Australia Burns Again, and Now Its Biggest City Is Choking
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The current drought is so tough on December 10 Sydney starts Level 2 water restrictions for all residents and businesses.
There’s an increasing sense among my friends of all political persuasions that we’re heading into this future faster than anyone anticipated - and that our government is asleep at the wheel.
No, they are deliberately misleading the public while attempting to shore up as much capital as possible for themselves, before the real crisis actually happens. It just so happens that more people are starting to catch on to their bullshit.
Don't make the mistake of thinking Morrison et al are incompetent. They are highly accomplished politicians who know exactly what to say and do to keep their jobs, and so far it is working.
Countries get the leaders they deserve.
People have to find a balance between climate solutions and retaining biodiversity. Looking at Australia, and California, where Eucalyptus trees were introduced a common thread behind these massive bush fires is these highly flammable trees.
It’s unknown why eucalypts thrive and promote bush fires, but the evidence is there.
We should be planting high growth European deciduous trees that have strong roots and give back to the soil.
Instead, environmentalists take a hardline “only native plants” view. In the coming years, if Australia is going to combat this we’re going to have to rethink our love of Eucalypts and start looking at less bushfire promoting plants.
But to your main point -- Australia has had eucalypts for tens of millions of years. It seems unlikely that eucalyptus is the cause of these extreme and very unusual bushfires. It's much more likely that the recent drought, reduced forest management, and similar factors are at play.
Environmentalists are right to be concerned about introduction of non-native species. The entire history of European colonisation in Australia has proven categorically that introduced species almost always cause unforseen and irreparable damage to the local ecosystem. For God's sake, we built three fences in the middle of the outback to try to stop rabbits from spreading. This is something that is so well known and simple that you learn about in primary school history classes.
But I do agree that California should probably stop planting non-local fauna in large numbers. Australia's biosphere has evolved with bushfires for millions of years, and California's has not.
Eucalypt forests are not planted en-mass in Australia. They are more or less the default native vegetation, and part of an ancient ecology. The only place they are not found is Lord Howe Island, which was separated from the mainland back when Gondwana was still a continent.
Some sub-species actually depend on fires as part of their life-cycle -- They have evolved rock hard seed pods that can survive a firestorm and are only dropped after a fire.
Much of Australia's unique fauna depends on these forests for their existence.
Introduced species, both plants and animals, are a significant problem in the Australian environment -- What you are suggesting is frankly a terrible idea.
It is well-known that indigenous people have been using wild fire as a land management technique on the Australian continent for tens of thousands of years.
Also, many of these tree species have very specific evolutionary adaptations due to regular bush-fires.
This is not something that occurs on human timescales.
http://www.forest-education.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/e...
This is what I meant. Human intervention has made eucalyptus flourish more. It's native to Australia for sure but using wild fire for land management gives it a leg up in competing with other native species.
The eucalyptus were there long before Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders burned anything or arrived on the continent. So were wildfires. Their burning didn't make Eucalyptus flourish so much, nor was this the intention. Fire does help open a Eucalyptus tree's seed pods, but fires would've happened without people there.
Ceremonial burning is used for many reasons, one of the main reasons is because Indigenous people learned that reducing the scrub covering the ground through what is known as "cool fire" (fire which doesn't get too hot due to reduced fuel load), the sun can more effectively penetrate to the forrest floor and allow more new scrubs to grow and made the Forrest floor more accessible to larger, grazing animals. Esentially, the fires increase the local carrying capacity of the Forrest wildlife and make hunting more easy.
These "cool fires" also reduce the amount of dead wood or "dry fuel" significantly. What this meant is that large loads of highly flammable fuel would not longer be hanging around to catch fire easily. The bark of a Eucalyptus is naturally somewhat fireproof. So without a very large fuel load the odds of fires spreading and burning out of control were rather low.
One of the issues is, since Europeans came, most of this practice was no longer commonly practiced due to the original occupants of the land being victims of genocide or the practice being outlawed in most parts of Australia (not all, and these places rarely have major wild fires). Sadly this has led to many parts of the Australian wilderness poorly managed and allowed a huge amount of fuel load to build up. When this fuel catches fire, the Eucalyptus trees get so hot internally, they combust like a petrol bomb, this wasn't previously very common.
All this combined with the super drought being experienced due to climate change has made this situation really unavoidable.
I know that Indigenous Australians know when the right time to burn is. They're careful about it for obvious reasons but I don't know if climate change will make it harder to re-introduce the practice due to the forrests being drier than ever before; However after these fires would be the right time to start as the fuel load is low.
To gain more insights on this checkout this excellent video on how the practice is being re-introduced in more areas to stop events like this happening in such devastating ways: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM72NtXxyLs
Bascially, the Australian wildlife needs these trees, many animals including Koalas have been facing extinction due to the loss of Eucalyptus.
In my view, we need more trees, and better management of land, less trees has it's own catastrophic side effects, including less carbon sequestration and the extinction of native species.