Natural Sequence Farming

[Bigriggen Park]

Read "Back From The Brink" Could not put it down as it is so interesting. One question though and it is... How do we lessen the risk of bush fires without burning?

[duane]

Before the arrival of our indigenous people some 40-60,000 years ago the natural fire regime in the Australian landscape was 1 in every 300 years. From around 40000 years ago the fire cycles became more evident and frequent, occuring every 3-4 years. This is evidenced from core drilling of the Great Barrier Reef, where burning cycles show up as black rings amongst the white coral remains in core samples.

Fire as we know can be man made or it can be caused by natural means such as lightning strikes.

Why was the incidence so low all those years ago. The answer is very SIMPLE.

Do an experiment for yourself next saturday to test what I am saying.
Go to your newsagent and buy 2 copies of the SMH. Put one copy in the bathtub and part fill it with water. Put the other copy outside in the baking sun. The next day pull out the wet paper and take it outside. Get a box of matches and see which one you can light.

Let me know the answer.

We have drained our landscapes and removed vast tracts of its vegetation. Rivers,creeks and streams are little more than stormwater drains. The natural rehydration that used to occur in our landscape has been dislocated. The natural cooling effect of water and plants that used to cool our landcape have been slowly but inexorably lost and the remaining landscape is becoming desertified and drying out. Our landscape is now the dry SMH that is lying out in the sun waiting for a spark to ignite it.

We need to learn to value the moderating effect plants have on controlling the climate and the water cycles. We need to cool our landscapes and capture and hold water in it in the ground when we can and not let it drain away.

All of this will not be achievable overnight but some of the other ways we need to look at for moderating fire are changing the plant and forest mix from fire promoting plants to fire retarding plants as once existed in this country. And we also need to address how quickly we respond to fires and put them out as quickly as they occur.

The great fire that engulfed Canberra a few years ago could have been put out with your boots the first night it started. The ABC program 4 Corners recently showed the fire where it had started, captured on video by fire interpreters. It was left to burn by the RFS and over the ensuing days the RFS backburnt huge areas in order to arrest the fire from entering Canberra. I always thought that when you wanted to contain a fire in your fireplace you didnt throw more logs into it. A source recently told me that National Parks have a saying, "that when the RFS is called to a domestic fire in the kitchen they start a backburn in the living room".

Many fires like the ACT one could have been put out easily and quickly. Often, the volunteers are sent home before midnight only to report for work the next day with the fire raging and temperatures rising. Instead, many of these fires could be controlled by using nature and understanding that at night there happens to occur an inversion layer when cool moist air comes back to the ground to settle and conditions are a lot cooler, providing the fire has'nt been raging for too long. One solution may be to keep teams rotated so that fires can be fought after midnight as well as before, instead of sending all the troops home before 12 midnight.

Going back to where this posting all started, we have removed 95% of our wetlands and millions of acres of native forests. Let's remove the remaining and watch as Rome burns or do we take a stand and do as Peter Andrews suggests.

[CJW]

My experience in the Tweed Valley NSW with burnt bush is that it remains fire prone until it has remained free from fires for 20 or more years. After this time, fire proof species begin to take a hold and the longer between fires, the less likely it is to ignite.

Deliberate planting of fire proof species, serves to accelarate and assist the process and many non native "weed" species serve to make this a quick and easy process.
_________________
Colin Westwood.

[matto]

David Holmgren, co-founder of permaculture, has a free download called The Flywire House at his website www.holmgren.com.au, which includes design's for fire around your house using fire-retardant species.
He has also been working on some natural rehabilitation at the Spring Creek Gully where he has employed some of Peter's work, as well as developing contoured windrows from cleared understory. This catches runoff and promotes damp conditions to cool gullys which will act as a fire break.
The cleared vegetaion itself will slow fire down in the understory.

[duane]

Matto

David Holgrem and others work on Spring Creek is terrific and highlights the farcical debate about the willows issue. Thanks for posting the link

[ColinJEly]

On a similar, but slightly different tangent, after fruitlessly waiting for my local council to replace my street tree that fell down a couple of years ago I planted a Nothofagus cunninghamii out the front. After surviving the hot summer weather, it succumbed to our very changeable hail and sun recently

[duane]

Col

don't let one failure beat you.....suggest that you could plant another.....they say 'lightning never.....'

[ColinJEly]

Duane
Yes with the cooler weather with us I figure I can plant now and it will get a flying start before next summer. My house faces west so whatever I plant will get the full sun in summer. I was also thinking of planting an Albany Wooly Bush.