Decades of poor land management are fuelling a new wave of severe bushfires across NSW and Australia-wide, including a deadly blaze in Bulahdelah, about 90 kilometres north-east of Newcastle, which closed off the Pacific Highway and came within 80 metres of destroying the Bluebat timber mill. That is according to Marius Heymann, a former fire captain, now a vice‑captain who has fought fires on the Mid North Coast for more than 20 years, said the conditions were worsened by neglected hazard‑reduction burns and overgrown tracks.
“Every time I go to a fire, I see badly overgrown land, fire tracks overgrown. There hasn’t been any hazard reduction for decades,” he told Wood Central. “It’s a tragedy, as any fauna located in the now burnt out tracks have clearly perished in the latest fire.” And rather than blaming agencies, Heymann said he wanted to highlight the consequences of inaction. “I am not here to blame any agency but to make people aware of the consequences of bad forest management.”
Last weekend’s fire — one of thirty that burnt across the state — forced emergency services to open a firebreak with heavy machinery to safely back‑burn against the approaching flames. “Whilst waterbombing from the RFS was helpful, it was the heavy equipment which made the difference.”
“As soon as the fire got to the National Park border, the fire just went wild.”
According to Heymann, firebreaks should be implemented and maintained across communities. “We all like to live in the bush and have the wildlife on our doorstep, but there are consequences to living this way. We can still live in the bush but have safe firebreaks and controlled burns around our properties.”
He also rejected claims that climate change was the primary driver of fire severity, insisting that poor management was to blame. “Every year, climate change is to blame. This has nothing to do with climate change but with bad management. Australia has hot, dry summers, and the eucalyptus forest is renowned for burning hot if not managed properly.”
Warning that sustainable forest management is “becoming something of the past” as the industry continues to shrink, Heymann pointed to traditional owners who applied fire management practices for thousands of years before European settlement, often with better outcomes than today’s practices. “These fires happen every year, and the same reasons for severity stay the same,” he said.
And since Forestry Corporation of NSW – the state’s public forest manager- was corporatised (back in 2013), resources allocated to firefighting and fire protection have been scaled down, Heymann warned. “Then there are the problems with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has seen Forestry Corporation drag more and more resources away from much-needed firefighting and protection. It really is death by a thousand cuts.”
- To learn more about the latest round of Australian bushfires, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from Monday.
