Thread: forestry practices

The amount of residue created from clearfelling has halved in the last ten years, from roughly 7 tonnes per hectacre to 3 tonnes per hectacre.

This is usually dealt with in one of two ways at present:
The slow burn creates the irritating smoke levels over a period of days at ground level, whereas a hot burn will be over sooner and has the heat to carry the smoke up into the atmosphere.

The dilemma facing the forestry planner is the fact that a high intensity burn is most effective in creating a regenerative seedbed, but most likely to get out of control.

Forestry Tas have published a lot of research at http://www.forestrytas.com.au/forest...lture_home.htm
Two suggestions they offer are
"The options to deal with residues created in the harvesting
operation if traditional high intensity burns are not a viable
regeneration preparation technique may require the
development of new markets such as fuelwood or compost
material."
My preference is for the latter.

The local QLD fire wardens here just managed to burn out about 1000 hc of state forest and catchment. Lucky the area burnt was SF not any land with peoples house on it, tho it was 2 k's from us.

The official line was, we were staging a controlled burn and someone deliberatly lit a fire behind us . (note that no locals wil believe this as there have been a number of 'controlled' burns in this area that have got out of hand in recent times). Basically it got away from and thye would never admit it publicly.

The bottom line is that there are some good and some not so good management practices but generally it is inconsistent.

Shire and local fire authorities suffer from lack of funding and old style managemnet practices. They do a great job in a real fire when needed but the overal planning and execution of burns and planting is insufficient in most areas and does contribute to events like the canberra fires.

Envirometal emotionalism also directs a lot of managment issues and not objective, informed planning and action.


regards
JOhn

John,
not having a go, but maybe you should join your local rural fire brigade. People don't always like what our brigade does or the plans and policies that we formulate but they have the option of joining and having input. There are definitely some elements/factions that want more fire but we have a brigade that mirrors the range of views that our local community holds. If you live in a rural area in Qld fire supression on your property is your responsibility, not the government's. Brigades are formed by members of the community to help the community and while they may not get it right all the time they still provide a valuable service. BTW did you know that 93% of Qld is serviced by volunteer rural fire brigades? All operating on shoestring budgets and dedicating their free time to making their communities safer. Maybe some elements of your local brigades are fire bugs, or maybe a local farmer has used the brigade's presence to cover up their own fire lighting for their own ends. We've had people light fires when we've been conducting burns, investigations have confirmed this.

Mick

OK thanks Mick, feel free to have a go if u wish.

I not a full memebr but will volunteer if there is a fire and help is needed.

AS i work fullltime and do family and wood stuff on weekends I have given up local groups like landcare etc and just focus all my time at home.

I agree that ALL local fire services do their best in what is obvioulsy a smokey grey area. IE big areas lack of resources etc...

I, like some other locals are just a bit tired of the ' a controlled burn got away ' stories again and again, maybe someone did light a fire behind them and that got away, maybe not, we will probably never know.

I would support greater planning and resources being out into these areas and lot of the time thats a shire issue.

cheeeeeers