Bob McMahon
There is a third option in addition to moving away from plantations imposed on the inhabited landscape, or staying and copping the holocaust. That third option is to remove the plantations to a safe distance from your house/school/town. Each geographical area needs advice from our fire authorities as to what that distance may be, given that climate conditions are becoming more and more extreme. Will our Tasmanian legislators move on this? If Forestry Tasmania, Gunns, Great Southern and FEA are opposed, then the State government will not buck the puppetmasters. Federal legislation could over-ride state legislation on this Australia-wide problem. Start lobbying now. Put in your submissions to the Royal Commission and the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry. If in the wash up after the Victorian fires there is no progress on this life and death matter then you have every right to defend your lives, livelihoods, property and communities in a very direct way. It is not fanciful to envisage the day when community working bees will strike a blow for common law and common sense and remove the danger themselves with chainsaws and excavators. I do quite a lot of this work on private property for property owners. Believe me, you can go a long way to safeguarding your house in a day, your town in a few. No, Francis I haven’t forgotten about the great enemy, native forest. The same safe distance rules will apply to native bush. Yes, you can still have trees around your property. Advice on fire resistant and fire-retardant trees needs to be made widely available. I believe valuable lessons were learnt from the Canberra fires. As for “stressing about what might not ever happen” Francis, that is quite the most fatal approach to take to risk management and risk mitigation. Have you heard of the annual Darwin Awards? Someone is probably inscribing your name on one as I write. Read more, Comment here
