I study the way that forests and communities create stable and enduring environments.
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Aug 8 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
"We're environmentalists. We're not loggers." Dja Dja Wurrung elder Gary Murray.
That's "offensive and racist". Spokesperson for "Healthy Forests" set up by previous CEO of VicForests to log Dja Dja Wurrung country.
What's going on? 1/ abc.net.au/news/2024-08-0…
Dja Dja Wurrung traditional owners are concerned that land has been returned to them dense with young trees instead of widely-spaced older trees. Foresters are telling them the widely-spaced forest can be brought back by mechanical thinning. Here's the issue 2/
May 11 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
In 2022 we showed from WA Government records that their prescribed burning program was creating a more fire-prone landscape. They dismissed the findings, but their reasons turned out to massively *strengthen* our conclusions (new paper here).
1/🧵iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…
Once we accounted for the Government concerns, their records showed that long-unburnt forests had such low fire risk that every prescribed burning block would have to be burned *every year* to make them less flammable than they had been in a long-unburnt state. What happened?
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Jan 22 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Our new study shows that disturbance makes a very wide range of forests and woodlands more flammable. Problem is, we think of disturbance as "management". 1/9 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/br…
People are broadly aware that forests with a dense understorey will burn more severely than those with open understoreys. The question is how we get there. The answer depends on how well we understand the way a forest works.
2/9
Sep 13, 2023 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
It is not "safe" to conduct these prescribed burns, here is why. 1/8 theguardian.com/australia-news…
This graph shows smoke exposure from prescribed burns in 2016. 14 people died because of the smoke on the 6 shaded days, where PM2.5 reached ~50 micro-g/m3. It more than doubled that maximum in Randwick 2 days ago. 2/8 mja.com.au/journal/2016/2…
May 11, 2023 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
Why is this prescribed burning program unscientific, and how do we change course?
1/16 abc.net.au/news/2023-05-1…
The core of the issue lies in the fact that Departmental spokespeople say prescribed burns make it easier to fight fire, but their own records show overwhelmingly that the least fire occurs in forests they haven't burned.
2/16 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…
Jan 15, 2020 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
Thread: Why the big fires of the past don't make the point that Craig Kelly thinks they do.
Yesterday, Mr Kelly distributed this map from a book I wrote in 2006. I had mapped the 1939 NSW burnt area from witness interviews and old news reports. theaustralianalps.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bushfi…1. 1939 is a good case for Mr Kelly to choose. Judge Stretton in the following Victorian Royal Commission called it "a wicked attempt at state suicide". This was because the fires were all lit by people, not lightning.
