How They Made a Pyre of the Bush

One of the invariable outcomes of a  major bushfire like the one that is lashing the karri forest as I write, is that the debate about hazard-reduction burning always resurfaces. The Greens and their supporters in the leafy suburbs and university campuses, who are never threatened by bushfires from one year to the next, all oppose it. The emergency services bosses, whose status and budgets would decline if hazards were reduced, talk it down (while all the time calling for more firefighters and greater investment in helicopters and tankers). The wine-grape growers, concerned only for their profits, threaten to sue if the merest whiff of smoke blows across their vines. The media, which love a big fire almost as much as they love stirring possums, are ambivalent — they can’t really come out and say that they don’t like it … after all, if you oppose hazard reduction you are basically saying you support hazard retention. But journalists find irresistible the battle scenes associated…