My Australian homeland is burning. Areas the size of many U.S. states are completely blackened, billions of critters dead, thousands of homes destroyed, over 20 people dead and many more missing. Why? Let me share a memory. Lighting fires, riding horses through the Australian Outback dropping wax-covered Redhead matches. This was one of the routines we did as kids, after the first heavy rain. Everybody who ran livestock in the bush did this. The fires would burn slowly, on the wet earth, and continue all winter. Come spring, green grass replaced combustible wilderness. Then, when temperatures became so hot you could not touch steel with your bare hands and the hot wind cracked your lips, there were few or no bush fires. The idea of such controlled burning was not new. Australian aboriginals had been doing it for 30,000 years.
How things have changed in the last 60 years. In Australia today, if you dropped a match in the bush you would be jailed for the term of your natural life. If you go camping (show permit please!) it is illegal to use old wood from dead trees. You must actually haul in your own wood! Then again, it is illegal to own a slingshot in Australia. Guns are objects seen only in U.S. movies. Of course, they are heavily trafficked by criminals in Australia. Home invasions went up 49 percent when guns were banned.
Global warming, caused by man, may or may not have something to do with the Australian fires. What is clear is that traditional forest management in the Outback has been sacrificed by the people who believe that by leaving the bush in its “natural” state all living things will benefit. How wrong they were!
The situation in Australia reminds me of how it was here in Malibu a year ago, when scrub that had been untouched for 30 years exploded with an energy humans could not extinguish. Except I stopped it at my home with 30,000 gallons of stored water, two working pumps and six crazy friends. I saved my house, the houses on both sides of me, and half a dozen more the next day. Didn’t see a fire truck in seven days. Didn’t need one either. The only visitor I had was a sheriff ordering me to leave. I thanked him for his concern. I also personally thanked some of my neighbors for planting grapes—wonderful fire breaks.
Will policy change in Australia or Malibu? I doubt it. My advice: Get ready to save yourself next time—because nobody will come.
Colin Dangaard