Firestick Ecology: Fairdinkum science in plain English by Vic Jurskis
Foreword by Professor Peter Attiwill, Melbourne University
ISBN: 9781925138740
Paperback, 370 pages – RRP: $34.95
Aborigines came to Australia and burnt out most of the trees and bushes.
The megafauna starved whilst eucalypts, herbs, grasses and mesofauna flourished.
The ancient culture survived an ice age, global warming and hugely rising seas, forging economies in woodlands and deserts.
Europeans doused the firestick, woodlands turned to scrub, mesofauna perished, megafires and tree-eaters irrupted.
Foresters rekindled the firestick and greens stole it.
Megafires and declines are back with a vengeance whilst ecologists dream-up reasons not to burn.
Ecological history shows that we must apply the firestick frequently, willingly and skillfully to restore a healthy, safe environment and economy.
You can buy this book at Connor Court Publishing.
From the book
- Ecologists lacking knowledge and experience of fire behavior, have hijacked Australian fire management.
- Even the mildest sceptic would rightly discount the Angry Summer of 2013, contrived by discarding all temperature data collected prior to 1910.
- Disasters will continue while ever we’re doing research instead of burning.
- Climate hysteria conveniently absolves green academics with a wilderness bent from culpability for the human, environmental and economic disasters that they have visited on Australia through their bad advice to governments on fire management.
- A century after red gum forests came into being, wilderness fanatics from the cities began campaigning to save these ‘iconic natural forests’ from the communities that had created and maintained them.
- River red gum and cypress forestry turned environmental problems into socially, economically and environmentally sustainable industries.
- Australia is currently suffering socioeconomic and environmental chaos because greens and academics have stolen the firestick from pragmatic scientific managers, and they don’t know how to use it.
- The real environmental crisis in Australia is lack of mild fire or grazing or thinning in native vegetation. Megafires, chronic eucalypt decline, pestilence and loss of biodiversity are the consequences.
- To conserve biodiversity and live safely, we need to apply the firestick willingly, frequently and, with practice, skillfully.
- It is certain that man cannot control climate. However, man can eliminate megafires, enhance biodiversity and restore ecological resilience by using the firestick pragmatically and scientifically.
A book review from our readers would be nice, please use the comments option (below).
Having watched the speedy (and thicker-than-before) re-growth of the shrub & bush under the regenerating tree canopy in the Murrindindi area (along the Healesville/Narbethong/Marysville road) following the 2009 firestorm, I wonder why nothing appears to be done about reducing this (surely obvious) risk.
Reading John Mulligan’s letter (published on the VFFA site) confirmed my own perspective about fire management.
Where are the blocks in understanding the action that needs to be taken, and taking it?
Sincerely,
Christine Ryan
I can venture a reason why authorities are not removing fuel. It seems to be because people are now afraid of inhaling particulates in smoke. If you live on the outer urban fringe you cannot burn in June and July, safe months, because particulates with water vapor are apparently worse than those without. It is very frustrating. Particulates with water vapour are fine in August, which can be a wet month.
We are in a tourist area and have neighbors quite close and this is an important consideration. We think that a system of certain days of burning is good. But those of us on large blocks with large trees need more time to clear up at least some of the fuel.
Once again Vic nailed it in his insightful piece in the Winter 2017 edition. He also showed how the RFS has got it so horribly wrong in trying to control fire storms and reacting to wildfire. Returning the bush to the management methods of the aborigine is the only way to get on top of the problem. Sadly, the vested interests of academic grant gougers, green pressure groups, empire building bureaucrats and politicians, have swept away common sense.