Australia is burning

Catlady

Catlady

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Location
Southern AZ
(Bloomberg) = Australia’s indigenous people say the bushfire-ravaged country is paying the price for ignoring their expertise in managing the ecology of the world’s-driest inhabited continent.

The indigenous approach is to manage the landscape with so-called “cool, slow” controlled burns often conducted at night. They’re designed to reduce dangerous fuel loads of scrub and fallen timber on forest floors, and incrementally tackle large tracts of land with multiple small-scale burns. Such an approach is more labor intensive and takes longer. But the lower intensity and slow progress of the fire gives animals chance to escape and protects the forest canopy.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/60-000-old-way-help-130000215.html
 

The NSW and Queensland fires are tragic and heartbreaking to watch on TV day after day.

Hubby and I were up the Gold Coast staying on Mount Tamborine when the fires first started( from a controlled burn off that got out of hand). on The mountain next to MT

That was back in September , on the way home we drove through smoke for about 400 km, while traveling near Grafton we were turned back after traveling through very steep country for 75 km so I can tell you it was very nerve wracking being told we had to go back because burning trees were falling across the road we was traveling on

its sad that the fires are still burning after all that time TBH I don't Know what’s left of NSW to burn
because a lot of NSW has not had any rain for years and it’s very dry and arid in many areas
 
I have an Australian online buddy who is in Australia and last time I heard is very concerned. I cant begin to imagine the horror of these fires and makes me feel that the weather in the UK is balanced compared to other countries and continents
 

Catlady said:
(Bloomberg) = Australia’s indigenous people say the bushfire-ravaged country is paying the price for ignoring their expertise in managing the ecology of the world’s-driest inhabited continent.

The indigenous approach is to manage the landscape with so-called “cool, slow” controlled burns often conducted at night. They’re designed to reduce dangerous fuel loads of scrub and fallen timber on forest floors, and incrementally tackle large tracts of land with multiple small-scale burns. Such an approach is more labor intensive and takes longer. But the lower intensity and slow progress of the fire gives animals chance to escape and protects the forest canopy.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/60-000-old-way-help-130000215.html
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I hope the powers that be heed the advice of those people who have lived there for so long and have been successful in controlling the fires, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t heed the advice if it’s been successful in the past.....
 
Lc jones said:
I hope the powers that be heed the advice of those people who have lived there for so long and have been successful in controlling the fires, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t heed the advice if it’s been successful in the past.....
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Money rules! According to the article, the aborigine's way is time consuming and more expensive. I feel sorry for the animals most of all, 2000 koalas dead and they don't even mention the other animals. It's summer there now, I can't imagine the heat besides the fires.
 
Catlady said:
(Bloomberg) = Australia’s indigenous people say the bushfire-ravaged country is paying the price for ignoring their expertise in managing the ecology of the world’s-driest inhabited continent.
Click to expand...

A similar approach was taken by the Native American Indians in centuries past. They often burned the deadwood and scrub in their forests to allow for better hunting, and forest management....and probably had far less trouble with things like ticks and chiggers. Now, however, there are so many people living in rural areas that any fires that do start generally result in huge losses of property, and even lives.
 
There is a conflict in this article stated as fact in the last paragragph. This sentence is the conflict

Quote
"For the first Australians, whose culture traces back at least 60,000 years, fire is central to their way of life, an important spiritual symbol as well as a tool for hunting, cooking and warmth."

Give or take a few hundred years the conflict is with the bible. The death of all mankind by a great flood that covered the earth for between 170 & 360 days. That Noah & the arc story took place about 6500 to 8000 years ago. A bible scholar would be able to pinpoint the time frame more accurately.

Doesn't that make it impossible for people to be alive for the 60,000 years as described in the article? I think the unique animal & reptile life in Australian should also have been exterminated. But there must be some logical explanation how this could be.

Meanwhile the educated bright minds that don't pay attention to what worked is taking a toll on a beautiful country.
 
The fires are not only effecting the people in the areas where the actual fires are still burning
it’s also effecting people in the huge city of Sydney New South Wales and other part of NSW where they have been getting smoke so thick from the fires for weeks you can hardly see their famous Sydney harbour bridge .

I live in South Australia ,thankfully we haven’t been effected by the NSW / Qld fires however we had a major fire 100 km from us a month ago it was burning towards the coast where it destroyed 15 homes in its path.
Lucky for us it burned its self out because it burned to the waters edge and put its self out , if the wind had changed we would have been right in its path and being summer here as well as being a huge cereal growing area the fires burn fast and extremely hot
 
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One of the things that have come to light about fires in the US is that they happen, and they will happen. And that fire is as needed in a firest as is water. To prohibit fires only increases the ferocity of the fires. While I don't know a darn thing about Australia's situation, the indigenous people's approach sounds basically very sound.
 
Australian vegetation has adapted over time to the environment. Our soils are low nutrient and we are the driest continent bar Antarctica. Fire is not only a frequent occurrence, it is necessary for some seeds to open up to allow for germination.

The indigenous practice of firing the vegetation to drive game out of hiding changed the landscape drastically, opening up the forests and creating open grasslands. Repeated low level fires destroy the new growth and the heat isn't sufficient to promote germination of the seed stock. Regrettably, only less frequent hot fires can renew the forests.

These fires that we are seeing now are something entirely new. In the past fires didn't join up into the mega fires that we are battling today. Forests burned in patches and the bare areas were able to regenerate quite quickly. The current fires are monsters and so big that the firefighters are flat out just protecting property where they can. The forest fires are out of control and won't be extinguished until we get heavy rain, which isn't coming any time soon.

Many of our firefighters are volunteers who are taking a month away from their work at zero pay and all of them must be exhausted by now.

A few photos







 
fuzzybuddy said:
One of the things that have come to light about fires in the US is that they happen, and they will happen. And that fire is as needed in a firest as is water. To prohibit fires only increases the ferocity of the fires. While I don't know a darn thing about Australia's situation, the indigenous people's approach sounds basically very sound.
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Fires in the west before the white men came was a yearly happening, it's nature's way of getting rid of the deadwood and adding nutrients to the soil from the ashes and also allowing new growth and allowing more sun to reach the interior of trees for good health. That periodic removal of deadwood allowed the fires to be minimal, but now because humans are populating and have built properties in wild areas, firefighters are forced to stop those fires from doing their job and now fires are gigantic, either because of those practices or global warming.
 
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