Re: SER1 Greenpeace

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    I think Ian that the extreme greens do the environmental cause far 
more harm than good. I am all for green causes and would be the first in 
line to encourage the Australian Navy to torpedo a couple of Japanese 
whaling boats if they do begin to take hump back whales in Australian 
Antarctic waters as they are proposing doing.
    Diana pointed out that the policy of National Parks administrators 
here of making large areas into wilderness areas (no access except by 
foot) can cause problems with such things as ferrals and fire. I point 
out that it already has caused such problems in the ACT. Our fires in 
2003, apart from destroying 500 homes in urban Canberra, totally 
destroyed about 300 square kilometers of native bushland. This area is 
mostly national park which had been lightly logged many years ago with 
no ill effects.
    The area is also the water catchment for the ACT. The fire and 
access tracks in this area were closed off to all access except for 
management purposes a number of years ago and the majority of tracks 
fell into disrepair. When the fires struck, there was no access, bridges 
collapsed under the weight of tankers etc. and the end result (after a 
comedy of errors lasting over ten days) was that the whole 
park/catchment area was totally deforested by fire.
    The water quality which was once among the very best, due to water 
being filtered by sphagnum bogs etc. is now very ordinary to say the 
least. A filtration plant has had to be installed which produces about 
four container loads of goop every day, this stuff has to be dumped 
somewhere too.
    The whole area will take more than our lifetimes to recover, these 
fires could have been stopped by having better access and by the fire 
authorities being able to act without consultation to these green 
managers before they did anything at all.
    I am certain that Diana will agree with all of these statements as a 
similar situation to the above occurred in the Shoalhaven area closer to 
here home on two successive fire seasons. Again, the damage was caused 
mostly by park managers making access by fire authorities difficult if 
not impossible. Most of the people making these decissions have all 
sorts of academic qualifications but have only theoretical knowlege of  
the bushland that they "manage".
    Cheers
    Allan
    Canberra, Australia


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