Fire planning and control burns – opportunity to have your say
Posted on 5 March, 2015 by Connecting Country
The Victorian government is reviewing the effectiveness of target-based control burning, and are currently accepting submissions from individuals and community groups. The closing date for public submissions is 13 March 2015. A press release about the review was released by the Premier Daniel Andrews (click here) and there is further information available about how you can make a submission and the scope of the inquiry from the Inspector-General for Emergency Management (IGEM) website (click here).
Connecting Country is intending to make a submission to this review.
There are two locally-based groups that have a number of concerns about the current control burning regime, and the effectiveness of the blanket 5% annual burning target in reducing fuel and reducing risk to human life and assets.
– Living with Ecology and Fire or LEAF (click here to view their website)
– Friends of the Box Ironbark Forests (click here to view their website)
Local residents and groups may wish to make their own submissions to this review.
Repeated regular burning of the easy to get to areas causes many problems some of which are:
1. Drying the bush out, changing the species and making it even more susceptable to burning, particularly in areas where lyrebirds used to control the bush keeping it wet with very little middle story – burning reduces the lyrebirds and allows in dry middle story
2. Burning near Maldon in the spring before wild flowers have set seed wipes out flowers in huge areas, changing the species mix, drying it out further make situation worse as well as devoid of wild flowers