Burns spark interest

By Monique Ebrington
THE Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) will be holding meetings in August to identify when and where planned burns will be and to gather public input.
The DSE hosted the first of the meetings at Warburton and Healesville last Wednesday 5 August to inform the community about their 2009/2010 planned burns in the Bunyip State Park, Yarra State Forest and the Yarra Ranges National Park.
DSE Yarra District Land and Fire Manager Geoff Scales said there was an obvious interest from the community this year, with more than 30 people attending the Warburton meeting.
At Healesville, however the numbers were much lower.
“Each August we open up our lines for people to contact us and suggest where we should do planned burns of public land,” Mr Scales said.
“We are usually lucky to have a handful of phone calls,” he added.
“The heightened interest would have to be directly attributed to what happened in February.”
Ms Scales said that while the public can request areas to be burned, it is not guaranteed, with a strict process involved in choosing locations to burn.
“There’s a logical sequence of planned burns over time, to provide asset protection,” he said.
“There’s a lot of planning required to investigate the values on the area planned to be burned, so any particular values can be taken into account when planning for burns.”
Mr Scales said assets usually include flora and fauna matters, historical sites and cultural heritage.
He said that autumn is the favoured season for planned burns, due to weather requirements, and that the quota had been met for this year.
“We have achieved our burning fuel reduction targets this autumn,” he said. “We are now concentrating on autumn 2010 and smaller strategic burns during spring, if the weather conditions permit.”