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Green policies blamed for exacerbating deadly bushfires
by Scott Gilbreath ~ February 12th, 2009
Many Australians are angrily accusing government of contributing to deadly wildfires through policies that impede removing trees and clearing away brush.
During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne’s northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council’s help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. “We’ve lost two people in my family because you dickheads won’t cut trees down,” he said.
[…]
Another resident said she had asked the council four times to tend to out-of-control growth on public land near her home, but her pleas had been ignored.
Policy changes are “likely”, promised Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen, but Mr Spooner said it’s too late now, isn’t it. The man has a right to be angry, I’d say.
Vindication has come to an Australian family that was prosecuted for illegal clearing of trees.
THEY were labelled law breakers, fined $50,000 and left emotionally and financially drained.
But seven years after the Sheahans bulldozed trees to make a fire break — an act that got them dragged before a magistrate and penalised — they feel vindicated. Their house is one of the few in Reedy Creek still standing.
Columnist Miranda Devine says green agitprop is now a proven killer.
It wasn’t climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn’t arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves.
But the ideologues have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Burnoffs following Victoria bushfires a ‘threat to biodiversity’
[…]
A Department of Environment spokeswoman confirmed yesterday it had received a public submission to list controlled burning as a “key threatening process” – the same category that applies to climate change, land clearing and feral cats, pigs and foxes.
The fires have probably killed millions of animals in Australia. Doesn’t that qualify as a “threat to biodiversity”?
h/t: Australian Politics
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