Exaggeration

There is nothing new about young regrowth being more vulnerable to severe impacts from bushfire (Gaz 30/6).

But the key point is that the vast majority of this fire-vulnerable regrowth has arisen from past bushfires, rather than timber harvesting which is restricted to just a minor, and spatially-scattered portion of our forests.

Furthermore, this regrowth is more vulnerable to damage because of its dense structure and low canopy height.

Accordingly, the severity with which it may be impacted by a bushfire is not indicative of a fire burning with any greater intensity than in other taller and more open forests where it does less damage. Therefore, the presence of regrowth in the landscape does not automatically equate to bigger, hotter, and less controllable bushfires.

Zylstra et al tries to discredit this viewpoint by saying that “only one major piece of work funded by the logging industry and coauthored by logging industry employees, argued differently”.

However, this ‘piece of work’ was in fact a peer-reviewed paper published in a reputable scientific journal. It was not funded the ‘logging industry’ and was co-authored by a Melbourne University Professor of Botany and others including some of Australia’s most reputable bushfire scientists and practitioners.

On the other hand, only Zylstra himself amongst the five co-authors of his letter, can be described as a bushfire scientist. The others are ecologists who are unlikely to have ever attended a bushfire.

Claiming that they have collectively authored ‘multiple peer reviewed studies’ on bushfire science is the sort of exaggeration that we are more accustomed to seeing from environmental activists rather than supposedly credible scientists.

Mark Poynter, Sale