The Growing Menace of Trees 

By Viv Forbes

Australia is threatened by dangerous trees. They have infested our cities, menaced our power lines, invaded our grasslands and fuelled our worst bushfires.

The meander by Cyclone Alfred through south east Queensland illustrated how bad this danger has become.

Big tall trees smashed power lines and over 450,000 people lost their power, some for days; big tall trees crushed cars and closed roads; and in every cyclone big tall trees fall on houses, shops and fences.

Continue reading “The Growing Menace of Trees “

MORE LIES FROM BANDT AND HIS RED BRIGADE


By Cliff Reece

According to Greens leader Adam Bandt, opponents of the Albanese government’s absurd renewables-only strategy are putting lives at risk.

Bandt has lashed the food distributors of Australia for questioning Labor’s renewable energy strategy and claimed they are “putting Australian lives at threat by backing more coal and gas.”

Marxists have always been good at promoting their twisted ideology via propaganda that’s based almost entirely on lies – and Bandt and his Watermelon Warriors (green on the outside/ red on the inside) are no exception.

They work on the basis that everyday Australians are so dumb that we will believe everything they tells us.

His latest rant relates to the Albanese/Bowen government’s bizarre renewables-only energy policy.

Continue reading “MORE LIES FROM BANDT AND HIS RED BRIGADE”

Wildfires – Climate or Criminal?

By Dr Graham Pinn

The year 2024 produced much anguish over fires, with attempts made to blame the regular events on “unprecedented” climate change. The season is just kicking off here but elsewhere, in the Northern winter, things are hotting up early!

Just a few days into January 2025, the season has already started, with a major fire in Los Angeles; typically, the usual “catastrophic” fire season begins around May. Seven fires, including on the iconic Sunset Boulevard, have created significant damage, with tens of thousands evacuated, and only two under control (am 9/01). The city, with a population of 4 million has a massive urban sprawl, resulting in an area 50% bigger than New York.

Continue reading “Wildfires – Climate or Criminal?”

The ‘Aunt Dolly Bushfire System’ is doomed to fail

By Roger Underwood AM

Environmental activists and green academics in Western Australia are pushing the government to make radical changes to bushfire policy and operations. In place of the current approach, which integrates pre-fire mitigation with post-fire response, the activists are pushing for “response only”, otherwise known as ‘the Aunt Dolly Bushfire System’.

Specifically, they want the government to abandon the program of mild-intensity prescribed burning, a strategy aimed at reducing fuel levels in a mosaic pattern across south-west forests so as to make it easier, safer and cheaper to control fires under the worst case scenario situation.

Continue reading “The ‘Aunt Dolly Bushfire System’ is doomed to fail”

Federal Review of Fire and Biodiversity

The Bushfire Front Inc has produced a submission to the Federal government in relation to their inquiry into the impact of fire regimes on biodiversity in Australia.

The paper the government attached to the call for submissions was terrible. If this represents the level of impartial scholarship and understanding of bushfire science in the Commonwealth public service, then the country is in a worse position than I thought.

Please feel free to circulate this submission as you see fit. We regard it as a public document.

Roger Underwood
Chair, The Bushfire Front Inc

Submission document: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/bushfire-front-submission.pdf [PDF, 170 kB]

Use Foresters to Save the Forests

By Viv Forbes

Green extremists plan to convert Australia into “tree heaven”. They will bully this through, no matter what the cost.

Huge areas of forest are already converted to “locked-up-land” – national parks, world heritage areas, Kyoto protected trees, remnant vegetation, aboriginal reserves, wildlife habitat and corridors etc. Many lock-ups are so large and so poorly managed that they have become extreme bushfire hazards and a refuge for wild dogs, cats, goats, camels, pigs, lantana, groundsel and other weeds and pests. Continue reading “Use Foresters to Save the Forests”

When Bushfire Destroyed the Town of Dwellingup

Here is a dramatization of the events surrounding the destruction of the town of Dwellingup in Western Australia in January 1961. It was written and narrated by Roger Underwood. Other voices are provided by professional actors. The stories are by real people, and are taken from Roger Underwood’s book Tempered by Fire.

It was broadcast as three episodes by Perth community radio station Capital Radio FM.

This is a unique production, with real people recalling real events in the real bushfire world. It also has some underlying messages. One of these is that the so-called “unprecedented weather” on the eastern seaboard last summer was nothing new in Australian history at all. Another is the futility of trying to control bushfires burning in heavy fuels under strong winds.

https://www.capitalcommunityradio.com/podcasts.html

In case the links move too far down the list over time, here are the direct links to the audio files (approx. 15~20 min. each):

Episode 1:
https://staging.capitalcommunityradio.com/interviews/Tempered%20by%20Fire%20Episode%201.mp3

Episode 2:
https://staging.capitalcommunityradio.com/interviews/Tempered%20by%20Fire%20Episode%202.mp3

Episode 3:
https://staging.capitalcommunityradio.com/interviews/Tempered%20by%20Fire%20Episode%203.mp3

The Utter Failure of Yet Another Bushfire Panel

By Roger Underwood

When Prime Minister Morrison announced that there would be a Royal Commission into the 2020 bushfires in NSW and Victoria, my first reaction was ‘It’s not needed’. People who know about bushfires already knew precisely what caused the disaster and what needs to be done to ensure it does not happen again.

Read more: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2020/11/the-flaming-idiocy-of-yet-another-bushfire-panel/

BUSHFIRES ROYAL COMMISSION DOESN’T HAVE THE ANSWERS

Experienced land and fire managers from eight community groups across Australia have jointly written to the Prime Minister urging the restoration of healthy and safe rural landscapes. The grass-roots organisations represent more than 6,000 members and 14 regional councils. They have called for an end to the ongoing loss of human life and the socioeconomic and environmental destruction caused by extreme bushfires.

Former Chief of CSIRO Bushfire Research, Phil Cheney, says that a focus on emergency response at the expense of land management has created an unstoppable monster. Expenditure on fire fighting forces is ever-increasing whilst volunteers are being cynically used to deflect criticism away from failed government policies. Land management agencies no longer have primary responsibility for suppressing wildfires. Consequently they have little incentive for stewardship and fire mitigation. Cheney is a scientific advisor to Volunteer Fire Fighters Association.

Chairman of Western Australia’s Bushfire Front, Roger Underwood, points to the stark contrast in historical fire management policies and outcomes on either side of the continent. Seventy years of data from WA show a strong inverse relationship between the area maintained by mild burning and the area subsequently damaged by high intensity fires. This relationship is especially apparent in extreme fire seasons.

Underwood is widely experienced in sustainable land and fire management at all levels from lighting or fighting fires on the ground, to leading a State land management agency. He highlights the deep divide between those who actively care for the bush and who understand bushfire science and operations, compared to the Academics and Fire Chiefs who are misleading governments. The Royal Commission did not call upon Mr. Cheney, Mr. Underwood or similar elders to give evidence. Their consideration of previous bushfire inquiries went back only as far as the COAG whitewash in 2004.

The Royal Commission has accepted wrong advice from academics and modellers rather than information from experienced practitioners. Consequently its conclusions on Effectiveness of Fuel Management are substantially incorrect.

Our land was successfully managed for tens of thousands of years, through some extreme climate changes, by people with long experience, but only the most basic technology. It is shocking to see how this has been replaced by reliance on computer modelling and hugely expensive but futile paramilitary response capacity. The inevitable carnage will continue in the wake of this Royal Commission unless active landscape management based on pragmatic science is reinstated.

Contacts

Phil Cheney 0420 896526 (ACT)
Roger Underwood 0429 339405 (WA)

Letter to the Australian Prime Minister: The Bushfires Royal Commission – providing no hope for the future

From the Howitt Society:

Dear Prime Minister,

The Bushfires Royal Commission – providing no hope for the future The Royal Commission’s interim observations and the draft propositions give cause for grave concerns.

Conditions leading to Black Summer were not unprecedented. Equally atrocious conditions have been recorded periodically since the Settlement Drought, starting in 1790, when thousands of flying foxes and lorikeets dropped dead at Parramatta during three days of extreme heat and searing winds. Aboriginal fires were constantly burning, but Europeans were able to contain any that reached their settlements, because fuels were light and discontinuous. Our first known megafire occurred about 1820 in the Strzeleckis, after local Aborigines were decimated by smallpox. When Aboriginal management was disrupted across Victoria, 5 million hectares exploded on Black Thursday 1851. By the start of the 20 th Century, before any manmade warming, megafires were delivering unprecedented quantities of charcoal in 70,000 years of sedimentary records.

Read the full letter: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/man-made-megafires-letter-to-pm.pdf [PDF, 509KB]