TREE HUGGING GREENS JUST PLAIN OLE' DUMB,USELESS AND SLOW LEARNERS!

By Larry Pickering

The longer we can prevent a bushfire, the greater the eventual bushfire.

I will always remember the Victorian father searching for photos of his dead wife and kids among the ashes, wondering how he was going to pay the $30,000 fine administered to him by a Green council for daring to attempt to clear his property of combustible material.

The Australian bush is a dangerous place. People die and property is destroyed as a result of our passion for rustic living.

The sound of bellbirds and the bucolic smells of the bush are irresistible. The trouble is we shouldn’t be there. It is an ancient, foreign place to the modern, urban person.

Bushfires will happen, whether lightning starts them, Aborigines start them, arsonists or God starts them.

Every 10 -15 years combustible undergrowth builds to a point where it becomes a tinderbox begging to be ignited... and eventually it will ignite despite our efforts to prevent it.

Only then can the natural regeneration of the bush begin.

We drag bodies from these regular fires while hunting suspected arsonists. But arsonists may have done us a favour because, if left uncleared another year, the damage in life and property would have been far greater.

Millions of hectares of Australian bush burn annually but that matters only when we and our belongings are in the way. The natural order of the bush won’t make an exception because we build a house in its path.

The Greens lobby against the clear-felling of trees around homes and they win. They overtake councils. Their arrogance is breathtaking. Their lack of understanding of the bush is confounding and at the cost of countless lives.

A Green gopher like the Tasmanian hare-brained Bob Brown, doesn’t understand the bush; he just likes to live in it.

Flammable seeds from gaseous eucalypts, desperate to regenerate, lie dormant waiting, waiting. It is the inevitable fire’s intense heat that breaks open these rich, pregnant pods and allows our bush to regenerate, to live.

Return to a black landscape in a few months’ time and the fire’s purpose will be clear. It is an essential part of the health of our bush.

And the Green gophers still don’t get it... their memories are too short, their vision of reality too limited. Their influence too dangerous.