To say that Australian plants are adapted to fire (and flood, and storm, and landslide) is like saying that grass is adapted to lawnmowers.
Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 8:28 pm – view South from my window, horrific smoke from major bushfires in the mountains of southern NSW.
nomdeplume 
Nor do I, alongside what seems to be a decreasing minority. Tragically, as you well know, the prevailing political and cultural thought is in the other direction. That smoke above was still bellowing when the howls of those claiming the solution to such fires was more frequent ‘managed’ fires. ‘Scientific’ papers were published soon after purporting just that.
My question to you David, a long time in the making, is how do we right this wrong?
LikeLike
Dunno. Every so often there is a paper detailing damage to ecosystems caused by prescribed burns, or pointing out the long gaps between fires that is needed. But the “cultural burns” seem beyond criticism, and the bandwagon effect is growing strongly. Much damage will be done when this process is added to climate change and increasing land-clearing. My Memoir covers it a little, but publishers are not hammering at my door. In fact they are bolting their doors. I have pretty much given up.
LikeLike
Well, I’m sure some of us would like to read it in whatever published form it takes.
On the cultural burning issue, it now seems like such an entrenched ‘fact’, and utterly politicised across the spectrum, that little reason is left. One side argues strongly for out of a sense of virtue/guilt/reparation, while the other argues just as strongly as a ‘means justifies the end’ method to maintain the controlling status quo. Actual evidence is barely thought of, let alone mentioned.
Anyway, the zeitgeist doesn’t lend itself to one sticking their head up too high to counter the arguments, even if I thought that the dispassionate request for evidence to support any theory was legitimate discourse in today’s cultural war society. Ironically, I think the audience for such counter arguments is likely stronger on the political side that, just a few years ago, would have shouted loudest against claims made against landscape-scale planned burning.
LikeLike
I think both (all 4) sides of politics are entrenched in a world of fire. Hmm, is it “woke” to burn or not to burn, that is the question
LikeLike
It is, at least for some. For others, it is if it has to be to get the job done.
LikeLike