The Government is well ahead of its target to burn-off 27,000 hectares by the end of autumn next year.
Since Spring this year, fuel reduction burns have been carried out across 14,500 hectares of Tasmanian land and in fact up to an additional 25,000 hectares of fuel reduction burns are planned by the end of the 2015 autumn burning period.
This would bring the total fuel reduction burns for 2014-15 up to almost 40,000 hectares.
We are on target to further ramp up the annual activity to cover 60,000 hectares per year during this term of Government and we’ve allocated $28.5 million from the budget to do it. It will take time to build capacity and we made no secret of this fact, with funding in the budget gradually ramping up over the next four years.
This stands in stark contrast to Labor and the Greens, who mismanaged fuel reduction burns.
Once again, we are cleaning up another mess left by Labor and the Greens, who failed to make fuel reduction burn-offs a priority.
Matthew Groom, Minister for Environment, Parks and Heritage
