Uncontrolled bushfires are still burning in Victoria and South Australia — including the Deep Creek blaze on the Fleurieu Peninsula — as Australia faces its worst fire conditions since Black Summer. It comes as Wood Central revealed last week that high‑risk Victorian communities are now far less prepared than they were in 2019–20, with the end of native forestry in 2023 accelerating a drain of skills, machinery and operational capacity across the state’s timber towns.
“One of the consequences of ending native forest harvesting has been the loss of skilled and experienced operators,” Steve Dobbyns, chair of Forest and Wood Communities Australia, warned. “We are now seeing that in the bushfire crisis, where multiple pieces of heavy plant — including dozers and harvesting machines — are currently stood down because there are not enough qualified people to operate them.”
Forest communities respond to critical shortages
Now, Wood Central can reveal that experienced contractors — some with decades of firefighting experience — say vital machinery and expertise are sitting idle as fire conditions potentially deteriorate again in the coming weeks:
“I have been a roading and firefighting contractor for the last 25 years,” said Mick Leanne Crawford, one of thousands of users from Australia’s timber towns who responded to Wood Central’s article on the Forest and Wood Communities Australia Facebook page. “All my gear is packed up at home, ready to go. No phone call. We have been kicked out on our ass and forgotten about.”
“It’s the same here in WA,” added Raelene Osboine, noting that the state also banned native forestry in 2023. “Logging roads have grown over to make access harder to fight fires.” Whilst in NSW, others fear the same pattern is emerging on the north coast. “They’ve turned 47,000 hectares of state forest into The Great Koala National Park and closed the timber industry down,” said a local nurse from Coffs Harbour. “Next bushfires will be devastating without the logging companies and their machinery to help fight them. You can already notice the deterioration of the fire trails as they aren’t being maintained anymore.”
“Back in the day when there was logging in native bush (and forests) the companies harvesting would look after the bush tracks and the bush to make sure it was sustainable for future growth, and those cleared patches of bush would be fire breaks and would regenerate back into amazing tmber drawing in carbon from the atmosphere and for future use,” a commenter said.
“It’s an interesting chain of events that’s been happening over decades,” another wrote. “The greenies jump up and down and get some small logging areas shut down, then over the years they get more and more shut down because our city‑centric government win votes.”
“Meanwhile, back at home, they’ve killed off country towns that used to have a sustainable industry, leaving high unemployment and drug problems. Then governments realise they can save budgets by not maintaining bush areas anymore because the city won’t see that, so it won’t cost any votes.”
“They also don’t bother to mention to the cities that severe fires are more likely to break out now because once they killed off the rural towns, there were no operators left who used to maintain any areas they were in as a way of looking after their assets.”
- To learn more about the impact of Victoria’s native forestry ban on timber towns, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from last week.
