Dubious

State of Victoria's forests fanned bushfire inferno | The Australian

David Packham, a researcher from Monash University's climatology group who has specialised in bushfires, said governments had abandoned responsibility for the one control they had over wildfires -- the state of the forests that fed the flames.

"Due to terribly ill-informed and pretty well outrageous concepts of conservation, we have failed to manage our fuel and our forests," Mr Packham said. "They have become unhealthy, and dangerous."

I could be wrong, I admit, but from the television images and descriptions of events in the media, it sounds rather like twaddle to be blaming poor forest management for the Victorian fires.

The impression one gets is that you would have had to perform precautionary clearing/burning of an absolutely huge area of forest to significantly reduce fires fanned by 100kph wind gusts after a bone dry month of heat wave conditions.

UPDATE: Germaine Greer, who seems to be regarded by the British media as the expert on absolutely everything Australian despite not having lived here for what, 4 or 5 decades?, says it is indeed poor forest management that is at fault. However, it also seems that the reason she is writing this is mainly to point out how clever the aborigines were in their fire management of forests.

No wonder there are fights over forestry management when there are such differing agendas swirling around the issue.