Human management
IT IS hard to envisage how the fire service can commit to reduce long-term risk of catastrophic fires, given the history of fires that have occurred in Australia, and the unknown territory we are entering with an increase in global temperatures.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
As in California, except for those caused by lightning strike, most bushfires are blamed on human activity; sparks from equipment, power lines, escaped burn-offs, poor maintenance of plantations and so on.
Also, Aborigines burnt button grass plains, not forests, as anyone knows who has physically set foot in a coupe that has been burnt, the amount of actual soil in our forests is often minimal.
Regeneration after a burnoff causes a burgeoning in the number of eucalypts in that area, nicely adding to the free timber resources of Forestry Tasmania.
But burning the rainforest not only results in loss of biodiversity and animal habitat.
It is transformed into dry eucalypt forest.
This increase in the state's area of dry forest makes us more susceptible to exactly what we are supposed to be trying to avoid - bushfires.
Human management seems to be a better way to go.
Jo McRae, Lenah Valley.
US Election
I COULD be very wrong and it is rather frightening, but I think Donald Trump will on November 9, be elected president of the United States.
The reasons are to be found in Australia’s recent election and in Brexit.
Voters are tired of the establishment as is manifest in Hillary Clinton.
They see in Donald Trump something that is exciting and different and representing their views as those in Australia did in Pauline Hanson and the minor parties at the recent federal election.
Like with Pauline Hanson, they hope he will calm down when elected, but will “Make America Great Again”, whatever that means.
As seen in the United Kingdom with Brexit, America wants to rein control of its borders and Donald Trump is offering this - “the wall”.