Australia has a ''strong history'' of bushfire research, according to a recent national inquiry into bushfire mitigation and management.
It's a bold statement, made in a report published in 2004 by the Council of Australian Governments, that's beginning to acquire the ring of wishful thinking.
Strong history or strongly politicised history ? If we have such a strong national history of bushfire research, why does Australia still lack good data on fire management, potential fire frequency and risk assessment?
Why is vital research still falling through the cracks as a result of government budget cuts and efficiency dividends? And why are Australia's research agencies and institutions persisting with the dual cults of science management and science communication (media coverage is now being cited as a performance indicator in some areas of fire research), instead of stripping out management layers to free up funds for long-term public good research?
The CSIRO has dumped one of Australia's longest-running fire ecology studies, a 30-year project on fire and ecosystem recovery at Nadgee Nature Reserve in south-east NSW. The last scientist working on the project apparently with a good slice of the research conducted in his own time in recent years left CSIRO last week, after being made redundant. At least he had the satisfaction of knowing the Nadgee project , the first of its kind in Australia, influenced new research being conducted by the NSW parks service in Ben Boyd National Park.
The CSIRO has also mothballed a world-first software system capable of designing site-specific plans for prescribed burning. During a visit to Australia before his death in 2001, the man who pioneered modern ecological planning, United States academic Ian McHarg, author of the Design with Nature, was so impressed by the software he wrote an enthusiastic letter of recommendation to the federal government. McHarg was a towering figure in his field, and those unfamiliar with his work might think of it this way this letter of enthusiastic approval from McHarg was like Elvis inviting a singer onstage to perform Jailhouse Rock as a duet. Bells should have rung for CSIRO and the federal government they were clearly on a global winner. But the software and its potential fire management benefits are now lost to Australia.
According to CSIRO sources, the Nadgee study and the software were casualties of cost cutting, scrapped to accommodate a drop in Federal funding. The CSIRO's research priorities were refocused to encourage investment by private- sector partners, and these two projects were presumably axed as unlikely to attract commercial interest. The subsequent job cuts and loss of expertise have serious repercussions for Australia's biodiversity, the integrity of our national parks and the safety of people living and working in fire-prone areas of rural and peri-urban Australia. If scientist John Ive, inventor of CSIRO's breakthrough software, hadn't been declared ''surplus to requirements'' , we might be well on the way to developing sophisticated fire regimes for our national parks, state forests and the regional towns that service them.
But although he invented the software, Ive doesn't own the intellectual property. That remains with CSIRO, but the organisation appears to have little interest in making the software available for use as a fire management tool. Shouldn't this be facilitated (a favourite word with science managers) as a matter of national importance? If CSIRO doesn't want the software, shouldn't it be handed back to the inventor?
In 2003, the Howard government established the first nationally coordinated bushfire research effort, the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, as ''a vital fighting force to increase understanding of bushfires and how to control them.'' It had a budget and resources totalling about $110million over seven years, and was established to deliver research that could ''quickly be applied to assist in the prevention and fighting of bushfires''.
The centre is currently applying for refunding in the new round of bids to the Federal government for cooperative research centre funding. But following the devastating bushfires in Victoria earlier this year, questions have been raised about the relevance of some of its research. Government agency sources have told The Canberra Times they believe the centre has lost direction. These sources, all from within agencies that have worked with the research centre, claimed it is ''producing academic waffle'' and that it should be dumped by the Rudd Government when its seven-year funding cycle ends next year.
The centre recently announced a new study of ''decision making in the face of fire'', which aims to understand how decisions are made ''in the attempt to predict and to control fires''.
La Trobe University psychologist, Dr Mary Omodei, who heads up the project, said ''Previous research suggests that human decision-making ability deteriorates in rapidly changing and relatively unpredictable fire situations.
''While it remains unclear what factors cause such a decline in decision-making ability, our research findings suggest these range from inherent limitations of cognitive processing abilities limitations that are further aggravated by cognitive overload and physiological and psychological stress.''
Fine, but wouldn't it make sense to know more about the impact of global warming on soils and vegetation, potential fire frequencies and skills needed to manage prescribed burning?
Don't we need to know more about the decision options available? Australian National University visiting fellow in fire ecology, Dr Malcolm Gill, says we need to develop ''a national philosophy of fire.'' He argues that while bushfires are a natural feature of Australia's landscapes, the nature of their naturalness ''is usually poorly appreciated''. We don't understand the properties of fire, ''such as flame length, intensity, ember production and rate of spread'', or the impact of fire on our soils, water, air or ecosystems, he says.
The software John Ive developed for CSIRO can be used to map some of these impacts, and offers the opportunity for Australia to be a world leader in fire mangement at a landscape level. Can we have it back, please?
Rosslyn Beeby is science and environment reporter
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