Fire can be a Friend (1980)

[Music plays and text appears: the Researchers]

[Image changes to show various people working in the bush]

[Image changes to show a fire burning in a paddock and text appears: Fire Can Be a Friend]

[Image changes to show a burnt plant]

Narrator: Nothing engenders fear and horror among Australians like a summer holocaust.

[Image changes to show various images of fire in a paddock, and burning buildings]

Wildfires like this can bring down in minutes what has taken a lifetime to build.

[Image changes to show a burnt paddock]

Fire, though, is a natural part of the Australian environment. It’s been as regular as summer itself for thousands of years.

[Image changes to show fire fighters hosing water on a fire, and beating at the fire on the ground with a bag]

In fact fire has been such a dominant factor that many native plants are adapted to periodic burning. But fire out of control is no respecter of man or beast.

[Image changes to show a dead cow]

[Image changes to show a fire truck and fire fighters talking in a group]

It’s not surprising that so much effort in manpower and equipment is applied to suppressing fire in Australia, but this destructive power of bushfires, properly controlled, could be worth a lot of money to hundreds of graziers.

[Image changes to show a fire fighter starting a controlled burn fire]

Working in semiarid woodlands of Eastern Australia scientists from CSIRO’s Division of Land Resources Management have found that the suppression of fire is not always for the best.

[Image changes to show camera panning across a paddock]

When the pioneers pushed inland from the coast with their sheep and cattle they found vast open and grassy woodlands with abundant feed for their animals, but gradually, and then dramatically, the landscape began changing.

[Image changes to show an aerial view of inland Australia]

So much so that today a vast area of some 400,000 square kilometres, extending from Central New South Wales into Central Queensland, is being choked by a dense sea of invading shrubs.

[Image changes to show a man walking through dense shrubs]

The CSIRO scientists believe the reason for the change is partly due to overgrazing by sheep and rabbits, which have removed the grasses and given the shrubs the competitive edge, and ironically the efforts of settlers. CSIRO Range Land Ecologist, Doctor Graham Harrington.

[Image changes to show Doctor Graham Harrington]

Doctor Graham Harrington: Well we know that fire will kill many of these problem shrubs, and we also know that since Europeans arrived in this country, about a hundred years ago, the frequency of bushfires has been greatly reduced, and this coincides with the growth, this vast increase in growth of shrubs that we see here today.

[Image changes to show George Lucas on a motorbike in a paddock]

Narrator: The invading shrub is literally forcing sheep off the land, as grazier George Lucas knows only too well. When he bought his property, Clifton Downs, at Yantabulla in the far north of New South Wales in the early 1960s, he could muster this paddock alone in a matter hours.

[Image changes to show George Lucas mustering sheep in a paddock]

Now, with a dense cover of shrub, it take three men twice as long, and even then they can never be sure of a complete muster. The ability of his property to support livestock has been reduced by 50% in recent years, and his chances of finding sick or injured sheep are almost nil. The CSIRO research team believes the shrub will survive the next drought, but the grasses won’t, which means that when the drought breaks the grasses will not re-establish. And not only the sheep suffer, the shrubs are depriving the red kangaroo of its natural habitat, and creating a haven for feral animals like pigs and goats.

[Image changes to show a red kangaroo in a paddock]

In an effort to push back the shrub and restore the natural balance Doctor Harrington and his team are carefully reintroducing fire into the woodlands.

[Image changes to show fire fighters observing a bush fire]

But is fire foreign to this environment?

[Image changes back to Doctor Harrington]

Doctor Graham Harrington: Well no, fire is a natural part of this environment, either lightening fires, or Aboriginal started fires, and knowing this, and knowing that it was open country before Europeans got, or when Europeans got here, we’ve been carefully reintroducing fire into this system, and as you can see here it’s very effective. These shrubs are dead.

[Camera zooms in on the dead shrubs]

[Image changes to show a fire fighter in a field talking on a walkie-talkie as he observes a fire burning in a paddock]

Narrator: Years of experience in studying bushfire behaviour go into ensuring that scientists have a controlled, not a wildfire. But given the traditional Australian attitude towards fire, is there a better way of bringing paddocks back to productive operations?

[Image changes back to Doctor Harrington]

Doctor Graham Harrington: Well we’ve looked at the all possible alternatives, herbicides, mechanical clearing, goats, and they’ve either proved ineffective, or they prove far too expensive to have any hope on this large scale of controlling this scrub.

[Image changes to show a burnt paddock]

Narrator: Burning often causes seeds of shrubs to germinate therefore a second fire is necessary to kill off these seedlings.

[Image changes to show goats running through a paddock]

The management of paddocks after the fire is also important to the success of the technique. Animals favour burnt country, and the graziers need to be careful not to allow rejuvenated vegetation to be overgrazed, so an important part of the continuing research is the study of the migratory habits of kangaroos and goats into burnt areas. Just how strong a chance does the CSIRO experiment have of solving the shrub problem?

[Image changes back to Doctor Harrington]

Doctor Graham Harrington: Well our research program has got quite a few points to follow up yet as to how fire can be incorporated into property management, but what I am absolutely sure of is that there is no alternative to fire to stop this country from thickening up so that it will be no longer productive as far as sheep are concerned.

[Camera zooms in on shrubs in the paddock]

[Image changes and text appears: CSIRO]