Weather Extremes Michael Stephens
And thanks for the introduction. And I must congratulate ABARES for the topic for this session
in terms of weather extremes. It's certainly an issue that our industry has been confronting for
quite a while. And that's the topic of this session today.
I just want to point out that as an industry we've been dealing with climate risks and extremes for
quite a while. We've had a whole range of issues around some mortality events with extended
droughts and heat intensity. So we've actually done some work with CSIRO developing a
handbook around some of those issues and around management practises dealing with those
types of things. And similarly, with the banana industry we've had Cyclone Yasi come through
and cause some devastation with some of the Caribbean pine plantations and [INAUDIBLE]
doing some work and have some guideline documents around managing those types of issues in
terms of genetics, species location, or what you might do with stocking. So certainly an issue
that's very relevant for us.
What I'd like to talk about today is bushfire extremes. And talk about that as an emerging
problem. I'm going to talk a little bit about management experiences in the United States and
Canada. And I just need to thank the Gottstein Fellowship where I had a look at these issues and
policies, and practises middle of last year for a couple of weeks, and talk about what are some of
the learnings from North America to apply here in Australia.
And again, when we're tallying about fire, the key factors that Rob and others have talked about
is dryness, heat, wind, and fuel, all contribute to fire. Now, this is the Brindabella Ranges after
the 2003 fires. A lot of us in the audience can remember those. And you can see a lot of scorched
earth and a lot of very intense fires that caused a lot of damage. Some trees have epicormic
growth. They're recovering, but there's a lot of dead trees. So it's a real concern, not only for
industry, but in terms of some of the environmental impacts on erosion from these types of
issues.
Now, we'll acknowledge that this part of our natural environment and all the forecasts that are for
dryer and hotter conditions. So I want to go through the predictions, but, essentially, our extreme
fire rating days are going to increase based on those factors. And what we're really interested in
as an industry, we're a major stakeholder. We're not only affected by the direct impacts of fire on
our industries in terms of our timber resources, we're actually involved in terms of the
management of fire risk on those areas that we manage in terms of production forests. But it's a
landscape issue and it's a whole range of tenures.
And I think that's the issue that we really need to start to think about in policy about a whole of
landscape approach to fuel management. And what we're saying is a link not only with
adaptation, but adaptation in terms of doing things like prescribed burning, but it can actually
help us with some mitigation, if we link stuff to link that around renewable energy and using
some of that vibrant material for renewables. So I'll talk a bit about that.
This is just some observational data from the Department of Environment showing the areas
burnt of the last few decades, and the emissions that are associated with that. And I guess what
this slide is really showing is it relative to industrial activities. Now, fires in their natural
environment and emissions profile is quite extreme and quite significant. And what we're starting
to ask is in terms of these spikes in extreme events. This is what we're looking at going forward.
Associated with that is the concept of mega-fires, very large fires. And again, this is ABARES
data that's reported where we've had some really big fire events in terms of areas burnt. And
anecdotally, I was trying to see bigger areas. And there's been a history of debate about
management of our fire's landscapes. And a lot of commentators and Parliamentary inquiries are
talking about the active versus passive management.
So a lot of these areas where we had [INAUDIBLE] transferred from production forestry to other
tenures, such as conservation reserve that have tended to take a passive approach to managing for
fuels. So that's been an ongoing debate. And part of this issue is ensuring we have the
infrastructure in place to deal with fires in terms of firefighting capacity and roads. And part of
this trend has been attributed to the downsising of that capacity that was being provided
previously by quite a prosperous forest industry.
As I mentioned, mega-fires are recognised as a global issue. And really, in the United States after
the early 2000s, they had some very severe fire events. And mega-fires being defined in terms of
they're very big, they're very hot, and they cost an absolute fortune to deal with in terms of
fighting. And we're seeing a really an increase in fire suppression budgets.
The money that's spent in dealing with these fires. And I've just listed the whole example there of
this international trend of mega-fires. And you'd know it in particular, 2009 black Saturday fires
in Victoria in terms of the area burnt. And the impacts fits that definition.
If you look at the cost of those files to the economy, we're talking about severe loss of life. We're
talking about damage to infrastructure and property, agriculture, fencing, and to the forest
industry itself in terms of the resources that were burnt. We recently commissioned Deloitte
Access Economics to start to look at this problem in terms of public policy, in terms of managing
of landscapes. Are we better off investing in some managing some of our fuels in these
landscapes? And is it going to give us a return in terms of avoided damage, in terms of loss of
life, the cost of emissions, and just savings in terms of what we're actually spending in fighting
these fires.
And some preliminary work is showing that this is an area with property losses, insurance losses
have been trending upwards quite significantly over the last two decades, and that the economics
are actually doing a bit more in terms of land prevention are starting to stack up. So I did some
work, and it's starting to show that making investments in these areas will provide a really good
benefit cost return.
In the United States they've dealt with the issue of a large fuel build-up. And it's probably to do
with the management o large forest areas of the forest service, and their levels of the tree
stocking in those areas. We've also had impacts in terms of some climatic shifts that are dealing
with pests and diseases.
You might have heard about the mountain pine beetle outbreak. And that's causing a lot of
damage in terms of dead trees and material in that forest that can contribute then into the fuel
risk. So they're dealing with very similar issues to us.
And the other issue complicating factors, we're getting a high urban forest interface. We're
getting communities that are moving out into peri-urban areas and moving more into the natural
bush and agricultural landscapes. So again, from a public policy perspective, there's a whole lot
of issues around managing those risks.
This is an example in Colorado where I visited in terms of the stocking and the nature of the
Ponderosa pine forest along the Ponderosa Range. And again, it's about the natural fire histories
of these areas. And then I would have normally had more frequent, low-intensity fires through
the smokey bear campaign excluding fires of a number of decades, that's actually allowed the
vegetation to build up, and it's causing providing fuel for these more intensitive fires.
What we're really interested in is the management response. And in 2003, there was the healthy
forest initiative, where the US government had identified this as a problem, but was saying, we
need to start look at our regulation. And now planning around doing more prescribed activity to
manage the fuels. So things like the API, environmental conditions around doing those bones,
trying to streamline those, so it was actually practical, but still meeting some of those
environmental outcomes.
And they've spent almost 500 million on our landscape restoration programme, where they're
looking at thinning these areas and managing those fuels, which have a whole range of multiple
benefits. And in linking that to the utilisation of some of that material, so you've got biomass
utilisation programmes, fields to schools where they're using that material for bioenergy and
heating, and local applications. And also in their bioenergy policies themselves, their action plan
has made a link into some of these landscape issues, we're always fueling the area and have them
not really use that for renewables.
This is the lanscape restoration programme. So it's $400 million over 10 years. And basically, if
identified, the whole areas where they're going in to treat these, and there's a whole lot of spinoffs from doing this in terms of job creation, [INAUDIBLE] utilising that material and looking at
the restoring habitat conditions in terms of moving them to more fire-resistant natural regimes
that were in place.
This is an example in Arizona, where you've got on the left-hand side an overstock stand of
ponderosa pine with whole lot of ladder fuels, so their smaller trees are contributing to fires up
into the crown, which has been a major issue for them. On the left-hand side is an area that's
been treated. And they're planing to treat over a million hectares over the next 10 years, using a
combination of burning and mechanical removal. So we're quite interested as an industry in
looking at those types of activities to deal with some of these public policy issues and providing
some spin-offs for the industry and regional communities.
So I mentioned they're linking it to a lot of biology projects. This is just an example of the
Boulder County municipality that's thinning their own forests and managing the fuel, and using it
to heat their own facilities. And likewise, at the local university.
In Canada, again, a similar problem to Australia, defining that they're getting these large areas of
fire increasing over time. They've got very limited budgets for dealing with it, and they're getting
very serious about that dealing with the fuel and the landscape. And in terms of their identities,
they're very, very clear about some of their options looking at, and that's in terms of managing,
managing those trees and the landscape, using mobile prescribed fire and looking at, obviously,
in terms of emergency response, but making some links to energy and biomass.
Turns out, the lessons for Australia, we're very similar to the US, Western United States, we've
got a higher urban forest interface, particularly, in Eastern Australia or in the Southwest-Western
Australia-way, predominantly our forests are. And we really need to start thinking about a the
whole of landscape approach.
And in the United States, there is a real bipartisan approach to fuel management. And I think
we're still having a device in Australia about fuel, about fuel management. And they're actually
implementing these treatments. And I've got some examples of that.
And the use of combined mechanical removal and burning is becoming more common. That's a
trend that we're starting to see. And we believe that the bio energy industries and the forestry
industries has a potential role in this space in Australia. And the bottom line is that a landscape
lever returning these landscapes to more resistant conditions, we've had a long history of
suppression in Australia as well. I didn't show the stats, but our level of prescribed burning as the
client went about 50% of the last decade. Which is being quite concerning for us.
So what we're talking about as an industry stakeholder is that we really need to look at the
increasing our level of treatment for areas that have identified as priorities. We really think a
national pilot scheme is an obviously good way to write-test this concept. And the which Bush
5CIC has already identified areas in Australia where, we've got overstock areas, areas that I have,
that have a long history of suppression of given some examples here of the Pilaga scrub and
Australian cyprus We've got a lot of stocking, a lot of drought-affected forest areas in their
landscapes, that with active forest management in terms of thinning and improving the health
that we can reduce that fire risk, like similarly in central Queensland, some of the dryer areas and
in some of the foothill areas of East Gippsland so there is already some areas where we think we
could start the focus in such a trial programme.
So in summary, I just want to finish by saying we do recognise the bigger and hollowed, that's
going to be a problem. And the Bureau of [? Management ?] all of the climate forecasters are
really starting to show that this is becoming more evident. We believe that active land
management can play a role. US and Canada are making some pretty serious inroads into that.
We're probably about a decade behind, in this space. And an issue not only for the forestry, but
for agriculture, and, more broadly, in terms of some of the adjacency issues with agricultural
infrastructure and forests, so we see it is a primary industries issue.
And we really want to see it in improvement a policy settings in Australia. The coalition
government is made a start, they announced a $15 million bushfire mitigation programme. So
we're very keen to start to think it starts to prevent of Land Management around that. So I think,
that's pretty much what I wanted to say. And I kept within the 15-minute frame.
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