"Everything about the eucalyptus tree is designed to catch fire, spread fire and then grow back."
3/1/14, "How Aborigines could solve Australia's bushfire problem," BBC, Jim Carey, Sydney, Australia
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| Eucalyptus tree |
The most prolific tree in the Australian bush is the iconic eucalyptus, nicknamed the "gum tree" and described to me by one fireman as "a living firebomb".
The bark of the tree falls away in thin flammable sheets - a touch paper to any passing spark - whilst the air in and around a eucalyptus forest hangs with the menthol oil for which the tree is renowned. It creates an incendiary haze which sometimes causes the air to burn by itself....
When I arrive at Yellow Rock, the scorched valleys are a surreal sight. Heavily blackened trunks stand stubborn in the burnt dust. But sprouting from their spiky tops are iridescent explosions of green shoots.
"Everything about the eucalyptus tree is designed to catch fire, spread fire and then grow back once its competitors have been destroyed in that fire," observes Bill Gammage....a semi-retired history professor from the Australian National University.
"What people have forgotten is that a lot of these trees were not here when the Europeans first arrived," he asserts.
As a historian, Bill examined thousands of old eyewitness testimonies, paintings and drawings and found that, before the Europeans arrived, places like the Blue Mountains once contained significant amounts of grass pasture. His book on the subject won the Prime Minister's Literary Award.
Having lived and evolved on the continent for millennia, Aborigines managed the land almost like a garden - effectively using expertly controlled fires to keep the flora in check.
The resulting grasslands not only attracted animals which the Aborigines could hunt, they also provided massive firebreaks preventing the kind of destructive fires Australia is increasingly suffering.
When the Europeans arrived they kicked the gardeners out of the garden. And the garden went wild.
The common notion, fought for by the powerful green lobby, is that eucalyptus forest is the natural state of Australia and that every tree must be protected. Hence you have to apply for a licence to chop down even one tree growing near your house.
"It is too late to reverse the clock back to 1788," says Prof Gammage. "But the kind of damage we are looking at today could be lessened if we employed Aborigines to do something they spent tens of thousands of years perfecting."
Jack Saunders, a 17-year-old New South Wales firefighter, is keen to show me his copy of the official Bushfire Fighting Manual. The chapter on fire prevention acknowledges that controlled burning may be used "to maintain the natural condition of the environment and imitate the use of fire by its traditional owners over tens of thousands of years".
But there is an odd tension here, which rather unusually pitches conservation groups against an ancient knowledge. What exactly is the "natural" environment of Australia?
Is it the massive forests which have proliferated since 1788? Or is it the Australia gardened by the Aborigines for the tens of thousands of years prior to that?
In the burnt Blue Mountains bush I reach down to pick up the charred husk of a seed pod. It comes from the banksia shrub, the seeds of which are only released by the heat of flames.
Another timely reminder of how, along with the gum tree and the human being, Australia has evolved with, and been forged by, fire.""
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Comment: Over decades in the US and apparently in Australia the left has influenced gov. land management methods so fires are more difficult to control and more deadly. The notion of global warming is a $1 billion/day industry but they say that's peanuts, they need much more. Engineering death and destruction is one of the ways they sell CO2 terror.
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