Prescribed burns make communities safer.
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This was the message shared at a State Fire Management Council meeting in Launceston on Wednesday.
About 60 people attended the professional development day, featuring guest speaker Greg Esnouf from the Centre of Excellence for Prescribed Burning.
From 2011 to 2018 the National Burning Project brought together inter-related aspects of prescribed burning across Australasia, to design guiding frameworks and principles for approaches to prescribed burning.
Mr Esnouf said the purpose of the workshop was to facilitate a greater understanding and uptake of those national guidelines.
“Today is about sharing the tools with people, so they understand what the tools are, and can work with them comfortably and use them to assist them with their prescribed burns,” he said.
“It [Tasmania] has a very innovative program of cross tenure burning – so burning across both public and private land – which is probably the envy of a number of states.”
State Fire Management Council chairman Ian Sauer said with less private land owners carrying out burns across their properties, it was important people were informed about their options.
“What we are looking at is getting changes in behaviour across our landscape,” he said.
“In Tasmania 40 per cent of the treatable landscape is owned by the private sector.
“But for some there is a perception that if you are burning the landscape, you are doing a bad thing.
“Scientifically, that part is wrong. Australia’s bush needs to be burnt to have an ecologically improved health.”
As the state heads into another bushfire season, Mr Sauer said Tasmania was well prepared.
“Fuel reduction burning, prescribed burning, that is one of the benefits,” he said.
“It actually makes the community safer. That is one of the reasons the state government has a $28.5 million program.
“It makes strategically at risk communities and assets safer, by doing prescribed burning.”
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