WA volunteer bush firefighters will only support rural fire service independent of Department of Fire and Emergency Services
WA volunteer bush firefighters will only support rural fire service independent of Department of Fire and Emergency Services
24 June 2016
published by www.abc.net.au
Australia– The WA Association of Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades says a rural fire service would only work if it operated as a separate entity to the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) because of cultural differences.
The establishment of a rural fire service was one of the main recommendations of an inquiry into January’s Yarloop/Waroona bushfire, lead by former head of the Victorian Country Fire Authority Euan Ferguson.
The report was tabled in State Parliament in Perth.
Dave Gossage, president of the Western Australian Association of Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades, said there would always be a “cultural divide between paid and volunteer” firefighters.
“That’s not saying we don’t work well together, because we do, believe you me we work exceptionally well together on the ground,” he said.
“But the fundamental difference is the paid people in the city work on a structure of command and control versus the volunteer organisations that work on a culture of trust and respect.
“When you have those two culturally different paradigms you can’t put the trust and respect one under a structure of command and control because history has repeatedly shown that they fail.”
Mr Gossage did not support the introduction of a rural fire service under the authority of the DFES.
He said a fear culture had developed under the current structure in WA and that had to change.
“The issues coming out of the Esperance fires and all the big fires from previous years and certainly the Waroona fire is we weren’t allowed to make a decision,” he said.
“That common theme that we couldn’t take a bulldozer on there because we didn’t have permission from Perth.
“Those sorts of comments say to me that we have disempowered our community and taken away the ability of good, common sense decision-making from the local level.
“That should never, ever occur and it has to the point where we have almost created a fear culture that nobody wants to make a decision because they are frightened they might get into trouble.”
The WA Farmers Federation want more localised response
WA Farmers’ Federation executive policy officer Grady Powell said under the current structure it took too long for critical firefighting decisions to be made.
“The Euan Ferguson report showed that prescribed burning hasn’t been done,” he said.
“There’s a backlog of 12 years that needs to be caught up with, and with these fuel loads there we’re really putting not just our farmers but the small towns like Yarloop and Waroona in real danger.
“So we hope that having someone who is responsible for fire mitigation living in the areas, they can apply the best needs for the purpose that they see fit.
“If we’re looking at the report that was handed down, Euan Ferguson has been quite upfront in saying that there has been a disjoint between the firies, the incident managers and the superiors in Perth overseeing any response.
“I think if we’re talking about a system, I don’t want to use the word broken but it can’t be far off that, I think the best way forward is to try a new fit, and I think that new fit probably is a country fire service where we can really look after the fires and localise that with personnel.
“Hopefully what we’ll see is a quicker reaction as well, so these fires will be put out quickly, rather than waiting for decisions to be made by those in Perth, by that time when those decisions are made a fire may have escalated.” New Research on the California spotted owl has found that severely burned forests that have not been post-fire salvage logged are used by the threatened raptor when foraging for their small mammal prey. Stand-replacing fires, also called crown fires or high-intensity fires, do not harm spotted owl foraging habitat.
“We looked at spotted owl foraging behavior at multiple spatial extents and we found that whatever scale we used, the owls foraged in severely burned unlogged forests in proportion to their availability. In other words, they foraged in burned forest with the same likelihood as in unburned forest.” said Monica Bond, lead author of the study.
Wildfires over the past two decades have affected southern California spotted owl habitat to a greater extent than elsewhere in the range of the subspecies. From 2003 to 2007, spotted owl territories in the region were especially affected by wildfire, with more than 40% of 168 breeding sites in the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains experiencing at least one fire.
“These frequent and hot fires make southern California forests a good indicator of what may happen in more northerly forests of California in a warming climate,” said Bond. “Luckily, forests burned by high-severity fire can still be considered suitable foraging habitat for California spotted owls.”
Bond continued, “We also found these spotted owls strongly selected foraging sites close to streambeds, so we recommend implementing protective measures and management activities that conserve water and streamside forests.”
The study was published this week by scientists from the Wild Nature Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity in the Journal of Wildlife Management, a peer-reviewed scientific journal for professional wildlife biologists.
This is the latest in a series of scientific papers that have documented how resilient spotted owls are to high-severity fires, including so-called megafires. Spotted owl pairs have been shown to survive and continue to reproduce in breeding sites that experienced severe fire, even megafire, with success that is the same or higher than unburned sites. Spotted owls have also shown a significant preference for foraging in severely burned forest patches in the Sierra Nevada. However, post-fire salvage logging, also called forest restoration by the US Forest Service, causes site abandonment and reduces survival. Logging in an attempt to reduce the risk of fire, often called thinning or fuels reduction, also has adverse effects on spotted owls. The only studies that claimed forest fires hurt spotted owls have had logging in large portions of the study area.
“It’s high time we stopped managing our forests with the futile and unnecessary goal of stopping severe fires. All the science from the field says fuel buildup and insects don’t make forest fires worse. It is extreme weather like the Santa Anna winds in southern California that push fires to become very large, but we will never be able to stop these weather-driven blazes, so we should not risk our firefighter’s lives out in the wildlands. Instead, we should repurpose the billions of dollars we waste each year fighting wildfires on making structures fire-safe in our forest communities,” said Dr. Derek Lee, a co-author of the study. “Many native plants and animals thrive in the severely burned unlogged forest, and that response tells us that this kind of fire is natural and necessary to the ecology of the forest.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-evidence-forest-threaten-owls.html#jCpNew Research on the California spotted owl has found that severely burned forests that have not been post-fire salvage logged are used by the threatened raptor when foraging for their small mammal prey. Stand-replacing fires, also called crown fires or high-intensity fires, do not harm spotted owl foraging habitat.
“We looked at spotted owl foraging behavior at multiple spatial extents and we found that whatever scale we used, the owls foraged in severely burned unlogged forests in proportion to their availability. In other words, they foraged in burned forest with the same likelihood as in unburned forest.” said Monica Bond, lead author of the study.
Wildfires over the past two decades have affected southern California spotted owl habitat to a greater extent than elsewhere in the range of the subspecies. From 2003 to 2007, spotted owl territories in the region were especially affected by wildfire, with more than 40% of 168 breeding sites in the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains experiencing at least one fire.
“These frequent and hot fires make southern California forests a good indicator of what may happen in more northerly forests of California in a warming climate,” said Bond. “Luckily, forests burned by high-severity fire can still be considered suitable foraging habitat for Californiaspotted owls.”
Bond continued, “We also found these spotted owls strongly selected foraging sites close to streambeds, so we recommend implementing protective measures and management activities that conserve water and streamside forests.”
The study was published this week by scientists from the Wild Nature Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity in theJournal of Wildlife Management, a peer-reviewed scientific journal for professional wildlife biologists.
This is the latest in a series of scientific papers that have documented how resilient spotted owls are to high-severity fires, including so-called megafires. Spotted owl pairs have been shown to survive and continue to reproduce in breeding sites that experienced severe fire, even megafire, with success that is the same or higher than unburned sites. Spotted owls have also shown a significant preference for foraging in severely burned forest patches in the Sierra Nevada. However, post-fire salvage logging, also called forest restoration by the US Forest Service, causes site abandonment and reduces survival. Logging in an attempt to reduce the risk of fire, often called thinning or fuels reduction, also has adverse effects on spotted owls. The only studies that claimed forest fires hurt spotted owls have had logging in large portions of the study area.
“It’s high time we stopped managing our forests with the futile and unnecessary goal of stopping severe fires. All the science from the field says fuel buildup and insects don’t make forest fires worse. It is extreme weather like the Santa Anna winds in southern California that push fires to become very large, but we will never be able to stop these weather-driven blazes, so we should not risk our firefighter’s lives out in the wildlands. Instead, we should repurpose the billions of dollars we waste each year fighting wildfires on making structures fire-safe in our forest communities,” said Dr. Derek Lee, a co-author of the study. “Many native plants and animals thrive in the severely burned unlogged forest, and that response tells us that this kind offire is natural and necessary to the ecology of theforest.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-evidence-forest-threaten-owls.html#jCp
