Bundarrah Days

THE fires of 2003, 2006-07 and 2009 do not come under the heading of tragic act of nature.

These were manufactured fires, born of a cynical manipulation of the natural environment where neglect does the job demanded of it by radical greens.

Manufactured fire is all about fuel. It was easy for green land managers to accomplish heavy fuel loads in our forests and they did that by implementing a program of totally inadequate fuel reduction burning.

It wasn't so easy on private farmland but the intent is plain to see. Native vegetation offsets are not about preserving native flora but about providing fuel for flames on private farmland assisted by laws and regulations against clearing fallen timber and other environmental waste.

Black Saturday was for the green movement the culmination of manufactured fire. Whilst we are not claiming that their agenda actually requires the deaths of innocent people we don't believe they won't care if it causes tragedy. It's all grist for the green mill.

What the green agenda does require is that people become so frightened or disenchanted by life in rural areas that they pack up and move back to town and the deaths of the more than 200 people who died on Black Saturday will be used as a means to end.

Even though of us who keep banging on about the dangers of the neglected bush play in the hands of green fanatics. We scare people too, even though it's not our intent.

We need to reassure people that our forests, managed as they should be, are a stable and safe environment.

There have long been fears that bushfire may become a weapon for terrorists and now it is though not in the way most would have expected. Fire has become the primary weapon of the environmental terrorists who have infiltrated our bureaucracies and control organisations such as the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA). These are the people who "stack the woodshed" and wait for a fortuitous lightning strike, a fallen powerline or even a mad pyromaniac to set our country alight.

It's interesting that the VNPA only last year recommended that native vegetation offsets on private land be doubled. What has farmland got to do with a national parks lobby group? In brief, offsets are a requirement to replace one tree with more. If you have a problem tree affecting power lines or a fence, for example, and you want to remove it then under present regulations you have to plant 30 to offset the loss of the one you removed.

In the 2008 Land Health and Biodiversity White Paper the VNPA proposed that offsets be substantially increased. These new offsets were apparently to be set by science. However, no scientific evidence was presented in support of the proposal and the cost, of course, was to be borne by landowners. That is compelling evidence of a scheme to import manufactured fire to farmland

Depending on the findings of the Royal Commission there could be a case for the laying of charges of criminal negligence and conspiracy against senior conservation bureaucrats and other leading green activists over the Black Saturday fires. I know for a fact that Melbourne lawyers have discussed the potential for the laying of such charges.

The wilderness aspirations of the green movement, the subsequent lack of fuel reduction burning and other fuel reduction strategies and the imposition of native vegetation laws on farmers and other landowners is all evidence that manufactured fire is the weapon the green movement is using to try and remove human presence from our bushland.