets) later my estimate was that the release would be the equivalent of 20,000 return trips from Lorne to Melbourne in a light vehicle. Is this insignificant? Is it more than compensated for by additional capture in other parts of the forest? I don’t think we know. No one seems to be asking this sort of question in the depth needed (an envelope will not do).

Although many aspects of bushfires are outside our control, there is also a sense in which we get what we deserve. If we just go along with what seems ‘obvious’, we will be in trouble. Severe fires are NOT most likely in old forests, long unburnt and containing lots of undergrowth and standing dead trees. They are more likely in young forests recovering from relatively recent burns (13:06 min, session1). Is the same true of old growth and mountain ash forests in the Otways? What about our other types of forest? 

We have to pay attention to our own backyards, but we should also support our fire authorities and public institutions by making sure they have what they need to ask questions, gather evidence and apply findings to forest management. Why are we not hearing about post-COVID-19 jobs in environmental research and management? How can we ensure the environment gets its share of the job creation pie?

Mary Lush

Mary is a member of the committee revising an Australian forestry standard, AS4708