The Victorian Lands Alliance is prepared to comment on all aspects of public land management. Media releases will appear in this section as they are released to the media.
The government must recognise the royal commission emphasis on the “protection of human life and the safety of communities as the highest priority for bushfire policy” in taking action on their recommendations said the Victorian Lands Alliance.
We call on the government to lay the foundation for future bushfire policy by declaring that the No.1 priority for the Department of Sustainability and Environment is fire management.
In a dramatic rebuff of the scale of prescribed burning currently undertaken in Victoria, the expert panel on Land and Fire Management at the Bushfires Royal Commission yesterday unanimously recommended lifting the range of prescribed burning to between 5 and 10 per cent of the treatable area of public land.
The seven member panel consisted of experts in fire ecology and environmental research.
The Victorian Lands Alliance today launched an online survey to collate community views on bushfire and management issues by tapping the wealth of knowledge in the community.
In announcing the Bushfire Survey, VLA secretary Max Rheese said “A consistent theme in several inquiries and reviews of recent bushfires has been the frustration expressed by community members that they were not being listened to with regard to bushfire threats and how to deal with those threats locally.”
A new report released today by the Victorian Lands Alliance strongly supports the case for increased fuel reduction burning to help control bushfires.
The highly referenced report draws on research and 27 case studies of the Department of Sustainability and Environment, CSIRO and the W.A Department of Conservation and Land Management, to show that reducing forest fuel will help control bushfires, thereby minimising risk to communities.
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Gippsland East MP Craig Ingram has called on the government to amend National Parks legislation currently before the parliament to allow for more parks to be opened to licensed deer hunting, to manage increasing numbers of deer.
Mr Ingram states in his letter to government that seasonal, licensed deer hunting is the only tool currently available to manage deer on public land and this should be expanded to lessen impacts of deer on the environment.
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A No Fuel No Fire community meeting in Colac last night heard that despite the Black Saturday tragedy, state-wide fuel reduction burn targets had remained unchanged for the 2009/ 2010 fire season at 130,000 hectares, the same level as the last five years.
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The release of the Bushfires Royal Commission Interim Report has focussed the need for decisive action on preventing a repeat of last summer’s tragedy said public land management advocacy group, the Victorian Lands Alliance at the closed briefing given by the Treasurer today.
“It is clear from evidence given by many of the witnesses to the commission that not enough attention has been given to bushfire prevention” said Max Rheese, secretary of the VLA.
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Criticism of the Victorian Government for acting to protect communities before next fire season is unproductive says the Lands Alliance, which is advocating for better fire management on public land
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The Victorian Lands Alliance submission to the Royal Commission analyses the fuel reduction burning history since the rapid expansion of national parks in the 1970’s and finds a correlation between increasing area of parks and declining fuel reduction burning.
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This week, as we reach the three month anniversary of the fires, we encourage the Premier to unequivocally accept the major recommendation of his own parliamentary inquiry, the advice of the auditor general and the calls of the bushfire ravaged community to accept as an absolute minimum a tripling of fuel reduction burning to 385,000 hectares per year.
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The refusal of the Bushfire Royal Commission to allow the Victorian Farmers Federation and the Victorian Association of Forest Industries to appear at the commission was today denounced as ludicrous.
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